{"id":25,"date":"2012-10-14T19:14:59","date_gmt":"2012-10-14T08:14:59","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catesings.org\/?p=25"},"modified":"2012-10-14T19:14:59","modified_gmt":"2012-10-14T08:14:59","slug":"the-swingle-singers-perform-didos-lament","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/2012\/10\/14\/the-swingle-singers-perform-didos-lament\/","title":{"rendered":"The Swingle Singers perform Dido’s Lament (H. Purcell)"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was going to start this blog off tomorrow with a very beautiful recording of ‘Music for a while’, that being my tagline and all, but as I was wandering around YouTube looking for my own stuff, I stumbled across this deeply strange, beat-boxy version of Dido’s Lament.<\/p>\n

[youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3FSPJ5f9CWI&w=420&h=315]Is it not both weird and wonderful?\u00a0 I love the way the poor chap singing bass has that endlessly repeating ground bass * throughout.\u00a0\u00a0 He must be bored to tears, but he has a beautiful voice for it.\u00a0 There’s nothing like a bit of basso profundo to start your week.\u00a0\u00a0 I’m sure Purcell would approve.\u00a0 And then they add in the beat box rhythm.\u00a0 I’m not entirely sure what Purcell would have thought of that, though given some of the pub songs he wrote, he’d probably be fairly amused.<\/p>\n

I can’t quite decide what I think of it, overall.\u00a0 It’s sort of the chill-out version of Dido’s Lament, and it’s pretty gorgeous in it’s own right, but I’m not convinced it packs quite the same emotional punch as, for example, this version by Xenia Meijer<\/a>.\u00a0 But then again, does it need to?\u00a0 I completely love the idea of it, but my inner opera purist (I didn’t even know I had one) is less certain.<\/p>\n

What do you think?<\/p>\n

* This is me showing off my brand new musical terminology!\u00a0 A ground bass, for those of you who know as little of such things as I did a few months ago, is simply a repeating riff in the bass line that continues throughout a song.\u00a0 Purcell was rather fond of this device, in any case, and since I’m rather fond of Purcell, this probably won’t be the last ground bass you hear in these parts.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was going to start this blog off tomorrow with a very beautiful recording of ‘Music for a while’, that being my tagline and all, but as I was wandering around YouTube looking for my own stuff, I stumbled across this deeply strange, beat-boxy version of Dido’s Lament. [youtube=http:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=3FSPJ5f9CWI&w=420&h=315]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[185,351,505,549,593,674,780],"class_list":["post-25","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-dido-and-aeneas","tag-jazz","tag-music","tag-opera","tag-purcell","tag-swingle-singers","tag-xenia-meijer"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=25"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/25\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=25"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=25"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=25"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}