{"id":873,"date":"2018-12-10T09:59:00","date_gmt":"2018-12-09T22:59:00","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/catesings.org\/?p=873"},"modified":"2018-12-10T09:59:00","modified_gmt":"2018-12-09T22:59:00","slug":"advent-calendar-day-7-the-record-of-john-gibbons","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/2018\/12\/10\/advent-calendar-day-7-the-record-of-john-gibbons\/","title":{"rendered":"Advent Calendar Day 10: The Record of John &#8211; Gibbons"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>I really had intended to leave The Record of John out of my Advent calendar this year, especially as I have more Gibbons planned for you later in December, but then I made the mistake of listening to it again, and I just couldn&#8217;t.\u00a0 I really do think this is one of the most amazing pieces of Advent music ever written, and it just doesn&#8217;t feel like Advent to me until I&#8217;ve sung the part about the voice that crieth in the wilderness.<\/p>\n<p>(Which is sad, because I haven&#8217;t actually had the opportunity to sing this piece for some years now, and I miss it quite desperately.)<\/p>\n<p>Like the Michael Wise piece from last Thursday, this is a verse anthem, but where other composers use music to paint a picture of the words, Gibbons takes the approach of using the music to capture the natural inflections of speech, at least in the solo line.\u00a0 It makes him very easy to sing with feeling, and I think also heightens the emotional impact of the music.<\/p>\n<p>But really, you don&#8217;t need me to tell you why this is beautiful.\u00a0 You would be far better off just listening to it, and finding out for yourself.<\/p>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"This is the Record of John - Gibbons\" width=\"474\" height=\"356\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/a9pE5vrgBHQ?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<p>PS &#8211; So I just went and had a look at Gibbons&#8217; biography, and he apparently died of an apoplexy aged only 41.\u00a0 Spookily, this is the same age at which Michael Wise died (though he died while brawling with a night watchman).\u00a0 The moral of the story: don&#8217;t write verse anthems, or you will die young.\u00a0 And let&#8217;s not even get started on Purcell, who only made it to 36.\u00a0 Come to think of it, he wrote verse anthems, too.\u00a0 Really, don&#8217;t write verse anthems if you want to grow old&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I really had intended to leave The Record of John out of my Advent calendar this year, especially as I have more Gibbons planned for you later in December, but then I made the mistake of listening to it again, and I just couldn&#8217;t.\u00a0 I really do think this is one of the most amazing [&hellip;]<\/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":[14,118,553,621,700],"class_list":["post-873","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-advent-calendar","tag-choir-of-magdalen-college-oxford","tag-orlando-gibbons","tag-rogers-covey-crump","tag-the-record-of-john"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873","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=873"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/873\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=873"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=873"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/catesings.catespeaks.net\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=873"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}