Having made it through Monday by the skin of my teeth, I wanted to share around this video in hopes that it would start Tuesday off on a better foot.
I would draw your attention, in particular, to the timing of the chorus, 1:16, 2:10, and 2:19′s “Tell it how you feel.”
Thanks for that warning, ladies. Er, gentlemen? Either. BOTH. REVEL IN THE AMBIGUITY. Revel in the DANCING.
Revel in the Austen!!
There’s a fellow in the laundry room just waiting for the dryers and playing his banjo. He’s not striving, he’s not driven, he doesn’t seem concerned about posture. But he’s making music, and that’s making him happy.
In another mood, that would thrill me. But today it makes me jealous and discontent. Where did I step from the road I was on and start berating myself for what I don’t do and hating what I do…do…? This banjo player is reminding me that I too, once loved playing the violin. Why do I now sigh patiently over it as if it were a querulous lover? Maybe we need counselling. Maybe I need to practice more. Maybe ‘practice’ is the last thing I need, and I should learn to play some bluegrass. Maybe I’ll go out there and ask this banjo-er…banjo-ist… banjo man, if he’s up for a jam with a heart sick violinist.
And maybe I’ll stop making all ya’ll listen to me whine. But this is the Egotist’s Club, after all, and if an egotist can’t whinge a bit about mooning around and missing a sense of purpose, what can an egotist do? I suppose I could discuss my dreams…but…that’s too far… After all, no one can relate to nocturnal wanderings, but in mentioning this particular sorrowful circumstance, perhaps you can see yourself. And perhaps, recognizing that all love (of people and things) takes care and thought and work, we can drag each other up by the bootstraps and try again tomorrow.
It is customary for some of us to put songs of praise on hold during the Lenten season, particularly songs of praise containing that particular Hebrew word proclaiming the praise of Yahweh. We get serious about avoiding it. We bury it. We listen to Handel’s Messiah with great care, lest the nine or ten movements appropriate to Lent lead us to hear that famous chorus before its time. I’ve even heard performers apologize for their potential offense of those with liturgical sensibilities (or, as Thalia and I would say, liturges) by including The A Word (not that one, the other one) in their program, which was performed during Lent because there are only so many openings in the performance hall schedule.
Normally it’s easy enough to avoid, because you know what you’re avoiding. But there are occasional false positives. Here’s the scene: Peachy sits, as before, listening to Celtic music on Pandora. Gaelic Storm’s rendition of “An Poc Ar Buile” has just begun. “Can I listen to this?” he asks me.
Preposterous, right? Surely he can listen to whatever he wants. But An Poc Ar Buile has made me wonder too. The chorus goes “Ailliliú, puilliliú, ailliliú tá an puc ar buile” and it does sound a bit jubilant.
But Gaelic’s not the same thing as Hebrew by any means. It turns out they’re singing about a fellow in Dromore, up in the County Down, who meets a mad goat. When it catches its horns in some gorse, he jumps on its back, and rides it some 230 or 240 miles to County Cork.
You will probably hear more from me about goat-songs before long. For now, know that ailliliú is like an extremely literal hosanna: anyone caught on a mad puck goat could well sing “Save me now!”
A couple years back, David reviewed a book called Undine. I read his review, put the title on my mental “to read” list, and went on my way. Before long, time ate away all details of the review except that title, but I figured it was enough to see me through. So last week, flushed with the victory of my new library card, I typed “Undine” into Ann Arbor District Library’s catalog, and rejoiced when I picked it up.
It was only after dashing through it that I looked at David’s review again and realized that oh, the thing I just read was written nearly 200 years after the thing he reviewed. Not only that, but he included a note that the novella he read is available in full on Google books.
Woops!
So perhaps it could be regarded as an inconvenient happenstance, but I grieve not. Instead of an Irish fairy story by Friedrich de la Motte Fouque, I got an Australian story of magic and the sea by Penni Russon, very clearly inspired by The Tempest, with some intriguing relationships and a dash of localized diction.
Undine’s a sixteen-year-old girl living next door to her best friend Trout (not even his teachers call him Trevor anymore), dealing with a peculiar heavy feeling and the unpleasant weight of Tuesdays (“which, on the whole, were not to be trusted”). Whispers call Undine home, as though she weren’t at home already, and she has a freak storm, a love triangle, and curiously inevitable fights with her mum to deal with as well. Meanwhile, Trout is doing a bit of research on chaos theory, a bit of reading on Shakespeare, and a bit of pondering how discrete he should be with other people’s secrets. My apologies for being vague, but I’m trying not to spoil any of the plot. Here are a few selections from it:
Little scales glittered on her hands from the fish, and her skin felt dry and salty. She lathered and washed, but suspected the scales were as insidious as Jasper’s day-care glitter, which hung around for months, miraculously appearing underneath a fingernail or at the end of an eyelash, no matter how many baths he took, and migrating to Lou and Undine, and various other unlikely places, so that little bits of Christmas would suddenly and surprisingly appear in the corners of things.
“Anyway, he didn’t waffle. He sang.”
Undine groaned. “That’s even worse. Tra la la. And then the great hero Achilles went into an epic sulk and was boring for a very long time. Tra la la. And here’s the name of every ship, all one billion of them, and everyone who was ever on each ship, tra la la.”
“But who…I mean…I already know my father is dead. This is hardly a revelation.”
“Do you know the story of The Tempest?”
“No. We studied Hamlet in English lit.”
Trout rolled his eyes. “You can actually just read Shakespeare, you know. It’s not outlawed outside of school hours.”
It was a fast and evocative read. My chief complaint is that a storyline dependent on the extra-ordinariness of the protagonist may ring a bit hollow to the ordinary reader. There were moments when I thought “Okay, so there’s this power you could wield; what is that to me?” because, of course, I can’t. Thankfully Undine has enough of the ordinary teenage girl about her: navigating relationships with friends and family, some awkwardness, and a quest to understand who she really is when she’s never seen or heard from her father.
Today is the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. As a person who enjoys both liquor and smaller government (and who is horrified by some of the political corruption, gang wars, and general loss of Gemütlichkeit that Prohibition enacted), I think it worth celebrating.
This honestly turned out a bit more political than I meant it to be. I guess that’s what happens when you parody The Who? Also, you end up learning a bit more about history. If School House Rock calls, send ‘em my way.
[With apologies to Pete Townshend and The Who, except not really]
Volstead called our drink a bane
Poured our barrels down the drain
And banned our palliatives in the glass
And the men who passed the Act
Have their sheds and cellars stacked
with the private stock denied the working class…
I raise my glass to the Blaine Resolution
The 21st Amended constitution
Smile and grin, since dryness was repealed,
Despite the Temperance Horde -
Let the drinks be poured!
Then I’ll get up and thank the Lord
We can buy booze again!
Those fourteen years were long,
Corruption growing strong,
As the clergy, cops, and doctors flout the law
To say nothing of Capone
Doing business of his own
Taking shots the North Side Irish never saw…
I raise my glass to the Blaine Resolution
The 21st Amended Constitution,
Sip my gin that’s 40 ABV
Without the Sugar House;
No need to get soused,
Just relieved that the thirst is doused,
And not by bad poteen!
No rotgut poteen!
Blaine kept the fight although always denied; 
here’s to biergardens that luck kept alive!
Since Congress was scared of the lobbying dries,
three-fourths of the states would ratify
{instrumental interlude long enough to mix up a Sidecar}
No more of white lightning
Though we’ve kept our grenadine
And bitters, citrus, syrup, crème-de-menthe
And the cocktails of the past
Are now cocktails of the hour
Huzzah for highballs, fizzes, flips, and sours!
I raise my glass to the Blaine Resolution 
The 21st Amended Constitution
Smile and drink, since dryness was repealed,
Despite the Temperance Horde -
Let the drinks be poured!
Then I’ll get up and thank the Lord
We can buy booze again!
We’ll imbibe again!
Yeaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaah!
Jerry insists that “sorrows” be sung with closed vowels. He called on the soprano from Windsor to demonstrate for us.
“I love what the tenors do here; they’re so pleased with themselves! So glad to be wicked.”
Glorrrrrry doesn’t sound the same as glow-rih, sadly.
*holds up wine glass* True story.
The sopranos were requested to sing “in a manner more alto…dian.”
“We don’t need too much text painting here.” Text painting, for the uninitiated, is when the music expresses what the words are saying. …it’s funny because in our attempt to sing very very softly, we sounded like a mortal wound kept us from projecting.
You can’t spend four autumns singing an oratorio without coming away with some stories about it. Here are some snippets of things I’ve encountered along the way…
First off, there’s our conductor. Jerry Blackstone is a beautifully dynamic man, and endlessly fascinating to watch. This is convenient, as I have not yet met the choral situation which demanded that I look at anyone other than the conductor. The plasticity of his face and the expression of his baton tell me more than my music (which, inevitably, I still hold up and turn when appropriate without so much as glancing at it).
Like any good music director, Jerry will use whatever cajoling or mental picture or example which proves effective. Some of his exhortation follows:
(whenever we repeat a phrase) “You can’t sing it the same way twice! You’re insisting – Did you hear what I said? And the glory, the glory of the LORD! It should explode! It should be really really compelling!”
“The ness of righteousness should sound like Loch Ness. The –ng of king shouldn’t spread the vowel; sing it as though the word were kitchen. Don’t let the n sneak into since; the word is city. THE WORD IS CITY.”
“Listen to you guys. It’s like you’re afraid to stick out. If you’re a real tenor, you go ‘I’m gonna stick out. And they’re gonna hear me. And it’s gonna be gorgeous.’”
“Not CHOStisement, ‘cause that’s not a word.”
“It’s hard to hide ugliness. ….yes! That’s a word that’s language!”
“I hope in Hill we have more vibrancy and more drama…right now it’s a little gentle, as though being taken captive were okay.”
(on how to enunciate “Hallelujah”) “We’re always going to the lu, so to speak.”
(on the “Amen” part of “Worthy is the Lamb”) “You would sing that differently if you were thinking ‘First Noel’ instead of ‘This is the end of the fugue; I can relax now.’”
Movement 5: Thus Saith the Lord
Thus saith the Lord, the Lord of hosts; Yet once, a little while, and I will shake the heav’ns, and the earth, the sea, and the dry land; And I will shake all nations…
My choir director in college told us – right before a performance – how he’d conducted the Jackson Symphony Orchestra and Jackson Chorale for a performance of Messiah once. Rehearsals had been fairly typical, and none of the soloists had given him any reason for concern. When it came time for this movement during the performance, however, the baritone soloist suddenly branched out into musical theater or jazz choir: he held up and vigorously shook a hand through every melisma in the movement, stretched out an arm toward the ceiling and the floor to indicate heaven and earth, and even, it seems, fluttered his wrist to indicate the liquid nature of the sea.
We all teased our conductor for sharing this story before we processed in to sing it, as the baritone slated to sing that solo was always a bit of a red-haired wild card, and it did not strain the bounds of anyone’s belief to imagine him imitating the baritone of legend in attitude and gesture.
Raconteurs who shared the story thereafter recognized the unique applicability of this movement to cocktail preparation, which is why I have begun making some effort to learn a recitative I will never perform with an ensemble.
Movement 6: But Who May Abide the Day of His Coming?
But who may abide the day of his coming? And who shall stand when he appeareth? For he is like a refiner’s fire.
Not much of a story here, sorry; it’s just, whenever I hear this particular air, I want to go back to chemistry class and, you know, burn the dross out of something in a crucible.
Movement 19: Then Shall the Eyes
Then shall the eyes of the blind be opened, and the ears of the deaf unstopped; then shall the lame man leap as an hart, and the tongue of the dumb shall sing…
Our organist has a little pastoral scene that he sets up on the organ console in Hill. He must get a new animal for it every year; he has some 6 or 7 sheep, as well as a miniature stag. Last week, as the mezzo-soprano sang, Scott was left to his own devices. His own devices evidently include making the little stag figurine leap, as harts do.
Movement 23: He was despised
He was despised and rejected of men, a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief. He gave his back to the smiters, and his cheeks to them that plucked off the hair: He hid not his face from shame and spitting.
You probably think I am a horrible person for finding anything amusing in this movement, which typically runs between 7 and 9 minutes on account of the tempo and repetition. It really ought to be grueling. However, Thalia once pointed out that “smiters” sounds an awful lot like “spiders,” which, creepy though it sounds, is far less wrenching.
I carefully broached this subject with a fellow soprano on Sunday and she agreed, saying “I’d wondered why Jesus would give his back to the spiders. Are there even spiders in the Bible?”
(In Job 8 and Isaiah 59, it turns out)
Movement 28: He Trusted in God
He trust in God that he would deliver him; let him deliver him, if he delight in him.
Quite aside from the abundance of third person masculine pronouns, this movement makes me both laugh and cringe because it’s so curiously pleasant to get wrapped up in the persona of a jeering bystander on Golgotha. I may write more on this topic later; for now, let me just say that Jerry gets so involved and so in character that he begins to resemble John Noble as Denethor:
Further silliness (and music markings) on the morrow!
So I’m part of this choir that sings Handel’s Messiah in Hill Auditorium every year. Sometimes that means we sigh at the fact that it’s December again and we’re singing Messiah for the 4th or 10th or 37th time. Sometimes that means we pass over rehearsing Handel in favor of rehearsing more unfamiliar repertoire; this season, it’s MacMillan’s Tu Es Petrus, the finale of Beethoven’s 9th symphony, and Milhaud’s Oresteia. Sometimes we hold our scores but never look at them, which can backfire on the odd occasion our conductor makes changes to the dynamics or duration of the notes.
It can get a bit wearing, is what I’m saying. Singing a piece year after year ought to make it more polished, but I’m convinced I get worse at the melismas every time. Squishing onto the risers never really gets better. I typically end up counting how many movements are left. December doesn’t really get any warmer (well, okay, it did this year. One-off). I never get any less liturgically confused. The Hallelujah Chorus always feels so relaxed and somehow that doesn’t seem right.
And yet, no matter how wearing it gets, the moments remain which remind me why I do this – why I’m part of a choir, why I sing, why music is: The end and final aim of all music should be none other than the glory of God and the refreshment of the soul. In high school, we had choir tour shirts with this line from Bach on the back, but it hardly seemed so true then as it does now.
During performances this weekend, that nigh-wearisome familiarity with the score allowed for the music to glorify God and refresh the soul as I’d never before experienced it. The notes, the rhythms, the dynamics, the diction: they were not abandoned, but observing them was drawn up into conveying the meaning, the truth of words heard so often over the years that we sometimes cease to attend them. To paraphrase our conductor, each chorus must be sung as though for the first time these words have ever been heard:
For unto us a child is born, to us a son is given, and the government shall be upon His shoulders…
Glory to God! Glory to God in the highest, and peace on earth.
Surely, surely He hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows; He was wounded for our transgressions, He was bruiséd for our iniquities. The chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with His stripes we are healéd.
Let all the angels of God worship Him!
The kingdom of this world is become the kingdom of our Lord and of His Christ, and He shall reign forever and ever.
Worthy is the Lamb that was slain, and hath redeemed us to God by His blood, to receive power, and riches, and wisdom, and strength, and honor, and glory, and blessing! Blessing and honor, glory, and power be unto Him that sitteth upon the throne and unto the Lamb. Amen!
When the final cutoff arrived, it seemed to me that we hadn’t yet sung enough…in fact, it seemed we never could. The power and verity of those words provided a glimpse of what praising God in perfect heavenly harmony might be like. To focus one’s energy on the One who is worthy of all praise: this is delight. This is what we were made for. This is a foretaste of the feast of thanksgiving to come.
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