6 posts tagged “classical”
Doesn't sound too bad until you hit that last lyric... then WHAM! These are the sorts of songs the Elizabethans and Renaissance folks sang around the tavern, exquisitely rendered by the Baltimore Consort. I can't stand most of the fa-la-la madrigal stuff from that time period, but this CD gets constant rotation in my deck. Songs about getting drunk, smoking, farting, banging your neighbor's wife or virgin daughter, and more--and you could probably get away with playing it for your grandma. More than a few of the songs sound rather feminist, as the young lady subject is usually either the sexual aggressor or the one who decides who gets her sweet honeysuckle rose when she's damn good and ready. otherwise, a nice illustration of how our ancestors could sometimes be pretty cool guys and gals.
Morten Lauridsen composes works that make you want to cry.
While he dislikes being referred to as a Minimalist composer, too damn bad—Philip Glass is one. With his repeated thirds and thematic repetition, Glass writes the sort of music that couldn't come from anyone else, and despite his protests he remains one of the few, maybe the only, contemporary composer the man in the street can identify after hearing a few bars of one of his works. Sometimes Philip Glass threatens to become a sort of, pun intended, one-note songster. But I still like him, occasional masturbatory piano works and elongated electronic doodling aside. His soundtracks are especially strong, and a good place for the average listener to start. Pick up Mishima, a great soundtrack to a so-so film about the Japanese author.
This comes from a three part suite based on a Beckett meditation on life and death, titled, yes, "Company." "My birth is my death." Chipper guy, that Beckett.
Desprez, a great composer of the 16th Century, wrote this motet to commemorate the death of his beloved teacher, the equally great Johannes Ockeghem. It's been said that this song marks the midpoint between early classical music and the more modern and familiar forms. Early, pre-Elizabethan music is a fascinating field. The "rules" for classical music had yet to be set by 17th and 18th century composers, so it all sounds beautifully alien to the modern ear, especially the choir pieces.
Translated, it says:
Eternal rest grant unto them, O Lord,
and let perpetual light shine upon them.
Wood-nymphs, goddesses of the fountains,
Skilled singers of every nation,
Turn your voices, so clear and lofty,
To piercing cries and lamentation
Because Atropos, terrible satrap,
Has caught your Ockeghem in her trap,
The true treasurer of music and master,
Learned, handsome and by no means stout.
It is a source of great sorrow that the earth must cover him.
Put on the clothes of mourning,
Josquin, Pierre de la Rue, Brumel, Compère,
And weep great tears from your eyes,
For you have lost your good father.
May they rest in peace.
Amen.
As usual, don't buy from Amazon, but do buy this album.
A beautiful part song by the man you probably didn't know wrote the "Pomp and Circumstance" march you hear at every graduation.
This week we highlight music that makes life worth living. We begin with Elizabethan composer Thomas Tallis and his masterwork the motet Spem in Alium. The piece is sung in 40 parts by eight choirs of five singers each. The Latin verse is:
Spem in alium numquam habui praeter in te
Deus Israel
qui irasceris
et propitius eris
et omnia peccata hominum in tribulatione dimittis
Domine Deus
Creator coeli et terrae
respice humilitatem nostram
Meaning:
I have never put my hope in any other but in you
God of Israel
who will be angry
and yet become again gracious
and who forgives all the sins of suffering man
Lord God
Creator of Heaven and Earth
look upon our lowliness
It's an amazingly beautiful piece, and this recording—by the Tallis Scholars—is probably the most celebrated version. Whenever I listen to it, I feel like the human race may not be so bad after all. Not if it can turn out something like this once in a while.
