"In a democracy (‘rule by mob’), those who refuse to learn from history will be the majority and will dictate that everyone else suffer for their ignorance."
Rosemary’s post, “Religion and Politics Don’t Mix?” brought Randall Thompson’s setting of some Thomas Jefferson letters to mind the other day, and I thought I’d post a short snippet of a performance of the first number in the work to hopefully entice some readers into purchasing copies of their own. Yes, I’ll link to an Amazon.com page featuring a decent recording of the work, but no I’m not including my Amazon.com linky stuff to get credit for any purchases… because I just want folks to look and perhaps buy and listen to the piece.
I have some small quibbles with the otherwise very credible performance I’ll link, but I cannot be certain whether the sloppy consonants are the vocalists’ fault or something lost in the performance/recording space or lossy compression in the download. So, I’ve included the text to the music Randall Thompson scored both above the snippet and below the fold in order that the text be clear.
Here’s the snippet of “The God Who Gave Us Life, Gave Us Liberty”–the signature opening number of Randall Thompson’s The Testament of Freedom
“The God who gave us life gave us liberty at the same time; the hand of force may destroy but cannot disjoin them.”
Or, if the media player doesn’t work for you, here:
Once again, Britain’s Got Talent shows up the shallowness of American Idol. h.t. Cao.
Sure, a couple of small bobbles, but I’d gladly have used her in any choir, any musical production I’d ever directed (edit: well, except for the strictly instrumental concerts), even though she deserves a much bigger stage.
There is so very much more to good music than “serious” music. In fact, “serious” music sometimes takes itself so seriously (or rather its performers sometimes do) that it stops being music. Here’s an antidote to that kind of thing: some unserious but seriously good a cappella.
While my personal favorite of all time among composers is Beethoven, among Romantic era composers only Brahms seems to have the height and depth and breadth of reach that such as Bach and Beethoven achieved. Here, in a selection from the last song cycle–“Four Serious Songs” (Vier Ernsten Gesänge) (Op. 121)–Brahms wrote not quite a year before his death, is Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau singing O Tod, wie bitter bist Du?:
For SJ Reidhead (and others who are inclined toward listening to really good music very well performed), here are a couple of alternate performances of songs featured at The Pink Flamingorecently.
And since SJ has featured so very many posts of Nessun Dorma performances (go and check out all of them except for the terrible performance by Mario Lanza *gag* and–unless you enjoy a poke in the ear with a sharp stick, the “performance” by Michael Bolton), I thought The Definitive Nessun Dorma deserved a place here. 🙂
While I prefer baritone voices in general, some tenors such as Placido Domingo, John McCormack and Jussi Björling (among other great voices) always move me. Jussi Björling seems largely forgotten nowadays, and of course Placido Domingo is the greatest living tenor, but this guy’s recordings are the only tenor voice performances guaranteed to move me to tears of joy (with, to my shame, just the very slightest touch of envy *heh*) nearly as frequently as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau’s do.
Another baritone, some would say (and I would include myself among that number) THE baritone voice of the 20th Century: Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. To this day, no one sings lieder as Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau did. One could almost take any recorded example of Fischer-Dieskau singing Schubert, for example, and say, “That is how it must have sounded in Schubert’s mind’s ear.”
Here is one of many examples of absolute excellence from this most excellent baritone artist singing a light piece from the master of art songs:
Schubert and Fischer-Dieskau: the ones who taught me that German can be a beautiful language. 😉 Oh, as an aside, notice the piano artistry of his accompanist. Schubert knew how to write accompaniment beautifully and Sviatoslav Richter captures Schubert’s artistry there very nearly as much as Fischer-Dieskau does with the song. Excellence all around.
But that was just a wee taste.
If I had to single out one Schubert song as my fav, I’d probably choose Der Lindenbaum from Die Winterreisse–my personal fav Schubertian song cycle–and the performance below is certainly a decent example (“decent example” for him being “surpassing excellence”) of Fischer-Dieskau’s mastery (although I have a couple of other recordings of his performances of this song I prefer, slightly, in terms of Fischer-Dieskau’s voice), and ALFRED BRENDEL (!) accompanying. Oh! Joy! Brendel does capture Schubert’s genius as well Fischer-Dieskau does, and that is a monumental accomplishment, but then, he is Alfred Brendel… *heh*
This is from Fischer-Dieskau’s 1985 collaboration with Brendel, when both were at their artistic peak, although at 60, Fischer-Dieskau’s voice had lost just a wee tad, just the slightest edge, of its former strength. His 1972 performance with Gerald Moore was, IMO slightly better vocally, but lacked the depth of artistry Brendel brought to this one, an artistry that seems designed to wed almost perfectly with Fischer-Dieskau’s artistry to make the whole much greater than the sum of its parts. In the earlier performances with Gerald Moore, Moore, while as always brilliant, was definitely “second fiddle” to Fischer-Dieskau, so the performances lacked the depth of partnership that mark the Fischer-Dieskau/Brendel performances in my ear. (What can I say, ALFRED BRENDEL! *heh*)
So, in spite of the slight vocal problems Fischer-Dieskau evidences (mostly in other songs in the cycle, but a bit here as well), the maturity of his artistry, his emotional depth and engagement with the music combined with Alfred Brendel’s masterful artistry on the piano makes this more than just the gold standard in performances of Schubert lieder; it makes it virtually unsurpassable, IMO. Pure joy to listen to.
It just doesn’t get any better than such as this. You can find copies of the entire Fischer-Dieskau/Brendel performance of Die Winterreissehere. Well worth the cost of a CD. More than well worth it.
By now you may have gathered I kinda like Fischer-Dieskau’s vocal performances. If you’ve somehow missed that lil point, then sign up for a remedial reading class NOW. 🙂
SJ Reidhead has been posting some YouTubery of beautiful music sung by various artists, mostly tenors, recently. (Here’s one example of five featuring Nessum Dorma). I thought I’d share a couple of examples of excellence in baritone voices, beginning with Bryn Terfel singing, “Oh What a Beautiful Morning”–not the absolute best from his collection of recordings, but nevertheless a good example of this Welsh baritone’s vocal production and performance:
(I used to have a recording of Marvin Lee Aday singing a credible rendition of “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning”. Not Bryn Terfel, but decent enough for a fading rock star. I have no idea what became of that recording, but I’m sure I have it around here somewhere… )
While I was listening to one of my fav songs by Stephen Fearing recently, I was once again stuck by the lyrics, particularly by his use of a word central to the song: beguiling. And once again, I wondered at his use of the word, for most of my exposure to it in a lifetime of reading (usually) good books rendered the word in my mind’s ear once again as “leading with deception” or some such. So, this time, I went to Meriam-Webster online and found…
beguile
1: to lead by deception
2: hoodwink
3: to while away especially by some agreeable occupation ; also : divert 2
4: to engage the interest of by or as if by guile
But when I thought to check the same resource’s thesaurus I found
beguile
1 to attract or delight as if by magic— see charm 1
2 to cause to believe what is untrue— see deceive
3 to lead away from a usual or proper course by offering some pleasure or advantage— see lure
Ahhh, there the meaning Fearing’s song alludes to is most akin to the primary meaning cited. And then methought, “The third listing: ‘Lure’? Fearing uses the word almost in the sense of ‘alluring’ (to entice by charm or attraction) doesn’t he?” Well, almost. But I think I’ve finally found the heart of the song in the fact that the “beguiling eyes” Fearing sees are… (at least partly) in the eyes of the beholder.
Quite apart from all that, Fearing’s wonderful artistry on the guitar, and the lyrics and melody taken as a whole, make this song one that can occupy my mind’s ear for hours. Yeh, yeh, I could wish for better vocal artistry, but the guy apparently wrote the thing as he heard it in his mind’s ear, and discovered he couldn’t quite manage some of the (very well-written) melodic devices. Someone with a better vocal instrument might do the melody more justice, but they’d have a hard time matching the overall artistry of Fearing’s own performance.
Here’s a small sample–just a portion of the intro. Get your own copy of the entire song for under a buck at the link I provided above. And no, I’m not getting anything out of the link–twc has, for now at least, been entirely “de-monetized”. All that went along with taking steps to kill off most of my traffic last year.
How in the world did it take me this long to find Free-Scores.com and its “radio” streaming feature? Just too cool for words. While most streaming services seem to focus on popular crap, I’m able to define a broad or narrow range of what I deem “classical” and have it stream randomly or as my own designed playlist. Whiloe I’ve found a number of other “internet radio stations,” some of which are close to my needs/desires (see my right sidebar for a decent station in Australia), this one offers some unique advantages for my uses–particularly free downloads of the SCORES! (The inclusion, on the download page for a score, of historical/biographical info is a nice plus, as well.)
I like. Ever since Dr Karl Haas died a few years ago, even classical radio stations, for the most part, have been–save for re-runs of Haas’ program–mostly either just stale Romantic-period only or that with a mix of modern crap thrown in. *sigh* Of course, I enjoyed Haas’ program almost as much for his musicological commentary as for the wide array of music he featured, but yeh, it was definitely the selctions of really good music well-performed that had me coming back to his program for years.
Nothing like his commentary survives in any of the prissy, inbred platter-spinners’ patter today that I can find, so just finding another source with a wide array of good performances of excellent music is a real nice find.
Of course, if you wanted to explore more limited genres, I suppose Free-Scores might do that for you as well, but since the actual SCORES are available, that knocks out a lot of crap. Nice to download a score, then play the piece along with reading it. Sometimes nuances are more obvious that way, and it frequently gives me ideas of how I’d change a performance were I directing/playing. And for those who want it, the default “human performances” can be altered to be computer-only or human/computer “performances”–and sometimes even I prefer to hear a piece as a well-wrought midi file, espeically when just reading along for analysis).
Just fun!
Seriously recommended for anyone who appreciates a wide range of classical music, and even for those who do not but are open to learning something new.
Michelle Malkin has a long post well worth your time, but the capstone, AFAIC, is her inclusion of Woodie Guthrie’s cover (and redaction) of Tom Paxton’s classic. See the YouTube video below. Needs no further comment from me.
Oh the price of gold is rising out of sight
And the dollar is in sorry shape tonight
What the dollar used to get us now won’t buy a head of lettuce
No the economic forecast isn’t right
But amidst the clouds I spot a shining ray
I can even glimpse a new and better way
And I’ve devised a plan of action worked it down to the last fraction
And I’m going into action here today
CHORUS:
I am changing my name to Fannie Mae
I am going down to Washington D.C.
I’ll be glad they got my back
‘Cause what they did for Freddie Mac
Will be perfectly acceptable to me
I am changing my name to Fannie Mae
I am headed for that great receiving line
So when they hand a trillion grand out
I’ll be standing with my hand out
I’ll get mine
When my creditors are screaming for their dough
I’ll be proud to tell them all where they can go
They won’t have to scream and holler
They’ll be paid to the last dollar
Where the endless streams of money seem to flow
I’ll be glad to tell them all what they can do
It’s a matter of a simple form or two
It’s not just remuneration it’s a liberal education
Ain’t you kind of glad that I’m in debt to you
Chorus
Since the first amphibians crawled out of the slime (of the slime!)
We’ve been struggling in an unrelenting climb
We were hardly up and walking before money started talking
And it’s sad that failure is an awful crime
It’s been that way for a millennium or two
But now it seems that there’s a different point of view
If you’re a corporate titanic and your failure is gigantic
Down in Congress there’s a safety net for you
Chorus
UPDATE: Not to be left out of updating his classic, “I’m Changing My Name to Chrysler” *heh* Tom Paxton has his own revision out:
Good git fiddle work, and his lyric changes are, if anything, more biting. Not as singable are the melodic variations, but then, it was his song to begin with, as I recall, and he’s perfectly entitled to change whatever he likes about it.
