Academic Festival Overture

In honor of the first day of a new semester, I once again present Brahms' "Academic Festival Overture," this time, a version recorded in 1927 with Otto Klemperer conducting.



I have said before that this is one of my favorite pieces of music, that it is one that can usually cheer me up when I am feeling low or snap me back into a mood of being able to work again when I'm slacking.

And that it captures some of the feeling of what I imagined the "romance" of campus life to be (before I learned that it's not really all sitting around in coffeehouses or beer halls talking about Deep Ideas or being surrounded by charmingly and amusingly eccentric colleagues who do things like conduct the amateur orchestra made up of professors and play with toy trains*)

(*Huge number of bonus points to anyone who gets that allusion.)

The Overture is largely composed of student drinking songs - in a way, it's a bit of a musical joke - Brahms apparently composed it as a joking response to a demand for a "thank you" in the form of a musical composition from the University of Breslau, which had granted him an honorary doctorate the year before.

Wikipedia, which I know isn't always the most reliable source, has it thus:

"Initially, Brahms had contented himself with sending a simple handwritten note of acknowledgment to the University, since he loathed the public fanfare of celebrity. However, the conductor Bernard Scholz, who had nominated him for the degree, convinced him that protocol required him to make a grander gesture of gratitude. The University expected nothing less than a musical offering from the composer. "Compose a fine symphony for us!" he wrote Brahms. "But well orchestrated, old boy, not too uniformly thick!...""

..."Brahms, who was known to be a curmudgeonly joker, filled his quota by creating a "very boisterous potpourri of student drinking songs à la Suppé""

Haha. If that's true I kind of love Brahms for it.

More Brahms:



I wonder if the "real" Brahms would have found that amusing.

I know that "Something for the Weekend" with a music performance is sort of Lynn's thing, but in the course of the sort of stream-of-consciousness clicking I tend to do when on YouTube, I ran across one of the earlier performances of the Benny Goodman orchestra doing "Sing, Sing, Sing."

I had forgotten - it's been a while since I listened to it - how much I well and truly love this song. So I'm sharing it.



Makes me wish I knew how to swing-dance, and had a good partner.

It's funny how some songs from the 1980s look increasingly idiotic as time passes, but some still hold up well - and maybe even seem to mean more, as we gain maturity.



I think this Talking Heads song is one of the best ways of capturing the puzzlement that someone in midlife feels. (Or at least, in the cases where someone=me). Where you walk around asking yourself, "How do I work this?" and "Well, how did I get here?" when you should really probably be looking at the flowing water instead.

The song makes more sense to me now than it did when I was in high school.

Last night, I got on a Shostakovich kick. I always forget how much I love his compositions when I've not listened to them for a while. There's such humor and warmth there (or at least that's what I get from a lot of them).

This piece is an arrangement of a well-known tune (In Russia, it's apparently better known as "Tahiti Trot," which is, I think, Shostakovich's renaming of it). This was the outcome of a bet: a conductor who had worked with Shostakovich bet him 100 rubles that he could not (a) arrange the piece from memory, having heard a recording of it and (b) do so in under an hour.

Shostakovich won the bet handily, and we have this lovely confection as a result:



Shostakovich, at least in the earlier photos of him I've seen, was also quite cute in that studious/rumpled way that I like. I suppose it's partly the glasses that do it.

Thanks, dragonknitter! I kind of suspected it was you.

I think my favorite track on the album (and yes, darnit, I am going to continue to call these things "albums," even if they are on CD) is probably either the Willie Nelson version of "Good Night, Irene" or the Chieftans' take on "Cotton Eyed Joe" - that one starts off as you would expect it, but then 10 or 15 bars in, it metamorphoses into an Irish step-dance tune. I laughed and clapped with delight the first time I heard it. It's really wonderful how seamless the change is: the meter stays the same, it doesn't seem to change key (and I'm getting better at noticing things like that, now that I play the piano some)

Really, it does make sense to mix "trad" country (I don't care so much for country "pop," but I do like some of the traditional stuff. And I like Willie Nelson (and Dolly Parton) even though I don't typically care for most country music) and Irish music, because a lot of the people through whom what we now call country music developed were Irish or Scots-Irish people in the "hills" of Appalachia. There's a definite kinship between things like bluegrass and traditional Celtic music.

The final track is also interesting, in that everyone who performed on the album (even Bela Fleck, who is there, but you didn't really notice him before) gets their turn - it's 12 minutes long and a big messy (in a good way) compilation of stuff. And there's laughter in the background, and whoops, and comments - it sounds like they're having a good time.

I suppose "how you do anything is how you do everything." One thing that interests me is the "phylogeny" of music types, how different forms grew out of other forms. And also foods...I was reading my big funny (it's burlap-bound and looks VERY 60s-counterculture) "The People's Cookbook" and they were talking about how ravioli and things like Pierogi could really be traced back to the steppes of central Asia and China. And it's interesting to think about: most cultures have some form of filled dumpling. And they have some form of flatbread. And I wonder how much of the similarities are due to cross-pollination (dumplings apparently being introduced along trade routes, and also possibly to Italy by Marco Polo) and how much is what we could call "convergent evolution" if we were speaking biologically (there are only so many ways you can cook an unleavened bread if you do not have an enclosed oven...which many people in India did not have, nor did most Mexican farmers have...hence the chapatti and the tortilla)

And also many cultures have a donut-like object. And today is Fat Tuesday, a/k/a Pancake Day, a/k/a Paczki day (ah, to have access to a REAL paczki. If I were willing to drive to Dallas, I'm sure I could find a bakery with them, but I'm not willing to do that just for a donut). I may have to do a little something to mark the day. I don't do the full-on Giving Up Stuff for Lent (my brother and sister-in-law went vegetarian one year; I know people who give up sweets. And it used to be traditional to not use eggs or butter - which is why the pancakes and donuts the day before: to use them up and also have one last big blow-out of the good stuff before the 40 days of abstention.) I suppose the local Episcopal church is doing their Pancake Day again; they usually do, but I never seem to make the time to get down there.


****

Still haven't finished the new "Neverending Project of Neverendingness." I'm down to about 1/8 of the ball of yarn left, but for small balls, the yarn I'm using has lots of yardage. I'm going to make a push to finish this tonight, so I can assemble the rest of the swap-stuff so I can send it off soon.

I find these days I can really only concentrate on one "big" project at a time. I think next up after this one is finished is to work more on Honeycomb. (Especially since I realize that to do the sleeves for Thermal, I will need the shorter size 3 needle I am using on Honeycomb. Or buy another one, which would also be an option...)

In honor of the first day of the new semester, one of my favorite pieces of music ever. (Because it's Brahms' Academic Festival Overture)



I love this piece because for me, it really sums up what my romantic ideals (as a girl) of what life on a college campus would be - the purposefulness (much of that piece sounds like people striding rapidly across campus to class, their academic robes* flapping in the wind, discussing deep stuff as they go). The swelling music, capturing the joy that a bookish nerd feels upon facing a new academic challenge or a new semester - all the new books, new pencils, new things to be learned. Even the old drinking songs that are incorporated - though I have to admit my observation (not participation) of on-campus drinking suggested it was more like a really bad punk song than a comic scene from Shakespeare (In that, rather than in vino veritas - or in vino ridemus - it was more in vino, puking and bad hook-ups).

(*Yes, I admit it, I sort of wish American universities had kept the British tradition of students and faculty wearing the academic robes over their clothes. I would probably complain about the impracticality in real life, but in my romantic imaginings, everyone looks a bit like a combination between Hogwarts and the stories I've read featuring Oxbridge in the 20s and 30s)

And then there's the Gaudeamus at the end. Which is sometimes sung at graduations (well, not here, it isn't), and so seems such an appropriate summing-up. (Even if the Gaudeamus is essentially another drinking song).

I don't know, it's hard to explain. There's a lighthearted and yet serious quality to my imaginings of academic life - lighthearted in the sense that you were apart from the rest of the world, that you could almost imagine yourself above the grubbing and politicking that happened out in business and, well, politics (though sadly, that is not the case - though I have managed to avoid MOST campus politics, and am grateful for that). And the serious quality: well, learning is, I've always believed, serious business. (or, if you prefer, srs bzns). And yet, at the same time, it's FUN. It's about the best fun I know.

from the Gaudeamus: (I don't know Latin but I've seen the English translation of it, and probably most of you can figure out what it's saying):

Vivat academia!
Vivant professores!
Vivat membrum quodlibet
Vivant membra quaelibet
Semper sint in flore.

I wonder how many people remember this name?

Art Ferrante, dead at 88.

I saw the obit and immediately blipped back to my early days on this Earth - probably 1973 or so - when my parents had season tickets to Blossom, the summer home of the Cleveland Orchestra. They also got tickets to see other performances - I probably saw, but don't really remember, the Carpenters perform.

They had "lawn" tickets for most things - would bring a big blanket and we'd sit out in the gathering dark of a summer evening. Sometimes friends of our family would come along and we'd all sit in a big group, the kids running around the blankets and playing tag until it was time for the concert to start.

I think for the Ferrante and Teicher concert, they must have had tickets in the "shell" - I remember being indoors for it (maybe rain was threatening?). The biggest thing I remember of the concert is the two big grand or baby grand pianos on stage, set so the concave section of one fit against the convex section of the other.

I don't remember exactly what they played - it was probably "pops" or movie themes, those seem to have been the biggest part of the repertoire - but I can close my eyes and picture those two pianos.

Those evenings at Blossom are some of my earliest memories. And I think like many early memories they're probably a bit more gold-tinged than they otherwise might be, but I remember really enjoying going out there to hear music and watch the summer night fall.

Something nice, for the weekend.

There's a whole "channel" on Youtube of a man who does acoustic guitar (mostly "fingerpicking") solos of different pieces. His work is very beautiful:



There's another one I love, Till there was You but he's disabled embedding (possibly a copyright question), but you can still go over there and hear it.

Or, if you don't like those, you can hear some Super Mario Brothers. (I know I've had this on here before, but I just love it so much:)



He also has done the MacGuyver theme song, among other more, shall we say, eclectic, pieces.

This is for everyone who is sad, who is distressed, who is having a hard time.

I know it's been used a lot in ads and such, but it still makes me feel a whole lot better whenever I listen to it. It calms me down when I'm upset about something, makes me more hopeful about the world and people in it, and makes my shoulders drop back into their normal position when they've gotten squinched somewhere up around my ears.



Enjoy. And feel better.

I'll be back in a week.

Dallas teen will lead the Young Performer's Orchestra playing her great-grandfather's 220 year old violin. ('ware the pop-up ads).

It's stories like this that give me hope that beauty and goodness still exist among the ugliness that we see every day in the world. There are so many wonderful things here - she will be the first Steiner to be a concert-master in 70 years. Her great-grandfather's violin has been passed on to her for the honor - so in a way, it gets to "live" again. And this quotation from Rachel:

"When I play, I do kind of feel him ... just watching me or helping me get something in tune. I guess he kind of helps me."

Yes. Amen.

One other thing:

Going through my CD collection...I have the "classical" (And I always feel the need to append a sensu lato on to that; I regard "Classical" as being Hadyn, Mozart, and Beethoven, that general era, that came after Baroque and before Romantic) CDs organized not alphabetically, but chronologically by the era the composer was active.

It struck me that that might be a bit odd, as much as it seems an eminently logical thing to me.

So there's another weird little random fact about me: I like to order my music chronologically rather than alphabetically. (It gets more sticky when I get into the 20th century and am dealing with jazz, chanson and early r&b/gospel/early rock simultaneously. In that case I tend to separate by genre, and each genre is small enough that the disks are just in random order.

I am one step closer to my dream of playing the piano. The Music Academy here in town called me up today - they had several openings available for students wanting lessons.

So starting next week, 3 pm Tuesdays, I will be learning to play the piano.

I am SUPER excited about this. The teacher is pretty highly recommended and when I spoke with her earlier, she mentioned two things that are definitely a win in my book: first, she wants people to learn to play the kind of music THEY like - so I will probably be working on mainly "little" classical pieces, with perhaps some jazz or gospel thrown in for variety (The truth is, I like MOST music, with the exception of some of the 20th century atonal stuff, and most current pop/country pop/alternapop/"urban" pop). Second, she is very into teaching music theory along with technique - and one thing you know about me, if you have read the blog for a while, is that I am fascinated by the "how things work" or the "why are they this way" as well as the "how do I do it?"

For the first few weeks, I will need to "borrow" a piano (either down at church or maybe someone in the Music department on campus will let me sign up for a practice time there) until mine arrives. But that's good - I like the idea of having my feet a little wet by the time the real piano arrives, so I can sit down and transfer the little bit of knowledge I've already gained to it.

I looked up the specs on the "L" on the Steinway page (apparently they still make them). It's 5' 10 1/2" long and 58" wide. Which is useful for figuring out where it will fit. (I thought it was going to be longer than that. I wonder if it's perhaps a typo because I thought my dad said when he measured the thing it was around 7'. Though then again, the L pictures the folks at the repair place sent me make it look more "snubby" than a 7' piano would be. Maybe that 7' is including where the bench and player go.)

I don't want to post photos here because they're not my photos and not my "property" to do such with, but I have to say the old creature looks incredibly beautiful. EVERYTHING has been refurbished and made to look not unlike it did (or so I imagine) when the piano first left the factory. (I will, of course, have photos when it actually arrives)

I had forgotten about the not-on-an-outside-wall thing; that means option 1 remains the best because the piano will be closest to the wall adjoining where my hall closet is and will also be as far as possible (in that room) from windows, which I suppose contribute to fluctuating temperatures.

****

A few finished-object photos. None of the wearables as yet; I don't feel much like modeling today (apparently they had to work harder in my mouth than I realized; it looks like that side of my face is a bit swollen today).

So here are some photos of the three "flowers" I finished for the someday Grandmother's Flower Garden quilt:



"That Green" (not quite Nile Green but close - quilters refer to this as "that green" meaning the characteristic 1930s green) with a cute little stylized flower (almost recalling the Mackintosh Rose Arts and Crafts design).



Purple. Or rather, lilac. I'm not sure if the print is supposed to be cherries or tomatoes - the fruits look like tomatoes to me, especially at the stem attachment point, but the leaves are more like cherry leaves. Still, I like the print: it is typical of the sort of whimsical prints commonly produced in this era.



The first turquoise-background one. (It doesn't match quite as well as I had thought it would). The print is tiny bows if you can't tell.

On to happier things.

On January 30, I get my piano. The restorers are almost done (they have been e-mailing me photos of the progress, I need to get some photographic printing paper and print them all out - I plan to make a notebook of the information I have surrounding the piano's history and renovation and keep that, and someday when the piano goes to another home (HOPEFULLY it will outlive me), it will go with the piano).

This shop is the one that is doing the work - they came highly recommended and given the amount of attention they've paid to us during the restoration - all the updates - I think the recommendation is warranted. (And what a great career that must be. Restoring something to beauty and function again, being able to work with your hands, and then getting to see the joy of the people when you deliver their rejuvenated piano)

They tell me it is a Steinway model "L," which apparently means something to people who know Steinways. I'm just excited to be getting my grandfather's piano, and to have it to play.

The latest set shows the case, all refinished, with the pedals all polished up and more beautiful than I remember them ever looking, and the soundboard back in the piano, and that cast iron thing that holds the strings (I don't remember the name of it now) in and all strung up...so it's nearly done. (Other photos sent at the same time show them working with the hammers and reattaching them to the keys).

One thing I do need to do between now and then is a bit of furniture-shifting to make room for it. I am considering doing one of two things:

1. Simply shifting the furniture to open up the space I had originally thought of for it

vs.

2. Moving as much of the furniture out of the room (temporarily) as possible, and asking the restorer's advice as to the best location for the piano, and then putting back what furniture will "go" after it gets moved into place. This is because my original location is actually close to one of the two floor registers in the room, and I know being exposed to hot or cold air isn't so great for pianos - I could close off the register but the room gets chilly enough in winter as it is. There IS another spot it would go but that might make the rest of the room a bit tight, and I might have to give away/sell my nice big comfy upholstered chair as there might no longer be room for it in that configuration.

The biggest item is my futon sofa but fortunately I have felt pads on its feet so I ought to be able to slide it on my own. (The two Big Allegedly-Strong Men I know that I'd feel comfortable asking to come and help me both have back issues, so I don't think I want to ask them to help me move it.) Everything else is light enough (well, the bookcases will be once I take the books off) that I can move them myself.

But I have a little while to think about it. I don't think I'm going to do the shifting or moving right away, especially not if I go with option 2, because then I'd spend most of January having to sit on the floor to watch TV or have my bookcases all piled up in some other room.

A couple things for a Sunday afternoon.

First, one of my favorite short pieces of music ever (Bach's Prelude of the First Cello Suite) played on an unusual instrument:



It's a nyckelharpa, a type of keyed fiddle. I know it best as an instrument used in traditional Swedish music. (Yes, I like traditional Swedish folk music too. There are actually few forms of music I don't like...and most of the ones I don't are very highly commercial ones). I guess it's used in some other folk or folk-idiom music as well.

(Though to be totally honest, I think I'm moved more hearing it on a cello, as it usually is played.)

(One of the lovely things about YouTube? You can listen to many different artists' interpretations of a piece. Normally I don't get to do that, not having ready access to classical music radio, and as I generally prefer to have a broad rather than deep collection of CDs. I've been listening to different cellists play the above mentioned piece...have to say Pablo Casal's version [there's an old film from 1954 of him playing it] is my favorite, with Mischa Maisky a close second.

And as I am not a musicologist nor do I play the cello, I feel that I am free to be totally "wrong" and counter to the opinions on what "serious" musicologists would say on this. And I don't even feel that I have to defend my likes, not being a musicologist or such.)

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I began the Lace Ribbon Scarf:



This is the first...I think repeat and a half? It's a pretty easy pattern once you get going but that single yo is easy to forget...I wound up having to rip back a row or two because I'd forget them.

I will probably invariably think of this as my Hobbit scarf, as Hobbits famously are fond of yellow and green together.

****

I'm working away on the various socks. I pulled a bunch of yarn out of the center of the skein of the Kureyon sock yarn (I'm knitting it from the center out) and found a knot. On one side of the knot the yarn was purple. On the other side it was peach.

Yeah, there was a break in the yarn and they just tied two skeins together. Way to phone it in, Noro.

So I took the skein and used my ball-winder to subtract that part of the sequence from the center of the skein (Journey to the Center of the Skein! Hah! I slay me!) until I got back around to the purple. So the stripes may be a little off, whatever. I didn't want a sharp transition right there in the sock. I just hope the progression is the same and it's not that one of the skeins goes purple-reddish purple-gray-green-peach and the other part is reversed relative to that, where it will go backwards into the yellow green I had just left. (I've heard of such things happening in the self patterning yarns, though not specifically Noro.)

(waiting for fog to lift so I can run out to buy the 10 million* paper lunch sacks I will need for my little plants' roots and shoots so they can go in the drying oven)

(*An exaggeration, but it always feels like that to me at the start of a project that promises to be long and messy).

Some folks have been writing about not feeling a whole lot of Christmas cheer this year (BigAlice is one). And you know, I bounce back and forth. I'm not as cheery and Christmassy and everything as I usually am. I don't quite know why. I don't think it's like Frog-o-phobic, where I'm being overwhelmed and sad by the commercialized nature of modern American Christmases - it's never gotten to me before (I'm pretty good at tuning out the ads) and frankly, this year, I've been so busy I've not had time to see enough television to go all sneery at Lexus' insinuation that if you REALLY loved that person in your life, you'd buy them a car that costs more than what I paid for my house.

And also, I do have a little list of some "nice little items" I gave to my parents for Christmas. Because it's been an expensive fall (new hot water heater, plumbing repair, car repairs...), I haven't bought some of the things I might normally buy (heck, I need new jeans, even - I've blown out the thighs on one pair. And I hate that. That's one of the things I hate about being zaftig - the first place slacks show wear is in the thigh region. I suspect other women-of-size will have noticed that, too). So it's not a sense of "there's nothing I need, so there's no sense in asking for gifts." And I've been too busy to do "fun" shopping, also.

Actually, I think that's it - I've been so BUSY. I've not done some of the usual "Christmas" things I do - didn't bake the fruitcake, haven't done my cards, haven't had time to finish projects so as to clear the deck for new projects I want to start over break, haven't even really thoroughly cleaned house, haven't taken enough time to listen to Christmas music.

And I think I need to remedy a couple of those things to start feeling more like it's Christmas (because there's nothing I hate worse than having a big holiday pass, and my going, "But I didn't take time to ENJOY it!")

So I've decided - even though I said I'd wait and do them when I was up at my parents' house - that I'm going to go out (after harvesting my 10 million* little plants today) and find some kind of nice Christmas cards, and do them this weekend, and send them out. And listen to Christmas music while I do it.

(*again, an exaggeration. What with not-germination and all, I think it's closer to 180)

And I'm going to clean house this afternoon (And listen to music while I do it, I think).

Because there's something nice about sitting in a clean quiet house of an evening, and being able to relax because the kitchen floor has been scrubbed and all the odds and ends of makeup on the bathroom counter have been put away (I have but one bathroom so I like to try to keep it pretty spotless in case someone comes over. I don't have the luxury of having a "powder room" I can keep nice and a "behind the scenes bathroom" where I can leave my stockings drying over the shower curtain rod and stuff like that).

And the music is a big part of it, too. Christmas music is very important to me. My Christmas music tends to fall into two camps - sacred music that is mostly British choral renditions of things (and maybe I'm prejudiced given that my heritage is part-Brit, but I think the British have the world beat in traditional choral music. Or at least they have other English-speaking countries beat) and secular music from (mainly) the 40s and 50s.

The secular music is the kind of stuff I'd play at a party - some of it is crooner-era stuff (e.g., Dean Martin doing "Winter Wonderland") which is kind of fun and cool and slick and makes you feel like a sophisticated grown-up. (My all time favorite of these "cool" renditions though? Bing Crosby and the Mills Brothers doing "Jingle Bells." It's so much FUN. It sounds like they're goofing with each other, just having a lot of fun making the recording. And yes, the band is fairly hot [in the old jazz sense of hot] - as I think Bing comments at one point - on that one).

I also have some of the more "serious" pop stuff - singers like Bing Crosby doing Silent Night - more reverent songs, but not what I'd strictly consider "sacred" music because it was produced for a pop audience (I think I wrote earlier about "A Sentimental Christmas" which is one of my favorite compilation albums).

I also love the original version of "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas" (not the ORIGINAL original - which is actually kind of depressing - but the one known as the Judy Garland versionv-the one with the line about "muddle through somehow" - not the cheered-up version that (I think) Sinatra originally did). I like the song in that form because it recognizes that Christmases aren't always PERFECT, that there are times you do kind of muddle through (like the year that Sam, the beloved cat my family had when I was growing up, died shortly after Christmas. And the Christmas of 2004, which was just one long festival of difficult-to-digest news). And yet - at least in the version of the song that Garland insisted upon - there's a sense of hope, that maybe next year things will be better, that maybe someday soon the people we love will be close to us again.

But what really makes me feel most reminiscent of Christmases past - and most Christmassy - is the sacred music. Particularly, as I said, British choral music. I tend to prefer my carols more straightforward (incidentally, I think one of the reasons I like the 1940s/50s versions of things, and not the modern pop versions so much, is that the modern pop versions I've heard tend to be so "sweetened" and heavily produced and orchestrated that the basic simplicity of the carol is covered up by swoopy strings and the vocal calisthenics of the singer).

I also think - and this may be my family background, or perhaps it's that odd mystical "genetic memory" I sometimes talk about - the whole British idea of Christmas (or at least my imagining of such) puts me in the Christmas spirit.

I love a lot of the traditional foods (yes, even the much-maligned heavy Christmas cake). I love the idea of bringing in holly to put behind the picture frames (I have a holly tree, and yet I never get around to doing that). I love the idea of playing games and telling ghost stories (and yes, even the adults - especially the adults - participating. I think one of the greatest ideas about Christmas is that adults have an opportunity to become a bit childlike again. It is nice to take a little rest from being an adult sometimes). And I love the music.

Part of it, is, it is just so grand. I've described myself before as being remarkably "High Church" in my sentiments for someone who belongs to a denomination that's basically an offshoot of one of the "Dissenter" groups (which did not like the COE because of its pomp). But, you know? I like pomp. I like the idea of making things grand and formal and maybe even a tiny bit solemn. (Yes, it is possible to be formal/solemn and yet joyful at the same time). I'd not mind it one bit if they used incense in the church at the Christmas eve service.

I also enjoy - and try to find and attend - the "service of lessons and carols" that some churches do (in the British tradition) at Christmastime (it can be difficult; most places do them as a Christmas eve service. Some years I've resorted to watching a version of it on television). I LIKE that. I like the structure of it; the fact that it doesn't change much from year to year.

I also like, about the British choral tradition, that they will sing the words of one carol or hymn to the tune of another. On one of the albums I have, there is a rendition of "O Little Town of Bethlehem" that rather than being sung to the familiar tune (at least the tune that's familiarly used in America), it's sung to a tune that either is, or is very reminiscent of, the tune I associate with "While Shepherds Watched their Flocks by Night."

(I do not have a terrifically good music education. I kind of figured out on my own, one day, what the metrical markings in the hymnbook meant, and then had the flash of realization that you could sing the words of one hymn to the tune of another, as long as the meters were the same. Another, more fanciful example of this: a friend of mine said that at her church camp, they used to sometimes sing the Doxology (a/k/a "Old Hundredth") to the tune of Hernando's Hideaway as a before-meal grace. I tried it - it works. [and as I'm of the persuasion to believe that God has a sense of humor, no, I don't see it as sacrilegious].)

"Away in a Manger" is like this, too - there is a tune more commonly used on this side of the Atlantic, and another tune more commonly used on the other side.

And I like that. I like that you can hear the familiar words in a new setting - I think it makes you hear them a different way.

So, at any rate - I'm going to listen to my "Christmas Adagios" album, and my one of carols from Tewkesbury Abbey this afternoon while I clean house. Then I'm going to sit down and knit and try to get myself into the Christmas mode. Heck, I might even take a little drive around town tonight after it gets dark to look at the lights people have up.

Because I want to be feeling Christmas, darn it, instead of just feeling tired and burnt-out.

So anyway: (I hope I'm not violating a copyright here)

Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Let your heart be light
Next year all our troubles will be out of sight
Have yourself a merry little Christmas
Make the yuletide gay
Next year all our troubles will be miles away
Once again as in olden days
Happy golden days of yore
Faithful friends who were dear to us
Will be near to us once more
Someday soon we all will be together
If the fates allow
Until then, we'll have to muddle through somehow
So have yourself a merry little Christmas now

I am learning the wonders of YouTube now that I have a fast connection at home (so I can waste time on it).

One of my favorite singers EVER is (was; he died in 2002) Charles Trenet, who was a French singer (sort of a high baritone, I guess that's what his voice was). He was active from the 30s through the 50s and his work ranged from swing-pop to more emotional pieces.

YouTube has some lots of film of him!

La Mer. This is probably one of his best known pieces. Bobby Darin used the tune for "Beyond the Sea" but Trenet's French lyrics are much more complex and interesting to me - he is basically painting a word-picture of the sea near where he grew up. (Trenet dabbled in both painting and poetry as a young man). This was filmed when he was an older man and his voice had matured somewhat compared to his younger days. (He also hams it up a lot towards the end of the song - in the black and white clip stuck in the middle, he is saying that there were complaints his music didn't "swing" enough)


My favorite piece he ever did: Douce France, which is a love-song to his childhood in France. (It's from a German or Dutch tv program; the announcer at the beginning sounds like she's speaking German and Trenet says something to the audience in German).

It is interesting to see the man performing after years of only being able to listen to him.

Oh, and here is film from his earlier days showing him in an outfit I've often seen on the covers of his recordings - a fitted turtleneck and cloth cap. (I read somewhere that he made a number of filmed recordings for a sort of early video-jukebox thing. And I guess he was in some French movies.)

Another recording of him un rien me fait chanter. Here he's wearing the dark shirt/white tie and porkpie hat that I also have seen in lots of pictures of him.

(Yes, I'm kind of obsessed by the singer.)

He was a nice-looking man, I think. And I love his music.

I love this kind of thing:

Debussy "recorded" on player-piano rolls. And it's been released on a CD. (I tend to be more enthusiastic than the critic: perhaps it is because I cannot play Debussy on the piano, and so every time I hear Debussy, it's someone else's interpretation anyway). But I love the idea of hearing "Debussy's ghost" - where you're hearing a new recording made off the old player-piano rolls he made back in 1913. (Oh, I know, there was recording technology to make records at that time, but it's not going to be as crisp and clear as new recordings made from a newly restored piano playing the old rolls).

The CD is available here. It's described as "special order," which I hope doesn't mean there's difficulty in them obtaining it. (I ordered a copy. Like I said - I love this kind of stuff. I also have a recording from piano rolls that Gershwin made.)

alllllllmost done grading student research papers.

Ironically enough, right as I'm in the worst, most grinding part of academic life, KING-fm starts playing Brahms' "Academic Festival Overture." Which is one of my favorite pieces of music ever, and which totally feeds my romantic fantasy of what campus life SHOULD be.

In a way, it makes me sad that I'm still in my office at very nearly 6 pm on a summer's night, but it also kind of gives me the energy to get through the last 2 papers.