Divine music

Recently I have been going to Sunday services with the local congregation of the Anglican Church of Canada. This may surprise some of my readers; let me add that the motive force behind this is my wife, who wanted to add one more singer to the ranks of the congregation. So my connection with the Anglican church is primarily through hymns and the liturgy of the Eucharist.

Since I am a historian whose teaching career has involved A LOT of ecclesiastical history, it's very interesting to return to this material (see? I told you I was a historian). Thanks to my training and my own scholarship I can't help but look at the liturgy and the readings as a collection of voices originating in far-flung times and places, and try to understand both the individual texts and their connections to each other. For example, the letters of Paul and... just about anything else in the Bible.

Throw in the hymns (the Anglicans have a huge collection) and it becomes quite a challenge to visualize for instance Regency-era country gentlemen retreating to their studies, having just returned from some gambling hell, and trying to turn King David or Wesley or both into a coherent representation of what is essential in Christianity.

About a month ago there was a hymn that depicted the universal chorus of God's creatures and how even pathetic human beings could add their little bit. That struck me as an entirely mistaken understanding of the divine, of music, and of humanity. You can say a lot of bad but true things about humanity, but our ability to turn any collection of noises produced by sticks and stones or our own voices into astonishing structures of sound is truly amazing. Faithful readers know how much I have been impressed by the innovative rock music of the 1960s and 70s (Jefferson Airplane, Yes). But pick your own faves. How about the Irish traditional band The Bothy Band?

Well over a decade ago I was driving to work listening to the Bothy Band and I was suddenly struck by the divine nature of their enterprise. I had a flash of anger against such divinities, that they could not spare some of their evident power to deal with the many problems afflicting humanity. But quickly I realized my mistake. Practical problems are for humans, as humans, to deal with. The divine nature of music is the proper concern of those seemingly human, but actually divine musicians. And that's my theology.

If you find this lacking in sophistication or rigor, I suggest you look into the "procession of the Holy Spirit," which has divided Christian churches for a thousand years, and then explain to me why this schism makes sense.

More Yes lyrics for the new year

Sad preacher nailed upon the coloured door of time

Insane teacher be there reminded of the rhyme

There'll be no mutant enemy we shall certify

Political ends as sad remains will die

Reach out as forward tastes begin to enter you.

I listened hard but could not see

Life tempo change out and inside me

The preacher trained in all to lose his name

The teacher travels, asking to be shown the same

In the end we'll agree, we'll accept, we'll immortalize

That the truth of man maturing in his eyes

All complete in the sight of seeds of life with you.

Some lyrics from Yes for the new year

Speak to me of summer Long winters longer than time can remember Setting up of other roads To travel on in old accustomed ways I still remember the talks by the water The proud sons and daughters That knew the knowledge of the land And spoke to me in sweet accustomed ways

Things change

A prominent English orchestra conductor said this on the radio yesterday, about refugee policy:

"It is nice to live in a country where we can do the right thing and not just the politically expedient thing." The country he was speaking about was, of course, Germany. The conductor was Sir Simon Rattle, who leads the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra.

Jokerman wins the Nobel Prize

Dylan!
I am extraordinarily pleased that Bob Dylan won the Nobel Prize for Literature.
I am not a hard-core Dylan fan, and I know little of his work from the past 40 years. But I was witness to his phenomenal early career, and that's why I feel confident in concurring with the Nobel Prize committee, probably for entirely different reasons.
Here is a guy who by most standards could not sing worth a damn, was only a moderately good instrumentalist, and whose lyrics by popular or folk music standards were more often than not pretty obscure. When it came to evaluating Bob Dylan's place in the musical universe, Dylan saw himself as a uniquely important singer, and the rest of the world -- at least at first -- saw him as someone who was not even worth listening to, with his terrible voice and his incomprehensible lyrics.
Well, guess who won that confrontation? Guess who was right?
Hat's off to the Nobel committee for recognizing Dylan's unique importance, whatever excuse they offered for doing so.
Their official reasoning for the prize, by the way, is also, quite rightly, a recognition of the importance of the American contribution to the explosive creativity of the late 20th century.

Summon back the fire-witch to the court of the Crimson King

<\p>Did the young George R.R. Martin listen to King Crimson A LOT?

Jefferson Airplane at Woodstock

I have been listening to this again and again for the past few weeks:

I went back and looked it up because someone my granddaughter's age expressed enthusiasm.

The state of affairs, April 2016

My various projects, including this blog, are progressing only slowly. I am undergoing medical treatment at the Hamilton General Hospital in Hamilton, Ontario. It's nothing to be alarmed about, but being away from home does make it difficult to work on my translations.

A couple of years ago another health problem gave me the opportunity to see London, Ontario, a place known to me only as the location of bad winter weather. Now I am seeing more of the city of Hamilton than I have seen before. It has the reputation of being a dirty industrial city, but as is the case in many another place in the Great Lakes region, a lot of the old factories have closed. Nonetheless, it doesn't seem that Hamilton's economy is suffering all that much. (Ditto for Canada as a whole, surprisingly. Unemployment is dropping significantly EVEN IN ALBERTA!)

One of the wonders of Hamilton is a bar/restaurant on James St. called Mezcal Tacos Tequila, which features a large number of tequilas and an amazing style of what might be called Mexican fusion. It is some of the best restaurant food I have ever eaten. And it is relatively cheap. If you live close to Hamilton, run don't walk to Mezcal.

I am also passing the time by listening, through You Tube, to my classic music, music on either side of 1970. In particular I am playing the Jefferson Airplane's

amazing early-morning set at Woodstock.

It has long been fashionable to make fun of Woodstock but it was the site of an amazing effloresence of music. Perhaps equally astonishing is the high quality of audio and video recording that was accomplished in what was a weather disaster. Here's to the sound engineers, cinematographers and all the other hardworking people who preserved this wonderful music.

The music of the 80s is now classic for a certain age group

Stary Olsa from Belarus play Another Brick in the Wallby Pink Floyd, using medieval instruments.

Note that great armor!

Then there is the Harp Twins doing Metallica's One: Thanks to Nicholas at http://quotulatiousness.ca/ for putting me on this track.

I always liked that name

Ian Anderson, leader of the band Jethro Tull, speaks of his regrets over the band's name (in Billboard):

Anderson adds that recording and touring under his own name now also allows him to shed some guilt he's felt since February of 1968, when the group's booking agency gave Jethro Tull the name of an 18th century British agriculturist after several other monikers were rejected.

"If you'd asked me 20 years ago did I regret anything about my musical career, my answer then, as it is today, has always been the name of the band," Anderson admits. "I can't help but feel more and more as I get older that I'm guilty of identity theft and I ought to go to prison for it, really. It's almost as if I watched old Jethro Tull at the cash machine and leaned over his shoulder as he put his credit card into the machine to check out his PIN and filched his credit card form from his back pocket as he walked away and then fleeced his bank account. It doesn't make me feel very good. I never paid much attention in history class, so I didn't realize we'd been named after a dead guy until a couple of weeks later."

The sounds of the past

I stumbled across two interesting blog posts this past week, both concerned with recovering or reconstructing ancient languages. Back in 2010, Open Culture ran a piece on ancient Akkadian (an early Mesopotamian language, one of the first written down anywhere). A short piece of the Epic of Gilgamesh was included. Have a look! And while you are at it, read up on the completion of the Akkadian dictionary produced by the Oriental Institute in Chicago -- over the last 90 years.

Best thing about the dictionary? If you are content to have it in electronic form, it's FREE, FREE, FREE!And if you have a bundle to spend, you can have it in a very nice printed set.

Now there is scholarship for you.

About the same time, I ran across this article on ancient Greek music. Everyone who cares to know it knows that the ancient Greeks were world champions in their time in both painting and in music. But in both cases, just about none of it is left.

Just about!

Back in 2013, the BBC ran (in its business section!?) a detailed piece on how some of that music must have sounded (at least in a minimal "unplugged" form).

Revelation (for me at least): "In ancient Greek the voice went up in pitch on certain syllables and fell on others (the accents of ancient Greek indicate pitch, not stress)."

Wow! Does this mean that speaking ancient Greek was similar to singing?

Close to the Edge

I was in Colorado recently and more than once, for obvious reasons, this song by Yes popped into my head.

Thank you, Yes for joy and pleasure over the decades. PS. From a comment on YouTube: "I was a little girl when this album came out but my siblings were 9 and 11 years older than me and this music cranked on their stereos, along with all the other earth-shattering music of the time. It was like being in the company of angels hearing these artists..."

Remembering the music of the 60s

A few days ago a friend posted to Facebook a poster for the late-1960s band "It's a Beautiful Day," whose album of the same name came out in 1968.  I was inspired to go to YouTube and listen to the most popular track, "White Bird."  Now that song did not make much of an impact on mainstream radio, as I recall, but that video has nearly a million and a half plays and a long list of testimonials from listeners about how much it meant to them.

I am about the same age as these people, and I too have very fond memories of "White Bird." Of course one reason I feel that way is that I was in my late teens, when (according to a cliche that seems to be true) I was acquiring "the music of my life."  But I also am convinced that between about 1967 and 1973 there was an unusual explosion of creativity during which an amazing variety of music was produced by young people.

It's a Beautiful Day (the band) is a good example of the riches that we (those of us who were lucky enough to have alternative sources of music) had thrown at our feet in the late 60s.  Listen to their Top Tracks on YouTube and ask yourself, what genre is this music?  Rock and roll? Folk-rock? Hard rock? There are elements of all sorts of music that would soon enough become traditions of their own.  One has the thought that if there had been no popular music in 1967, and highly cultured aliens had given Earth It's A Beautiful Day all of the music of the 1970s could have been created from that single seed.

But it's not just IABD.  Dozens and dozens of other bands might have played the same roll.

I feel privileged to have experienced this amazing era in music.

Grateful for her fine fair discount, Tess cooperates

Did Britain produce a more evocative rock album in the early 70s than Selling England by the Pound?

Today CBC radio talked to a man who wrote a book about being a shepherd in England at the moment, how his way of life is in some ways the opposite of modernity, with even the flocks he looks after being the product of hundreds of years of human and sheep cultural development. He mentioned how people who were interested in continuing that way of life as kids were seen as losers. And I Know What I Like sprang into my brain. "Have to thank Old Miss Mort for schooling a failure!"

So now of course I'm listening to the whole album on YouTube.

Some of the best music ever

Mike Oldfield, Tubular Bells live, 1973

Malian music: Tinariwen on NPR

A "Tiny Desk Concert" from 2012.

The Bothy Band 1976 – godlike

Gods and goddesses do not care about our petty problems of life and death and suffering.  Rather, they unleash joy and terror at their own whim.

Some Malian Tuareg music over at NPR

I don't know how long this music from Tinariwen will be available, but there is quite a bit of their recent release at this NPR site.

Geordie

Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer.

Tam Lin

A friend sent me a link to this marvelous rendition by Anais Mitchell and Jefferson Hamer of the British folk song Tam Lin.



Hearing this version of the song was a shock. It forcefully read reminded me of this version of Tam Lin by the folk-rock group Fairport Convention,, which I first heard in the summer of 1972:



That summer I was in Norwich, England taking part in an archaeological dig. It was a wonderful way to celebrate my graduation from University. The people running the dig provided us with cheap housing and a little bit of spending money, and we scraped or dug dirt. It was a social and informal learning experience and I soaked it up.

The house we were staying in was a student house during term time, and the usual residents had left lots of their property, including a record player and the Fairport Convention album Liege and Lief. I played the album a lot, particularly the song Tam Lin, about "an earthly knight" rescued from the Queen of the Fairies by his lover. I was an SCA member, a historian hoping to be a professional medievalist some day, and someone who really appreciated the rock elements of this particular arrangement.

And Tam Lin was just the beginning. Somebody told me about a weekly get-together of folk music enthusiasts at a pub near our dig, and I went there more than once, although I never had the nerve to to sing an American folk song. And before I left England a friend of mine gave me one of the early Steeleye Span albums.

The result was that I had found in British and later Irish folk the soundtrack of my life for the next decade, The decade when I was a graduate student and when I was most intensely involved in the SCA.

It was really something to reflect on that..