Maggie's Farm

Once Upon a Time in the West:

A shame the way he feels he has to lighten up this heartbreaker for the audience.

Levon Helm, key member of The Band, dies at 71.

The piece in the NYT is good.

That part about Jack Johnson isn't true, but it's a good old tune.

I like the Taize songs. Here are a couple of them:

Kingston Trio:

And Bob Dylan. Very cool arrangement by Bob - best version of the song I've heard:

I've driven through the Shenandoah Valley a couple of times. Lovely country. Reader wants me to add Van Morrison's version with The Chieftains. Here 'tis:

Each of us has his/her share of them.

Loreena McKennitt put the lyrics of this poem by the Spanish mystic monk, poet, and theologian John of the Cross (1541-1592) to music. Some of our readers will love what she did with it. The Youtube blurb on McKennitt's piece:

"Dark Night of the Soul," like much of John's poetry, is based on "Song of Songs" from the Biblical Old Testament, and also on much of the romantic poetry and lyrics of Spanish popular balladry of that time, i.e., 16th century. The "secret stair" has less to do with a staircase in a monastery, and more to do with the popular theme of lovers meeting for a late night romantic tryst. In order for this to be possible, the young maiden of the song or poem would have to sneak out of the house, by the "secret stair." John uses this as a metaphor for the soul in prayer who, by means of contemplation, steals away from the world unnoticed, to meet in loving relationship with God. The dark night refers to the soul's search for God, beyond the confines of the human definitions we have put upon God."

John also wrote a treatise on his poem, of the same title. As I understand it, the "dark night" also refers to the period between death and resurrection and union with God, or between death and heaven, and as a metaphor for the condition of being out of touch with God and His love, seeking it in the dark. However, John of the Cross makes a sexy love poem of it too, in the tradition of Song of Songs (Solomon, the old rascal, had 700 wives and 300 concubines to keep him from straying too far from the harem, and out of trouble.)

Here's one translation from: THE COLLECTED WORKS OF ST. JOHN OF THE CROSS, translated by Kieran Kavanaugh, OCD, and Otilio Rodriguez, OCD, revised edition (1991). (Copyright 1991 ICS Publications. Permission is hereby granted for any non-commercial use, if this copyright notice is included.)

1. One dark night,
fired with love's urgent longings
- ah, the sheer grace! -
I went out unseen,
my house being now all stilled.

2. In darkness, and secure,
by the secret ladder, disguised,
- ah, the sheer grace! -
in darkness and concealment,
my house being now all stilled.

3. On that glad night,
in secret, for no one saw me,
nor did I look at anything,
with no other light or guide
than the one that burned in my heart.

4. This guided me
more surely than the light of noon
to where he was awaiting me
- him I knew so well -
there in a place where no one appeared.

5. O guiding night!
O night more lovely than the dawn!
O night that has united
the Lover with his beloved,
transforming the beloved in her Lover.

6. Upon my flowering breast
which I kept wholly for him alone,
there he lay sleeping,
and I caressing him
there in a breeze from the fanning cedars.

7. When the breeze blew from the turret,
as I parted his hair,
it wounded my neck
with its gentle hand,
suspending all my senses.

8. I abandoned and forgot myself,
laying my face on my Beloved;
all things ceased; I went out from myself,
leaving my cares

Anat Navarro

"I'm worried now, but I won't be worried long..."

Well, The Voices of Ascension sang a bunch of Renaissance motets, and some Christmas carols too, in front of the Met Museum's Neapolitan Christmas tree last night. It was a sold out crowd, of course. We had the whole darn museum just to ourselves, too. Remarkable.

A 24-person a capella choir can sound just like an organ. There is nothing better. Anchoress would love this. They did Lauridsen's Magnum Mysterium of course  but not the great Palestrina's Sicut Cervus, which is one thing by The Voices which I could find on YouTube:

Here's King's College choir doing Lauridsen's transcendent version of Magnum Mysterium:

"End of the Line." Reader reminded me this one, with the then recently-late Roy Orbison's guitar in the rocking chair, and with George Harrison with his cancer growing, unknown, inside him. Dylan? Just a humble member of the group.

Good tune (not embeddable, but well-worth the effort of pushing the link). Good fellows making music. I love it. I'd guess Captain Tom would love it too.

"Well, it's all right, even if you're old and gray..."

 Gotta remember to tell Pastor that, if I get hit by a truck, he can play this tune in church. "It's all right...we're going to the end of the line."

Sipp's fine print reminded me of this one (two of these good guys now dead, alas):

Luke 1:46b-55 - the "Magnificat"

1:46b "My soul magnifies the Lord, and my spirit rejoices in God my Savior,

1:48 for he has looked with favor on the lowliness of his servant. Surely, from now on all generations will call me blessed;

1:49 for the Mighty One has done great things for me, and holy is his name.

1:50 His mercy is for those who fear him from generation to generation.

1:51 He has shown strength with his arm; he has scattered the proud in the thoughts of their hearts.

1:52 He has brought down the powerful from their thrones, and lifted up the lowly;

1:53 he has filled the hungry with good things, and sent the rich away empty.

1:54 He has helped his servant Israel, in remembrance of his mercy,

1:55 according to the promise he made to our ancestors, to Abraham and to his descendants forever."

In our church, this is the opening hymn through Advent. Enya, h/t Anchoress:

The first keyboard I ever approached was an 1800s Mason & Hamlin single manual reed organ, technically a harmonium. The wind is generated by vacuum-generating bellows (hence "suction reed organ") pumped by the feet of the organist. From a technical standpoint, these are like upright accordions with an organ-like sound.

My Grandpa salvaged it when the local Congregational church bought a new organ. He kept it in his living room, and the elderly, old maid church organist would stop by, unannounced. to play the old thing until she died.

Today, old reed organs are thrown in the garbage, but I think it's a shame. They are of an era when these were all small congregations could afford. Some folks had them in their homes, too: "Parlor organs." You can find them cheap on eBay, but often people will be grateful if you will just take them away.

Did I mention that mice like to live in them? My parents finally threw the old thing in a dumpster because I failed to take it away myself in a reasonable period of time. My fault.

This fellow explains how to use the foot bellows to affect the playing of a reed organ:

The first tune I learned to play on it was the hymn Work For The Night Is Coming. It is not just a song of toil and death, but a song of toil in God's fields and pastures, and I still love it. Here's the only half-decent version I could find on YouTube (on piano, not reed organ - lyrics here):

Currier and Ives' Skating in Central Park (Lots more trees there than in the 1880s but it remains rus in urba, more or less, with some of the best birding in the East in migration time as a green oasis in a sea of urbanization along the Atlantic Flyway):

Modern Jazz Quartet's Skating in Central Park:

All God's Critters Got a Place in the Choir, here done Irish but written by New Hampshire's Bill Staines:

I am grateful that Mrs. BD dragged me to see Einstein on the Beach on its world tour in 1992, at the BAM (for those of you in Yorba Linda, that's the Brooklyn Academy of Music).

Philip Glass and Robert Wilson, with dancer/choreographer Lucinda Childs, decided to call it an opera, but it really was a spectacle, and, with all of the repetition, choruses, and dancing, something like Greek theater with technology. I have grown to sort-of enjoy the Glass music in this, but it just drives some people crazy. It's a sound track, really.

The whole thing is hypnotically slow-moving (and it was over 5 hrs, no intermission, and people were welcome to come and go. We stayed, except for bathroom breaks - and they sold wine in the lobby.). There exist audio recordings, but, I believe, no video recordings of the whole thing. Video does not do justice to theatrical productions. You had to be there to be in the dream.

One snippet of video - you can search on YouTube it to hear more of Glass' music for the show:

Addendum, by complete coincidence I see that the Met is celebrating Glass' 75th birthday with  “Satyagraha.”  Wierd coincidences: I posted a Tagore poem this morning, mentioned Robert Wilson in a photo post yesterday, and stumbled on the news of that Philip Glass/Tagore opera today after preparing the above post.

The more you get out and about, the more fascinating life gets. Everybody needs to get out more, I guess. Possessions are expensive: cool life experiences are cheap by comparison.

I forget where I found this:

h/t, our intertunnel pal Bob at Black and Right: