I had watched the entire movie Singin’ in the Rain at some point many years ago, and my memory of it was spotty. I remembered Gene Kelly’s description of his childhood and early career: “Dignity. Always dignity,” and of course the title song, and that the whole plot centered around the advent of talkies and the demise of silent movies. I also had this vague notion that the song had something to do with smiling in the face of adversity, sort of along the same lines as “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head.” (Rabbit trail alert: Of course I had to look up “Raindrops” and watch the clip of its occurrence in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for Sundance to take the time for this little romantic bike-riding interlude with Etta Place, his schoolteacher girlfriend, since he and Butch are on the run from the law, but there it is. Maybe someone decided that the story had been going on too long without any fun stuff. The song itself doesn’t advance the plot directly, but the director wanted something to go with the scene, and Burt Bacharach, who was writing the score, apparently had the first line in his head and wanted to use it. You can shoehorn the lyrics into the plot of the story somewhat, but it takes effort. I will point out, by the way, that this scene includes no rain. Sheesh.) But back to “Singin’,” which isn’t about adversity at all. Gene Kelly’s character is simply in love. He’s just said goodnight to his new girlfriend Kathy, and he’s so happy that he’s perfectly willing to dance through the storm. No angst at all is involved.
The texts of the first two sections of Vivaldi’s Gloria are the words of the angels in their announcement of Christ’s birth, words that are sung repeatedly in Christmas music, either in Latin or English:
Here’s what you may already know about Antonio Vivaldi:
To begin with this week I’m bringing back some material that I wrote two years ago about the Mozart Requiem. Hey, we’re all in favor of recycling, aren’t we? I was struck by Rutter’s choice to put two sheep- or lamb-related sections together; the “Agnus Dei” from the Latin Mass and Psalm 23 as it is worded in the Book of Common Prayer.
And the answer is: an arch. We all know about Roman arches, don’t we? The architectural point, which ties in with the musical point, is that there are matching stones on each side of the arch, each one bending closer and closer to the center, with the top stone, the one that holds it all in place, called the “key stone.” Without that center stone that whole thing collapses.
Talk about a wealth of material! I’m going to talk about John Rutter himself and his writing of our piece and then branch out into the meaning of the text in a couple of followup ones. I’d encourage you to follow the link at the end to some earlier material (including some words from the great man himself via Facebook) that I wrote when we sang the Gloria.
You just never know what you’re going to find out when you google something! I assumed (a common action for me) that Franz Biebl was someone who lived several hundred years ago, as the music has a very old-ish feel to me. Perhaps he lived in the 1600’s or 1700’s? And it certainly would never have occurred to me that: