Oh folks, you’d just never believe how much I want to say about “Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star”! I will try to rein myself in, but it’s hard.
Let’s start with this whole idea of talking to or about stars in poetry or song lyrics. I’ll mention two famous ones here: First, John Keats’ poem “Bright Star, Would I Were Steadfast As Thou Art” and, second, the song “Catch A Falling Star and Put It In Your Pocket.” (I was reminded of the gift that the Lady Galadriel gives to Frodo, the light of a literal star to put in his pocket: “In this phial,’ she said, ‘is caught the light of Eärendil’s star, set amid the waters of my fountain.” Later, the light from that star glass helps Sam and Frodo in their flight from and fight with the horrible Shelob: “Slowly his hand went to his bosom, and slowly he held aloft the Phial of Galadriel. For a moment it glimmered, faint as a rising star struggling in heavy earthward mists, and then as its power waxed, and hope grew in Frodo’s mind, it began to burn, and kindled to a silver flame.”)
Um, I guess so. I’m going to try, anyway.
If you had been around in 1902 and invited to the coronation of Queen Victoria’s son Edward VII (“Bertie” to his friends), you would have heard the premier performance of Sir Hubert Parry’s setting of Psalm 122 from the Church of England’s Book of Common Prayer, always known by its opening words: “I Was Glad.”
When I sang this piece with my own choir, I was intrigued by the title of this piece, as I associated Racine with Greek mythology. As a French minor in college I had read Racine’s play Phèdre, which has a story line about the hero Theseus, his second wife Phaedra, and his son from his first marriage, Hyppolite. I won’t go into the story here, but it sure doesn’t have anything to do with Christian theology! 
I’ve sung with my choir a version of Gregorio Alberti’s “Miserere” edited by John Rutter, who includes a rather lengthy and somewhat technical commentary about how the current version of this piece came about. Rutter does not include the most famous story about how the piece became available to the general public, though, a tale about the child prodigy Mozart and his ability to write down music from memory, even music that he had heard only once. I’ll get to that story in a minute. (Don’t you just hate it when writers do that?)
