A Litany of Sad Lives–but with a Prayer for Hope and Peace

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I first had the opportunity to sing Franz Schubert’s lovely “Litanei auf das Fest Aller Seelen” (Litany for the Feast of All Souls) in a concert with a Hallowe’en theme. Weird, huh? Well, actually not. I’m going to take a little time here to explain this Roman Catholic holiday, an occasion that’s not at all well known today. There are actually three holidays in a row right at the beginning of winter: Halloween, or “All Hallows’ Eve,” “All Hallows’ (or “All Saints'”) Day,” Nov. 1, and then “All Souls’ Day,” Nov. 2. These three days together form “Hallowmas Season.” I’d encourage you to follow the link above to my other article if you want more information. Basically, though, what it boils down to is that the Roman Catholic church, and to some extent other denominations, took advantage of existing traditions in pagan cultures and put a Christianized spin on them. As winter approached it was natural to think of the death of loved ones as the year itself was dying. The saints (those who, according to RC doctrine, were especially holy) got their day first on Nov. 1, and then everyone else (“all souls”) came in on Nov. 2.

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Monsters at the Concert

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Back in October 2015 my choir gave a concert titled “BOO!” We had so much fun with doing a Halloween-themed program. Here are three short essays about songs we sang that include some kind of monster theme.

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Is There Any Truth at all to the Story of the “Phantom of the Opera”?

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Phantom of the Opera Mask

It’s always fascinating to search for the inspiration of a creative work, and that’s certainly true of The Phantom of the Opera. I tried to read the original 1909 novel by Gaston Leroux after seeing a performance of the musical some years ago, but I found it to be pretty much impenetrable. (And I just took a look at it again before writing this post; it hasn’t changed.) To me there were two questions I wanted to answer: 1) What is the reason for the Phantom’s physical disfigurement? And 2) What so-called “real events” gave rise to the legend of the Phantom in the first place?

There doesn’t seem to be any reason given for the Phantom’s horrible face in the original novel, which describes it as a “noseless, lipless, sunken-eyed face which resembles a skull dried up by the centuries, covered in yellowed dead flesh.” It is simply the way the child, christened Erik, was born. The epilogue of the novel gives a brief synopsis of Erik’s early life, saying that his own mother couldn’t stand the sight of him and he therefore ran away from home as soon as he could, with the intriguing tidbit that his father (who died before the Phantom’s birth) was a master builder. While I couldn’t get into the original version by Leroux, I found the1990 novel Phantom by Susan Kay to be utterly compelling. If you’d like to read a re-telling of the Phantom story told with great empathy from several points of view I’d recommend this book. Kay adds some intriguing twists to the story at the end, but I won’t tell you what they are! In a couple of film versions there are specific reasons given for the deformity: an acid attack and an accident with a record presser. (That second one is set within the cutthroat world of the early music industry.)

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What’s the meaning of the weird ingredients in “Double Trouble”?

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PictureThis selection is from the third film in the Harry Potter franchise, HP and the Prisoner of Azkaban. It’s performed by the Frog Choir, a group of Hogwarts students who don’t appear in any of the actual books but whom J. K. Rowling really loved when she saw them in the movie. They perform at the welcoming feast that begins the new school term and each carries a toad, one of which croaks during the song. (Why aren’t they called the Toad Choir? I don’t know.) The music is, of course, by John Williams. Isn’t everything?

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An Introduction to Carmina Burana and “O Fortuna”

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Image accessed via Wikipedia

Please note: The choir to which I belong, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is performing “O Fortuna” in its October 2021 concert. (Follow the link to the Chorale’s home page.) This article was written for an earlier concert, so don’t be confused!

Back in the fall of 2013 I had the incredible opportunity of singing a full performance of Carl Orff’s Carmina Burana with my own choir and a Denver-area symphony orchestra. We didn’t have a ballet to go along with it (although I’ve since attended a performance that included that element), but it was quite an evening all the same. Back then I was trying to figure out how I could create some type of venue to explain the meaning of the lyrics. This question engaged me particularly in the case of Carmina, since not only were the texts very old, but they were also in medieval Latin with a sprinkling of German and French. Since the music itself was very challenging and we were under a demanding deadline, there was no chance for any type of in-person commentary to be given at our rehearsals. How could I get the ideas in these texts across to my fellow choir members so that they wouldn’t just be mouthing syllables? I eventually settled on writing short essays on the words, and here I am today, still doing the same thing here on this website and making the material available to any and all who are interested. Following is some brief introductory material. If you find it intriguing, I’d encourage you to purchase the book I eventually wrote that covers the entire work.

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Why Did Beethoven Put a Chorus In His Ninth Symphony?

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PictureShort answer: We don’t know. Where does any creative artist get the idea for any of his creations?

So much for that. We’ll never know how the thought welled up in Beethoven’s mind that it would be a cool idea to have a choir march out at the end of the fourth movement. We do know, however, that he had been interested for some time in creating new forms of music. He had already created a hybrid piano concerto/choral work in his “Choral Fantasy,” a 20-minute piece whose words and music are very much a precursor to the Ninth; Beethoven himself said in a letter that the symphony was “a setting of the words of Schiller’s immortal ‘Lied an die Freude’ in the same way as my pianoforte fantasia with chorus, but on a far grander scale.”

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A Choral Commission

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Have you ever noticed the words “commissioned by” or “in honor of” at the top of a song or other musical composition?  My own choir has actually commissioned several works over its history.  I wrote this piece about a new one, and our relationship to both the commissioner and the commissionee was pretty special.


What three strands produced our selection “Friendship” by K. Lee Scott?

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Who Says, “Play It Again, Sam” in the Movie “Casablanca”?

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Black-and-white film screenshot of a man and woman as seen from the shoulders up. The two are close to each other as if about to kiss.
image accessed via Wikipedia

And the answer is: nobody. That line isn’t in the movie. We get the full scoop from the website The Phrase Finder:

This is well-known as one of the most widely misquoted lines from films. The actual line in the film is ‘Play it, Sam’. Something approaching ‘Play it again, Sam’ is first said in the film by Ilsa Lund (Ingrid Bergman) in an exchange with the piano player ‘Sam’ (Dooley Wilson):

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What are the “three links of chain” that Mary wears?

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Spoiler alert: You’re not going to get a definitive answer to this question. You may be more confused than ever! I know I am. There seem to be dozens of versions of this and similar spirituals. We are singing something close to the one that Carl Sandburg published in his 1927 American Songbag..

Here are just some of the variants of our first verse:

“Mary” is sometimes “Sister Mary” or “Sis Mary”

“Three links of chain” is sometimes “three silver chain[s]”

“Every link bearin’ Jesus’ name” is sometimes “bearin’ freedom’s name” or “each chain bore the Savior’s name”

“Matthew Mark and Luke and John” is sometimes “Gabriel stood and blowed his horn” or “You better let God’s chillun alone.”

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