Who was Zadok the priest, and what does he have to do with royal British coronations?

March 23, 2023March 23, 2023 by debisimons

The Anointing of Solomon by Cornelis de Vos. According to 1 Kings 1:39, Zadok anointed Solomon as king. Image accessed via Wikipedia.

To answer that question it’s necessary to delve into the following ideas:

1. A history of British coronations dating back to 973.

2. An explanation of why a German composer, George Frederick Handel, was commissioned to write a set of coronation anthems for a British ceremony in 1727.

3. A look at the source of the actual text for the anthem referencing said Zadok.

Let’s start with #3. Zadok was the high priest of Israel at the time of King Solomon’s coronation around 970 BCE. The story about his role in this event comes from the book of I Kings in the Jewish Bible; the text for the anthem is shortened and simplified to read:

A Mysterious Text with Three Beautiful Settings and a Bonus: “Gaelic Blessing/Deep Peace”

March 30, 2023February 19, 2023 by debisimons

The miniature gem “Gaelic Blessing” written by John Rutter in 1978 has an interesting connection with the choral music scene in the US. How did that happen with an English composer and a Scottish text? It all started with one of those inexplicable human connections that can never be completely teased out.

John Rutter started his long relationship with America in 1974 when he was contacted by a church choir director, Mel Olson, in Omaha Nebraska, and asked to write a 20-minute piece for Olson’s Chancel Choir. How did someone from Omaha even know about John Rutter, then in the very early stages of his composing career? I don’t know for sure, but it seems possible that Olson had gotten hold of Rutter’s early Christmas music and liked it. Whatever the reason, Rutter was very pleased to get the commission and ended up writing his magnificent Gloria. As he said in answer to my inquiry when I wrote about that piece, “Other commissions from the USA just seemed to follow, to the point where I was able to look upon America as my second home.” And one of those commissions was for “Gaelic Blessing” in 1978, but this time it was the Chancel Choir that reached out for a piece they could dedicate to Olson. I haven’t been able to find a detailed description of Olson’s career, but I’m wondering if this was a farewell gift to him from that choir because he was leaving Omaha. He ended up at in California, where in 1985 he was involved in the initial performances of Rutter’s Requiem.

Robert Burns and the Lasses–Two Love Songs

January 29, 2025February 15, 2023 by debisimons

Jean Armour at age 57, 26 years after Burns’ death. Image accessed via Wikipedia.

It’s always a bit of a facer to track down some lovely, idealized idea about a person or artwork and find out the real story. So it’s been with Robert Burns and two of his famous love songs, “O My Luve’s Like a Red, Red Rose” and “I’ll Ay Call In by Yon Town.” Was he a tender, faithful lover who paid the object of his desire these tributes? Does he stand as an example of proper behavior to those reading his poetry? Did he . . . well, I think you get the gist: the answer to these and similar questions is a resounding “no.”

When Burns died at age 37 he’d fathered 13 children (that we know of) by four different women and had love affairs with a number of others. The only woman he married, though, was Jean Armour. Were she alive today she’d probably be labeled as an “enabler;” she even went so far as to bring up Burns’ daughter by another woman who was born the same month as his son with Jean. As she said, “Oor Rab needed twa wives.” Just to sketch out the relationship between Jean and Burns takes up a fair amount of space. He met her in 1785 when Burns was 26. She quickly became pregnant by him, but her father refused to let the couple marry because of Burns’ poor financial prospects. He went off and got involved with someone else while Jean gave birth to twins. The couple reconciled and married after “many bizarre turnings” and yet another set of twins. She seems to have remained faithful, and her last child by Burns was born on the day of his funeral. He was an on-again, off-again presence in her life. I can’t imagine what they talked about when he was home!

The Mysterious and Haunting “Skye Boat Song”—Tragic History told in Beautiful Music

February 6, 2023February 4, 2023 by debisimons

Isle of Skye, Photo by Piotr Musioł on Unsplash

You’ll probably think as you read the lyrics below that they sound familiar, and you’d be right. This song has had a very long and popular life, starting with its first publication in the 1880’s. The most recent incarnation has been as the theme song for the long-running drama Outlander, based on a series of novels by Diana Gabaldon. I’m not going to deal with anything outside of the actual historical origins of the song, as there’s plenty to say just in that area.

The short version of the story behind the lyrics is that it centers around the Battle of Culloden in 1746, in which the Scots were soundly defeated by a much-larger English force. The battle had come about through an attempted restoration of the Stuart dynasty to Britain’s throne, with the Scottish forces being led by Charles Stuart, or “Bonnie Prince Charlie” (and often referred to in the material below as “BPC.”) It’s an incredibly complicated bit of history that I won’t go into in detail here. If you’d like to get a more thorough overview of the events referred to in the song, let me direct you to a post I wrote several years ago that tells the story behind yet another very famous song associated with this battle: “I’ll Take the High Road and You’ll Take the Low Road.”

Dan Forrest Breathes Life into “the breath of life”

June 21, 2024January 26, 2023 by debisimons

the breath of life

The contemporary choral composer Dan Forrest had no way of knowing when he was contacted by the professional choir Bel Canto for a commission that he would write something audiences would associate with the COVID pandemic and the death of George Floyd. Since the premier took place in October 2019, though, the association was inevitable. The piece poignantly represents the truth that “There’s beauty and joy and wonder in every breath we take.”

Is “The Days of the Kerry Dancing” a happy song? Well, no.

January 20, 2023January 20, 2023 by debisimons

Imge accessed via https://explore.blarney.com/irish-dancing-history-today/

I’ve had the privilege of singing most of the pieces I write about on this site with my wonderful choir the Cherry Creek Chorale, and I remember getting the sheet music for “Kerry Dancing” on the first night of rehearsal for our March 2023 Celtic concert. As I glanced through it and read the words I felt a sense of longing and sadness. Why was that?

The first clue is the word “oh.” Not to belabor the point here too much, but have you ever thought about the rich array of meanings in this two letter word? It can mean:

Robert Burns’ Duncan Gray: Spurned, then Haughty, then Happy

January 28, 2023January 16, 2023 by debisimons

Portrait of Robert Burns by Alexander Nasmyth, 1787, Scottish National Portrait Gallery. Image accessed via Wikipedia.

Original Scottish dialect: Standardized English:

Duncan Gray cam here to woo                                 Duncan Gray came here to woo,
(Ha, ha, the wooing o’t!—repeated refrain)           (Ha, ha, such was the wooing of it!)
On blythe Yule-Night when we were fou                On merry Christmas Even when we were drunk,

Maggie coost her head fu’ high,                               Maggie cast her head full high, (raised her head)
Look’d asklent and unco skeigh,                             Looked askance (scornfully) and very skittish,
Gart poor Duncan stand abeigh –                           Made poor Duncan stand off

Duncan fleech’d, and Duncan pray’d                     Duncan wheedled/beseeched, and prayed
Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig                                     Meg was deaf as Ailsa Craig (a rocky island)
Duncan sigh’d baith out and in,                              Duncan sighed both out and in,
Grat his een baith bleer’t an’ blin’,                         Wept his eyes both bleary and blind,
Spak o’ lowpin o’er a linn –                                       Spoke of leaping over a waterfall

William Butler Yeats’ Dreams of the Countess Kathleen and Her Blessed Spirit

February 8, 2023January 11, 2023 by debisimons

Dante Gabriel Rossetti The Blessed Damozel.jpg — “The Blessed Damozel” by Dante Gabriel Rossetti; image accessed via Wikipedia.

William Butler Yeats, the great Irish poet of the late 1800’s and early 1900’s, was obsessed with Irish legends and the occult. The story behind his poem “A Dream of a Blessed Spirit” neatly encapsulates both ideas, since it concerns a mythic Irish character, the Countess Kathleen O’Shea, who sold all her goods and finally her soul to help her starving tenants. Because the Countess had given her soul for the good of others and not to enrich herself, God refused to let her be damned and instead brought her to heaven. Yeats also wrote a whole play about her, but it’s safe to say that it’s never performed these days. The poem, on the other hand, has provided the text for a lovely art song that is quite popular. My own group, the Cherry Creek Chorale in the Denver metro area, has programmed it several times. I found the words to be fascinating and puzzling:

In “It Came Upon A Midnight Clear,” What’s “It”?

November 28, 2022November 27, 2022 by debisimons

Image by b0red from Pixabay; I like this image because the angel isn’t doing anything not included in the biblical story.

I classify this carol along with “Hark! The Herald Angels Sing” as having a very confusing title. In order to understand the meaning we’ll have to dive into a little grammar wonkery, with some biblical doctrine along the way.

Okay. Everybody got that? The lyrics were written by an American Unitarian Universalist minister, Edmund H. Sears, and, notably, they do not mention the actual birth of Christ at all. Let’s look at the first two lines of the carol itself:

It came upon a [or the] midnight clear,
That glorious song of old,

Did the lyricist of the famous song actually get to go “walking in a winter wonderland?”

November 18, 2022November 14, 2022 by debisimons

In a word: No. Why not? Because he was in a tuberculosis sanitarium. How weird and sad is that? Very.

So, back in the winter of 1934, 33-year-old Richard Smith was sitting in his room at the West Mountain Sanitarium after having a recurrence of his TB, trying to keep himself occupied by entering jingle contests for ad copy. (He actually won the Maybelline eye shadow contest with the slogan “The Eyes Have It.” Clever!) He could see children playing in the snow outside his window and was reminded of how much he’d enjoyed those same activities when he was growing up in the small town of Honesdale, Pennsylvania. A powerful nostalgia was at work here, but, given the actual wording of the song I think there was something else going on: he missed his wife, Jane, whom he’d married in 1930.