Behind the Music

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.

The Concept of the “Kyrie”

September 21, 2024October 9, 2022 by debisimons

Image by falco from Pixabay; do you recognize what story is being portrayed in this sculpture and how it relates to the concept of mercy?

The choir to which I belong, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is privileged to include a composer, Gloria Srikijkarn, whose works we have performed at several concerts. For our October 2022 concert Songs of Thanksgiving we have a section titled “The Valley of the Shadow” that includes her setting of “Kyrie.” She says that she wrote this moving and beautiful piece “at a very dark time in my life.”

The simple text comes from the service of the Roman Catholic Mass but is often, as here, used as a stand-alone piece. It’s always helpful, though, no matter how separate from the original a version is, to look at how it was used in the first place. So if you were to attend an actual service of the Mass you’d participate in singing the text right after the priest or minister had addressed the congregation by saying,

Hallelujah and Alleluia–from the Psalms to Shrek

October 12, 2022October 2, 2022 by debisimons

I’m not really going to cover the millennia of this word’s usage; there are whole books on the subject. Instead, I’ll concentrate on the word itself and on pieces my choir has sung that include it. I will include a brief foray into its usage in Shrek, though, so keep going to the end if you want to get that!

It’s stunning to look at the pieces that are either totally built around this one word or include it as a significant part of the lyrics. Why is it so powerful and attractive? Such questions are always in the end unanswerable. I’d postulate, though, that the sound of the word itself and its use as an exclamation of praise can claim at least partial credit. Why are there two spellings, by the way? Very simple: “hallelujah” is a transliteration from the Hebrew Old Testament and “alleluia” is a Latinized version of the same word in Greek.

Follow the Sheep and the Shepherd All Through Psalm 23

September 29, 2022September 28, 2022 by debisimons

Image from the website “The Expeditioner”

The Lord is my shepherd; I shall not want.
He maketh me to lie down in green pastures;
He leadeth me beside the still waters.
He restoreth my soul;
He guideth me in straight paths for His name’s sake.
Yea, though I walk through the valley of the shadow of death,
I will fear no evil, For Thou art with me;
Thy rod and Thy staff, They comfort me.
Thou preparest a table before me, in the presence of mine enemies;
Thou hast anointed my head with oil;
My cup runneth over.
Surely goodness and mercy shall follow me all the days of my life.
And I shall dwell in the house of the Lord,
Forever, forever.

All the Ways the Storm Has Been Passing Over

September 17, 2022September 16, 2022 by debisimons

I’ve said this many times before and will say it again here: You just never know what you’re going to find when you start looking up information about a piece of music. My choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale here in the Denver area, is closing its October 2022 concert with the piece “The Storm Is Passing Over.” The composition credit is listed as “Charles Albert Tindley, arranged by Barbara W. Baker.”

So the obvious question was, “Who were these people?” Let me start with Tindley, a fascinating figure in American history who was born before the Civil War and ended up as the pastor of a 10,000-member mega church. And this was before mega churches were even a thing. A-a-a-a-a-nd, he’d been the janitor of that church to begin with. It’s a great, great story. Tindley was the son of a slave father and a free mother (how that happened I have no idea), considered to be free himself because of her. When his mother died he went to live with his mother’s sister in order to keep his free status. But he was expected to earn his keep, as it were, and was routinely “hired out,” never having the opportunity to attend school. Here’s what Wikipedia has to say:

How an Obscure Shaker Hymn Gave Elaine Hagenberg Her Start

January 18, 2023September 1, 2022 by debisimons

“The Ritual Dance of the Shakers,” Shaker Historical Society, public domain, image accessed via Wikimedia Commons

“I Will Be a Child of Peace” by Elaine Hagenberg offers an origins two-fer: the beginning of her career as a published choral composer/arranger and the source of the music itself. “Peace” was Hagenberg’s first published piece back in 2013. The piece has now been voiced for SATB, TTBB, and SSA. She must really like it!

The original song is a Shaker hymn:

“O Holy Father,” according to manuscripts, originated in 1851. [The manuscripts] attribute it to Alonzo Gilman of the community in Alfred, Maine. Sr. Mildred said that in her youth the song was used very frequently “at the close of prayer services while we were on our knees.” The song is in 5/4 time. (Notes on Songs in the Film, Shakers)

The True Story Behind the Text of “Even When He Is Silent”

September 19, 2022August 26, 2022 by debisimons

Image accessed via website humanistseminarian.com; no attribution given

Who wrote the text of “Even When He Is Silent” and under what circumstances? Do these questions matter?

I believe in the sun even when it’s not shining.
I believe in love when I feel it not
I believe in God even when he is silent.

Found written on a concentration camp wall after World War II

That’s the text used in the lovely piece that my own choir, the Cherry Creek Chorale, is performing/has performed in October 2022, a setting written in 2011 by the Norwegian composer Kim André Arnesen. Given my own fascination with history I was curious to find out a little bit more about these words: Which concentration camp? Who might have written them? My internet diving turned up some surprising facts about the lines, facts that only deepened and strengthened their power.