CD Reviews: Some Traditional Irish Music
I obtained a little stack of CDs from the artists' consignment table at Catskills Irish Arts Week recently. I think some of our readers (if we have any left with our infrequent posting schedule) are interested in Irish music, so I thought I'd share my thoughts on my latest acquisitions.
Sliabh Notes: Along Blackwater's Banks (Ossian Publications)
Sliabh (pronounced like "sleeve") Notes consists of fiddler Matt Cranitch, accordion player Donal Murphy, and singer/guitarist Tommy O'Sullivan. The band gets its name from the region of Sliabh Luachra in the southwest of Ireland which is known for its distinctive repertoire of slides and polkas and the set dances that go with those tunes. Sliabh Notes are joined by some guests, including Kevin Burke, Steve Cooney, and Matt Molloy. There are three songs, one slow air, and nine sets of dance tunes on the CD. I didn't find the CD as thrilling as I find Sliabh Luachra-style playing to be in person--somehow the energy just didn't come across. It's ok, but not a must-have unless you're already a Sliabh Notes fan.
Fingal: Fingal (New Folk Records)
This is the group's first recording together. The band has exactly the same line-up of instruments as Sliabh Notes, but with very different players: James Keane on accordion, Randal Bays on fiddle, and Daithi Sproule on guitar and vocals (his first name is pronounced like "DA-hee"). The CD has four songs, two slow airs, seven tracks of tunes, and two mixed tracks--one is a song followed by a reel, the other is a slow air followed by a pair of reels. The trio has a nice dynamic, and the tunes are solidly played and interestingly arranged. Unfortunately, Daithi Sproule's singing, which is delightful in the quiet back room of a pub, falls a little flat in recording. His voice is light and pleasing, and it's always nice to hear good Irish-language singing, but I find him mesmerizing in person, and the recording fell short of that. Maybe my expectations were too high in that respect. Still, Fingal's maiden voyage is a success--I would definitely recommend it.
Lasairfhiona Ni Chonaola: Flame of Wine (publisher unknown)
Lasairfhiona (pronounced something like "Lahss-er-EE-na," I think) is a relatively young singer from the Aran Islands. Four of the tracks are in English, and ten are in Irish. Unfortunately, singing in Gaelic does not equal singing in the sean nos style; Lasairfhiona's vocal style is more in the vein of Enya and Emer Kenny, although her accompaniment involves fewer synthesizers, and to my great puzzlement, some big-name instrumentalists (Mary Bergin on whistles and Johnny McDonagh on bodhran). Despite her impressive back-up, I find the recording to be lacking in taste, and I can honestly say that I know a dozen amateur singers that have better voices (and more stage presence). She sings like a breathless school-girl, although she is clearly at least in her mid-twenties, and if you're expecting anything like traditional Irish singing, don't buy this CD.
Kathy Ludlow, Mary Coogan and guests: The Big Ship Sails (Trutone)
This is a recording of nursery rhymes and songs for children. There are 38 tracks on the hour-long CD, and every one of them is a gem. It is easy to tell that Kathy and Mary have many years' experience working with children. The playing and singing are of very high quality--there was no stinting just because the songs are simple or made to appeal to children. A lot of folks of my generation missed out on traditional children's songs (not me, thanks to Wee Sing tapes), and I'm glad to know that people like Kathy are still working to make sure that this generation of children don't miss out. Many of the songs here are familiar, but some of them are new to me--I didn't know "First Comes a Butterfly" or "The Fox and the Goose," for instance. If you like folk music and have kids, you absolutely MUST buy this CD. Even if you don't have kids, buy it anyway--the innocent joy of this music will keep you thoroughly entertained on your morning commute.
28 June 2008
Things I love about Los Angeles...
...other than the diversity of the inhabitants, which is what everyone else says when asked what they like about L.A.
1. The delightful variety of architectural styles. In one block of a residential neighborhood, you will find ranch, mission, Tudor, cottage, and colonial, all in a row. None of these styles are native to Los Angeles, and all are meant to evoke some other location, but the combination of these styles is very Los Angeles.
2. The unspoken traffic laws (expect two people to turn left just as the light changes, but feel free to honk and curse if three cars go) give me a strange sort of pleasure, a feeling of being an insider.
3. The stories everyone has about the time they saw a celebrity. My story: I gawked at Clint Eastwood from a distance of twenty feet, when he attended an awards show at the same hotel where I was attending a conference. He is just as handsome in person, even if he is about 168 years old by now.
4. The night-time noises in my apartment complex. The birds sing at night when the weather is warm, because that's when the sprinklers are on, and the birds come to bathe in the running water. Bird-song, combined with the hum of my neighbors' air conditioners (I never use mine), provides a veritable symphony to lull me to sleep at night--or to stay up and listen to, as I'm obviously doing now.
5. The fact that I can walk to my choice of four grocery stores, a farmer's market, two Catholic churches, a mall, a movie theater, two parks, several museums, and any number of restaurants--and that the weather rarely interferes with my walk.
6. The many opportunities for prayer. Besides the obvious dangers of driving in city traffic, I have long followed a tradition imparted to me by my school teachers of saying a Hail Mary every time I hear a siren. I hear a siren about three times a day here, much more often than in the smaller towns I've lived in. I've added to that saying a Glory Be every time I see a homeless person, so there are many more incidences of prayer throughout my day than I made for myself before.
...other than the diversity of the inhabitants, which is what everyone else says when asked what they like about L.A.
1. The delightful variety of architectural styles. In one block of a residential neighborhood, you will find ranch, mission, Tudor, cottage, and colonial, all in a row. None of these styles are native to Los Angeles, and all are meant to evoke some other location, but the combination of these styles is very Los Angeles.
2. The unspoken traffic laws (expect two people to turn left just as the light changes, but feel free to honk and curse if three cars go) give me a strange sort of pleasure, a feeling of being an insider.
3. The stories everyone has about the time they saw a celebrity. My story: I gawked at Clint Eastwood from a distance of twenty feet, when he attended an awards show at the same hotel where I was attending a conference. He is just as handsome in person, even if he is about 168 years old by now.
4. The night-time noises in my apartment complex. The birds sing at night when the weather is warm, because that's when the sprinklers are on, and the birds come to bathe in the running water. Bird-song, combined with the hum of my neighbors' air conditioners (I never use mine), provides a veritable symphony to lull me to sleep at night--or to stay up and listen to, as I'm obviously doing now.
5. The fact that I can walk to my choice of four grocery stores, a farmer's market, two Catholic churches, a mall, a movie theater, two parks, several museums, and any number of restaurants--and that the weather rarely interferes with my walk.
6. The many opportunities for prayer. Besides the obvious dangers of driving in city traffic, I have long followed a tradition imparted to me by my school teachers of saying a Hail Mary every time I hear a siren. I hear a siren about three times a day here, much more often than in the smaller towns I've lived in. I've added to that saying a Glory Be every time I see a homeless person, so there are many more incidences of prayer throughout my day than I made for myself before.
19 June 2008
Hail Mary
Here is a page with versions of the Ave Maria in several different languages. I wish there were recordings of people saying them to go with it.
One of the versions is labeled "Bernadetta Soubirous." I think what they mean by this is that the prayer is in Gascon, an Occitan language; St. Bernadette reported that the Blessed Virgin spoke to her in Gascon, not in French.
Here is a page with versions of the Ave Maria in several different languages. I wish there were recordings of people saying them to go with it.
One of the versions is labeled "Bernadetta Soubirous." I think what they mean by this is that the prayer is in Gascon, an Occitan language; St. Bernadette reported that the Blessed Virgin spoke to her in Gascon, not in French.
14 June 2008
Why I love Brideshead Revisited
Or: Why not to seek religious instruction from a 14-year-old
"I've had a long talk with a Catholic--a very pious, well-educated one, and I've learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that's the direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I'll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d'you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope who made one of his horses a Cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the church porch, and if you put a pound note with someone's name on it, they get sent to hell. I don't say there mayn't be a good reason for all this," he said, "but you ought to tell me about it and not let me find out for myself."
[...]
"You can see he's a long way from the Church yet," said Father Mowbray.
"But who can he have been talking to? Did he dream it all? Cordelia, what's the matter?"
"What a chump! Oh, mummy, what a glorious chump!"
"Cordelia, it was you."
"Oh, mummy, who could have dreamed he'd swallow it? I told him such a lot besides. About the sacred monkeys in the Vatican--all kinds of things."
"Well, you've considerably increased my work," said Father Mowbray.
--Brideshead Revisited, Book II, Chapter II
Or: Why not to seek religious instruction from a 14-year-old
"I've had a long talk with a Catholic--a very pious, well-educated one, and I've learned a thing or two. For instance, that you have to sleep with your feet pointing East because that's the direction of heaven, and if you die in the night you can walk there. Now I'll sleep with my feet pointing any way that suits Julia, but d'you expect a grown man to believe about walking to heaven? And what about the Pope who made one of his horses a Cardinal? And what about the box you keep in the church porch, and if you put a pound note with someone's name on it, they get sent to hell. I don't say there mayn't be a good reason for all this," he said, "but you ought to tell me about it and not let me find out for myself."
[...]
"You can see he's a long way from the Church yet," said Father Mowbray.
"But who can he have been talking to? Did he dream it all? Cordelia, what's the matter?"
"What a chump! Oh, mummy, what a glorious chump!"
"Cordelia, it was you."
"Oh, mummy, who could have dreamed he'd swallow it? I told him such a lot besides. About the sacred monkeys in the Vatican--all kinds of things."
"Well, you've considerably increased my work," said Father Mowbray.
--Brideshead Revisited, Book II, Chapter II
02 May 2008
On Music History and Divisions of Time
Michael Lawrence of The New Liturgical Movement blog posted an article a few days ago called "Re-Thinking Music History." In the article, he outlined why he finds the naming of musical eras like "Baroque" and "Classical" to be unhelpful.
At least musicologist--Michael O'Connor--contributed in the combox. Dr. O'Connor took issue with Mr. Lawrence's assertion that "thinkers" have stuffed very diverse composers into boxes and labeled those boxes with things like, "Baroque period; exemplified by Monteverdi, Lully, and J.S. Bach," thus cheating many other good composers (he gives the example of Buxtehude) of being recognized as anything other than "forerunners" or slightly-inferior-but-similar in relation to the "great" composers, rather than receiving attention for their own achievements. Musicologists don't use these very general labels, but Mr. Lawrence and other commenters note that the labels are often used in teaching high school and college-level music classes, ignoring Dr. O'Connor's assertion that very general categories can be useful if you don't get too attached to them.
Dr. O'Connor, presumably unlike Mr. Lawrence, knows what it's like to try to teach music history to a class full of 19-year-olds who know nothing about the subject when they enter the class except for a general notion that Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner all lived in the 19th Century. You must be able to group composers in some fashion, to label them. No label will ever be sufficient to describe a composer, his works, and the era in which he lived, but in order to remember who they were and learn about them, you start with general labels and move to more specific ones--this is how humans learn about other humans.
Please bear with me for the following thought experiment:
Imagine you are at a party. Your co-worker, John, introduces you to his tall, red-headed wife, Mary. You have a couple of minutes to chat with Mary, during which time you ask the usual sorts of questions, like where she's from and what she does for a living. You find out that Mary is a nurse. She has a slight Southern accent because she grew up in Virginia. Someone else comes into the party, and you move on to talk to him, and soon the evening is over. Reflecting on your new acquaintance, you categorize Mary based on what little you know about her (Southerner; Nurse; Wife of John). When John mentions Mary to you at work, these are the three things that you remember about her, along with maybe a mental picture of how she looks (Tall; Red-headed).
You and Mary meet a second time. On the second meeting, you discover that Mary likes movies and is a convert to Catholicism. She and John met in college. Her favorite color is red, and she's sorry that she thinks she can't wear red because of her red hair. You add these things to your mental file-folder on Mary.
John, Mary, you and your spouse soon begin to be very good friends. You spend a lot of time together. They decide to homeschool their children and join the same homeschooling group you belong to; Mary offers extra science classes for your high-schooler if you will teach her youngest child piano. You have ceased to think of Mary as Southern; Tall; Nurse--now she is just "Mary," in all her Mary-ness.
Isn't this an accurate picture of how we learn about most things? When you first hear of Mozart as a child, you learn that he was a Classical composer and is famous for his symphonies, piano works, and operas. You may also hear of Haydn, and Haydn and Mozart's music sound virtually indistinguishable to you (although your piano teacher seems to think Mozart is better). You label the works of theirs that you play in high school as "Classical Piano Music." You go to college and study Mozart and Haydn in your music history class. You remember playing works by J.C. and C.P.E. Bach in your piano lessons but never really knowing who they were--your music history teacher helps you understand the difference between these two Bachs and Haydn and Mozart. Now you mentally have two categories of Classical Piano Music--the Bach category and the Haydn/Mozart category. You become a professional pianist. You can now distinguish by ear or by sight Haydn's piano style from Mozart's. They have ceased in your head to be "Haydn/Mozart" but are now separate entities, neither greater than the other but each having his own style, although with many similarities.
Does this render the very broad category of "Classical Piano Music" unhelpful? Should the beginning piano student be told not to classify Mozart, Haydn, and C.P.E. Bach in one category and Schubert and Beethoven in another category because he needs to learn to differentiate between Mozart and Haydn? No. The beginner, who does not know who Mozart and Haydn are and can barely connect their names with any specific works, should be allowed to class Haydn and Mozart together because that way he will remember that they lived in the same era and wrote similar kinds of music. There is time for further distinction later in his education once he gets the initial distinction of "Mozart and Haydn wrote similar music; C.P.E. Bach sounds kind of similar to this; J.S. Bach sounds very different."
In a nutshell, I would highly discourage those who are knowledgeable about music from continuing to use labels like "Classical" and "20th Century" as much as possible. But what do I say when a 19-year-old jazz saxophone player asks me who Buxtehude was? "He was a German Baroque organist who influenced J.S. Bach." Do you have a better answer?
Michael Lawrence of The New Liturgical Movement blog posted an article a few days ago called "Re-Thinking Music History." In the article, he outlined why he finds the naming of musical eras like "Baroque" and "Classical" to be unhelpful.
At least musicologist--Michael O'Connor--contributed in the combox. Dr. O'Connor took issue with Mr. Lawrence's assertion that "thinkers" have stuffed very diverse composers into boxes and labeled those boxes with things like, "Baroque period; exemplified by Monteverdi, Lully, and J.S. Bach," thus cheating many other good composers (he gives the example of Buxtehude) of being recognized as anything other than "forerunners" or slightly-inferior-but-similar in relation to the "great" composers, rather than receiving attention for their own achievements. Musicologists don't use these very general labels, but Mr. Lawrence and other commenters note that the labels are often used in teaching high school and college-level music classes, ignoring Dr. O'Connor's assertion that very general categories can be useful if you don't get too attached to them.
Dr. O'Connor, presumably unlike Mr. Lawrence, knows what it's like to try to teach music history to a class full of 19-year-olds who know nothing about the subject when they enter the class except for a general notion that Beethoven, Brahms, and Bruckner all lived in the 19th Century. You must be able to group composers in some fashion, to label them. No label will ever be sufficient to describe a composer, his works, and the era in which he lived, but in order to remember who they were and learn about them, you start with general labels and move to more specific ones--this is how humans learn about other humans.
Please bear with me for the following thought experiment:
Imagine you are at a party. Your co-worker, John, introduces you to his tall, red-headed wife, Mary. You have a couple of minutes to chat with Mary, during which time you ask the usual sorts of questions, like where she's from and what she does for a living. You find out that Mary is a nurse. She has a slight Southern accent because she grew up in Virginia. Someone else comes into the party, and you move on to talk to him, and soon the evening is over. Reflecting on your new acquaintance, you categorize Mary based on what little you know about her (Southerner; Nurse; Wife of John). When John mentions Mary to you at work, these are the three things that you remember about her, along with maybe a mental picture of how she looks (Tall; Red-headed).
You and Mary meet a second time. On the second meeting, you discover that Mary likes movies and is a convert to Catholicism. She and John met in college. Her favorite color is red, and she's sorry that she thinks she can't wear red because of her red hair. You add these things to your mental file-folder on Mary.
John, Mary, you and your spouse soon begin to be very good friends. You spend a lot of time together. They decide to homeschool their children and join the same homeschooling group you belong to; Mary offers extra science classes for your high-schooler if you will teach her youngest child piano. You have ceased to think of Mary as Southern; Tall; Nurse--now she is just "Mary," in all her Mary-ness.
Isn't this an accurate picture of how we learn about most things? When you first hear of Mozart as a child, you learn that he was a Classical composer and is famous for his symphonies, piano works, and operas. You may also hear of Haydn, and Haydn and Mozart's music sound virtually indistinguishable to you (although your piano teacher seems to think Mozart is better). You label the works of theirs that you play in high school as "Classical Piano Music." You go to college and study Mozart and Haydn in your music history class. You remember playing works by J.C. and C.P.E. Bach in your piano lessons but never really knowing who they were--your music history teacher helps you understand the difference between these two Bachs and Haydn and Mozart. Now you mentally have two categories of Classical Piano Music--the Bach category and the Haydn/Mozart category. You become a professional pianist. You can now distinguish by ear or by sight Haydn's piano style from Mozart's. They have ceased in your head to be "Haydn/Mozart" but are now separate entities, neither greater than the other but each having his own style, although with many similarities.
Does this render the very broad category of "Classical Piano Music" unhelpful? Should the beginning piano student be told not to classify Mozart, Haydn, and C.P.E. Bach in one category and Schubert and Beethoven in another category because he needs to learn to differentiate between Mozart and Haydn? No. The beginner, who does not know who Mozart and Haydn are and can barely connect their names with any specific works, should be allowed to class Haydn and Mozart together because that way he will remember that they lived in the same era and wrote similar kinds of music. There is time for further distinction later in his education once he gets the initial distinction of "Mozart and Haydn wrote similar music; C.P.E. Bach sounds kind of similar to this; J.S. Bach sounds very different."
In a nutshell, I would highly discourage those who are knowledgeable about music from continuing to use labels like "Classical" and "20th Century" as much as possible. But what do I say when a 19-year-old jazz saxophone player asks me who Buxtehude was? "He was a German Baroque organist who influenced J.S. Bach." Do you have a better answer?
06 April 2008
Death Spirals in Musicology
Ficta Spiral of Death: when making an edition of a Renaissance piece, you add ficta, and some of the additions require more ficta, and some of those additions make further ficta necessary to avoid discord....
Footnote Spiral of Death: when writing a paper, you read articles and books to get information. Each of those articles and books has footnotes to other books and articles that have information pertinent to your topic. They also have footnotes to books and articles that have nothing to do with your topic but sound interesting; with great self-discipline you bookmark or download these articles for later and go back to reading the pertinent ones. Each of these new pertinent articles has still more footnotes leading you to further interesting and/or important reading, some of which will take you ages to dig up online, others of which will be frustratingly unavailable or written in languages you don't read, so you seek still more books and articles that contain passages from or translations of the books you can't get or read in the original version...and so on.
Ficta Spiral of Death: when making an edition of a Renaissance piece, you add ficta, and some of the additions require more ficta, and some of those additions make further ficta necessary to avoid discord....
Footnote Spiral of Death: when writing a paper, you read articles and books to get information. Each of those articles and books has footnotes to other books and articles that have information pertinent to your topic. They also have footnotes to books and articles that have nothing to do with your topic but sound interesting; with great self-discipline you bookmark or download these articles for later and go back to reading the pertinent ones. Each of these new pertinent articles has still more footnotes leading you to further interesting and/or important reading, some of which will take you ages to dig up online, others of which will be frustratingly unavailable or written in languages you don't read, so you seek still more books and articles that contain passages from or translations of the books you can't get or read in the original version...and so on.
23 March 2008
Christ is Risen, and you, o death, are annihilated!
Christ is Risen, and the evil ones are cast down!
Christ is Risen, and the angels rejoice!
Christ is Risen, and life is liberated!
Christ is Risen, and the tomb is emptied of its dead;
for Christ having risen from the dead,
is become the first-fruits of those who have fallen asleep.
To Him be Glory and Power forever and ever. Amen!
John Chrysostom, Easter Sermon
26 February 2008
Discoveries
In case you haven't discovered it yet, Free-Scores.com has a lot of free sheet music of all sorts available for download, both instrumental and vocal.
Bizarrely (if you look at the site you'll see why I think it's odd) there are 61 pages of chants uploaded from the web source Canto Ambrosiano. Poking around their website, I notice that they've uploaded some really beautiful images of chant codices.
Speaking of chant codices, if you are a chantophile, bibliophile, lover of medieval illuminations and calligraphy, or one of those weird people who likes Old High German, check out the codices of the library of St. Gallen, available online here.
From Codice Sangallensis 374, c. mid 11th century (the feast of St. Matthias was yesterday in the old calendar)
In case you haven't discovered it yet, Free-Scores.com has a lot of free sheet music of all sorts available for download, both instrumental and vocal.
Bizarrely (if you look at the site you'll see why I think it's odd) there are 61 pages of chants uploaded from the web source Canto Ambrosiano. Poking around their website, I notice that they've uploaded some really beautiful images of chant codices.
Speaking of chant codices, if you are a chantophile, bibliophile, lover of medieval illuminations and calligraphy, or one of those weird people who likes Old High German, check out the codices of the library of St. Gallen, available online here.
From Codice Sangallensis 374, c. mid 11th century (the feast of St. Matthias was yesterday in the old calendar)
09 February 2008
08 February 2008
Those, erm, Robust Roman Choirs
In case any of you are wondering whether the rather distinctive sound of Roman choirs that so many of us have come to dread in television broadcasts (or live, if you're luckier than me) of Papal Masses is a recent phenomenon, I can assure you that it is at least a hundred years old.
In The Musical Times of July 1, 1893, a reader writes in describing the performance of Palestrina's music in Rome:
"During a stay of some weeks last year in Rome I had several opportunities of hearing the traditional method [of rendering Palestrina's music] at St. Peter's and St. John Lateran, and I am not sure that it would commend itself to an English audience. The choirs, consisting of from twelve to fifteen voices, sang fortissimo throughout, and the organ was played from beginning to end so loudly that the voices were scarcely heard, and no variation of tone was introduced. During Lent, however, the organ was silent, and the choirs sang with excellent precision, attack, and intonation; but the constant fortissimo seemed somewhat monotonous."
The author of that article preferred the performance of Palestrina heard in Germany.
In case any of you are wondering whether the rather distinctive sound of Roman choirs that so many of us have come to dread in television broadcasts (or live, if you're luckier than me) of Papal Masses is a recent phenomenon, I can assure you that it is at least a hundred years old.
In The Musical Times of July 1, 1893, a reader writes in describing the performance of Palestrina's music in Rome:
"During a stay of some weeks last year in Rome I had several opportunities of hearing the traditional method [of rendering Palestrina's music] at St. Peter's and St. John Lateran, and I am not sure that it would commend itself to an English audience. The choirs, consisting of from twelve to fifteen voices, sang fortissimo throughout, and the organ was played from beginning to end so loudly that the voices were scarcely heard, and no variation of tone was introduced. During Lent, however, the organ was silent, and the choirs sang with excellent precision, attack, and intonation; but the constant fortissimo seemed somewhat monotonous."
The author of that article preferred the performance of Palestrina heard in Germany.
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