I could write a lengthy intro essay for this one…or I could just write, “Here’s Mr. John Denver.”
Choices, choices.
Here’s Mr. John Denver.
Your Daily Dose of CHRISTMAS!!!
Somehow I made it to just the other day (as you’re reading this) without knowing that in 1983 David Bowie starred in a Japanese war film about the individuals living in a POW camp. The film’s English title is Merry Christmas Mr. Lawrence, and the film’s score, by Ryuichi Sakamoto, is highly regarded, possibly moreso even than the film. (I only know this by reading the film’s Wikipedia entry.) The movie doesn’t appear to have any specifically Christmas subtext, except that one of the Japanese characters wishes Mr. Lawrence, one of the non-Japanese characters, a Merry Christmas several times throughout the film. Nevertheless, the title track from the film has apparently become a Christmas standard in Japan. Listening to it now, I’m pretty sure I’ve heard it before, but I’m not super familiar with it.
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Tuesday Tones
Continuing our series exploring classical music about or inspired by water, in one way or another, we have one of the most evocative tone poems of all time: The Fountains of Rome by Ottorino Respighi. Respighi lived 1879-1936, and his gift for using the orchestra for illustrative effect is nearly unparalleled. His music sings with pictorial clarity that recalls Berlioz, Rimsky-Korsakov, and echoes Richard Strauss, albeit with an Italian flavor. His scores are shot through with brilliant light.
Fountains is perhaps a bit more introspective than Respighi’s other famous showpiece, The Pines of Rome, but it contains its own moments of showpiece brilliance. One device that Respighi uses frequently, to great effect, is his off-setting of the beat; he also makes great use of a “shimmering” sound in the strings. More than any other composer, Respighi’s music always seems to have a visible “sheen” to it.
Here is more on the work specifically (credit):
Fountains is also in four movements, each representing one of Rome’s fountains at a different time of day. The opening movement depicts the Valle Giulia at dawn. Now enveloped in the suburbs north of Rome, the Valle Giulia was, during Respighi’s lifetime, a pastoral landscape. The orchestra gradually awakens, murmuring strings joined by plaintive oboes and English horn as cattle pass through the mists in the distance.
In the second movement, the majestic Triton Fountain on the Piazza Barberini springs to life in the morning light. The fountain was created by the sculptor Gian Lorenzo Bernini, and his work – and Respighi’s as well – was inspired by the story of the end of the flood from the first book of Ovid’s Metamorphoses: “The ruler of the seas sets his trident aside, smoothes the billows, and summons the sea-blue Triton who towers up over the depths… and commands him to blow into his sounding shell and by his signal recall the waters and the rivers.”
The third movement represents what is undoubtedly the grandest of Rome’s fountains, the Trevi Fountain, at midday. Respighi’s majestic writing for brass over swirling strings and cresting waves of percussion captures the fountain’s sheer scale, with its central depiction of Neptune in his shell chariot, emerging from beneath the sea and standing under a Roman triumphal arch.
The finale depicts the modest fountain in front of the Villa Medici, which sits atop a hill overlooking St. Peter’s, at dusk. Respighi’s orchestra provides the rich atmosphere of graceful birdsong, gentle evening breezes, and twinkling stars through a combination of sumptuous writing for strings and woodwinds and his use of percussion instruments such as the celesta and the orchestra bells. The work ends as gently as it began.
Here is The Fountains of Rome by Ottorino Resphigi.
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Your Daily Dose of CHRISTMAS!!!
A lot of what I post in this series every year comes from just simple YouTube searches, which I then follow until I find something interesting. This is a case in point: I searched “Appalachian Christmas”, which yielded some good stuff! One thing I almost used was a recording of an actual cantata a composer wrote using old Appalachian melodies, but…I didn’t like the performance in the recording, which sounded oddly “commercial” in my ears. So here is this, performed on a selection of Appalachian instruments. The performer, Timothy Seaman, provides this information:
I found this song, one of only three Christmas-themed shape-note hymns, in an old book back in the 1980s, and have sung it in concerts ever since; here it’s an informal ensemble (all played by me) on mountain dulcimer by Bert Berry, tuned CGC, with harmonica, then baritone mountain dulcimer by McSpadden, tuned AEA, with harmonica and Woodsong bamboo flute by Rob Yard.
The strong mountain melody is joined with these powerful words reminiscent of Handel’s Messiah’s Christmas section, drawn from prophecies in Isaiah of the coming Messiah:
1. The people that in darkness sat
A glorious light have seen;
The light has shined on them who long
In shades of death have been.
To us a child of hope is born,
To us a son is giv’n;
Him shall the tribes of earth obey,
Him all the hosts of heav’n.
2. His name shall be the prince of peace
Forevermore adored,
The wonderful, the counselor,
The great and mighty Lord.
His pow’r increasing still shall spread,
His reign no end shall know;
Justice shall guard his throne above,
And peace abound below.
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Your Daily Dose of CHRISTMAS!!!
Taken on Miranda (Lumix FX1000ii), using a “starburst” scene mode.
f/3.1, 1/15 sec, ISo1600
Welcome to December! Along with “normal” blogging, this month always features a daily music or video selection pertaining to Christmas. There are some items I post annually, while other things will be brand new. That’s one of the things I love about this season: every year it’s a mixture of the old and traditional with new stuff that may become tradition in the future, or rather fade into memory until someday you say, “Hey, remember that one Christmas when everybody was doing/singing/watching that one thing?”
Anyway, I hope you’ll join me in this tour through Christmas as it unfolds in my brain. The mood will be festive at times, introspective at others, sometimes happy, sometimes bittersweet…but always Christmas. Because that’s how I roll.
We’ll start with the United States Marine Band performing “A Christmas Festival” by Leroy Anderson.