In memory of my friend Robert John Guttke, I present one of his favorite works by a composer he dearly loved.
Gerald Finzi was a British composer who lived from 1901 to 1956. His best-known output is primarily choral, and he was not prolific. Finzi left fewer than fifty compositions behind, but his voice is wonderfully British in the vein of Ralph Vaughan Williams: clear-minded and often ethereal, Finzi’s work is often inspired by poetry that he loved. Finzi had a personal library of over 3000 books, many of which were English poetry.
I first heard this piece via a compilation CD that Robert Guttke made and sent my way, and it has since become a staple of my holiday listening. Every year when I hear it (and another piece still to come) I think of Robert and his constant search for music that made him feel.
Never let it be said I don’t take requests! In comments to yesterday’s post, a reader asks about the possibility of the hammered dulcimer making an appearance in this series. I confess to not being familiar at all with this instrument; I know it exists, but that’s about it. I didn’t even know how it was played, beyond it involving, well, hammers. Turns out the hammers are a special kind of mallet that one deploys over the dulcimer’s strings to produce tones.
And it’s a very pleasing sound, I must admit. So, here are selections!
OK, today I provide a public service, if you so desire.
You may be familiar with a game called Whamageddon, in which you try to get as deep into December as you can without hearing “Last Christmas” by Wham!. Why this game, why this song? No idea, really…only the song is pretty ubiquitous as Christmas songs go, and many people find it outright annoying. (For me, the song is an “in one ear and out the other” song, I don’t have an opinion of it, one way or the other.)
As soon as you recognize that you’re hearing the original version of the song (it also has been covered a lot), you’re out.
Now, I personally have amended these rules with one caveat: if you hear it in a setting where you have no control over the music, it doesn’t count. Now, that doesn’t mean basically everywhere! You don’t control what you hear when you’re walking through Target, but you did choose to go to Target at that time! So that counts. But if you hear it at work, that doesn’t count. I’d also extend that to hearing it at doctor’s appointments, the hospital, or any other place where you really have to be for one reason or another. But if you could choose to be in that place, and you could have been there another time, and that’s when you hear “Last Christmas”, well. Bad luck, champ!
So anyway, if you’d just like to self-terminate your participation in this weird game and get it over with so you’re not finding your December increasingly dominated by the weird anxiety of possibly hearing “Last Christmas” through little fault of your own, well, I’m here to help. Just play the video below, breathe a sigh of relief, and go about your December like a non-weird person.
It’s December, so here we go. This year things feel markedly different. I suppose there’s only one way to avoid having to celebrate a first Christmas without your mother, and…well, I’m not signing up for that.
But still.
I’ve always featured this particular carol, all by itself, in a single post at some point. This year, it’s leading off, because it was her favorite Christmas carol. I hope you’re somewhere that you can hear these, Mom.
From John Williams’s score to Nixon: “The 1960s: The Turbulent Years”.
I’ve been remembering Oliver Stone’s fascinating reinterpretation of history in this movie ever since I heard of Henry Kissinger’s death. I wrote about the film years ago, and honestly I wouldn’t change a word of that. I consider Nixon a great film about a time when our country was led by terrible people.
As for Mr. Kissinger, well…my mother would not appreciate being outlived by him.
I was at Knox Farm State Park the other day, and a theme that emerged in that day’s photography was “Fallen Giants”. I took a lot of photos of fallen trees and decaying stumps. I’m of the view that trees don’t stop being beautiful for not being in the ground anymore. The beauty of the woods lingers.
I’ve become pretty good at making coffee over the years (I’ve even written about all my various methods of preparation). While it took me a long time to get to drinking coffee, I have to admit my mother’s influence on me in this regard. She often spoke of how she loved coffee all the way back into her childhood, and coffee was one of her essentials, all the way up to the end.
I recall, with some embarrassment, by first attempt at making coffee, when I was in kindergarten and we were living in La Crosse, WI. One Saturday morning I wanted to make coffee for Mom, so I set out to do just that. The problem was that I didn’t understand how coffee worked. I thought it was just like making hot cocoa: spoon the powder stuff into a mug, add hot water, stir, and drink. So that’s what I did. Mom was very nice about it, even as she explained to me that no, that’s not how coffee works, and that I should leave the coffee-making to her and to the machine on the counter that made all the weird noises. (“Hisss…hissssss…WHEEZE…drip drip drip! WHEEZE, drip drip drip! WHEEZE, drip drip drip!”)
Here’s to jitter liquid and to things we learned from our mothers.
