Tag: Something For Thursday

My alma mater, Wartburg College, was noted for the very high quality of its vocal music groups — still is, I suppose. Chief among these was the Wartburg Choir. I had the privilege of going on tour with the Choir in my freshman year, as they did a piece that actually included a small brass ensemble. It was a setting of my least favorite hymn of all time, “A Mighty Fortress”, but that was a small price to pay to get to hear these people on a nightly basis.

The choir closed out each concert in the same way, offering this unimaginably gorgeous setting of a spiritual as their encore. I couldn’t find a video of the actual Wartburg Choir doing it, but I did find this amazing high school chorus doing the piece. Here’s “Give Me Jesus”.

I don’t often associate pieces of music with things — even the Star Wars score has become an abstract entity for me over the years — but this is one of the rare works that transports me back to another time and another place.

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Something offbeat, but which I kind of like, since the movie is a recent favorite of mine. Here’s a medley of numbers from Saturday Night Fever.

This video contains one of my favorite tiny moments from the movie, a “blink and you miss it” bit of characterization. Tony is strutting down the sidewalk, in one of the film’s iconic moments, looking confident and masculine — you can tell by the way he uses his walk that he’s a lady’s man. But then he stops at his local pizza place, and he shows some actual vulnerability in whether to have two slices or not. In the split second interaction with the crusty lady who runs the pizza joint, all of his masculine confidence goes out the window and he’s the insecure kid.

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Going all “Showtunes” for a moment, this is one of my favorite of all Lerner-and-Loewe songs. It’s from Brigadoon, and it comes toward the end, as our hero, the American hunter Tommy, realizes his dilemma: he is in love with Fiona, and that night is falling. (This last is important because the town of Brigadoon vanishes each night for a hundred years, so Tommy can only be with Fiona if he gives up his entire world to do so.) He’s on the verge of staying, and he sings this song to Fiona. Here’s “There But For You Go I”.

The song is not heard in the film version of the show, due to time constraints, along with several other songs including two that were omitted not just for time purposes but for their risque lyrics.

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Wow, I cannot get into a blogging rhythm this week to save my life. So here’s some Mozart.

If this piece sounds a bit familiar, remember the scene from Amadeus:

Wow, I need to watch that movie again….

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Blame it on the bossa nova!

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One of my favorite bands. Here’s Blackmore’s Night, with “Under a Violet Moon”.

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Not my favorite piece in the world — I always find it a bit repetitive on the way to its unquestionably thrilling climax — but I’ve had it on the brain a bit since linking part of it in my Erich Kunzel memorial post, so here’s Seiji Ozama conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. (It’s in two parts.)

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Time for a break from all the classical of late and for something Celtic. Here is the band Great Big Sea, joining in with the Chieftains for a raucous rendition of the song “Lukey”.

(Lyrics here, for reference.)

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Emanuel Chabrier was a French composer at the end of the nineteenth century. He was active at the time when Debussy and Ravel were coming into their own, and Chabrier’s voice is a more minor one in the annals of French music, but he wrote vibrant music. His best known work is this musical tribute to the land to France’s south. Here’s Espana.

Pay close attention to the bassoons at the 1:31 mark — that’s got to be one of the best orchestral passages featuring the bassoons ever. Also of note is the big passage at the 3:35 mark, when Chabrier writes a sparkling passage in which it feels as though the sections of the orchestra are playing in two different time signatures.

I was fortunate enough to play this work in college. It’s one of the most infectious pieces I know — its rhythms, constantly dancelike and always just slightly off-kilter with the beat never quite where we expect it, are pure delight, and there are wonderful melodies at play here as well. I love this piece.

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