music Archives - Page 67 of 264 - Ramblin' with Roger

The John Rutter requiem

Rutter was born in 1945

I am a sucker for a good requiem. The John Rutter Requiem is one of my two favorites.

I’ve sung the Mozart, Faure, Durufle requiems, and probably a couple more. There’s often a certain pattern, to which the composer may add or leave out. The Wikipedia discussion is useful.

I must admit that the Verdi Dies Irae, a theme that shows up repeatedly in the piece, is both one of the most recognized and my favorite single two-minute musical pieces.

While I’ve never performed the Brahms German requiem, my former church choir has sung the fourth movement quite frequently, in English. One of my favorite people at my old church wants the choir to sing How Lovely Is Thy Dwelling Place at their funeral.

Published in 1985

Still, the Rutter as a whole touches me greatly. Requiem aeternam, the first movement, “opens with a steady beat of the tympani, to which instruments enter, first without a defined key.” And I think I like the musical uncertainty

The second movement, Out of the Deep, begins with a cello solo; I love a good cello solo. The voices join, and they’re low in the register as well. The text is from Psalm 130; I’ve learned that the text is commonly used at Anglican funerals. The quartet from my choir sang it in the autumn of 2021. Ultimately, this could be transformed into a blues piece, and I can hear it clearly that way.

Pie Jesu is the third movement, featuring the soprano, then the chorus. It includes the prayer to Jesus for rest.

The fourth movement, Sanctus, is ” a lively, and exclamatory movement which is brightly orchestrated with bells, flute, and oboe and occasional timpani recalling the passage in Old Testament scripture in Isaiah 6, and the worship of the six-winged seraphim in the heavenly throne-room of God.”

Choirs I’ve been in have performed The Lord Is My Shepherd, the sixth movement. The text, of course, is Psalm 23, scripture commonly used at many funerals.

Finally, Lux aeterna, for soprano and solo, “includes words from the 1662 Book of Common Prayer Burial Service (‘I heard a voice from heaven…’)”

The recording I own is this one.

1972: the Easter break

Kentucky State College Concert Choir

Robert Yates.Aaron Yates.Audrey — **Robert, Aaron, Audrey Yates on Easter Sunday (April 2), 1972 at 29 Ackley Avenue, Johnson City, NY, home of Les and Trudy Green**

In the 1972 annals, I had totally forgotten that the Okie came home with me for Easter break, beginning March 28. She drove us from New Paltz to Johnson City, near Binghamton. She met our family friends the Pomeroys.

The next day, we went to my old high school, Binghamton Central, and talked with my friend Carla [we’re still in touch] who yelled to me from a third-story window until a teacher closed it. Also, Amy H. [recently reconnected] and others [who I’ve lost track of]. Saw one of my favorite teachers, John Kellogg [RIP].

March 31 – My good friend Carol and her then-beau drove the Okie and me up old Route 11 from Binghamton to Syracuse to see the new movie The Godfather. [Was it not yet playing locally? Possibly.] Other films I had seen in March 1972: The Importance of Being Earnest; Gimme Shelter; Billy Jack; 2001: A Space Odyssey; and Performance, which I described as “weird”.

April 1 – My cousin Robert Yates, his wife Audrey, and their two-year-old son Aaron came to visit. Robert was my mother’s first cousin. But she was born in 1927, and he in 1946, so he was actually closer to my age. Robert, Audrey, my sister Leslie, and I went bowling at two different venues, in JC and the Vestal Plaza, a total of six games.

Easter Sunday

April 2- A bunch of returning college students, including me, were acknowledged at church. Inspired sermon by Rev. A.C. Bell. After dinner, lots of card games (whist, hearts) with Robert and Audrey, who returned to NYC that day, my parents, the Pomeroys, and me. The Okie also left for her parents’ house.

[Young Aaron was murdered – shot or stabbed, I understand – when he was 18 or 19. This devasted his parents, of course, but Robert became a great father figure, not just to his nieces and nephews, but to kids in the neighborhood. He died in 2016.]

April 3 – I was “supposed to meet some people @ Bing. Pub. Library… but no one showed. Someone mistaking me for an employee I assisted w/ card catalog.” [I did work there as a page two or three years earlier.] Saw familiar faces, including Vito [RIP, 1991], Michael Butler, Don Wheeler, and others.

Later, I interviewed my father for my economics paper.

April 4 – participated in a memorial for MLK, with participation by my church’s choir. Later, my mom’s bowling team won the championship. The US recognized Bangladesh.

KSCCC

April 5 – Adam Clayton Powell died yesterday, and baseball DIDN’T start today.

A concert by the Kentucky State College Concert Choir (KSCCC) was held at First Presbyterian Church. Rev. Roberts, the father of my HS friend Catherine Carson, gave the invocation. The Broome County Urban League officers, which probably included my father, were introduced.

“Guys in black tuxes with white shirts. Gals with pink blouses and light purplish long skirts. They sang four very beautiful classical numbers; I liked to listen to them with my eyes closed. Then a Slavic song and a chant-like song they had done last year. Males sing semi-spirituals and a female soloist sang an operatic song and another piece…

“Mom and I noticed that dad didn’t applaud at all for Motherless Child. Perhaps it means too much for him.” Someone announced that my sister Leslie “has won a scholarship to KSC.” [No, she did not end up going there.]

“Four spirituals with African drums… After the standing ovation, they sang Ain’t A That Good News (like it’s supposed to be sung) and The Battle Hymn of the Republic with a piano intro full of discords, which dad dug.”

Afterward, some co-ed seemed to be flirting with me, which was both awkward and nice. “Leslie auditioned sans choir as the audience like I had last year. [I have no recollection of that happening in 1971.] She sang a capella I Wish I knew How It Would Feel To Be Free rather well. She went with the KSCCC to a party at the Treadway Inn.”

Note that KSC, an HBCU, became Kentucky State University in 1972.

1932 #1: Depression music

ten cents in 1932 is about two dollars today

Here are the songs that reached #1 in 1932 in the United States. From A Century of Pop Music by Joel Whitburn: “The record industry underwent an almost total collapse to the point of selling only six million discs in 1932 – compared to the peak of 140 million just five years earlier.”

The growth of radio, in addition to the economic woes, contributed to this phenomenon. Some of the songs reflect the difficulties of the era.

Night and Day– Leo Reisman with Fred Astaire. 10 weeks at #1. A song by Cole Porter from the musical The Gay Divorcee. I became much more familiar with the works of Porter after I bought the original Red Hot + Blue album in 1991. This song was also covered by Peter Sprague and Rebecca Jade on Planet Cole Porter
In A Shanty In Old Shanty Town – Ted Lewis and his band, 10 weeks at #1

Please – Bing Crosby with Anson Weeks and his orchestra, 6 weeks at #1
Paradise – Leo Reisman and his orchestra with Frances Maddux, vocals, 6 weeks at #1. From the film, A Woman Commands

We Just Couldn’t Say Goodbye – Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians with Carmen Lombardo, vocal, 5 weeks at #1

Paradise – Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians with Carmen Lombardo, vocals, 3 weeks at #1
All Of Me – Paul Whiteman and his orchestra, with Mildred Bailey, vocals, 3 weeks at #1. The song was written by Gerald Marks and Seymour Simons. It was given the Towering Song Award by the Songwriters Hall of Fame as a result of the countless covers, including by Frank Sinatra and Willie Nelson

Deuce

All Of Me – Louis Armstrong, 2 weeks at #1
Dinah – Bing Crosby with the Mills Brothers, 2 weeks at #1
Say It Isn’t So – George Olsen with Paul Small, vocals 2 weeks at #1. Written by Irving Berlin
Lullabye of the Leaves – George Olsen, 2 weeks at #1

Too Many Tears – Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians with Carmen Lombardo, vocal, 2 weeks at #1
River, Stay Away From My Door – Guy Lombardo and His Royal Canadians with Kate Smith, 2 weeks at #1
Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? – Rudy Vallee, 2 weeks at #1. From Wikipedia: “Written by lyricist Yip Harburg and composer Jay Gorney,… [it] was part of the 1932 musical revue Americana; the melody is based on a Russian-Jewish lullaby. The song tells the story of the universal everyman, whose honest work towards achieving the American dream has been foiled by the economic collapse.”
Brother, Can You Spare A Dime? – Bing Crosby, 2 weeks at #1

Reisman, Whiteman, Olsen were on Victor
Lewis, Armstrong, and Vallee were on Columbia, though I also found the Armstrong recording on Okeh
Crosby and Lombardo were on Brunswick, except the Kate Smith cut, on Columbia

March rambling: quotation marks

Support the Albany High School robotics team!

tractor_beam_2x — **From https://xkcd.com/2579/**

In a world-historic first, microplastics were detected in human blood

The Our World in Data COVID vaccination data

How American conservatives turned against the vaccine

The Lancet: Paul Farmer

Cameroonians fleeing conflict are in dire need of Temporary Protected Status – cf. Inside “the most diverse square mile in America”

What Caused the War? Ukraine and Russia in Historical Context

The Race to Archive the Ukrainian Internet

Ukrainian Actress Oksana Shvets Killed in Russian Rocket Attack

Non-war conflict

Hate and extremism

How did Christianity become so toxic?

The Interactive Theater of Ketanji Brown Jackson’s Confirmation Hearing

Addressing racial inequality in paid leave policy

Sara Jacobs, one of the youngest members of Congress, talks about sexism and ageism in politics.

Writing Women into History

Women in medicine are running up the wrong side of the escalator

Where Does the Religious Right Go After Roe?

Sojourner Truth’s Battle to Free Her Son from Slavery

Actor Tim Reid on addressing racial issues on WKRP in Cincinnati

Texas’ New Voting Law Disenfranchised Thousands Of Otherwise Eligible Voters

The Tangled, Messy Roots of Fake News, long before it became djt’s favorite term

Ginni Thomas demanded Congressional Republicans take the fight to overturn the 2020 election to the streets

John Bolton admits that ‘it’s hard to describe how little [djt] knows’

I Know There’s An Answer

Climate Change Brings Uncontrollable Wildfires

The Illinois town that got up and left

The 1950 Census is Coming: What You Need to Know

Timbuctoo Institute would build opportunities in the Adirondacks

About Those Gas Prices

Concert Tickets: Last Week Tonight with John Oliver

2021 County and Economic Development Regions Population Estimates for NYS

Luka’s mural

Jobfished: the con that tricked dozens into working for a fake design agency

“They’re called ‘quotation marks’.”

Phobias. Aibohphobia is the (unofficial) fear of palindromes. Hippopotomonstrosesquipedaliophobia is used to describe the fear of very long words.

The official Girl Scout cookie power rankings

The Result of a Rabbit Hole

Audience participation

A GoFundMe page for the Albany High School Robotics Team to compete at the FIRST Robotics World Championship in Houston, TX on April 20-23. They placed 2nd in the New York Tech Valley Regional Competition.

Four Open Seats on Albany Public Library Board in May 17 Election. Nominations are due to the Clerk of the City School District of Albany by Wednesday, April 27, at 5 pm.

New York Bike Census

Now I Know

The Biggest Bread Soup in the World and Why Are My Baby Carrots Always Wet? and The First Computer Bug and The Phone Booth in the Middle of Nowhere and Beware the Ire of Caesar and Which Came First, The Algorithm or the Pi? and World War II’s Pre-Email E-Mail

MUSIC

Livinliv – Aleksandr Shymko

Irish tunes

K-Chuck Radio: The musical tree of Ida Red and green songs

Holiday at Ferghana -Reinhold Gliere

Lullabye of Broadway from 42nd Street

Coverville: 1393 – John Cale and Velvet Underground Cover Story and 1394 – The Blink-182 Cover Story II and 1395 – The Smashing Pumpkins Cover Story II

Lydster: what to write on her natal day

To the degree that I know anything…

Back in the day, I would have gushed about my daughter, especially on her natal day. I might have noted how cute she was, and how lovely she is now. Perhaps I would indicate how much I’ve learned from her almost every day.

Her sense of justice has always been finely tuned. At least a decade ago, when the change from my pants pocket fell onto the bed, my wife would collect it. But my daughter thought my wife was stealing from me and ratted her out to grandma. Now, she is savvy about issues of racism, sexism, and other inequities.

I’m much more aware of looking at food labels because of her allergies, especially dealing with peanuts. She and I react almost exactly the same to everything from ragweed to cigarette smoke, which is to say, badly.

To the degree that I know anything about 21st-century music, technology, changes in language, and a myriad of other things is because of her.

But…

Here’s the thing, though. 1) She’s a teenager. 2) She sometimes reads my blog, especially on the 26th of the month. A bunch of platitudes would probably make her gag. She’s doesn’t think she was cute as a child. (N.b., she’s wrong.) If I say I love her, at best she’ll roll her eyes.

So frankly, I don’t know WHAT I’m going to write that doesn’t invade her privacy too much.

I can say this. She’s applied to about eight colleges. She got into most or all of them. Currently, she’s considering a couple of them and wants to make second visits to both before deciding.

Ah, heck. I’ll write what I want. It’s my blog, and if it wasn’t for her, there would likely not BE a blog. Here’s a story I’ve told before. When I got one of those baby books where one records her first tooth or first steps, I was TERRIBLE at using it. To be fair to me, her mother was no better than I.

So when I comtemplated starting a blog, I decided that I would write about my daughter at least once a month. And always on the 26th of the month, because. I might write about her MORE often, but that was the floor.

Since May 2005, I have managed to write about her every 26th, 203 times in a row if my math is correct. I’ll try to keep this up, but it might be more difficult. We shall see.

(Don’t tell her that I wrote how much I love her. She’d REALLY will roll her eyes.)