Burn up the old, ring in the new

NGL—I am big happy to see 2024 in my rearview mirror. If any year deserves to be yeeted into the sun, this was it. If it weren’t for highly valid misgivings about 2025, that would be the end of it, but here we are.

Still—I’ve got a couple of things I can work on, like getting better at yoga and photography. And writing more. And being more alert to opportunities to be a better friend. Political shenanigans shouldn’t interfere too much with those goals.

So I’ll do my usual end-of-year ritual tonight: burning El Año Viejo and washing it down with a glass of champagne. Then I’ll launch el Año Nuevo by taking my neighbor to the airport at 0600 and then going for a walk.

Here are a couple of the folks I met on my morning walks this month. I hope I see more of them in 2025.

And have the best 2025 you can.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: well, okay

Final Gratitude Monday of 2024. Yeahhhhhh, um…

Let me preface this by saying it was a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad year that sucked the big one, on both macro and micro levels. I seriously do not know when there was more fuckery in a US election than the one we held this year; the outcome was generally in line with the fuckery and I am not sanguine about the next four years. I lived through (most of) the Vietnam War, the Nixon administration, Ronald Reagan as both governor of California and president, the civil rights and women’s liberation movements, the global riots of ’68, the excesses of the ‘80s, the “war on drugs” and the other one “on terror”, the COVID pandemic and the first regime of the Kleptocrat. I’m a military historian specializing in mass conflicts of the first half of the last century; I still cannot describe what I think may happen after 20 January because the only thing I know is we’re not in Kansas any more.

Moreover, my sister died this month, years before she should have done and from an absolute bastard of a disease that is apparently not as important to fight as the global scourge of erectile dysfunction. It’s all I can do to refrain from howling at the moon ever night in grief and rage.

That said, there is always gratitude.

First of all, for Penny’s life, for all the wisdom and skills with which she imbued hundreds of students over her nearly four decades teaching the hearing impaired. For her unerring ability to play whatever hand she was dealt in the moment as best she could, without overthinking or wallowing in regrets. For her curiosity and her core of steel that took her so many places and got her through so many things that would have left others moaning about victimhood. For her ability to be happy and to share that happiness with everyone around her. For just not hearing people when they told her something was beyond her ability. And for not caring what they might think of her when she tried it.

Best big sister I could ever have had.

I give thanks, too, for the campaign of Kamala Harris and Tim Walz. They picked up some crappy cards really late in the game, and they played them with passion and finesse. They showed us what w might have had, if so many of us could just have got over their outrage about that first non-White president, or past their refusal to envision a woman holding that office. A competent, compassionate, experienced woman with a track record of accomplishment, teaming with the most dad-joking running mate we’ve ever had—also with experience, temperance and a good heart. Watching them campaign was a blessing; they filled so many with hope and joy. That lies, fears and grievance triumphed is not down to them. I’m sorry that it turned out that way, but am grateful we had those brief, shining moments.

I’m thankful that I was able to help several of my friends out this year. Getting laid off under any circumstances tends to make you feel useless and without value. Being able to prepare two friends for the experience of knee replacement surgery, to share my coping mechanisms and fill them in on some things the surgeons don’t think to tell you—that felt good. Looking after my neighbors’ plants while they were in Turkey was another way to be a friend. (NGL—I was not wild about Das Auto. That car hates me.) Being an accountability partner, being the first call when a friend has an opportunity or has been gut-punched with a setback—that gives me purpose.

I give heartfelt thanks for the life of Jimmy Carter, possibly the most decent man to ever hold the office of president. Following his single term, he and his wife Rosalyn showed the world what was best about the United States. We’ll need to hold on to that memory during the upcoming years. I’m also grateful that he is once again reunited with Rosalyn.

I’m grateful that—if I’m going to be “retired”—I somehow managed to save and invest enough so that my financial adviser assures me I shall not have to live my remaining years in a refrigerator carton under a freeway overpass. That’s largely due to TIAA, which managed the 403(b) retirement plan offered by the non-profit organization I joined in 2015. Their representatives patiently bit my ankles until I located all the 401(k) plans from all my previous employers, and then got them all rolled into my TIAA portfolio. They also patiently explained all the possibilities to me and worked with me to build a program that I was comfortable with. And by “patiently explained”, I mean—they got out the single-syllable words and sock puppets. Remember—I’m the one (with degrees from Scripps College and The College of William & Mary in Virginia) who only last month came across almost 200 shares of stock in a Fortune 50 company that I’d, uh, well—kinda overlooked. For 14 years. I am so lucky to be able to work with this team, and I know it.

I’m grateful that I bought my house when I did and refinanced it when I did, because I don’t see how a retired person could get a mortgage these days. I’m fully aware that millions in this country alone don’t have this kind of security; I do not take it for granted.

I give thanks to my yoga instructor, who’s been teaching me for more than four years. If it weren’t for yoga, I know my recovery from two knee replacements wouldn’t have been as smooth.

I’m grateful for friends across the country and around the world. They keep me honest and build my strength. When they make me laugh, it’s the best thing ever. And I’m thankful for friends who are no longer physically here. I’m better for having had them in my life and for carrying them with me.

I’m grateful for my younger sister, who’s always been the smartest one in the family. I have so much to learn from her.

Being healthy is always a cause for thanks. When you’ve been immobilized by pain, you don’t take simply going up and down stairs for granted. I had some issues in Spring, but have really been heartened by my recovery. Again: yoga.

I give thanks for the Fairfax County Public Library. Especially in the current climate of know-nothing campaigns to ban books and clamp down on people’s access to ideas, possibilities, knowledge and entertainment, FCPL has held the line. There was a time when I’d never even have thought about this, but not now. Yay, librarians!

I’m deeply grateful for the people who work in the food supply chain—planting and harvesting crops, staffing meat packing plants, transporting food to our markets. I fear for many of them in the coming months, and for the bedlam when those who voted for mass deportations discover what was actually on the ballot. Not at all sorry for those idiots, but I wish the workers the dignity their work should bring and the safety that all who live in this country deserve.

I am heartened by the fall of the regime of Bashir al-Assad in Syria. In addition to at least some hope for the Syrian people, it totally screws up Putin’s playbook and messes with his ability to deploy forces in that part of the world. I’m not unaware that there are rough days ahead and that this could go south in some infinite number of ways. But still—like the 10,000 lawyers at the bottom of the ocean, it’s a start.

I’m even grateful for those merry folks at the Social Security Administration. Because after they notified me that I had to prove once again that my income is not now currently what it was last year, when I was employed (after having done so in <checks notes> February), once I got them the documents, it only took them two weeks to correct the situation. I’m really glad that I got this taken care of before the Kleptocrat and his DOGEbro pals start taking an industrial scythe to the federal workforce next month.

You know what—there’s more, but I’m going to stop here. Turns out this year had some good spots; that ain’t nothing.

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

On the Silk Road

I’m thinking that—given the events of this year, and of course the seasonal frenzy—we all might benefit from something quiet and contemplative.

I had a restorative yoga session on Monday, and it was really helpful. For all those who missed it, here’s Kitaro, with a cut from his Best of Silk Road album, “Taklamakan Desert”. Let him take you away.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

Time for a reboot?

I’ve been thinking, over the past month, about the Christmas narrative. About how the Almighty decides to make his presence manifest in human form…and chooses a peasant girl at the end of the world as the woman to impregnate for this purpose.

I mean—the chroniclers (all male) are primarily Jews, so I guess they’d set the story in their region. Okay, fine. But Judea was hardly the center of the universe for anyone; it was always the edge of empires—Assyrian, Babylonian, Egyptian and now Roman. Why wouldn’t the purported son of God be born in Rome, or even Alexandria? You know, give him some street cred?

Moreover, not only is Mary a teenager from the back of beyond, married to a carpenter, if you please—in no respect can they be said to be quality folk—but she gives birth in a <checks notes> stable. A place that shelters working animals. A place that has to be mucked out on the regular but still undoubtedly reeks of manure. What kind of pedigree d’ya call this?

Not a speck of bling—at least until the Magi show up. Just straw, oxen and poop. That’s where Christ’s life began, to be shortly followed by the family fleeing persecution to a foreign land, where they sought asylum. I can’t get over this.

And what I can’t get over is how really impossible this story is in the age of the Kleptocrat (the self-confessed germophobe and lover of gold in all its manifestations) and his followers, who purport to worship this Christ, but have so thoroughly bought into the gospel of prosperity that their brains must break if they try to align the arc of the son of God’s origin and life with the notion that “God helps those that help themselves.” They vote for billionaires to run the government because their billions are (to them) a clear sign that God approves of them and completely ignore the notion that a God who chose to have his son born to a Brown couple in a stable in the back-end of empire instead of in a palace must have done so for a reason.

Revisit Jackson Browne’s “The Rebel Jesus”, if you will.

At no time in his 33 years of life did Jesus of Nazareth praise the wealthy or admonish his followers to grow their capital. In fact, the one instance that I can recall in his story of him being pissed all the way off is when he drove the money changers from the temple. We’ve come a long way from that, where a husk of a human being who could not name one Bible verse if you held a gun to his head is praised as a “Christian leader” by people who attend church and actually can recite passages from the Bible. (Although, tbh, their interpretation may be somewhat off.) Where “pastors” of mega churches in $6k suits preach prosperity on weekly broadcasts as the chyron flashes where you can use your credit card to donate. Where followers of Christ—born in a stable and on the run within days—nod in agreement when the billionaires, the husk and the pastors tell them that refugees are “poisoning the blood of the nation” and that to save us, they must be rounded up in their millions and deported. End of.

And I wonder, as we focus in this season on the birth of the Savior in that stable, how these billionaires, the husk and the pastors would rewrite that story to make it make sense in our current reality? What would this birthplace look like—marble floors and gold-plated toilets? Manhattan or Cape Town? World leaders coming to pay fealty live broadcast on CNN and Fox? Maggie Haberman writing the new gospel, complete with commentary on the maternity wardrobe?

And what message will this messiah bring?

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

Happy, joyous, shhh

We’ve got a two-fer today; first in my decade of Advent posts. Because, in addition to being Christmas Day, at sundown Hanukkah starts. So just as the frenzy is winding down in Christian homes around the world, Jewish families are gearing up for kids literally spinning like dreidels.

As I consider the birth of Jesus in a Bethlehem stable, it occurs to me that most of the excitement happened in the night: baby born, shepherds led to the manger by angels, possibly the Eastern kings bringing gifts for the baby. Christmas morning might well have been a recovery period. Quiet. Reflective, even.

There might have been some people peeking in—having heard about all the nighttime visitors, they’d want to have a look at the cause. No doubt they went away, disappointed, because just a man, woman and baby, so what’s up with that? “There’s nowt so queer as folk, eh?”

Anyway, here’s a lullaby, which started in Czechoslovakia; it’s from the perspective of the animals in the stable. They open with, “Little Jesus, sweetly sleep, do not stir, we will lend a coat of fur,” and they promise to rock him gently.

Technically, the animals in the stable—the oxen, the ass, the sheep brought in by the shepherds—they don’t have fur, really. But if there were stable cats—I can see them offering to snuggle up to the baby and purr him to sleep. Even a sheepdog—entirely possible that, with the sheep all corralled, the dog would be off duty and overjoyed to curl up with the infant. I love the image this conjures up in my mind.

Here's Chanticleer singing it.

And then…Tonight marks the first night of Hanukkah, celebrating the rededication of the Second Temple at the time of the Maccabean revolt against the Persians. Hanukkah lasts for eight nights, which is the number of days the lamp oil stayed alight in the temple, when there was only enough for a single day. 

“Happy Joyous Hanukah” was written by Woody Guthrie, and why not? This is a holiday that lends itself to counting, and this song does a whole lot of it. Also, particularly in this year, we need all the light and all the happiness and all the joy we can get.

Here are the Klezmatics performing it. I happen to like folk music and klezmer, and this is a blend of both. (Well, heavier on the folk, but whatevs.)

©2024 Bas Bleu

Alpha es et O

Our Advent pick for today goes back to 14^th Century Germany, by way of one of my all-time favorite collector/composers, Michael Praetorius, with some input from our pal Martin Luther.

The text of “In Dulci Jubilo” is what’s known as macaronic: a mashup of languages, in this case (originally) German and Latin. I don’t know the story, but I like to think it might have been an attempt to either dress up a vulgar (as in, not-posh, not as in risqué) German thing with some high-toned Latin. Or to make something Latin understandable to the masses. Or possibly it was just something resulting from folks hitting the Glühwein and not being able to remember what language they were supposed to be using.

It came down to us via the 19^th Century translation that swaps out the German for English, retaining the Latin. We know it as “Good Christian Men, Rejoice”. (Fun fact: when I was a kid I wondered why all the good Christian women were excluded. Were they out fixing a meal? Or putting the kids to bed? I did not know.) It’s also often sung in such a way as to make me think the choristers have been hitting the Wassail—lotta glissando. It’s also one that I very often hear performed by brass groups. It seems to suit those instruments particularly well.

To give you an idea of the macaronic thing, here are a couple of verses of the German version:

In dulci jubilo
nun singet und seid froh!
Unsers Herzens Wonne
leit in praesepio,
und leuchtet als die Sonne
Matris in gremio,
Alpha es et O, Alpha es et O!

O Jesu parvule
nach dir ist mir so weh!
Tröst mir mein Gemüte,
o puer optime;
durch alle deine güte,
o princeps gloriae
trahe me post te.

Here it is, sung at King's College:

The English version (kind of mid-way between German and “Good Christian Men”) goes:

In dulci jubilo
Now sing with hearts aglow
Our delight and pleasure
Lies in praesepio
Like sunshine is our treasure
Patris in gremio
Alpha es et O
Alpha es et O

O Jesu parvule
For thee I sing always
Comfort my heart’s blindness
O puer optime
With all thy loving kindness
O princeps gloriae
Trahe me post te
Trahe me post te

And, “Good Christian Men, Rejoice”:

Good Christian men, rejoice
With heart and soul and voice!
Give ye heed to what we say
News! News
Jesus Christ is born today!
Ox and ass before Him bow
And He is in the manger now
Christ is born today!
Christ is born today!

Good Christian men, rejoice
With heart and soul and voice
Now ye hear of endless bliss
Joy! Joy!
Jesus Christ was born for this
He hath ope’d the heav’nly door
And man is blessed evermore
Christ was born for this
Christ was born for this

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Songs of joy and peace

Not gonna lie—this Christmas is a tough one for me. There’s a great, gaping chasm in my heart for the loss of my sister and I confess I’m largely going through the motions. Badly, actually. Penny had the gift of happiness—she accepted the cards she was dealt and played them with all her heart. That’s a gift I have never possessed, so I’m basically just mucking about.

However, this can be a good season for dealing with loss—if you don’t get wound up in all the festivities, which can’t help but taste off and wear you out. For me, holiday lights and music can take me out of myself.

So I’m grateful for my custom of posting Advent music every December. It makes me seek out and immerse myself in seasonal songs, which is a blessing.

Today’s piece is Joni Mitchell singing “River”. She wrote it while living in LA, where the only thing approaching riparian status is the LA River; it won’t get you anyplace you want to go (certainly not by skating), and Mitchell knew it.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Scatter the proud

Fourth Sunday in Advent for many Christians is devoted to the Annunciation, which was what got the whole thing rolling, as it were. The Annunciation was when the Archangel Gabriel appeared to Mary and announced that she’d been chosen to bring the Son of God into the world via virgin birth.

(Obvs the Annunciation did not occur during Advent; that would be weird. Weirder than the actual impregnation by the Holy Spirit. It’s just that this is the Sunday when we reference it.)

We only have the (male) Gospel accounts of that event and they pretty much gloss over what must have been quite the awkward conversation. What we’re told is that, upon receiving the announcement (no discussion allowed), Mary replies, basically, “Well, okay. I am the handmaiden of the Lord. Let’s do it.”

A prayer for today is the Magnificat, a canticle sung by Mary. Technically, this takes us to the Visitation (which took place shortly after the Annunciation, thus long before Advent, but is referenced in seasonal readings), but I am not responsible for how this shakes out. “Magnificat” is the opening of how Mary describes her condition to her cousin Elisabeth. “My soul doth magnify the Lord, and my spirit hath rejoiced in God my Saviour.”

There are often discussions about the “magnifying” thing. People talk about magnifying glasses, which I think misses the point. Magnifying glasses make things look bigger; they stay the same size, we’re just experiencing an optical illusion. Mary tells us that she (through her soul) will add to the Lord; amplify him, if you will. Or perhaps she’s saying that she’ll make God manifest, and thus larger in our lives; she’ll actually add to the Lord.

So I think we should have a Magnificat today, and what better than J.S. Bach’s?

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Snow on snow

It’s the Winter Solstice today—the longest night and shortest day of the year in the Northern Hemisphere. After tonight, night retreats day by day until balance is achieved at the equinox, and then the tide turns again at the Summer Solstice.

Probably since the origins of humanity, people have celebrated this annual event, giving thanks for the return of the sun, gathering around bonfires, singing, banging on things, eating and drinking. Before the domestication of fire to candles, followed by gas lights and then by electricity, knowing that the hours of darkness would not in fact continue to grow was comforting in a world full of perils.

The festival we know as Christmas was overlaid on older traditions; the birth of the Son of God has perhaps more dramatic impact if it’s celebrated around the Solstice rather than sometime in Spring, which makes more meteorological and astronomical sense. The early Church accomplished two goals with the coopting: subsumed pagan sun worship into Christian rites and gave themselves license to feast away the longest nights of the year. It’s not a bad deal, really.

The English poet Christina Rossetti wrote “In the Bleak Midwinter” in 1872, although it wasn’t published until 1904. A couple of years later it was set to music by Gustav Holst and became the carol we now know. It’s an apt piece for marking the Solstice. The imagery of the first stanza just makes you shiver—earth hard as iron; moaning, frosty wind; water like stone; snow piled deep on itself. It’s a frozen world, an absolutely perfect description of the Winter Solstice.

I thought about that last week when we had overnight temperatures in the 20s (Fahrenheit). On my morning walk I came across some of that stony water. It was beautiful, actually.

As Rossetti goes on to describe the mother and child, the stable beasts and the angels, you can just about see their breaths billowing misty into the night air. But then she walks us back, just like the sun does, starting tomorrow.

It seems appropriate for today, and here’s one of my favorite a capella groups, Chanticleer, singing it.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Adorned with prayer and love and joy

I feel rather like I need a big anthem for today’s Advent piece. As you know, I’m a big fan of Catherine Winkworth, the extraordinarily accomplished 19^th Century English feminist who gave the Anglophone world some of the best translations of German Lutheran hymns. Earlier this month I gave you her Isaiah-based “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People”, which is among my all-time favorites.

Today let’s have another of her translations, “Lift Up Your Heads, Ye Mighty Gates”, set to the tune “Truro”. This hymn urges us again and again to open wide the portals of our hearts to receive the waiting King of Glory. That’s what the season of Advent is, although we’re often told that it’s a period when we’re doing the waiting, not the other way round.

Also—perhaps if we fill our hearts with love and joy, there'll be less room for the fear, hatred and vindictiveness currently swirling about us. Just a thought.

Here's the First United Methodist Church in Houston giving it their all.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Die uns das Blümlein bracht

Michael Praetorius is one of my favorite composers; I don’t think I’ve ever heard anything of his that I don’t like. He makes the transition from medieval/Renaissance-sounding things to a more modern—or maybe a more universal—feel, that touches me every time. He was one of those court composers—like Bach or Handel or (sort of) Mozart, which perhaps gave him the freedom to set his hand to whatever struck his fancy. Masses, motets; experimenting in surround-sound (by placing mini-choirs in different areas of the space)—these days, in the Valley They Call Silicon, they’d dub him a paradigm-shifting, disruptive-tech, game-changing thought leader, and venture capitalists would throw money at him.

In those days he served a succession of German princes, ending at the court of Dresden.

“Es ist ein Ros entsprungen” is my all-time favorite Christmas carol. I first learned it in a German class and I still only know the words auf Deutsch. You probably know it as “Lo, How a Rose E’er Blooming”. The intricate polyphony of this piece always speaks to me of voices echoing in huge, candle-lit Gothic spaces, merging together on the final note of each verse. I love it.

There are so many exquisite performances of this; I'm giving you the British a cappella group VOCES8.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Comfort and joy

I think it’s time for something substantially traditional for Advent today. Hardly anything is more traditional than “God Rest Ye Merry, Gentlemen”. (Note the comma placement; the song is telling us to lighten up/be at peace, not commenting on our existing state of jolliness. It’s reminding us that our burdens are about to be eased by the birth of the Savior.)

The carol dates from the 17^th Century, when it was associated with recusant (Roman) Catholic families in England. This was a time when "celebrating" Christmas (the word means "Christ's Mass) was dangerous; Puritans did not hold with such frippery. The melody we know was hooked up to it about a hundred years later.

It was a bit of a palaver to find a version not by Pentatonix; here are my pals at King’s College, Cambridge, singing it, with the congregation during the Service of Nine Lessons and Carols recorded ten years ago.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

A long road back

Eighty years ago yesterday, the Germans launched their last-gasp attack on the Western Allies, sending Army Group B through the Ardennes Forest against American troops in Luxembourg and Belgium. The Allied advance across France since the D-Day landings had gone much faster than anticipated, and the mostly American soldiers were tired, had stretched their supply lines to the max and were in fact short supplied.

The Germans were aided in their plans by a massive Allied intelligence failure to pick up on the transfer and massing of infantry and armored divisions ahead of the attack. The surprise was complete, and in war, surprising the enemy is a good thing. Especially if they’re tired and poorly supplied in the middle of winter.

(Also—may I just point out that I’d have liked a word with those Allied commanders who did not think it possible that the Germans would attack through the dense Ardennes region because it had not happened for <checks notes> for all of less than five years. Dudes—they still had the discarded mess kits and petrol cans from May 1940.)

Well—we know the resulting campaign as the Battle of the Bulge. The Germans pushed a salient into the Allied front, all but surrounding the Belgian town of Bastogne; the Americans rushed troops to the area and—despite bad weather (preventing air support or supply)—held the line. Within a month, the Germans were in retreat, leaving tens of thousands of casualties, as well as hundreds of tanks, assault guns and aircraft behind, none of which they could afford to lose.

Today’s Advent piece honors that first day of engagement in the frozen forest. It should come as no surprise that “I’ll Be Home for Christmas” was written in 1943 (first recorded by Bing Crosby). Its lyrics encapsulate the longing of every soldier on every side in every war for the past millennium to be with family and friends for the quintessential family-and-friends holiday. By December of 1944, with parts of Europe having been at war for more than five years and vast swathes of it reduced to rubble, I’m betting that any equivalent of “I’ll Be Home” would have people in floods.

Eighty years on, with kinetic wars in Ukraine (going on three years), Gaza (more than a year) and Syria (I think for most of this century), you don't even need the Christmas part. Just the home.

Here's Bette Middler singing it.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Gratitude Monday: a smashing dance

How is it that in all the years (this is the tenth) I’ve been posting Advent music I’ve never had anything from Nutcracker? Worldwide, the Tchaikovsky ballet competes only with productions of A Christmas Carol (and variants) for stage time during December. I don’t know how I missed it.

Nutcracker was pretty much the only cultural event I experienced as a child; every year my mother would take us to the performance at the Pasadena Civic Auditorium, and that was The Arts done for the year. And then I read E.T.A. Hoffman’s original in a German class.

Well, and of course there are those bits in Fantasia.

But my strongest connection now to the musical confection is hearing “The Russian Dance” as my sister Penny smashed ornaments in one of the activities of the Jacquie Lawson Advent Calendar.

Every year, Lawson lets you vent your frustration and/or aggression on controlled destruction. Basically, you’re meant to “kill” three or more identical items lined up in a collection of items. Last year there were two varieties—Christmas ornaments and canapés or desserts. 

These games come with banger sound effects: smashing for the glass ornaments and slurping/crunching for the food. There’s background music, too, but that’s across all the games, not specific to the activity.

But back in the Olden Days, the music for smashing the ornaments was always “The Russian Dance”, and you had only a limited time to get as many as you could. (That time being the length of "The Russian Dance".) When I’d visit Penny for Christmas, I could look forward to her playing that game. (She had a profound hearing loss, so her computer volume would be cranked up to the max for these things. You could also hear her doing online jigsaw puzzles because of the “click” as pieces went into place.)

I shall never be able to disassociate that memory from this piece of music. But since it makes me happy, I am grateful to have it. And I think of Penny every single time I smash ornaments, which is an additional blessing to the satisfaction that comes from hearing those things in their death tinkle.

That’s my gratitude for today. And here’s the Cincinnati Ballet performing it. Volume up!

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

And shout, shout, shout, shout

Today is Gaudete Sunday. Since Advent is meant to be a period of preparation, reflection and quiet (hahahahahahaha—no, really, that’s what it was for centuries, but we’ve totally blown past that in the past hundred years or so), the third Sunday is the break from all that. You add a pink candle to the two purple ones you’ve lighted already, and you focus on rejoicing.

Well, alrighty, then. The title of today’s Advent piece is “Rejoice Greatly”, from Messiah. The context is that an angel appears to the shepherds in the fields around Bethlehem to announce the birth of the Savior. Instructing them to “rejoice greatly” seems somewhat understating the case, but I suppose times were different, both back at the original scene and when Handel wrote it.

I’ve been listening to a lot of sopranos singing this; my pick this year is Mija Park, so here she is. You will note that the lyrics are not complex, so you can concentrate on her voice and technique.

 

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

 

Merry measure

Today’s Advent tune comes to us from a Welsh folk song, dating back to the 16^th Century. The English lyrics about decking the hall(s) were added (by a Scotsman) in 1862. You will no doubt hear it several hundred times this month, but if you for some unaccountable reason do not actually know the words to the first verse, you at least can join in on the chorus, which consists of “fa”, followed by about 42,736 “las”.

Easy-peasy, although it helps if you've been nipping at the nog.

Who better to sing it for us than John Denver and the Muppets.

Except—what is Denver singing? His lips do not appear to be anywhere near the lyrics. And for the chorus, he seems to be saying “Blah”.

Interesting

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Sea so calm, wind so dear

Today is the feast of Saint Lucy, a Sicilian martyr of the Diocletian persecutions in the Third Century. When you hear the term “Christian martyr” applied to a woman of the early years of the Church, it’s almost always a young woman whose only defense of her virginity against pagan lechers is death. And so it was for Lucy, also known as Lucia, who was burnt at the stake in Syracuse. Although she did not die until given Christian rites…

Ah, good times, eh?

Well, interestingly, Saint Lucy (whose name derives from the Latin lux, lucis; light) was taken up big time by the Nordics. Interesting, but not really surprising. For one thing, when you live in areas enshrouded by darkness for months at a time, anything relating to light is highly valued.

For another, it turns out that, in pre-Christian Scandinavia, 13 December was dedicated to Lussi, a kind of female demon, who led her followers around wreaking havoc on everyone. In the period between Lussi Night and Yule, trolls and evil spirits (possibly joined by spirits of the dead) roamed the land and committed all manner of mischief. Lussi could even come down the chimney and take naughty children away.

So you can see why folks might want to wrap a saint rumored to have taken food and supplies to refugees hiding in caverns (wearing a wreath of candles on her head, so as to leave both arms free for schlepping stuff) around the Old Ones’ Lussi.

As an aside, driving back the winter darkness with lights, fire, prayers and making a lot of noise is a major theme of holiday celebrations. At least in the northern hemisphere. (People down under probably do it a lot around July-August, but their PR machine didn’t get the word out the way we up here did.) There’s more than a little blustery defiance in a lot of these activities, although it’s not framed that way for Saint Lucy, focused as it is on young girls.

(Although, I dunno—virgin sacrifice? I wonder about that because of the red sashes you see on these girls’ white robes.)

The traditional song for Saint Lucy is “Santa Lucia”, a traditional Neapolitan song, translated into Italian in the first stage of Italian unification, mid-nineteenth century. The lyrics are about light on the ocean, sung by a boatman and inviting Lucy to come join him on his boat . Scandinavians have adapted that theme of light for a particular celebration—you know, overlaid on Lussi.

Here is a typical Swedish rendition of "Santa Lucia": girls' choir, led by a girl wearing a wreath of candles on her head, processing through a candlelit church.

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Harps of gold

“It Came upon a Midnight Clear” is one of the staples of Christmas pageants. Or it was in the days when they had Christmas pageants. I have to say that I was never that enthused about it because it, like “O Little Town of Bethlehem”, it always sounded to me like whoever was singing it was drunk.

However, it turns out that there are alternative melodies to both of them, and these, I find, are quite appealing.

In the US, “Midnight Clear” is sung to a tune called “Carol”, by Richard Storrs Willis, but in the UK it’s to one called “Noel”, adapted from something older by Arthur Sullivan (yes, that Arthur Sullivan). Here it is, performed by the choir of Winchester Cathedral (yes, that Winchester Cathedral):

If you’re interested, the alternative to the Fleet Week version of “O Little Town” uses an English hymn tune called “Forest Green”. Here it is from my pals at King’s College, Cambridge:

Turns out it’s actually not at all a bad carol.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Mourning under sorrow's load

Martin Luther is generally acknowledged to be a badass hymnist—he made congregational singing a key fixture in the Lutheran worship service, so it makes sense that some extra primo good Christmas music should come out of that tradition.

What you may not know is that one of the 19^th Century’s great translators of German Lutheran hymns was an Englishwoman named Catherine Winkworth. Daughter of a silk merchant, Winkworth was influenced by a couple of Unitarian ministers and brought a lot of power to expanding hymnody. Not even in her 20s, after spending a year in Dresden, she published a book called Lyra Germanica, which was a collection of German hymns she liked and had translated. Winkworth essentially opened up the world of Lutheran music to Anglophones, which enriched Advent for us all.

In addition to her interests in German and sacred music, Winkworth actively promoted women’s rights, particularly to education. But my first introduction to her intelligence was a delicious pun that was published in Punch when she was 16 years old. In 1844, Britain was expanding and solidifying its hold on India, and one of its imperial coups occurred when General Charles James Napier’s ruthless campaign to conquer the province of Sindh. In a droll play on two languages, Winkworth remarked to her teacher that Napier could have announced his victory with a single word, “peccavi”—Latin for “I have sinned.”

The pun has been credited to Napier himself, perhaps by persons who could not believe a female—much less a teenaged one—capable of such dexterity. But records back her as the author.

Today, we’ll have a Luther-written Advent hymn translated by Winkworth. The text of “Comfort, Comfort Ye My People” is based on Isaiah 40: 1-5. The German was published in 1671, set to a tune called “Freu Dich Sehr”, a setting for Psalm 42 that dated about 100 years earlier. (Today it’s known as Genevan 42, from the Genevan Psalter.)

You can hear the Renaissance in this music—almost see glittering court dancers moving in and out in an intricate pattern, possibly alternating with wassail. And at the same time, it feels so contemporary, as though you might expect speakers-in-tongues dancing in the church aisles. Yeah, a lot of dancing in this one.

Full of joy and energy; let’s have some of that today.

Here’s the Saint Olaf College Cantorei singing it. If you feel like dancing, that’s absolutely allowed. Encouraged, even.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

O re di lucce e amor

If you’ll recall, this year, I’m pulling in my own favorite seasonal music, because I frankly need a boost. And one of my favorite collections of said music is the 1991 A Carnegie Hall Christmas Concert, which featured operatic sopranos Kathleen Battle and Frederica von Stade (also two of my favorites), trumpeter Wynton Marsalis and the American Boychoir.

Today I’m sharing Battle and von Stade singing “Gesù Bambino”, magically intertwining their voices in this beautiful piece, rippling in a swirling pattern, like water bubbling down a hillside.

Pietro Alessandro Yon wrote “Gesù Bambino” in 1917, one of the darkest years of World War I. At the time, he was running his music studio (which was located in Carnegie Hall), where he taught students pursuing liturgical music. The melody was used by Frederick H. Martens for his own Christmas carol, “When Blossoms Flowered ‘mid the Snows”, which I confess I have never heard.

I love the refrain:

Osanna, osanna cantaro
Con giubilante cor
I tuoi pastori ed angeli
O re di luce e amor

Your shepherds and angels sang hosanna, hosanna with jubilant heart, O king of light and love.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Gratitude Monday: Wine, wassail & love

On Friday, my sister’s body won the fight with her brain. By the time she died, at 0300 on Saint Nicholas Day, she’d been under sedation for a week; she must have been exhausted from acting out all the bizarre orders her disease had been giving her. Everyone who loved her—which is to say, everyone who knew her—was heartsick at her passing, but relieved that the struggle was over. She lasted just about three years after her Alzheimer’s diagnosis.

I am grateful that three years is all that bastard got of her life. And I am so grateful that I had so many decades of her life to share.

Up until the diagnosis, Penny enjoyed her wine. Red or white, many’s the glass she and I had with many, many the meal. She taught me how to pour sparkling wine so it doesn’t fizz over the rim of the glass. (At the time of teaching, I’d been drinking champagne for a fair few years, but clearly I still had things to learn.) I think of that every single time I pour some bubbly, and I’m grateful.

When we made dinners from the Time-Life series Great Meals in Minutes, we always started out by pouring ourselves a glass of the specified wine. That may or may not have contributed to the fact that we did not once ever get the meal on the table in the promised “less than 60 minutes”. But we had absolutely rollicking good times, for which I'm grateful.

And the meals were pretty good, too.

(When I saw her in February, she could remember that we used to cook together, but could not recall the one we did every Christmas we spent together, butterflied grilled leg of lamb with a savory sauce.)

There’s one wine-related incident that I think of every time I have a glass of red. It was the 80s and we were having dinner at a restaurant on the fringes of Old Town Pasadena. We had a bottle of red with the meal (I don’t remember what main course I had, but the appetizer was carpaccio, and it was stupendous) and then we decided to have a glass of dessert (red) wine, which was quite nice. Penny being well known to the restaurant, the manager came by and topped up our little glasses. At this point we realized that our tongues had turned purple, so we sat there in the trendy restaurant, sticking our tongues out at each other and laughing like maniacs.

(Don’t @ me about the fact that Penny drove us home. It was the 80s and we were admittedly irresponsible that night. Big gratitude that all was well.)

Two years ago, when I took her and two of her friends out to dinner, I was drinking a glass of red. I poked her and stuck out my tongue, asking if it was purple. It was, and she remembered the dinner. That she did is a blessing, and I am grateful for it.

Well—back to Advent. In Penny’s honor, today we’ll have one of the approximately 12,347 variants of seasonal songs about mobs forming to rove villages in search of booze. This version is from Gloucestershire, because it’s called the “Gloucester/Gloucestershire Wassail Song”. I mean, I’m taking that as a clue.

Wassail, in case you are a little unclear, is one of the approximately 12,347 variants on mulled cider or wine or beer or mead. Mulling involves heating [mead, wine, beer or cider]; adding spices such as ginger, nutmeg, cinnamon and the like; and topping it with a slice of toasted bread, as a sop. (Sop: you know—like the toasted slices of baguette or croutons on the top of soup. Think: French onion soup.)

Oh, and it’s drunk from one big, communal bowl. No germ theory here.

Wassail dates back to Medieval times. I don’t know when all the spices started to be added, because they would have been extraordinarily rare and prohibitively expensive during that period. And I’m not sure about the significance of the toast being white; white flour and bread were also very expensive, and therefore only the very wealthy could afford it.

The custom of wassailing—roving around the village singing and demanding booze—is bifurcated. In apple and cider country in the west of England, you go out to the orchards in mid-winter to, you know, wake them up. To serve notice that the trees will have to shake off their winter sleep in a couple of months, and get back to work, because those apples are key to the local economy.

Wassailing through the village focuses on a kind of jolly-faced exchange between the peasants and the landlord class: here we’ve come to wish you well (wassail comes from Old English, and means “be thou hale”), oh—and have you got any food and drink on you? Great. Hand it over.

This explains all the verses in the song about wishing the master all the best: a good year, a good piece of beef, a good Christmas pie, a good crop of corn, blah, blah, blah. Just the slightest bit on the toadying side, but hey—it’s Tradition.

I’m giving you a performance of “Wassail” by the Utah State University Chorus.

I especially love this version because—even though it’s a Concert, they’re having such fun with it. I also love the fact that, it being Utah State, and the composition of the performers and audience is probably heavily Mormon and therefore strictly tee-total, they’re totally delivering on the progressively tipsy nature of the piece.

Penny would have got such a kick out of this, and I’m grateful for that, too.

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

Zion hears the watchman sing

We’re at Advent II, which is about peace and preparation. 

Both are critical elements of the season—stepping away from the quotidian madness to reflect upon the gift soon to be given, and to prepare for receiving it. It is not, after all, a blender that you can put on your pantry shelf after politely thanking the person who regifted it to you. No, no—we’re talking about a paradigm-shifting, bootstrapping, disruptive thought leader here; this takes considerable groundwork for those who are part of the distribution chain.

So today let’s have “Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme”. It’s the first chorus in J.S. Bach’s cantata of the same name, BWV 140. It’s based on a Lutheran hymn that predates Bach by about 125 years, and it’s about being both alert and prepared for the arrival of the Messiah. The text references the parable of the wise and foolish virgins—two groups of maidens waiting to greet the bridegroom at a wedding. Only one group has really thought through—and prepared for—this arrival; no prizes for guessing which one.

(Also, you can take it as read that this is one parable that’s overdue for an update removing the sexist framing. Or at least mention all the men at the wedding who are getting drunk on beer, shooting craps and generally getting in the caterer’s way, all the while expecting someone else to see to the lighting.)

Here’s a performance of it by the Amsterdam Baroque Orchestra and Choir.

©2024 Bas Bleu

O my soul

I’m jumping the gun a tad today; tomorrow being Advent II is the one focused on peace. But I’ve been thinking about peace for a while and it is at the forefront of my mind right now.

 “It Is Well with my Soul” was written in 1873, by a lawyer-hymnist named Horatio Spafford. Spafford had experienced multiple losses—death of his four-year-old son, financial collapse following the Great Chicago Fire and then the deaths of all four of his daughters when the ship on which they were sailing to England sank.

That’s a lot of grief for anyone to carry. 

But we none of us get out of this life without grief. Even in Advent. And even though “It Is Well with my Soul” isn’t Advent-specific, this is what I’m hearing in my heart this weekend. Here is the choir of the New Apostolic Church of Southern Africa singing it.

 

©2024 Bas Bleu

 

A real famous cat

Today is the feast day of Saint Nicholas, when we commemorate the Fourth-Century bishop of Myra, one of the participants of the Council of Nicaea. This is actually the day he died, which makes a bit of a change for celebrations.

(Although his death is kind of a thing; at least his corpse was. Because about 600 years after he died, Italian merchants robbed his grave in Myra and took his body to Bari. I’m not touching the issues around what possesses a group of people to do that kind of stuff and expect to remain in God’s favor.)

He’s the patron of sailors, merchants, archers, repentant thieves, children, brewers, pawnbrokers and students. I’m trying to think of what commonalities connect those groups, but without luck.

We of course have conflated Saint Nicholas with major gift giving (which might explain the children, merchants and pawnbrokers; possibly the repentant thieves, too), via the Dutch version of his name, Sinterklaas. And today is the day (instead of the 25^th) when children in a number of countries get their gifts (if they’ve been good; if they’ve been naughty, they get coal or switches, depending on the local custom; you might even be eaten by a giant cat).

To honor the good bishop, we’re having the “Little Saint Nick”. I must confess that I don’t find this the best example of the Beach Boys’ oeuvre, but it serves the purpose.

©2024 Bas Bleu