For weak and for strong

Today we’re hauling our asses from 16^th Century France to New York in 1971, when John Lennon wrote “Happy Xmas (War Is Over)”.

It’s both a Christmas song, and a protest song. Which, considering the life of Jesus, seems appropriate, not least because waving this about gets straight up the noses of the millions of evangelical hypocrites around us who like to pick and choose their Biblical guidance.

(Last year I gave you “The Rebel Jesus”, which plays on somewhat similar themes. Have a listen to that.)

At any rate—here’s the Gospel according to John, something for us to think about as we watch saber rattlers swarm into the corridors of power once more.

O let us sing Noël

Let’s move from Renaissance Germany by way of 20^th Century Vienna to 16^th Century France. “Noël Nouvelet” is a pastoral tune infused with a modal flavor from the first five notes of the Ave Maris stella plainchant.

Or so I’m told.

Both “noël” and “nouvelet” carry the meaning of “new” or “news”, although we understand the former to mean Christmas, so we have "new Christmas".

There are some versions of this piece that frankly make me want to commit ritual seppuku on the village square, they’re so slow and depressing. I prefer something lighter and livelier. So here is the choir of King’s College Cambridge to sing “Noël Nouvelet”.

Eine kleine Weihnachtsmusik

Today’s Advent piece may be a bit of a surprise—a reworking of two traditional carols by a composer you might not ordinarily associate with something calm or Christmassy.

As I said last year, Michael Praetorius’ “Es ist ein Ros’ entsprungen” is my all-time favorite carol. And I’m quite the traditional purist when it comes to it. Also, I’m not a huge fan of Arnold Schoenberg’s atonality.

So this is a step out of the traditional, perhaps a step into the uncomfortable, but it’s not bad. Have a listen; see what he’s put together for us:

Although born a Jew, in 1898 Schoenberg converted to Lutheranism as both a cultural and defensive move—turn-of-the-Twentieth-Century Vienna had strong strains of anti-Semitism flowing through it. In 1933 he reverted back to Judaism, but he enjoyed celebrating Christmas, and he liked the music. Ergo this and other pieces that don’t entirely rip the top of your head off with musical clashes.

Schoenberg had held a teaching post at the Prussian Academy of Arts in Berlin since 1926. With Hitler’s rise to power in 1933, he left Europe for the United States, teaching at both the University of Southern California and at UCLA. He remained there until his death, and it breaks my heart to think that in our current anti-Semitic and xenophobic political climate, it’s likely that refugees like him could be refused entry to this country.

But Germany would welcome him.

Anyhow—set all that aside for now and just listen to something familiar and unfamiliar.

Gratitude Monday: Grateful praise

My seasonal music today is technically—well, it’s kind of all over the place. The Christmas carol version is sung during Epiphany, but it’s also the music for a hymn sung for US Thanksgiving. And since today I’m grateful for being able to spend Thanksgiving this year with friends (with dinner and word games), I’m playing this incarnation. Ish.

By “-ish” I mean that it’s extremely hard to find a “clean” version of “For the Beauty of the Earth”, one that’s not that John Rutter…thing. No, I want Dix, number 92 in the Methodist hymnal, preferably with a badass Methodist choir giving it their all on such lyrics as:

For the beauty of the earth,

For the beauty of the skies,

For the love which from our birth

Over and around us lies

Lord of all, to thee we raise

This our hymn of grateful praise

Sadly, YouTube has not been my friend in my search for a decent recording of this. Really.

However, I did come across this very interesting variant: “Dance Africana on Dix”, by Jeffrey Honoré. It’s meant for handbells, with optional percussion.

All I can find on this are performances at various churches, so the quality isn’t spectacular, but have a listen:

To me, it capture the sense of giving grateful praise for the beauties around us, by incorporating some of the sounds of nature—I hear rain, birds, insects. And I believe I hear thanksgiving joy.

So why not for Advent?

Redemptor omnium

Today marks the beginning of Advent, the period of preparation for the arrival of God-made-man. Many traditions mark these four weeks before Christmas with contemplation and reflection, with prayer and music.

I myself crack out the Christmas CDs and go through way too many candles, because both help me through this dark period.

Let’s have a definitive Advent piece to start us off, “Veni Veni Emmanuel”. Veni is one of the “O Antiphons” sung at Vespers during the during the octave before Christmas (17-23 December). So technically, it’s a little early for it, but it’s my blog, my rules.

Here it’s performed by The Gesualdo Six, a small, recently-formed British group devoted to renaissance polyphony. I like their restraint in a song that often ends up being a Katy-bar-the-door choral blow-out.

The Gesualdo Six are singing it in Latin, which I think flows with more grace than the English translation. They skipped over several of the verses, including one we could really, really stand to consider this year.

Veni, veni Rex Gentium,

veni, Redemptor omnium,

ut salvas tuos famulos

peccati sibi conscios.

O come, Desire of the nations, bind

in one the hearts of all mankind;

bid every strife and quarrel cease

and fill the world with heaven’s peace.

Circles and arrows

One more Thanksgiving tradition, one that figured strongly in my youth:

I saw the film version in Tokyo, with Japanese sidetitles. What those translations of Arlo’s story were like, and what the other movie-goers made of it, I do not know.

Flipping the bird

And here’s another traditional Thanksgiving story, courtesy of Stan Freburg.

I swear I can never think of that First Thanksgiving gathering without picturing them having to go forward with the meal eating the wrong bird, on account of by the time they found out about the mistake, the guests had “already started on their little nut cups.”

Turkeys trot, not fly

As we head into the last Thanksgiving before the Age of Kleptocracy commences, let us return to a time when Ohio was prosperous thanks to the strength of now-toothless unions, the work of organizations like the soon-to-be-dismantled EPA had extinguished the fires on the Cuyahoga River, and the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame was but a gleam in Ahmet Ertegun’s eye.

In short, let us step into one of the greatest Thanksgiving promotions ever planned by a miniscule AM radio station, an event that will live in our memory for as long as the grass shall grow brown from aquifer pollution by fracking.

And a couple of the salient points:

Happy Thanksgiving, and may God have mercy on us all.

Domestic comfort

This exchange took place on Twitter in the days following the election.

If you need it explained to you, then…no, I cannot help you.

Gratitude Monday: Sunlight through trees

As we move through November and watch the Kleptocrat-elect go low at every possible opportunity (Administration picks racists, anti-Semites, science-deniers and chicken hawks? Check. Blurring the settlement of a multi-year, multi-million-dollar fraud case with a pouty tweet-storm about people in a theatre and a TV show exercising their First Amendment rights? Check. Laying the groundwork for pimping out the Presidential office for personal business gains? Oh, hell, check.), I’m really having to reach to find things to be grateful for.

Things that take me away from awareness that this cataclysm is upon us.

I found one as I was driving around Northern Virginia to stock up on grocery supplies for the holidays. It’s been so long since I’ve lived in a place where the leaves change colors before they drop that I’d forgotten what a joy that experience is. Because the sun filtering through an avenue of autumn-yellow leaves turns your whole world golden.

So for this, today, I am grateful.