For ever and ever

I do love Messiah, both listening to it and singing it. Nothing gets your heart thumping by being in the middle of “Hallelujah”. Over the years, I’ve posted flash mob “Hallelujahs”, high school “Hallelujahs” and zither “Hallelujahs”.

This year I’m closing out the season with a different version entirely. In the past 12 months, we’ve suffered through multiple horrors—global pandemic, an expanding spate of police engaging in casual homicides of Black citizens and the downward-spiral of Cadet Bonespurs as he did nothing to ameliorate and in fact did everything he could to violate the Constitution and societal norms in the pursuit of power and profit.

It has, in short, been a fucking shitshow of a year, so crank up the volume and listen to Handel’s Messiah: A Soulful Celebration’s take on “Hallelujah”. I bought this album when it came out nearly 30 years ago, and it never fails to raise my spirits. I hope it does the same for you.

Merry Christmas; God bless us, every one.

 

Redeeming grace

“Silent Night” seems appropriate for today’s Advent piece. It is, after all, the über Christmas carol. And this year, I think we’ll have the Temptations singing it.

Call my true love to my dance

As Christmas carols go, “Tomorrow Shall Be My Dancing Day” is barely in its teens. It first appeared in a collection published in 1833. You shouldn’t even give it the keys to the family car.

What I like about this one is the metaphor of the Messiah’s life as a dance. (You may be more familiar with the modern “Lord of the Dance”—and I do not mean that crypto-Celtic Michael Flatley crap; I’m talking about the one set to the Shaker hymn, “Simple Gifts”.) There’s a version by John Rutter; ix-nay on that. This one, from that old reliable King’s College, Cambridge, Choir, is by John Gardner.

A song broke forth

Our Advent piece for today comes from Fisk University, a Historically Black institution in Tennessee, founded in 1865 to provide education for former slaves and their descendants. “Behold that Star” was written by Thomas W. Talley (1870-1952), chemistry professor, ethnographer and director of the university’s Mozart Society.

We don’t know when it was composed, but when Marian Anderson sang it, it was an arrangement published in 1912.

Last year I wrote about “Rise Up, Shepherd, and Follow”, and how spirituals were “safe” ways for slaves to communicate with one another, having been denied literacy. I still have issues with using religion to keep the masses in line—which applies to all masses in the face of the oligarchs, but especially to race-based control. Still, I love the imagery of the star of Bethlehem, and I’m willing to put aside my class warfare for the season.

I have a recording of Jessye Norman singing this, but this year I’m giving you the Morehouse-Spelman Choirs.

 

Gratitude Monday: bargain of the year

On Friday, my team met to do a retrospective of our recent product launch. I’ve been nagging at our manager for months to do this, because so many things made this launch more painful that strictly necessary.

We started with a think-outside-the-pattern exercise—what’s your spirit animal. Which is a little weird, not coming from a Californian. But then our manager asked for a recap of highs and lows over the past year, both personal and professional.

My worst moment was watching a week in Sorrento slip away because of the pandemic. But costs were higher in the team. One colleague’s father-in-law died from COVID19, another one’s stepmother also died, and he couldn’t go to Salt Lake City to help his father. And a third found out that his friend and mentor from agency days has committed suicide.

We all have paid a high toll throughout this year. But for me, if the worst thing that’s happened is a lost vacation, I am blessed. I know that; I just wanted to acknowledge it publicly.

 

 

Seven druids dance

Today is the Winter Solstice, the longest night of the year in the northern hemisphere. Starting tomorrow, the darkness retreats and light advances. For centuries, humans have helped this process along by lighting bonfires, making noise and drinking.

All seems perfectly reasonable to me.

One of the major bands of my youth was Jethro Tull. JT went through about every stylistic metamorphosis possible, from blues-rock to jazz-rock to folk-rock to progressive-rock to hard-rock. Today’s Advent selection is from the folky phase, “Ring Out, Solstice Bells”.

Although band frontman Ian Anderson wrote it in 1976, the lyrics definitely capture the centuries of celebration at the turning of the year, and it has a Renaissance exuberance to it.

The gate of heaven

Today is the last Sunday before Christmas. This is the time to focus on the stories of Mary and Joseph; it’s frequently called Annunciation Sunday. (Although, technically, if Jesus was born on the night of 24-25 December, the Annunciation would have been some time in March. I’m not going to get into the meteorological mare’s nest about whether or not the Nativity was actually in December.)

Toward that end, my selection for today is “Angelus ad virginem”, a medieval carol brought to England from France in the Thirteenth Century. Some versions of the song are reputed to have 27 stanzas. This one, performed by the King’s College, Cambridge, choir, does not.

You knew I had to have the King’s College choir, didn’t you?

We've been good, but we can't last

A friend saw yesterday’s post about the birds, and he asked about the squirrel that appeared in one of the videos. Because it seemed to be getting along with the birds in the frame.

Well, as you know, I have issues with squirrels. They’re cute, furry little landsharks who wreak havoc on my potted plants and vacuum up all the birdseed on the ground. But yesterday I gave the squirrel a pass.

(Fortunately, it was just the one. Some days I’ve had as many as five of them out on my patio, acting decidedly squirrely, and that is just not on.)

Anyhow, this squirrel appeared fairly early on in the storm, and he actually had a hedgehog appearance with the snow on his tail curled on his back.

Here he is in action

Well, tying this to Advent, I looked for a “Carol of the Squirrels”, which I did not find. However, there is this song about chipmunks, so here you go.

 

They sweetly did rejoice

On Wednesday we got snow here in the District They Call Columbia. It started around 0900 and by late afternoon it was replaced by rain. I am so glad I didn’t have to commute in it.

But throughout the day, my patio was visited by dozens of birds, so every hour I tossed out a couple more fistfuls of seed to make their stop worthwhile. Sparrows, cardinals, juncos, wrens, bluebirds. 

(Yes, bluebirds.)

It was just lovely to see them all out there hopping about and no squabbling. Yesterday, even the blue jays got along with everyone else.

So today’s Advent music is “The Carol of the Birds”, which is from Catalonia. Throughout his self-imposed exile from Franco’s Spain, cellist Pablo Casals closed his concerts with this piece; he believed it to be the most beautiful tune ever created, and its theme of peace—of all the birds getting along—seems particularly relevant right now.

I first heard “The Carol of the Birds” from a Joan Baez recording, so that’s what I’m giving you.

 

 

A thrill of hope

Apparently there was a TV show called “Studio 60”. And it ran, well, I don’t know, at least in 2005. I suspect it’s no longer on air, although I don’t know, and don’t really care.

But this year, while searching for new takes on Advent music, I came across this video of New Orleans brass musicians playing “O Holy Night”, and I was poleaxed. Clearly it’s having an effect on the characters, although I don’t know who they are and don’t much care. Because this rendition is stunning.

Also, I think the “All I want for Christmas is my city back” slide (3:01) resonates with us all. All we want is our nation, our democracy and our decency back.

Here’s hoping.