I used to look for funny items for the Friday Miscellanea, but they have been hard to find lately. However, this qualifies:
That's from Carmina Burana by Carl Orff. When I was young I thought the first day from the Twelve Days of Christmas lyrics was "A part of a juniper tree." I was even more puzzled when I found out that the actual words are "A partridge in a pear tree." How does that make more sense?
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You know, I think I will do a whole miscellanea of clips. Here is an excerpt from a new album of Lea Desandre and Thomas Dunford and his Jupiter Ensemble joined by Iestyn Davies. The album is Eternal Heaven and contains arias and duets by Handel:
One commentator said "I would listen to Lea Desandre read the ingredients on a packet of breakfast cereal." Yep, and the other musicians are pretty fine as well. Next is Mstislav Rostropovich and Benjamin Britten playing the Cello Sonata by Debussy in a studio recording from 1961:
This is Alvaro Pierri playing Albéniz:
Someone I haven't put up in a long, long time: this is Stockhausen, Klavierstück XI:
Ivo Pogorelich in his prime playing the English Suite No. 2 of J. S. Bach:
A string quintet by Boccherini:
Sorry no details on the artists of that last one, but it is from a European music festival. Here is one with a very catchy title: Lamentio sanctae matris ecclesia constantinopolitanae by Guillaume Dufay:
For contrast let's have a little ska by the English Beat:
That will get your blood flowing. For a final clip, here is Jordan Peterson talking about the role and nature of art and creative people:
I was going to play the pedant and correct the Latin in Dufay's title (lamentatio sanctae matris ecclesiae Constantinopolitanae, it ought to be) but the fact is that those folks weren't always very strict about their -ae and -e when declining nouns so being pedantic is pointless. May first have heard that lament on Portland's Capella Romana's album The Fall of Constantinople.
ReplyDeleteThomas Dunford seems to be all over the place these days but I don't believe I'd ever listened to Lea Desandre's lovely voice singing Handel's Theodora. "So from virtuous toil well borne raise Thou our hopes of endless light." Many thanks!
I did enjoy the song That's So You of Douglas Balliett (on the Eternal Heaven album) but I guess someone imagines that the lyrics are perfectly comprehensible since Balliett is a professor at Juilliard and not one of those ancients who used Old English like Handel did: the album booklet supplies the lyrics for the Handel but not the Balliett; had to hunt about for them. Such tribulations....
ReplyDeleteI haven't got round to listening to the rest of the Handel album. I have been a fan of Lea Desandre for a while, though. I have her album Amazone which is lovely.
ReplyDeleteBut what I liked about today's envoi was the juxtaposition of such different music.