Not satisfied with my vinyl adventures, I expanded my repertoire of obscure audio formats yesterday with the acquisition of a … cassette deck. I haven’t had one since my nonfunctional bookshelf stereo from college went to the curb, some time before I started to transfer all my media to digital, and I was worried that my cassette tapes would crumble to dust before I found something to transfer them.
Who cares? Well, I had a lot of audio that isn’t available in any other format, including Virginia Glee Club concert recordings (the 50th annual Christmas concert and A Dove in the Hall among them), a few rare Shannon Worrell and Monsoon EPs, and others. The Shannon Worrell stuff is just for me (though I missed the ability to hear her song with the late Haines Fullerton, “Lighthouse”), but the Glee Club stuff was for posterity.
And then someone posted on the local Arlington email list that they had a cassette deck that they were giving away–literally leaving on the curb. It turned out to be a very nice Teac W-520R dual deck unit that had no issues in playback. Twenty minutes later it was hooked up in the basement, audio out going into my trusty Griffin iMic and then into the MacBook, recording the 1992 concert recording that the Glee Club did at Smith–complete with the Benjamin Broening “When David Heard”, the James Erb “Shenandoah” arrangement, and … “Time Piece.”
Now I have to figure out what the right way is to make the Glee Club recordings available to other alumni and friends. But this should be a fun challenge.
This week, the documentary The Parking Lot Movie hit the iTunes store for download or rent. A movie about the Corner Parking Lot in Charlottesville and the philospher-kings who work there, it features an appearance by Our Very Own D.R. Tyler Magill (that’s him above), with music by another friend, Sam Retzer.
I have rarely laughed so hard when listening to a soundtrack as I did when the first cut came on, Rikka Rikka’s “Life in a Nutshell.” To paraphrase does it no justice; you simply have to hear it.
There’s also a set of outtakes on YouTube: check this one that Tyler leads off:
I am going to have to start a whole new Glee Club history chapter about this thing; both Sam and Tyler sang with me, back in the day.
This year’s CD release of Tanglewood Festival Chorus: 40th Anniversary marks a number of interesting milestones. First, it is the first time the TFC has headlined a recording (rather than participating alongside the BSO or Pops, or on a soundtrack) since 1983’s Nonesuch recording Kurt Weill: Recordare/Dallapiccola: Canti di Prigionia (surely a collector’s item now). Second, of course, it celebrates the 40th anniversary of the chorus in a significant, tangible way.
Third, and best of all, it collects examples of the superb Prelude concerts that the TFC has put on at Tanglewood over the last ten years in the evocative space of Seiji Ozawa Hall. (Disclaimer for all superlatives: I don’t sing on any of the performances on this disc, so my conflict of interest as a reviewer is minimal.)
The repertoire is a mix of old friends (the Lotti “Crucifixus”, Bruckner motets, Bach’s “Singet dem Herrn Ein Neues Lied”) and slightly less familiar works (the Martin Mass is performed in its entirety here). Reception to the disc has been good; Jeremy Eichler of the Boston Globe singles out the Bruckner “Virga Jesse Floruit” for “robust and hearty singing,” and calls the Bach a “wonderfully vibrant performance” and “the highlight of the disc.”
For me, the highlight is the closing work, Copland’s “In the Beginning.” I’ve sung the work twice in performance with various groups and the TFC performance recorded here is simply superb, beginning with the performance of soprano Stephanie Blythe and carrying through all the chromatic chord changes, tricky rhythms, and shifts of mood as the Genesis story unfolds.
And that’s no small trick: the Copland is a work with many layers. The piece is in no specific key or meter, but visits about twelve different tonalities throughout, all with hummable melodies and each yielding to the next in a slow chromatic rise of pitch throughout the piece until the final lines are sung in an ecstatic seventh above where the music started. And the work embodies multiple shifts in musical voice, neatly signalling the (presumed) change in authorial voice from the P author (Genesis 1:1 – 2:3) to the Redactor (Genesis 2:4a, “These are the generations”, which Copland’s performance direction indicates should be sung “rather hurriedly,” as if to get it out of the way), and then the conclusion, the story of the creation of Man as told by the J author, the oldest part of the story, which seems to rise out of the mist like the clay that is fashioned into man and breathed full of the divine breath. (Wikipedia has a good summary of the theory of differing authorial voices in Genesis.)
The TFC performance neatly captures all the layers of the work–the differing sections are full of the excitement and exultation of creation and then, in the end, its mystery and a more solemn gladness. Until now, I don’t think I had a good reference recording for the work; this certainly qualifies. The overall effect of the recording is captured in the summation of the brief Globe review: “Oliver conducts eloquently in this well-deserved recognition of the chorus’s anniversary year.”
Originally written for the Tanglewood Festival Chorus newsletter.
As I bask in a UVa football victory by a team that seems, for the first time in years, headed in the right direction, I am moved to consider why this is so.
I happen to be reading Philip Bruce’s History of the University of Virginia now, and there’s a bit in a chapter on the first decade of the 20th century that describes a deliberate shift in Virginia’s attitude to collegiate athletics, one that was to inform its approach for much of the next 100 years:
The committee earnestly counselled that the following resolutions should be at once passed: (1) that, in the opinion of the Faculty and students, the only proper basis of inter-collegiate athletics was that spirit of pure amateur sport which animates contests between gentlemen the world over; and that the true criterion which differentiated amateur sports from professionalism was the spirit which plays the game for sake of the game itself; (2) that membership in a team should be held only by actual students,— a rule which would exclude all who carried about them the odor of professionalism,— and by young men whose class records demonstrated their keen interest in their scholastic work; (3) that it was the part of gentlemen engaged in any amusement, sport, or game, to remember, at all times, that they were gentlemen first, and only incidentally, players,— that they were to follow, not the bastard honor which calls for victory at whatever price of fraud or brutality, but the voice of true honor, which prefers an hundred defeats to victory purchased by chicanery or unfair dealing,— that the Faculty and students were determined to discountenence and brand with their disapproval any intentional violation of the rules of the game by members of the University teams or any improper advantage taken by them of their antagonists, and that it was entirely immaterial whether these were detected by umpire or referee; (4) that it was to be assumed that the opponents of these teams were gentlemen equally with themselves,— that every presumption of honorable dealing was to be accepted in their favor until the contrary was conclusively shown,— and that they were to be looked upon as guests, and as such to be always protected from rough and inequitable treatment; (5) that the spectators on the home grounds should show fairness and courtesy towards opposing players and officials of the game; and that the more considerate and generous the behavior of the University teams on such occasions, the more nearly would their members approach the ideal of the true gentleman and the true sportsman.
Thinking about where we are now, vs. where we were during the Groh years, my conclusion can only be that Mike London knows his University history.
How could anyone who listened to Uncle Tupelo’s farewell album Anodyne, in particular the title track, esteem Jay Farrar as a talented songwriter? Crooning an obscure word as though it were a lover’s name is many things, but songwriting is not one of them.
"Hike, Virginia" lyrics in a 1911 football song book
It’s first and ten for a new season of Virginia football, and for the first time in several years my heart is full of more than the usual blind optimism. With a new coach at the helm, I feel as though Virginia has a chance to shake loose the malaise that’s gripped the team for the past few years. In the spirit of blind optimism, then, I present a little history: the back story of a Virginia football song, “Hike, Virginia.”
As I noted earlier this year, spectators used to sing at Virginia football games. And not just “The Good Old Song”–there were songs for every occasion and for every foe. A 1911 football song book that has come into my possession indicates part of how they were able to pull this off, by having lyrics in front of every fan, but there was much more required to make it happen, from the presence of a band (or the Glee Club) at games to Virginia fans who would write songs to be sung by the crowd. One of these fans was L. D. Crenshaw, and the song was “Hike, Virginia,” cowritten by Crenshaw and C.S. McVeigh.
The story might end there, but I did a little sleuthing and found that L.D. Crenshaw was in fact Lewis D. Crenshaw, first secretary of the UVA Alumni Association, first to successfully accomplish a system of modern reunions, and the originator and host of the University’s bureau in Paris during World War I. He was fondly remembered by many alumni as a redoubtable host; a New Years Eve party in Paris was to continue “‘jusqu’au moment où les vaches rentrent chez ell’ (’til the cows come home). On the menu was ‘de l’egg nogg véritable.’” He was also instrumental in getting the centennial reunion together, with his goal being
to see that every human critter that can walk or hop or crawl or fly or swim, or even float down the Rivanna on his back, gets within calling distance of the old Rotunda… [searching for the] oldest living specimen of the genus alumnus Virginiensis, who we will have seated on the throne of extinct beer kegs [prohibition being in full force], and crowned with a chaplet of fragrant mint leaves.
Unfortunately, the infant Alumni Association could not afford to keep up Crenshaw’s salary, reports University historian Virginius Dabney–it seems alums were delinquent in their dues even in the beginning–so he resigned his post and returned to Paris indefinitely.
Less is known of C.S. McVeigh, save that he was in the Glee Club in 1905, per concert reviews in the spring of that year published in the Baltimore Sun and the Alexandria Gazette. (It is becoming axiomatic that just about every Virginia song I run across has at least one Glee Club man responsible for its authorship.) But together they produced a lesser known but still fun gem in the annals of Virginia songs.
“Hike, Virginia” was first recorded on Songs of the University of Virginia and can be heard on the Glee Club’s current record, Songs of Virginia, along with other Virginia songs.
Fulton Lewis, Jr. with Joe McCarthy (source: Life Magazine)
Today’s odd moment in Virginia Glee Club history comes by way of that “other” official Virginia song, “The Cavalier Song.” While most alums today are familiar only with “The Good Old Song,” that collectively authored song-about-a-song set to the tune of “Auld Lang Syne” by Glee Club alum E.A. Craighill and sung by swaying Hoos at every touchdown, that song was never an official song of the University, though it has been the de facto alma mater since its introduction in 1895.
Instead, the University’s two official songs were chosen through a contest sponsored by College Topics (now The Cavalier Daily) in 1923. Seeking official University songs, the contest netted “Virginia, Hail, All Hail!“, by Glee Club alum John Albert Morrow, and “The Cavalier Song,” by English instructor Lawrence Lee and Glee Club alum Fulton Lewis, Jr. While most alums are familiar with “Virginia, Hail, All Hail!” only, if at all, through Glee Club performances, “The Cavalier Song” has been played at Virginia sports events by the various bands (University Band, Pep Band, Cavalier Marching Band) during the school’s history since its introduction. Because it’s typically performed as an instrumental, its lyrics have faded into obscurity, meaning that it is Fulton Lewis Jr.’s tune that we know best about the song.
It’s perhaps ironic that Lewis’s contribution to the University has been so long lasting, since many of his other contributions to history were decidedly less cheery. Described as “an indifferent student,” he left the University without a degree after three years and sought his fortune as a journalist, becoming a reporter and editor at the Washington Herald. After helping to unmask spy for Japan “Agent K” as Naval officer John Semer Farnsworth, he rose to fame as a conservative radio commentator, where at his peak he was syndicated on over 500 stations. As a commentator, he staked out a series of positions on the wrong side of history: against the New Deal and FDR, against America’s entry into World War II, and in support of Barry Goldwater and Joe McCarthy–backing the latter even after his nationwide disgrace.
Lewis’s ongoing support of McCarthy cost him his national audience, though he continued on the air until his death in 1966. He left behind him a noxious legacy and a reputation for subjective partisanship: the New Republic noted that his “wild charges were part of his campaign over many years to smear in every way possible the New Deal, the Fair Deal, and everybody not in accord with the most reactionary political beliefs”; the Washington Post memorialized him in 1987 as “one of the most unprincipled journalists ever to practice the trade”; and a profile on Salon calls him “a master of the partisan smear.” He called moderate Republicans, like Casper Weinberger, Communists. In many ways, then, he was ahead of his time.
I was pleased to download and check out the University of Virginia’s new iPhone app. “One stop” doesn’t begin to cover the scope of this app — Grounds directory, news, alumni clubs, reunions, alumni magazine, the Cavalier Daily, sports scores (and notifications)…
…and music. I was even more pleased to find the Virginia Glee Club‘s recording of “Vir-ir-gin-i-a” on the app’s list (along with marching band renditions of “The Good Old Song” and other Virginia tunes. While “Vir-ir-gin-i-a” seems an odd tune to represent Club–the recording from which the song was taken, Songs of Virginia, has many more familiar UVA related songs including the superb “Virginia, Hail, All Hail“–it’s actually an interesting tie to the past of both the University and the Glee Club.
“Vir-ir-gin-i-a” has many connections to the Glee Club. Featuring an arrangement by long-time Club conductor Donald Loach based on a tune by Handel, the text is by UVa professor Arthur Kyle Davis, Jr. (1897-1972). Davis himself sang in the Glee Club shortly after the group’s reformation by Alfred Lawrence Hall-Quest, serving as secretary during the group’s 1916-1917 season (during which Club performed the blackface musical “Oh, Julius!,” a minstrel-show story of life in ancient Rome). Davis went on to serve in the Army during World War I; went to Oxford on a Rhodes scholarship; and returned to the University as a professor in the English department in 1923.
And here’s where it gets interesting. Davis went on to his greatest fame as a folklorist, collecting three volumes of traditional ballad and folk songs through field research and becoming the archivist for the Virginia Folklore Society. The main thrust of his research was in showing that the English and Scottish ballads listed and enumerated by Harvard folklorist Francis J. Child (the “Child Ballads”) were alive and well on American soil for hundreds of years before their collection and numbering by Child.
While influencing numerous Virginia faculty, including Paul Gaston, his most unlikely influence was on folk singer and song collector Paul Clayton, a student of his in the 1950s, whose song “Who’ll Buy You Ribbons (When I’m Gone)” was “re-gifted” by Bob Dylan for “Don’t Think Twice, It’s Alright.” Of course “Who’ll Buy You Ribbons” was itself “re-gifted” from an Appalachian song called “Who’s Gonna Buy Your Chickens” which Clayton learned from Mary Bird McAllister, a song that was collected by Clayton while he was Davis’s student.
And “Vir-ir-gin-i-a”? Davis knocked it out in his spare time, apparently, in honor of the University’s sesquicentennial and premiered it himself at a meeting of the Jefferson Society. Loach arranged it for men’s voices for the 1972 Glee Club LP A Shadow’s on the Sundial, which financed the group’s first European tour, and it’s been in Club’s repertoire on and off since.
So while there are better known, and arguably better, pieces of Virginiana that could feature on future UVA app playlists, there are few that have so many interesting touchpoints to Glee Club, Virginia, and even pop music history.
Almost six months ago, I managed to create a big mess 0n my outboard media drive with iTunes, when, while trying to consolidate all my music onto a new 1TB drive, I managed only a partial move and ended up with files strewn across the old drive and two different directory trees on the new drive. I’ve spent the time since in a lot of manual moving of files, since the Mac does not support merging two different directories with the same name.
I was able to clear up the top level confusion easily enough by doing a diff on directory listings from the top level directories, but that still left issues with subdirectories that had the same names but different contents. I thought I’d be doing the project forever. I tried a couple different tools to help. Path Finder was the nicest UI that I worked with, but it still only supported manual comparison and synchronization of the two directory trees.
I finally broke down and looked harder, and found an amazing tool, DeltaWalker, that seems as though it were designed for exactly the nightmare I faced. Point it at a pair of directories and it will highlight all the differences between them–missing subdirectories on one side or the other, or subdirectories whose contents are different in the two different locations. You can filter the output, too, so that you only have to see the differences that you care about (I didn’t need to know how many folders were in my target directory and not my source). And when you find files that have to come over, it’s a button click to make the move.
Once I found DeltaWalker, it took only about an hour to finish cleaning up the mess that I had started over six months before. It’s an awesome tool, and one I can’t believe I had never seen before.
I got my official “save the date” mailer for the Virginia Glee Club’s 140th Anniversary celebration last night. I haven’t been to a reunion weekend since the 125th back in 1995, so am eagerly looking forward to attending.
Not least on the reasons that I want to return: the opportunity to sing under four great Club conductors. I haven’t seen John Liepold since 1996 or so, so am looking forward to renewing acquaintances. I only met Bruce Tammen once, at a Clubhouse party in the late 90s. I had a blast singing with Frank Albinder’s Glee Club this spring when the group came through on their Northeastern tour.
And I’m especially interested to sing with Donald Loach. While I came into the group at a time when there were still a lot of hurt feelings over the separation in 1989, the more I learn about his tenure as Club director (still the longest serving at 25 years), the more respect I have for him and what he was able to accomplish. It should be interesting to see what happens.
Today’s Virginia Glee Clubhistory moment is a look at the Concert on the Lawn. The Glee Club’s entry in the collegiate tradition of “step singing,” the Concert on the Lawn was inaugurated in 1936 as a community sing with an announcement in College Topics, featuring this trenchant quotation from conductor Harry Rogers Pratt:
Ability to sing is not a pre-requisite. Those who think they can sing are wanted especially. Tenors will be protected by Beta and Captain Mack. Baying, bellowing, and booing will be allowed. ‘Sweet Adeline’ will be sung as often as demand warrants.
The concert was a roaring success, with the review reporting:
With beer in front of them, beer in back of them, beer inside of them, “Pratt’s Boys” went to town last night and lifted the skies from the steps of the Rotunda.Some say the interlude was caused by a shortage of foaming brew, but whatever it was, either the Lure of the Lawn or the Radiance of the Rotunda, it was good!
Over the next sixty years, Club continued to mount free performances on the Lawn in spring afternoons, and surprises–whether community sing-alongs of Old MacDonald or four-voice performances of “Freebird”–abounded.
And then… the tradition died out. Reports are mixed on the cause: some say that a new Glee Club conductor feared his men couldn’t be properly heard in an outdoor venue (as if that were ever the point). Whatever the case, sometime in the late nineties was the last time there was a free Concert on the Lawn by the Glee Club. Here’s hoping that we will see another one sometime soon.
We call this “unclogging the pipes.” I have probably 20 mixes in various partial states of repair, and it’s high time I start publishing them so that I can make room for the real stuff.
So here are two—maybe, dare I hope, my last two—80s mixes. As always, the first one is the stuff I’m ashamed (and secretly happy) to remember, while the second one is stuff I would have been proud to listen to had I known about it while I was growing up.
Your Scary 80s 7
Be near Me – ABC (How to Be a Zillionaire)
Always Something There to Remind Me – Naked Eyes (The Best of Naked Eyes)
She Blinded Me With Science – Thomas Dolby (The Golden Age of Wireless)
Your Love – The Outfield (Play Deep)
Spies Like Us – Paul McCartney (Press to Play)
Your Wildest Dreams – The Moody Blues (Anthology: the Moody Blues)
Rain In the Summertime – The Alarm (Eye of the Hurricane (Remastered))
Africa – Toto (Toto IV)
No One Is To Blame – Howard Jones (Dream Into Action)
The Captain of Her Heart – Double (The Captain of Her Heart)
Life In a Northern Town – The Dream Academy (Rhino Hi-Five: The Dream Academy – EP)
Tonight, Tonight, Tonight – Genesis (Genesis: The Hits – Turn It On Again)
Sanctify Yourself – Simple Minds (Once Upon a Time)
Higher Love (Full) – Steve Winwood (Back in the High Life)
I Wanna Be a Cowboy – Boys Don’t Cry (Boys Don’t Cry)
Pump Up the Volume (USA 12) – Colourbox (Best of Colourbox: 1982-1987)
The Reflex – Duran Duran (Duran Duran: Greatest)
Your Scary 80s 8
Gardening At Night – R.E.M. (Dead Letter Office)
Alive and Kicking – Simple Minds (Once Upon a Time)
You Be Illin’ – Run-DMC (Raising Hell)
Do You Really Want 2 Hurt Me – Culture Club (Culture Club (Box Set))
West End Girls – Pet Shop Boys (Please)
Moments in Love – Art of Noise ((Who’s Afraid Of) The Art Of Noise?)
Let the Day Begin – Michael Been AKA The Call (The Best of the Call)
The Perfect Kiss – New Order (Low-Life)
Fire Woman – The Cult (Sonic Temple)
One Thing Leads to Another – The Fixx (20th Century Masters – The Millennium Collection: The Best of the Fixx (Remastered))
Banned in D.C. – Bad Brains (Bad Brains)
Rise Above – Black Flag (Damaged)
Small Man, Big Mouth – Minor Threat (First Two 7″s)
Kinky Sex Makes the World Go ‘Round – Dead Kennedys (Give Me Convenience or Give Me Death)
I Want You Back – Hoodoo Gurus (Stoneage Romeo)
Red – Mission Of Burma (Signals, Calls, And Marches)
You Are My Friend – The Rain Parade (Emergency Third Rail Power Trip: Explosions In The Glass Palace)
Jetfighter – Three O’Clock (Sixteen Tambourines/Baroque Hoedown)
I Love Rock N’ Roll – Joan Jett and the Blackhearts (I Love Rock N’ Roll)
Beat Box – Art of Noise (Into Battle with the Art of Noise)
My father-in-law died late on Wednesday night. He was 90 and lived every one of those years with passion. I remember meeting him for the first time 15 years ago, and being struck initially by his age but also by his energy and drive. The man could charm anyone: I remember him deep in conversation with my Uncle Forrest, swapping stories, and being struck by how natural it was for this son of Italian immigrants from Pennsylvania coal country to converse with my very Southern uncle.
Al always engaged everything he came across with curiosity and humor. I remember hearing the story about his first drive through the south–it was the middle of World War II, and he, as a petroleum engineer, was heading to the Gulf to contribute to the war effort by working at a refinery. He stopped somewhere in the deep south for breakfast and placed an order. The waitress asked if he wanted grits. Of course, he had no idea what grits were, but didn’t want to be impolite, so said, “Yeah, I guess I’ll have one or two.” There were many stories that he told over and over again, but I never tired of that one–it said a lot about his sense of adventure.
Most of all, I remember sitting around a lot of tables with him. Even to the end, he loved food and drink, and would always ask for his wine glass to be refilled– “Poco, poco“–look and wink, and say, “Quando festa, festa.” I think those are some pretty good words to live by.
John Oliver, founding director of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus, was on a great roundtable on WAMC about the chorus, memorization, Michael Tilson Thomas, his garden, and a bunch of other topics.
It makes me want to head off to Tanglewood right now.
In other news, I am heading to Tanglewood. Tomorrow, actually, to sing the Mozart Requiem and Stravinsky Symphony of Psalms with Michael Tilson Thomas. I’ve never sung with him before, but based on how the performances of the Mahler went last week, we should be in for an exciting ride.
I got interviewed last week for Risky Business, a podcast about application security from Australia. Had a great time chatting with Patrick Gray about security during the application development lifecycle. You can download the episode at their site or listen to it here:
