Category: Music

New mix: something other than regret

Starting to have the energy again to think about posting here, which is nice. I’ve been down the grindstone for a very very long time, and now, faced with some unexpected downtime, I’m going to use the opportunity to catch up on a  few things.

Starting with this. I completed something other than regret, my 33rd mix in the modern era, on the 10th of November, and it’s all over the map, but with some pretty strong thematic material running through as well. I especially love the way that Laura Marling excavates on the three tracks from Once I Was an Eagle, which is my favorite album of 2013; the woozy, witchy, R&B-driven silliness of “Nommo (The Magick Song)” (“All praises due to the Black man,” indeed); the light touch of Antony’s “Crackagen”, and the way that John Fahey’s riff on Clarence Ashley’s “The Coo Coo Bird” fits so seamlessly with gospel. I’ve definitely got something other than regret.

  1. Song-Song – Brad Mehldau Trio (The Art Of The Trio Volume 3)
  2. Nommo- The Magick Song – Gary Bartz And NTU Troop (I’ve Known Rivers And Other Bodies)
  3. Is That Enough – Yo La Tengo (Fade)
  4. Blue Light – Mazzy Star (So Tonight That I Might See)
  5. Life & Soul – The Sundays (Blind)
  6. Take The Night Off – Laura Marling (Once I Was An Eagle)
  7. I Was An Eagle – Laura Marling (Once I Was An Eagle)
  8. Crackagen – Antony and the Johnsons (Another World)
  9. Everybody’s Heart’s Breaking Now – Lavender Diamond (Incorruptible Heart)
  10. Variations On The Coocoo – John Fahey (The Dance Of Death & Other Plantation Favorites)
  11. Where Shall I Go? – Sister Marie Knight (When the Moon Goes Down in the Valley of Time: African-American Gospel, 1939-51)
  12. Don’t Give Up – Peter Gabriel (So (Remastered 2012))
  13. Incinerate – Sonic Youth (Rather Ripped)
  14. Tiny Cities Made Of Ashes – Sun Kil Moon (Tiny Cities)
  15. We’ll Sweep Out The Ashes In The Morning – Gram Parsons (G.P. / Grievous Angel)
  16. Breathe – Laura Marling (Once I Was An Eagle)
  17. Turn Your Color – The Men (Campfire Songs)
  18. I’ll Fly Away – Southern Sons (When the Moon Goes Down in the Valley of Time: African-American Gospel, 1939-51)

New mix: will you buy me a shaky heart

As I grow … well, older isn’t right, and neither is more mature, so let’s just go with “as I grow,” I find that what I listen to is less about lyrics and singing along and more about just listening. So, of the 19 tracks on this mix, six have no words at all, and a few more are mostly nonsense.

No real notes here, except to note that Jonny Greenwood’s Bodysong, from 2003, is an unlikely sleeper album. There are bits that remind me of Ravel, and Berg, and glitchy techno, and sometimes they come in the same song.

Also: why did it take me so long to listen to Bruce Cockburn? He would have been right up my alley in 1988 or 1989.

Also also: I’m in the crowd for that 2004 Sonic Youth performance at the Showbox. This one.

  1. Burning Of Auchidoon – Maddy Prior (Silly Sisters)
  2. Tree (Today is an Important Occasion) – David Byrne (The Knee Plays)
  3. Ready to Start – Arcade Fire (Ready to Start – Single)
  4. Lovers In a Dangerous Time – Bruce Cockburn (Stealing Fire (Deluxe Edition))
  5. Wiggle-Waggle – Herbie Hancock (Warner Archives)
  6. Everything In Its Right Place – Radiohead (Kid A)
  7. 24 Hour Charleston – Jonny Greenwood (Bodysong (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture))
  8. Concorde – Modern Jazz Quartet (Concorde)
  9. Track 4 – Sigur Rós (( ))
  10. Chemtrails – Beck (Modern Guilt)
  11. Sorrow – The National (High Violet)
  12. I Should Watch TV (M. Stine remix) – David Byrne & St. Vincent (Brass Tactics EP)
  13. Pattern Recognition – Sonic Youth (Live at the Showbox in Seattle (2004))
  14. Milky Way – Weather Report (Weather Report)
  15. Alone And Forsaken – Neko Case (Live from Austin, Texas)
  16. Hi-Speed Soul – Nada Surf (Let Go)
  17. After All – Christian Scott (Yesterday You Said Tomorrow)
  18. Bode Radio/Glass Light/Broken Hearts – Jonny Greenwood (Bodysong (Soundtrack from the Motion Picture))
  19. I Wanna Dance With Somebody – David Byrne (David Byrne: Live from Austin, TX)

The Colonoscopy Playlist

I can tell that I’ve reached that certain special age based on what my interactions are with the medical profession. And this week I had one of those really “special” ones: a visit from the camera snake.

As I was getting ready for the procedure, I realized that there were a lot of songs that were inadvertently funny in the context of a colonoscopy, and that there didn’t seem to be a lot of people putting them together in playlists. So I figured I’d do it so you don’t have to. (You’re welcome.) I posted a request for help on Facebook and got a lot of suggestions from my friends, so this was a real labor of love…from the bottom to the top.

  1. Baby Got Going – Liz Phair
  2. I Like to Move It – Reel 2 Reel
  3. Relax – Frankie Goes to Hollywood
  4. Shout – Tears for Fears
  5. Take It Easy – The Eagles
  6. When the Levee Breaks – Memphis Minnie
  7. Medley: Highway to Hell -> Shook Me All Night Long – AC/DC
  8. Highway to Hell – AC/DC
  9. It Looks Like I’m Up Sh*t Creek Again – Tom Waits
  10. Medley: “All Stripped Down” / “The Earth Died Screaming” / “The Ocean Doesn’t Want Me” / “New Coat of Paint” / “Chocolate Jesus” / “Take It With Me” ” / “Tango Till They’re Sore” / “Don’t Go Into That Barn” / “The One That Got Away” / “How’s It Gonna End” / “Make It Rain” – Tom Waits
  11. All Things Must Pass – George Harrison
  12. Chocolate Rain – Tay Zonday
  13. Everything Must Go – Manic Street Preachers
  14. The Waiting is the Hardest Part – Tom Petty
  15. Pants on the Ground – Larry Pratt
  16. From the Bottom to the Top – Frank Sinatra
  17. Way Down in the Hole – Tom Waits
  18. I’m Looking Through You – The Beatles
  19. Wide Open Spaces – Dixie Chicks
  20. I Can See Clearly Now – Johnny Nash
  21. Back Door Man – Howlin’ Wolf
  22. In Too Deep – Genesis
  23. Da Butt – EU
  24. Mega Colon – Fischerspooner
  25. I’m Beginning to See the Light – Bobby Darin
  26. Shine a Light – Rolling Stones
  27. The End – The Doors
  28. Black Hole Sun – Soundgarden
  29. Ring of Fire – Johnny Cash
  30. Moon River – Henry Mancini
  31. Boogie in the Butt – Eddie Murphy
  32. Baby Got Back – Sir Mix-A-Lot
  33. Show Me the Way – Peter Frampton
  34. Stinkfist – Tool
  35. John Mayer – Inside Wants Out
  36. Up in the Dark – The New Pornographers
  37. Searching With My Good Eye Closed – Soundgarden
  38. Shot in the Dark – Ozzy Obourne
  39. Way Down Now – World Party
  40. Already in a Daydream – Freddy Jones Band
  41. Bad Moon Rising – Creedence Clearwater Revival
  42. Scatman – Scatman John
  43. Into the Great Wide Open – Tom Petty
  44. Tighten Up – Archie Bell and the Drells
  45. Supermassive Black Hole – Muse
  46. Broken Hearts Are For Assholes – Frank Zappa
  47. Black Tongue – Gene Simmons
  48. Medley: ‘Fire in the Hole’->’Do It Again’ – Steely Dan
  49. Shake Your Booty – KC and the Sunshine Band
  50. Dig for Fire – Pixies
  51. Medley: ‘I’ve Got You Under My Skin’ -> ‘Moanin” -> ‘Walkin” -> ‘I’ll Never Be The Same’ – Frank Sinatra / Art Blakey / Miles Davis / Art Tatum
  52. Better Days (And The Bottom Drops Out) – Citizen King
  53. Rolling in the Deep – Adele
  54. My Face Your Ass – Lambchop
  55. Pretty on the Inside – Hole
  56. The End – The Beatles

Welcome, Andris Nelsons

Boston Globe: BSO names Andris Nelsons music director, succeeding James Levine. An exciting day. I sang with Nelsons last summer at Tanglewood in a deeply felt (if a little idiosyncratic) performance of Symphony of Psalms. I also watched him conduct the BSO in a spine tingling version of Ravel’s La Valse that was easily the best musical moment of the Tanglewood anniversary concert. Can’t wait to sing with him again.

Careless Love: The Virginia Glee Club in the 1950s

Glee Club 1956 promo acetate

There’s not a lot to say about the Virginia Glee Club in the later 1950s, seemingly. The group lost one of its more influential directors, Stephen Tuttle, to Harvard in 1952, and saw two directors alternate during the remaining years. There were tours, sure; legend has it there were even panty raids on other campuses. But no LP survives from the period between 1952 for almost 20 years; no big commissioned work exists; nothing remains but a bunch of concert programs.

Except this. The image above is of an acetate recording that was made as a promo record and sent to radio stations. Seems that Donald MacInnis didn’t spend much time with his group recording because they spent time trying to get on live radio. We know they were broadcast on WTVR radio, probably as a result of this acetate.

(Aside: an “acetate” is actually made of aluminum—or, in the WWII years, glass—coated with a thin layer of lacquer. You could cut one live, and some did, but you could also copy prerecorded music onto it. It was common to use acetates for promotional recordings when the number of playbacks was unlikely to be high. You can see the aluminum under the black lacquer of this disk around the hole of the record.)

The repertoire on the disk is interesting, too. The Bach is pretty straightforward, but it’s followed up by a downright woozy version of “Careless Love,” and then by MacInnis’s own version of Tom Lehrer’s “The Hunting Song.” I’m trying to imagine that on a Glee Club program today. In fact, I’d pay money to see this paean to hunting, in which the protagonist bags 7 hunters, two game wardens, and a cow, on a modern day program.

It’s a fun recording, albeit short, at around 6 and a half minutes. 

New mix: my love invented all of you

This has been building for a bit. I had more work to do on it, then I thought it was done. Then I heard the last two songs side by side and realized they were the perfect coda. So it’s a little longer than CD length. Oh well…

  1. The Empty Page – Sonic Youth (Murray Street)
  2. Rock And Roll – Led Zeppelin (Led Zeppelin Remasters)
  3. Don’t Care – Klark Kent (Klark Kent)
  4. What Difference Does It Make? – The Smiths (Hatful Of Hollow)
  5. Manta Ray – Pixies (Complete ‘B’ Sides [UK])
  6. Carry Me Ohio – Sun Kil Moon (Ghosts Of The Great Highway)
  7. Vengeance Is Sleeping – Neko Case (Middle Cyclone (Bonus Track Version))
  8. Back Of A Car – Big Star (#1 Record – Radio City)
  9. Just Like Heaven – The Cure (Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me)
  10. Space (I Believe In) – Pixies (Trompe Le Monde)
  11. Lick the Palm of the Burning Handshake – Zola Jesus (Conatus)
  12. Gravity’s Angel – Laurie Anderson (Mister Heartbreak)
  13. Water Babies – Miles Davis (The Columbia Years 1955-1985)
  14. Working For The Man – PJ Harvey (To Bring You My Love)
  15. Lil Wallet Picture – Richard Buckner (Richard Buckner)
  16. In the Devil’s Territory – Sufjan Stevens (Seven Swans)
  17. I Don’t Recall – Lavender Diamond (Incorruptible Heart)
  18. Dawned On Me – Wilco (The Whole Love)
  19. Morpha Too – Big Star (#1 Record – Radio City)
  20. Kiss Me On The Bus – The Replacements (Tim [Expanded Edition])
  21. Dauðalogn – Sigur Rós (Valtari)
  22. End of the Line – Sleigh Bells (Reign of Terror)

Whither iTunes Plus upgrades (again)

A while ago I wrote about how Apple’s offer to upgrade previously purchased music to iTunes Plus, their “drm-lite” offering that raised recording quality and eliminated copy restrictions, had gone missing.

At that point the issue appeared to be faulty infrastructure, since the link was sometimes available and since you could hit the page directly if you bookmarked it.

Today, it looks like the page may be gone for good. I haven’t seen it in the store in several weeks, and the bookmark now returns a “Could not complete the iTunes Store request” popup.

While I’m not entirely surprised—the promotion has been running for what, four years?—I’m disappointed. Because this is what I see in my smart playlist that contains the old, “FairPlay” encrypted, DRMed iTunes Store downloads:

671items

That’s right. 671 tracks, in about 178 albums, that were never made available for upgrade through the iTunes Plus page. I know, because every time something was made available in Plus, I paid the 30 cents per track or $3 per album to get my music out of DRM jail.

So my question to Apple is: what happened? Did the rest of the music never get “plussed” because of the labels? Or did you just forget?

I’ve read some speculation that iTunes Match is the new “upgrade to iTunes Plus”. If so, I’m still out of luck, because I have more than 25,000 songs in my library—all purchased legally, I might add, though some came from eMusic or Amazon, or were ripped from CDs or vinyl that I own.

So let’s see: I’m stuck with a bunch of DRMed music that I can’t unDRM, contrary to Apple’s iTunes Plus promises, and I can’t take advantage of the other legal path offered to me because I’ve been too good a music customer.

Is it any wonder that people just say “screw it” and download music for free?

New mix: An attic space overgrown

I wasn’t expecting to do another mix so soon after the last one (the business), but this one was kicking around for a while. As always, I was throwing songs I liked to listen to into a temporary playlist called “next,” but couldn’t figure out how to link them all together. Then one day I heard a recording of Kenyan girls singing (like so much these days, it surfaced out of my library on shuffle), and I said “Hmm.” I threw a handful of short world music songs into the mix (from an album of Tuvan throat singing, an Internet-curated collection of African music, and a historic field recording of the Bera pygmies from the 1950s), shuffled them about until I got the right order, and before long I had something that seemed set to shuffle into the ear in the same way that the songs had wormed their way into my mind. An attic space overgrown (also on Art of the Mix) was the result.

The mix:

  1. Chemirocha [Kipsigis] w/Chemutoi Ketienya & Girls – Kenyan Songs and Strings (Kenyan Songs and Strings)
  2. Strange – R.E.M. (Document)
  3. Rolling – Soul Coughing (El Oso)
  4. Vessel – Zola Jesus (Conatus)
  5. Bodhisattva Vow – Beastie Boys (Ill Communication)
  6. Right On – The Roots (How I Got Over)
  7. Yraazhy Kys (The Singing Girl) – Shu-De (Voices From The Distant Steppe)
  8. The Eraser – Christian Scott (Yesterday You Said Tomorrow)
  9. Harrowdown Hill – Thom Yorke (The Eraser)
  10. Jean-Baptiste à la fenêtre – Sonic Youth (Simon Werner a Disparu)
  11. Tshetlha Di Kae – School Girls In Kayne (Tswana and Sotho Voices)
  12. Half Way To Crazy – The Jesus & Mary Chain (Automatic)
  13. Infinity Guitars – Sleigh Bells (Treats)
  14. Staircase – Radiohead (The Daily Mail & Staircase)
  15. One Big Holiday – My Morning Jacket (It Still Moves)
  16. Skipping Song – Bera Pygmies (Music Of The Rainforest Pygmies)
  17. Antenna – Sonic Youth (The Eternal)
  18. Hikikomori – Zola Jesus (Conatus)
  19. Silver Rider – Robert Plant (Band of Joy)
  20. You See Everything – Low (C’mon)
  21. Moorestown – Sun Kil Moon (April)

Track notes:

  • I finally heard the original version of “Strange” (on Wire’s Pink Flag) last year, and while I love it, it made me appreciate the R.E.M. version I heard in high school–bravura, loud, beery, and outré.
  • It’s a pity that Mike Doughty has disavowed the Soul Coughing discography, because tunes like “Rolling” were made for delicious cognitive dissonance–the luxury and assonance of the words and the thick beats…
  • Zola Jesus was a discovery for me about this time last year. “Vessel” is the strangest arrangement of the album, with Nika Roza Danilova’s voice hocketing into the echoing void at the opening over a sort of middle-period Dead Can Dance accompaniment. And that’s just the opening.
  • I miss Adam Yauch.
  • “Right On”: Who knew that Joanna Newsom made such a good chorus for hip-hop?
  • Christian Scott’s “The Eraser,” its strikingly original jazz arrangement of Thom Yorke’s original, has been in heavy repeat since I heard the album last year. The whole album is worth checking out.
  • “Harrowdown Hill” gives you an opportunity to hear Yorke’s original glitchy percussion against the jazz acoustic original. Not as starkly tense as some of Radiohead’s earlier (or later) works, it feels a little more personal but still despairing.
  • Sonic Youth’s final(?) recording, a soundtrack, carries enormous tension throughout it even if you don’t understand the cinematic context of the songs, which, um, I don’t. Still absorbing.
  • I dug out “Automatic” the other day–still a great album all these years later.
  • I found Sleigh Bells thanks to Molly Young‘s plug for the band (she plays the gum-chewing cheerleader in the video for this song). I like the second album better as an album but “Infinity Guitars” is still an astonishing kick to the head.
  • Someday Radiohead will make a full album that “Staircase” fits into and I’ll be a happy man.
  • My Morning Jacket’s It Still Moves was the last of the early albums and the one I love best, I think. This one reminds me of growing up in the South.
  • Robert Plant’s cover of “Silver Rider,” from the underappreciated Low album The Great Destroyer, is both hypnotic and wholly respectful of the original.
  • Low’s most recent album is the one I’ve liked best since The Great Destroyer. “You See Everything” is a great spotlight for Mimi Sparhawk’s voice.
  • Finally we get to “Moorestown.” After the psychedelic wonderland of Ghosts of the Great Highway, it took a long time for Sun Kil Moon’s acoustic albums to grow on me. But this one had been waiting to find me, and today I realized it was the closer.

Finally, a note on mixes: Seems to me that I put them together to digest the music I’m listening to and to claim it before it claims me.

1938 Virginia Football Songbook

Footballsongs 1938

Amidst disappointing news from the University of Virginia this week, I received an unexpected pleasure in the mail today: a 1938 University song book meant for football games and boxing matches.

As with the 1911 song book I posted about a few years ago, this one contains the lyrics (but no music) to commonly known songs for the student body to sing at sporting events. Unlike the previous edition, 27 years later the repertoire had shrunk to just four songs: “Virginia, Hail, All Hail,” “The Cavalier Song,” “Hike, Virginia” (with the Carolina lyrics), and of course “The Good Old Song”–first and second verse.

The advertisers list had shrunk too. The sponsoring businesses were just two: Bruton’s Barber Shop (Charlottesville’s Finest!) and Valley View Greenhouses, both near what is now the Downtown Mall.

For me, as with the previous version, it makes me happy to think about generations past of UVa students singing these song at sporting events. The full photo set is on Flickr: enjoy!

New mix: the business

Did you ever notice how many songs there are about the music business itself? I think the popular music industry is possibly even more self-referential than the newspaper industry (though not nearly as self-referential as the Internet…). I started hearing the connection a few years ago and began collecting examples in a playlist, and I finally have enough to share with you in this mix (see also Art of the Mix).

Of special note is the hip-hop section (coming just after Joe Pernice’s wry anti-anthem decrying touring, “We Love the Stage”), featuring “Check the Rhime,” origin of “Music industry rule #4080/record company people are shady,” followed by Steinski’s record industry slag off mix of “Hit the Disco,” wrapping up with J-Live’s epochal “Them That’s Not,” which features the most astonishing bit of tempo bending that I’m aware of.

Enjoy…

  1. Radio Song – R.E.M. (Out Of Time)
  2. Legend of Paul Revere – Paul Revere & The Raiders (Paul Revere & The Raiders: Greatest Hits)
  3. Suits Are Picking Up The Bill – Squirrel Nut Zippers (Perennial Favorites)
  4. A Sermon – The Police (Message In A Box: The Complete Recordings)
  5. Hey, Mr. DJ, I Thought You Said We Had A Deal – They Might Be Giants (Miscellaneous T: B Side / Remix Compilation)
  6. Radio, Radio – Elvis Costello (The Very Best of Elvis Costello And The Attractions)
  7. Do You Remember Rock ‘n’ Roll Radio? – The Ramones (Mania)
  8. I Bet You They Won’t Play This Song on the Radio – Monty Python (Monty Python’s Contractual Obligation Album)
  9. Hello Radio – They Might Be Giants (Miscellaneous T: B Side / Remix Compilation)
  10. Spirit of Radio – Rush (Permanent Waves)
  11. Formed A Band – Art Brut (Bang Bang Rock & Roll)
  12. Rock Notes – Monty Python (Monty Python’s Contractual Obligation Album)
  13. So You Want to Be a Rock ‘n’ Roll Star – The Byrds (The Byrds: Greatest Hits (Remastered))
  14. Playing Your Song – Hole (Celebrity Skin)
  15. Left Of The Dial – The Replacements (Tim [Expanded Edition])
  16. We Love the Stage – Pernice Brothers (Goodbye, Killer)
  17. Check The Rhime – A Tribe Called Quest (The Low End Theory)
  18. Hit The Disco (Mc Enuff Mix) – Steinski (What Does It All Mean?: 1983-2006 Retrospective)
  19. Them That’s Not – J-Live (The Best Part)
  20. Pay to Play – Nirvana (DGC Rarities, Vol. 1)
  21. The Late Greats – Wilco (A Ghost Is Born)

New mix: My heart’s beating is all the proof you need.

It’s been a while since I’ve done a new mix. This one, My heart’s beating is all the proof you need (Art of the Mix), has been interesting–a little more upbeat than some of my past efforts, a few songs that have been kicking around my library for many years. I think the subtheme of this mix is in the second song: “It’s getting better all the time (can’t get no worse!).”

So there’s some party time stuff, both benign and wild; some funny tracks (I dare you to listen to “Bloody” with a straight face);  and some contemplative stuff. There’s not a lot of deep digging (outside of the Tom Waits/John Lurie track and maybe “Amen Brother,” which features what must be the most sampled drum break in the prehistory of hiphop), just some really fun listening. Just right for early spring.

  1. River of Men – Tom Waits/John Lurie (Fishing With John – Original Music From The Series By John L)
  2. Getting Better – The Beatles (Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band)
  3. Just Like Heaven – The Cure (Kiss Me, Kiss Me, Kiss Me)
  4. Mondo ’77 – Looper (The Geometrid)
  5. Amen’ Brother – The Winstons (Color Him Father (Original Masters))
  6. In The Street – Big Star (#1 Record – Radio City)
  7. Happy Kid – Nada Surf (Let Go)
  8. Don’t You Just Know It – Huey “Piano” Smith and the Clowns (Don’t You Just Know It [EP])
  9. Pictures Of You – The Cure (Disintegration)
  10. Near Wild Heaven – R.E.M. (Out Of Time)
  11. Friends Stoning Friends – Mclusky (Alan Is A Cowboy Killer)
  12. The Ox (Original Mono Version) – The Who (The Who Sings My Generation)
  13. Head On – Pixies (Trompe Le Monde)
  14. No Hiding Place – Elvis Costello (Momofuku)
  15. Bloody – Golinski Brothers (The John Peel Singles Box)
  16. Do You Wanna Hit It? – The Donnas (The Donnas Turn 21)
  17. Yard Of Blonde Girls – Jeff Buckley (Sketches for My Sweetheart The Drunk)
  18. Codex – Radiohead (The King of Limbs)
  19. Steam Engine – My Morning Jacket (It Still Moves)
  20. Calling My Children Home – Emmylou Harris (Spyboy)
  21. Things behind the Sun – Nick Drake (Pink Moon)

Pacem, pacem, shantih

It’s been four years since I last sang at Carnegie Hall, and Tuesday I’ll be there again, performing the Beethoven Missa Solemnis with the Boston Symphony, under the direction of the Tanglewood Festival Chorus’s John Oliver. It’s been an interesting run, for a host of reasons that have little to do with the music and everything to do with the musicians.

But one thing about it that’s particularly interesting to me is that I find myself still trying to figure out this work. Even though it was the first major work I sang with a symphonic chorus, eighteen years ago. Even though I sang it once more with Robert Shaw fourteen years ago.

It shouldn’t surprise me how much there is to learn about this work. Beethoven wrote it at the height of his powers, and close to the end of his life, at the same time he was composing the Ninth Symphony. I think it’s equally as great a work as the Ninth, but more difficult to approach. Because where the Ninth resolves eternal conflict through the relatively accessible lens of joy and brotherhood, the Missa doesn’t really resolve the conflict at all, and uses religion as the lens through which the conflict is examined.

The movement I’ve been fixated on is the “Agnus Dei.” It’s the last movement of the piece, and as Maestro Oliver points out, it’s unique in that it’s a classical composition–as in, big C classical, partaking much more of Mozart or Haydn than does the rest of the work. It’s very structured, relatively formal, and can seem either light hearted or too mannered if you approach it in the wrong way.

I’m coming at the piece through a gout attack–the first one I’ve had in several years, only the second major one I’ve had–and I think I understand it a little better. I see the “Agnus Dei” as Beethoven trying to come to terms with what was happening to him at the end of his life–his total deafness, his approaching mortality. There are shifting tones in it of fear and of utter desolation. (Which also became clear to me for the first time on this concert run, when we sang the “Miserere” section after hearing Maestro Kurt Masur’s announcement that he could not conduct and his quiet confession that the Missa was too much and that he would never conduct it again.) And I certainly feel an echo of that in my frustration in being unable to stand without pain, or at the worst even to have something touch my foot.

But then comes the “Dona Nobis Pacem.” And where in Berlioz or other masses it’s a cry for help, there’s something quietly assured about the way Beethoven sets this text. It’s a fugue in a major key that keeps returning even over outbreaks of “Miserere.” Done lightly or thoughtlessly, the contrast is jarring. Done in the spirit of the thing, it is meditation, a plea for self control.

It reminds me of The Waste Land, actually. As Eliot’s associative madness pulls in imagery from Hieronymo to bats to women fiddling on their hair, the poet reaches for “Datta, Dayadhvam, Damyata.”–“give, sympathize, control”–and then “Shantih, shantih, shantih.” A mantra in the strictly correct sense of the word. And while it’s debatable whether Eliot truly achieves “the peace that passeth all understanding” even by the end of the work, it’s pretty clear that Beethoven’s “pacem, pacem” performs the same function for him. It’s a reaching of acceptance of all that is in life, an acknowledgement of peace and its power.

And it will be very hard to convey that in performance. But now that I know that it’s there, maybe I can try to make it happen.

“Must be able to carry a tune”

1935uvamag

In the process of putting together the Virginia Glee Club Wiki, containing the history of that illustrious 171-year-old assemblage, I’ve made my way through just about every official archive of Glee Club history. But there are gaps to be filled, so I’ve resorted to eBay. I’ve picked up yearbooks, magazines, and other ephemera trying to find information on missing years. And in the process, I’ve gotten hooked on the convenience and the thrill of it all. I’ve also grown a little blasé about it, paradoxically enough–one too many speculative purchases of Virginiana has ended in a cold trail, historically speaking.

So I wasn’t expecting much when I won an auction for the September 1935 edition of the University of Virginia Magazine (winning bid: $1.50). To my surprise, though, I hit pay dirt. This was the “new student” issue of the magazine, and it featured essays from each of the leaders of the (non-fraternity) student groups introducing to prospective students such Virginia institutions as Corks & Curls, the UVA Band, the Jefferson Society …. and the Glee Club.

I’ve posted the top half of the article above, including a pretty fair pen-and-ink caricature of the Club’s raconteur director from the 1930s, Harry Rogers Pratt. The rest of the article and a transcription have been posted to the wiki on the biography page of its author, Glee Club president Rial Rose. The article is pretty modest about the group’s requirements and ambitions:

There are just two things that are absolutely required of a man who wishes to join the University of Virginia Glee Club. He must be enrolled at the University, and he must be able to carry a tune.

But Rose does a spectacular job of defining the college glee club of the 1930s and painting a picture of what’s involved:

Now, a College Glee Club, in these days, is a very ambitious organization. It attempts to combine the best of all these various kinds of music. The religious and folk music of the negroes and Cossacks appear on the same programs with the popular and “pretty” music of the “Pennsylvanians,” and with the strong, soul-stirring music of the great composers. In 1934-35, for instance, the University Glee Club sang music of America, England, Germany, Russia, Finland, the Netherlands, and the Latin Church, while a quartet sang negro songs, on a typically arranged program. And, not content with merely singing the music, we attempted to perform it nearly as possible in the various styles of the peoples it represented.

For me, this is what’s so fascinating about the history of this group. Save for one or two phrases, this could be a description of the Glee Club I sang in, or the one that is under the direction of Frank Albinder today. But then in the middle, there’s that reminder that the Glee Club, like the University, was a creature of its times: “negro songs.”  At least this incarnation of the Glee Club wasn’t performing them in blackface.

Virginia football songs for the Chik-Fil-A Bowl

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So here we are, on the eve of the last Virginia football game of 2011. At the beginning of the season, I had no hopes for a bowl game, in only the second season of the Mike London era. And yet here we are, in the Peach Bowl (now called the Chik-Fil-A Bowl) against Auburn.

As the historian of the Virginia Glee Club Alumni and Friends Association, I’ve had a special place in my heart for the football songs of the University, and I’ve written many posts about the origins of the songs. In honor of the game tonight, here’s all the posts in one convenient list. Enjoy!

The commencement of the author of “The Good Old Song”

Page 3 of the 1895 Public Days program showing E.A. Craighill, Jr.

A while ago, I picked up an interesting historical keepsake from eBay–the program from the University of Virginia’s 1895 Public Days, aka graduation. I was hoping to find some Glee Club value here, and I got it. The program lists 1895-96 Glee Club president McLane Tilton, Jr. as completing his undergraduate degree, and also has a familiar face picking up his Law degree–E. A. Craighill, otherwise known as the author of “The Good Old Song.”

It’s fun to look at the document and realize how different the University was then. Most of the degrees are professional or graduate degrees because the four-year bachelors degree was virtually unknown then. It wouldn’t be until a few years later that curriculum reform at Virginia and other universities standardized the four-year undergraduate degree that we are all familiar with today.

I posted scans of the whole thing to Flickr; enjoy.