A British ghost song

Not to switch gears too violently, but the song the other day by Gustav Mahler, "Wo Die Schoenen Trompeten Blasen," makes me think of a song sung by Steeleye Span.

Perhaps you know Steeleye Span, the veteran British folk group. I got to know their records back in college when I was in the Society for Creative Anachronism, the medieval recreation group. A lot of my friends listened to them.

And there was this song that would get to me, "The Wife of Usher's Well."

It is a ghost story similar to the Mahler song. The Mahler song -- the words at least -- was also a folk song, which shows how much death was on these people's minds. Both the melodies are strangely dreamy, rather detached. In the Mahler the ghost's melody sounds like sleepwalking to me. The British folk song also follows a sweet melody. It makes the stories extra shocking, so it seems to me.

Here is "The Wife of Usher's Well." There are other performances out there but I like the one by Steeleye Span, the one I loved in college. It is from their album "All Around My Hat."

A great ghostly song

Here is a wonderful song for October.

Mahler's "When the Fair Trumpets Sound" is a ghost story. If you are lucky enough to be hearing it for the first time I will not give away what it is about. I have found a video with a translation.

The singer here is Brigitte Fassbinder. She is kind of unpredictable in my experience and I have had my issues with her but she does pretty well here.

Normally all other things being equal I like Lieder better simply with piano. But in this case the orchestra is evocative of the trumpets and other sounds.

When I first heard this song I cried. There was something about the dreamy melody of the ghost. I love Gustav Mahler's "Knaben Wunderhorn" songs and this one is at the top of my list.

Take it, Ms. Fassbinder.

After you know what the song is about you can always try Jessye Norman's version. She sings the song beautifully.

Mass appeal

Unbelievably cool find on YouTube: an Easter Tridentine Mass narrated by Archbishop Fulton Sheen.

He explains all the chants and everything. And the vestments, and the rites. Everything. This was filmed in Chicago in 1941.

I was looking at the comments on this video a while ago, and someone wrote, "It kind of scares me."

It's supposed to, you know?

That organ you hear at about 6:12 could be an example of that. That is uncompromising organ playing!

Being a post-Vatican II baby I did not grow up with this Latin Tridentine Mass. But in high school I had to read James Joyce's "Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man" and I remember that book was shot through with all the old Catholic symbolism, and the deep beauty of the old Mass. It is amazing to think of the effect it must have had James Joyce for him to fill his book with it.

J.R.R. Tolkien was another writer who loved the Mass that Fulton Sheen is describing. I read how later in his life, when everything had gone to pot with guitars and everything, Tolkien couldn't stand it. He was a passionate Catholic and so he sweated it out, but every Sunday when he went to Mass, he insisted on making the responses in Latin, to his grandson's mortification. Haaahaa... my Uncle Bob used to do that too.

I think a lot remains to be written about the effect of the pre-Vatican II Mass on classical composers up through Gustav Mahler. It's funny, it is never written about. I think that is because most people don't know any more about the old rite, and most people in academia are not religious and don't care much about this kind of thing.

Anyway, the old Mass, with the old chants, and the old vestments, and the old ceremony. Fulton Sheen will walk you through it.

Enjoy!

Benedict, Bruckner and beer

Remember a while ago when we talked about Pope Benedict XVI and his knowledge of music?

His Holiness is at it again!

Just the other day he listened to a performance of Beethoven's Ninth and Bruckner's "Te Deum." That is Bruckner up above in an old photograph I like. After listening to the piece Benedict got up and talked. Here is the transcript from the Vatican that was sent to me. I am lucky! Whenever anything happens in the Vatican someone buzzes me, I will have you know.

VATICAN CITY, 22 OCT 2011 (VIS) - This evening in the Vatican's Paul VI Hall, the Bavarian State Opera gave a concert in honour of Benedict XVI. The programme included the Ninth Symphony and the "Te Deum" by Anton Bruckner, played by the Bavarian State Orchestra and the "Audi Jugendchorakademie", conducted respectively by Kent Nagano and Martin Steidler.

At the end of the performance the Pope rose to thank the musicians. Listening to Bruckner's music, he said, "is like finding oneself in a great cathedral, surrounded by its imposing structures which arouse emotion and lift us to the heights. There is however an element that lies at the foundations of Bruckner's music, both the symphonic and the sacred: the simple, solid, genuine faith he conserved throughout his life".

"The great conductor Bruno Walter used to say that 'Mahler always sought after God, while Bruckner had found Him'. The symphony we have just heard has a very specific title: 'Dem lieben Gott' (To the Beloved God), almost as if he wished to dedicate and entrust the last and most mature fruit of his art to the One in Whom he had always believed, the One Who had become his only true interlocutor in the last stage of his life", the Holy Father said.

"Bruckner asked this beloved God to let him enter His mystery, ... to let him praise the Lord in heaven as he had on earth with his music. 'Te Deum laudamus, Te Dominum confitemur'; this great work we have just heard - written at one sitting then reworked over fifteen years as if reconsidering how better to thank and praise God - sums up the faith of this great musician", Pope Benedict concluded. "It is also a reminder for us to open our horizons and think of eternal life, not so as to escape the present, though burdened with problems and difficulties, but to experience it more intensely, bringing a little light, hope and love into the reality in which we live."

A pope who knows about Mahler and Bruckner and Bruno Walter, how cool is that?

I would love to sit down with him and music-minded friends like Norman Lebrecht and Prof. G who comments on this Web log, and others who care about this kind of thing. All of us with a couple of pitchers of beer and what a round table that would be.

Wow, I had better watch what I say. A long time ago, just fooling around on the Web log, I wrote that it would be fun to have a beer with Norman Lebrecht and lo and behold, it happened.

All of us having a beer with the Pope could happen!

Here is Bruckner's "Te Deum" with Jessye Norman and Samuel Ramey, the Chicago Symphony conducted by Daniel Barenboim.



Quite a piece. Bravo, performers!

Bravo, Pope Benedict!

Wake-up call

Just now I went out to get the paper and I looked at the morning and I got this Gustav Mahler song in my head. Actually the song had nothing to do with the actual day. I get this song in my head every morning. It is funny how you can fall into musical habits like that. It is morning, I get up, I think of this song at one time or another.

I was surprised there were not more takes on this song on YouTube of this song. I would have thought someone would have done something artistic with it because it is so atmospheric, describing a spring morning. Well, the one I found is a dandy: Bo Skovhus with the Bamberg Symphony and a good-looking conductor named Jonathan Nott. Funny, I am hearing a lot about Bamberg lately! We just had thing going in Buffalo where they brought over a film about how they brew beer in Bamberg. The film made the rounds of the taverns and they showed it and had beer tastings. The German filmmaker came along with the film and you could ask him questions.

The Bambergers play Mahler as well as they brew beer. There is no translation but you can get the spirit of the song. And heck, I can more or less translate it from memory. There is breeze in the linden tree (in German songs you are always dealing with linden trees). It's a spring morning. The sun is up. Get up!

And my favorite line, at 1:50.. "And I have already seen your sweetheart."

Your sweetheart is out and about!

If that does not get you out of bed what will?

You get your own inner videos to go with these songs and I always picture the breeze blowing through a village, the birds singing, the people in the streets. You are asleep in an upstairs front bedroom and the branches of the tree outside are tapping on your window and the breeze is coming into the room and stirring the sheets over your feet.

Oh, look. This is darling. (That is what I even wrote, as a comment.) This is a sweet video someone made of the song. The performance, by a singer named Rob Wanders, is kind of amateurish which adds to the charm. Plus it is with piano. All other things being equal I almost always prefer the original piano version to the orchestration. And the piano accompaniment to this song makes the bird trills so pretty.

The concluding image in this second video is especially cute. "Lang schlafer, steh auf!" Long sleeper, get up! There is a comment apparently from the person they show asleep. "That's me in the video! Thanks for using my picture, Rob!"

We would say sleepyhead.

I am one!