American Popular Song 3

Cole Porter (9 June 1891 – 15 October 1964) was known for his erudite, witty, and sometimes risqué lyrics. Unlike some other of the famous composers of American Popular Song, he wrote both words and music.

He wrote shows for the stage (Broadway and London) and scores for Hollywood movie musicals, some more successful than others. His best known were mostly from the 20s and 30s, but his biggest hit came in 1948 with Kiss Me Kate. It ran for a combined 1400+ performances in New York and London and was made into a popular motion picture in 1953. Many of his songs from these shows became instant hits in their day and were recorded by all the biggest singers of the jazz and pop field. 

Ella Fitzgerald recorded the Ella Fitzgerald Sings the Cole Porter Songbook in 1956. One of the songs she did was “In the Still of the Night,” a short, smooth styling of the song. Written for Nelson Eddy in the 1937 movie Rosalie, it was not the basic AABA format and Eddy found it difficult to sing, asking for a replacement. Eddy lost that battle because it stayed in the film and he even sang it in his concerts. So did a lot of other people.

I like the song because it isn’t the standard form and uses an internal rhyming scheme that could be juvenile in other hands, but becomes crisply sentimental with Porter’s talent. 

Here are the lyrics and the 1956 Ella Fitzgerald performance. Enjoy!

In the Still of the Night

In the still of the night

As I gaze from my window

At the moon in its flight

My thoughts all stray to you

 

In the still of the night

While the world is in slumber

All the times without number

Darling when I say to you

 

Do you love me, as I love you

Are you my life to be, my dream come true

Or will this dream of mine fade out of sight

Like the moon growing dim, on the rim of the hill

In the chill, still of the night

 

Happy Birthday Dorothy L. Sayers

Dorothy L. Sayers (13 June 1893 – 17 December 1957) insisted that her middle initial always be included in her full name. That’s the way she referred to herself and so shall we. Essayist, playwright, poet, mystery novelist, and Christian apologist, she was what we’d refer to today as a workaholic. She wrote morn, noon, and night.

Probably her most famous creation was Lord Peter Wimsey, aristocratic amateur sleuth. Lord Peter was the second son so the duties of the estate fell to his elder brother the Duke, leaving Lord Peter time to indulge in whatever activity took his fancy. His fancy was solving murders. From London to countryside he solved crimes, sometimes putting himself at risk (damaging his hearing in The Nine Tailors). For a time Dorothy L. Sayers worked as a copywriter for an advertising agency and so the action of Murder Must Advertise took place in an agency with Lord Peter playing Death Bredon, junior copywriter. Not all the stories or characters were based on Sayers’ experiences, but it is said authors do best to write about what they know. (According to Wikipedia, Sayers is credited with coining the phrase “It pays to advertise.”)

In addition to two sets of short stories, there were eleven Lord Peter novels, as well as a twelfth unfinished at Sayers’ death, completed by novelist Jill Paton Walsh (who then went on to write three more on her own). Sayers also wrote short stories about another detective Montague Egg, a wine salesman. There was a fair amount of criticism about Lord Peter and Sayers’ writing, but there will always be people who can’t stand taking something as plebian as detective stories seriously. My opinion (and it is my blog after all) is that they were highly entertaining and well written. Loved the whole series.

Her non-fiction, especially her translations and writing about Christian apologetics, was taken much more seriously. Writers who admired her work and became her friends included C.S. Lewis and G.K. Chesterton. Creed or Chaos? has been compared to Lewis’ Mere Christianity and she and Chesterton founded the “Detection Club,” a group for British mystery writers (he of the Father Brown stories fame).

The work she was most proud of was her translation of Dante’s Divine Comedy. Her ability to translate the work from Italian to English and keep Dante’s line length and rhyming scheme (terza rima), while making the work poetic was widely praised. She was able to complete Hell (1949) and Purgatory (1955) but died before finishing Paradise. Barbara Reynolds, Italian scholar and Sayers’ goddaughter, completed the translation and it was published in 1962. (Barbara Reynolds also edited several books about Dorothy L. Sayers and was the president of the Dorothy L. Sayers Society.)

Whether you want a good mystery (the Lord Peter Wimsey novels and short stories), a play (The Man Who Would be King), an essay (Are Women Human?), or poetry (Divine Comedy along with volumes of the Dante papers) Dorothy L. Sayers will have something that will delight and intrigue you and make you think. Try her out! 

Happy Birthday Richard Strauss

Richard Strauss (11 June 1864 – 8 September 1949) was a German composer and conductor. He was known for operas, tone poems, concertos, songs, and two symphonies. He lived and worked in Germany even through World War II, leading some to believe he was a Nazi sympathizer. In fact, Strauss’ daughter-in-law was Jewish and he used his position as a celebrity (and head of the Reichsmusikkammer and principal conductor of the Bayreuth Festival) to save Alice and her children from the concentration camps. He also tried to save Alice’s family but was less successful, many of them dying in the camps.

Among his most famous operas were Elektra, Salome, Der Rosenkavalier, Ariadne auf Naxos, and Die Frau ohne Schatten. Elektra, the ancient Greek character seeking revenge for the murder of her father Agamemnon, and Salome, based on the play by Oscar Wilde, are both one-act operas. But what a punch in one act from each of them. Der Rosenkavalier is miles away from them both. A three-act comic opera, it is as light and frothy as the other two are dark and gut-wrenching. 

Tone poems were the other music form that no one did like Strauss. Whereas a symphony has four or more movements and is pure music, a tone poem is usually one continuous movement and is based on a picture or story or poem that is supposed to bring something visual to mind. His first tone poem was Don Juan. Others were Till Eulenspiegel’s Merry Pranks, Death and Transfiguration, Don Quixote, and Also sprach Zarathustra, the famous piece used in 2001: A Space Odyssey.

Strauss also composed much lieder, and most of these were with his wife Pauline’s voice in mind. It is said, though, that he composed his Four Last Songs for the Norwegian opera singer Kirsten Flagstad and she premiered them in 1948.

I’ve picked two pieces for you today. The first is the opening to the tone poem Also sprach Zarathustra in a video from the opening of the MGM movie 2001: A Space Odyssey. If you can, listen to the rest of the composition, which is different from the beginning. (And, by the way, watch 2001: A Space Odyssey. A great movie.)

The second is the famous waltz from Der Rosenkavalier. This appears to be from one of Leonard Bernstein’s Young People’s Concerts, a staple from my childhood. Bernstein was one of the best teachers of music for young or old. But that’s a story for another day. Enjoy!

Shakespeare's Sonnets: IX

A widow can look at her children and see her deceased husband in them. However, the world is like a widow without children if the young man does not marry and have offspring. The world has nothing to remember him by and has no consolation.

Sonnet IX

Is it for fear to wet a widow’s eye,

That thou consum’st thyself in single life?

Ah! If thou issueless shalt hap to die,

The world will wail thee like a makeless wife;

The world will be thy widow and still weep

That thou no form of thee hast left behind,

When every private widow well may keep

By children’s eye, her husband’s shape in mind:

Look what an unthrift in the world doth spend

Shifts but his place, for still the world enjoys it;

But beauty’s waste hath in the world an end,

And kept unused the user so destroys it.

                No love toward others in that bosom sits

                That on himself such murd’rous shame commits.

 

The Feast of Corpus Christi

Yesterday was the external solemnity of the feast of Corpus Christi (the actual feast was Thursday, June 3, but it was celebrated on Sunday.) Corpus Christi is the Body of Christ. For Catholics this is the celebration of the True Presence of the body, blood, soul, and divinity of Christ present in the Eucharist.

Sadly, only about 30% of Catholics believe in the True Presence, according to a 2019 poll. Only a third believe what the Church teaches. Why go to Mass, then? Why receive Holy Communion if it’s only bread and wine? I can’t answer those questions because I know why I go and why I receive – I believe in the True Presence.

The day’s Gospel is from John 6:55-59, but let’s back up a bit. Earlier in chapter 6 Jesus said that “I am the bread which came down from heaven.” This caused the Jews to murmur because they all knew him as Jesus the carpenter whose parents they knew. Jesus doubles down. “Truly, truly, I say to you, he who believes has eternal life. I am the bread of life. Your fathers ate the manna in the wilderness, and they died. This is the bread which comes down from heaven, that a man may eat of it and not die. I am the living bread which came down from heaven; if anyone eats of this bread, he will live forever; and the bread which I shall give for the life of the world is my flesh.”

This really ruffled feathers. Jesus persists. “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless you eat the flesh of the Son of man and drink his blood, you have no life in you; he who eats my flesh and drinks my blood has eternal life, and I will raise him up at the last day. For my flesh is food indeed, and my blood is drink indeed. He who eats my flesh and drinks my blood abides in me, and I in him. As the living Father sent me, and I live because of the Father, so he who eats me will live because of me. This is the bread which came down from heaven, not such as the fathers ate and died; he who eats this bread will live forever.”

The disciples were confused and did not understand. “This is a hard saying; who can listen to it?” Remember, all their lives they had been told, according to Jewish law, that it was wrong to drink the blood of an animal, much less a man. Blood must be drained before the animal flesh could be eaten. And here was this Jesus telling them they must eat his flesh and drink his blood or they could not have eternal life. “After this many of his disciples drew back and no longer went about with him.”

Jesus could have said, “Wait! This is only a parable. Let me tell you what I really mean.” But he didn’t. He was adamant that he meant what he said. He said it over and over and over. Later, he would show the form of the body and blood at the Last Supper, offering up the bread and wine. This is the form at Mass, when the priest performs the Consecration. What we receive looks like bread and wine, but because of the Consecration, what we receive is truly the body and blood of our Lord. This is a mystery, but our faith teaches us it is real. 

The Epistle, taken from chapter 11 of 1 Corinthians, tells us “For as often as you eat this bread and drink the cup, you proclaim the Lord’s death until he comes.” It goes on “Whoever, therefore, eats the bread or drinks the cup of the Lord in an unworthy manner will be guilty of profaning the body and blood of the Lord…For anyone who eats and drinks without discerning the body eats and drinks judgment upon himself.” What does this mean? If you are not in the state of grace (having committed a grave sin without confessing it), if you support abortion or remarriage after divorce or same-sex unions, or worst of all, don’t believe in the True Presence, you bring judgment on yourself. This judgment will not be pretty.

Ezekiel Saw the Wheel

All of Scripture teaches us how to love and obey the Lord God. The “thou shalls” are as abundant as the “thou shalt nots.” It’s all very simple, if not always easy.

Ezekiel reveals to us in forty-eight chapters what God has instructed him to say to the Hebrews and to us. One of the main themes is personal responsibility. Do the right thing and you’ll be okay, but do the wrong thing without repenting and you’re lost. We’re not necessarily talking about the consequences in this life, because we all know that sometimes bad things happen to good people and vice versa. The more important point is, where will your soul spend eternity. Nothing that happens to us in this life can be as bad as eternity in Hell. (Yes, there surely is one.) 

Ezekiel 18:21-24:

But if a wicked man turns away from all his sins which he has committed and keeps all my statutes and does what is lawful and right, he shall surely live; he shall not die. None of the transgressions which he has committed shall be remembered against him; for the righteousness which he has done he shall live. Have I any pleasure in the death of the wicked, says the Lord God, and not rather that he should turn from his way and live? But when a righteous man turns away from his righteousness and commits iniquity and does the same abominable things that the wicked man does, shall he live? None of the righteous deeds which he has done shall be remembered; for the treachery of which he is guilty and the sin he has committed, he shall die.

Part of this point, too, is that the sins of the father are not visited on the son if the son is a righteous man. Ezekiel 18:20:

The son shall not suffer for the iniquity of the father, nor the father suffer for the iniquity of the son; the righteousness of the righteous shall be upon himself, and wickedness of the wicked shall be upon himself.

God is always ready to receive us back into His loving heart. You will be judged on your righteousness or wickedness, not the righteousness or wickedness of your family, your community, your country. Be ready for the end, your end. Examine your heart and make sure you are right with God.

Happy Birthday Sir Edward Elgar

Everyone who has graduated from high school or college is familiar with Sir Edward Elgar’s Pomp and Circumstance March No 1. They may not know who wrote it, but they should, but the lack of music education in schools is a screed for another time.

Edward Elgar, born June 2, 1857, wrote much more than the Pomp and Circumstance Marches. One of his most famous pieces was the Enigma Variations (1899). A composition entitled “variations” consists of a theme and a number of variations on that theme, in this case 14, the most famous being “Nimrod.” The variations were written for many of Elgar’s friends, one of his closest being August Jaeger, who was also his publisher. Nimrod was a biblical figure being called “a mighty hunter before the Lord” and the German word for hunter is jaeger, hence the title of the piece. It is a beautiful melody and puts people in mind of war, death, and loved ones and is often used at funerals, most recently that of Prince Philip. However, given that Jaeger helped his friend greatly through a period of depression the year before the composition, it can also be thought as a deep expression of hope and love.

His next big composition in 1900 was a setting for orchestra, chorus, and soloists of John Henry Cardinal Newman’s poem The Dream of Gerontius. The Pomp and Circumstance Marches (5 total) were composed between 1901 and 1930. There were choral pieces, symphonies, and a violin concerto (commissioned by Fritz Kreisler). After the death of his wife in 1920, Elgar’s composing slowed down but didn’t stop completely, as he was commissioned by the BBC for a Third Symphony, which he was working on along with an opera when he died in 1934.

Elgar is considered one of the most English of English composers. His style typifies the English mood and sensibility. The trio part of the Pomp and Circumstance No 1 is not only known as that “graduation music” but as the song “Land of Hope and Glory,” which some British people think of as a second national anthem. 

I leave you with a recording of Pomp and Circumstance No 1 (with “Land of Hope and Glory” being sung within it) as well as a beautiful rendition of “Nimrod” from the Enigma Variations. I think you’ll enjoy both.