Pickled Resurrected Children and a Crazy Rain

September 11, 2023 at 9:03 pm

I was daydreaming through some of my favorite musical memories and “stumbled” (if you will) on a piece which has a special place in my heart.

I envy Benjamin Britten because he has written a lot of church music that sounds very un-churchy. I too have written music for use in church, and usually anything that pushes any boundary gets panned (or banned) as too weird to be used or downright ugly. Somehow he was able to be creative in his composition, and still got played. When his cantata St. Nicholas was first performed, it was hailed as “pious frivolity”. And it is indeed both pious and frivolous – and also creative while fitting the tight-fitting form of church music.

First of all, this ain’t no Santy Claus musical. This is about the legendary St. Nicholas of Myra who punched heretics at the first council of Nicaea. And like so many saints of the church, the stories about him are utterly ridiculous – so wacky they wouldn’t even make it into a SpongeBob episode. So from the getgo, it’s hard to take this too seriously. But at the same time, there’s a sort of reverence in the work that elevates a historical figure that time and legend have blurred into a superhero. There’s even a chorus that directly asks what the heck are we modern people supposed to make of these looney stories? We learn what we can from them, dismiss what is outrageous, and try to make sense of our own looney times.

So what’s so looney? My favorite number is “The Pickled Boys”. Yes, you read that correctly. During a famine, a butcher killed three boys and pickled their bodies to sell as pork (side note – many suggest that some religions forbid pork because it is supposedly similar in taste to human flesh. Barf.) Nicholas calls out the butcher on his sins, and then proceeds to call the boys forth – which of course they do. Their bodies reassemble in the pickle barrel, and the boys respond by singing Alleluias.

You can’t make this stuff up.

Well that’s good and fun, but now let me tell you about my personal experience performing this work. I was conducting this – full choirs and orchestra – on a hot June day in a church with no air conditioning. We were dripping in sweat. We finally began the closing chorus of the cantata – first a Nunc Dimittis while Nicholas breathes his last, followed by an awkwardly angular anglican hymn (London New, for those who care).

The organ finally opens up to fortissimo during the final verse: “Ye fearful saints, fresh courage take; the clouds ye so much dread are big with mercy and shall break in blessings on your head.” At the moment of “clouds … shall break blessings” the skies opened up and utterly drenched the church in cool rain. Right after the final cadence (organ thundering along with the actual thunder), my choristers ran outside afterwards and stood in the rain, soaking themselves. It was about as hilariously joyful as a church cantata could be. The whole place was full of pious frivolity.

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Music for self-flagellation: a Lenten Playlist

April 5, 2019 at 5:16 pm

Gregorio Allegri: Miserere MeiPsalm 51 was supposedly written by David after he had slept with another man’s wife. Even if you’re not an adulterer yourself, you can feel the heavy weight of regret in Allegri‘s famous setting of this text.

Herbert Howells: Like as the Hart – Dated April 1941, legend* has it that this anthem was written while the Nazis were bombing London. When I hear it, I imagine Howells crouching in fear in the corner of a dark house, listening to the explosions outside. He’s trying to calm his brain and find some peace. He dreams up music that is misty and serene, and tries to remember a prayer or a psalm to say. Psalm 42 comes to mind: a deer, thirsting for a stream of water. The beginning and ending sections feels unsettled and timeless; the middle section is full of stress and suffering.

*the legend probably isn’t true, since the work lists Cheltenham as the place it was composed – nearly 100 miles away from London. But it creates such a powerful image for this piece!

Johann Sebastian Bach: Cantata 38 “Aus tiefer Noth” – “Out of the depths I cry to you O God.” This piece is based on Martin Luther’s hymn setting of Psalm 130, another popular penitential psalm (P.P.P. – is that even a thing?). Bach magnifies it into a short masterwork. The final chorus begins on the highly unstable V42 chord (nerd alert!) – inconceivable!

Thomas Morley: Nolo Mortem Peccatoris – A contemporary of Shakespeare, Morley is best known for his madrigals. This sweet little devotional song sets an imagined prayer of Jesus before his arrest, using both Latin and English.

Gerald Finzi: Lo, the Full, Final Sacrifice – This festal anthem is a hymn to the Eucharist. Many prefer this to be sung during Eastertide, I consider it a Lenten piece because of its association with the Last Supper, plus the overall mood of the music: dark and passionate. And, it is one of two anthems I know that use the word “pelican.” (The other anthem that uses the word “pelican” is The Weasel Cantata, which claims to be the only anthem on the dietary laws of Leviticus.)

Giovanni Pergolesi: Stabat Mater – The Stabat Mater is a devotional that envisions Mary at the foot of the cross, watching her son die. The video below is only the first and last movements of a twelve movement work. Like most composers before Beethoven, Pergolesi probably didn’t compose this so he himself could become immortal, so there are some great movements that are great, and some that are … okay. We’ll skip to the best stuff for this one.

John Sanders: The Reproaches for Good FridayThe Reproaches are a set of devotional responses which originated in the Medieval era. The text is written in first person from the perspective of Jesus, who compares instances of God’s grace from the Old Testament to the cruelty of his crucifixion. No musical setting of this text is more powerful than Sanders‘.

Joel Thompson: Seven Last Words of the Unarmed – Another Lenten devotion is known as the Seven Last Words (sayings) of Christ. I’ll be honest and say I’m not really a fan of any of the settings I’ve heard. However, this new work by Joel Thompson is really powerful. Instead of the words of Jesus, Thompson sets the last words uttered by unarmed victims of police brutality. It’s chilling to hear.

Johann Sebastian Bach: Mache dich, mein Herze, rein – I guess I should end on a positive note, for those of you who like happy endings (as for me, give me a miserable ending every time!) This aria is from Bach’s setting of the Passion from the book of Matthew, and is sung just after Jesus dies, and provides a moment of respite from the very turbulent and emotional drama of the crucifixion.


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What does Wind sound like?

October 23, 2017 at 12:47 pm

Wind is one of those words that can mean different things according to the context in which it is used. Physically, it is the movement of gasses; metaphorically, it can refer to luck (winds of fate), change in society or culture (winds of change), change of (metaphorical or actual) season, the state of being alive (having breath). Wind takes a role in many, if not all, religions. And of course, let us not forget the wind of the butt.

So, how do composers set the idea of wind to music?

We may as well start with some of the stereotypical musical settings of wind – the fast, chromatic passages that rise and fall in Richard WagnerOverture to Der fliegende Holländer (The Flying Dutchman), the trills and tympani in Gioachino Rossini Storm Scene from Il barbiere di Siviglia (The Barber of Seville), and the spooky violin glissandi in this colorful, fun work by Ferde Grofé – Cloudburst from Grand Canyon Suite.

Franz Schubert – Die Wetterfahne (The Weathervane) from Winterreise (Winter’s Journey). It doesn’t take a lot of imagination to see how Schubert paints the wind in this song – piano arpeggios and trills practically make you shiver, just like a cold, biting wind. This song is part of the wonderfully depressing song cycle that Schubert wrote as a he approached the end of his short life.

The wind is turning the weathervane on the roof of my sweetheart’s house. Round and round it mocks and teases my sighs and my tears…. For Nature plays with our hearts as the wind plays with the vane.

The wind also plays a part in Schubert’s Erlkönig.

Gustav Mahler – Im diesem Wetter (In this Weather) from Kindentotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children). Another happy little composition, here the wind is a nasty thing that kills babies. Mahler’s amazing orchestration makes you feel the stinging raindrops and blowing gales.

In this weather, in this windy storm, I would never have sent the children out. They have been carried off, I wasn’t able to warn them!

César Franck – Les Éolides (The Breezes). This is a sort of tone-poem about Aeolus, the keeper of the winds in the Odyssey, who gifts the winds to help Odysseus find his way home. The piece doesn’t narrate the story like some other tone-poems, but instead paints a picture of the breeze blowing the sea and gently swaying a ship on its journey. The music is so ridiculously French Romantic in its melodic gesture and harmony; it’s easy to see where Debussy and Ravel got their sound. Finally, we need to note that the composer’s full name is César-Auguste-Jean-Guillaume-Hubert Franck, because it takes a good bit of wind to get that name out.

Speaking of Aeolus, there’s an instrument called the Aeolian Harp which is played by – you guess it – the wind. You can listen to one here.There are two piano works related to this ethereal instrument – though neither can be said to really imitate the Aeolian Harp’s sound, they do capture the mystical, magical quality of its music. First, Frédéric Chopin’s Ab-major Etude was subtitled “Aeolian Harp” by his fellow composer, Robert Schumann, because of its quick, wind-like arpeggios.

Henry Cowell – Aeolian Harp. Cowell was known for pushing the boundaries of composition. Ironically, this work is one of his tamest, but it’s still a little different from what you might expect in a classical piano piece. And, unlike Chopin, he himself titled this piece with Aeolus’ name.

Carson Kievman – Hurricane Symphony. You might call this a modern equivalent of the Franck work mentioned earlier. It’s a longer listen, and tells the story of a real storm rather than mythology. Kievman is a living American composer whose current project is an opera about Nikola Tesla. How cool is that?

Johann Sebastian Bach – Kyrie, Gott Heiliger Geist (Have mercy, God Holy Ghost). This is part of Bach’s third Clavier-Übung, also called the German Organ Mass – much has been written about it, so I won’t discuss it here for the sake of brevity. This piece is a fancy setting of a hymn which pleads for mercy from the Holy Spirit, which, in the bible, first appears to the disciples in a wind. The melody of the hymn (cantus firmus) is found in the bass –  long, slow, deep notes – and as it is an organ piece, these low notes require a lot of wind flowing through organ pipes. As the piece progresses, there are rhythmic motifs that sound like the rushing of wind as well. There is also a sequence which repeats itself seven times (normally, it should be no more than four), climaxing at the highest note on the baroque organ. Bach is definitely thinking deep here.

Olivier Messiaen – Le vent de l’Esprit (The Wind of the Spirit) from Messe de la Pentecôte (Pentecost Mass) Not to be outdone by a German, Messiaen writes his own windy setting of the Holy Spirit for that big bag of hot-air, the organ. At the end, a nice fat chord puts the bellows to the test, as wind rushes through the pipes and into the church.

-= So, I promised some fart music as well. =-

Carl Orff – Ego Sum Abbas from Carmina Burana. The fart in this short little aria (if you can call it that) from this monumentally famous choral work is, sadly, nearly always ignored by conductors and performers. A baritone soloist sings a satirical monologue about being a nasty drunken abbot. But then, at 1:26, there’s a single-note tuba solo, which has no musical relation to the rest of the piece. Why? I’ll tell you why. It’s a fart. The drunken jerk of an abbot farted. And I believe it should be required that the soloist pretend to break wind at this pinnacle moment of this oratorio.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart Bei der Hitz im Sommer eß ich. Mozart was a dirty little boy. He wrote a number of canons on butt licking, probably for singing with his mates at the local drinking hole. No, I’m not lying. After his death, his dirty little canons were all published, but with alternative words that were much more acceptable for public performance. The video below, unfortunately, is sung with the alternate “clean” lyrics, but here is is a translation of the original:

In the heat of summer I like to eat roots and spices, also butter and radish; they expel a lovely wind and cool me.

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