There’s a handful of pieces that would be good for Labor Day: there’s the musicians’ walkout of Haydn’s “Farewell” Symphony; there’s the joy of the workers in the Anvil Chorus; and of course there’s the Fanfare for the Common Man to cheer on the proletariat.

But I want something that really captures the down-and-dirty manual laborers of the early 20th century. The Plow that Broke the Plains was a 1936 short movie, sponsored by the US government, which linked the dust bowl to uncontrolled farming. While not specifically about the labor movement, the film does demonstrate how greed in high places can displace and destroy the workers in the low places. The score, by Virgil Thomson, incorporates hymns, American folk tunes, and cowboy melodies.

You’d think that naming the “bestest choral piece ever written ever” would be a subjective matter. Well, I’m here to tell you that it’s not; this is nothing short of hard science. If you disagree with me, it’s because you’re wrong. Sorry.

German joke time – Johann Sebastian Bach was a “sechs” maniac. He wrote six (sechs) Brandenburg concertos, six English suites, six French suites, six organ trios, six violin suites, six cello suites, six flute sonatas, (the list goes on …), and six motets. Joking aside, it is said that this is an homage to God’s making the world in six days and resting on the seventh – Bach wouldn’t presume God-like perfection by writing a seventh concerto, suite, motet, etc. Little did he know that he actually had achieved God-like perfection in practically every note he penned.

The motets were mostly written as funeral pieces. When a person died, Bach’s choir of St. Thomas church would gather outside the home of the deceased and sing a motet before the body was processed to the church for the funeral service. This motet is written for two 4-voice choirs, and is a tour-de-force of what styles were expected of a baroque composer and what the baroque voice was expected to do. This stuff is exceedingly difficult (but fun) to sing; the writing is simply amazing. A quick outline:

• 0:00 a vocal courante, sung antiphonally between the two choirs
• 2:17 one choir begins singing a fugue, accompanied by the other’s choirs continued courante
• eventually the other choir joins in on the fugue – both choir simultaneously sings the fugue AND the dance
• 4:40 a vocal chorale prelude – one choir sings a hymn, while the other provides commentary
• 8:40 another vocal antiphonal dance, this time a bourrée
• and because that’s never enough for Bach, at 10:07, a marvelous fugue which both choirs sing together

Sing this at my funeral, please.

Today is Saturday; take a half-hour to close your eyes, sit, breathe, think, and of course, listen.

You have to admire Carson Cooman‘s legendary work ethic. At 35, he already has penned over 1100 musical compositions, all the while maintaining careers in organ performing, academic writing, and others. He has written for every genre and his music has been performed all over the world “in venues that range from the stage of Carnegie Hall to the basket of a hot air balloon.”

His poignant Symphony no. 4 is best described using Cooman’s own words (taken from his website):

… for me, a symphony is a piece that attempts (in some rather small way) to make an artistic comment on a “big topic,” whether that be emotional/psychological, societal, or natural…. My fourth symphony, Liminal, addresses climate change—a topic at the forefront of discussion in the present time. The English word liminal comes from the Latin word for threshold. In social and cultural anthropology, the concept of liminality is used when describing rituals and processes; it refers specifically to the quality of ambiguity that occurs in the middle of the ritual, when participants are not the same as they were before the ritual began, but have not yet reached the conclusion.

It seems inarguable that the earth is (and perhaps has always been) in a liminal state. This piece is made up of varied soundscapes that reflect musically on the large-scale changes taking place, many of which have very distressing consequences for the future of the life we know…. while the ultimate trajectory is perhaps disturbing, as the ecologically-minded composer John Luther Adams has written, “Amid the turbulent waves we may still find the light, the wisdom and courage we need to pass through this darkness of our own making.”

[In this symphony,] one harp is tuned a quarter tone lower than the rest of the orchestra, and the two harps together provide an uneasy, blurry tonal area through which the rest of the ensemble is led…. in the final section only one harp remains. Some sort of transformation has been reached, or at least the search for light continues. The quarter tone contrast returns for the final chord. Perhaps the process only seems to be at an end from our limited perspective.