A few months ago, there was a story about a church in Mexico that reappeared after lying at the bottom of a reservoir for centuries. Similarly, there’s a church in Venezuela that is sometimes wet, sometimes dry. Pretty cool stuff!

French impressionistic composer Claude Debussy was dreaming of this stuff one hundred years before. His “Submerged Cathedral” is a staple of the piano repertoire. Large chords remind us of tall stone towers, dominating a murky landscape, portrayed by murmuring notes in the bass. The image in this video looks like the church where King Triton would take Ariel and his daughters. No doubt, Sebastian played a mean bubble-organ there.

Francis Poulenc‘s first song cycle was Le bestiaire. It was never a “smash hit” as far as Art Music goes, but it remains in the repertory for a number of reasons. It demonstrates Poulenc’s compositional talent, early in his career, while he was still serving in the French army during World War I. It’s not exactly avant-garde, but it’s modern enough to catch you off-guard if you’re not used to the Art Music of the 20th century. And, if you do find the modern sound a bit challenging, the pieces are short and sweet, and the subject matter, fun (animals!) Finally, it helps to introduce French Art Song, or mélodie, to budding voice students.

The movements are:

1. The Dromedary (there’s your HUMP DAY joke)
2. The Goat
3. The Grasshopper
4. The Dolphin
5. The Crayfish
6. The Carp

The books and movies that are set in the medieval era usually portray a positive and a negative side to life in olden times. On one hand, famine, hunger, disease, plague, superstition, wars, cruelty – a harsh life. On the other hand, romance, heroics, bravery, passion, beauty – an over-romanticized vision of a charmingly simple life, without the madness of the modern age.

I am no historical scholar, so I won’t go into how things “really were” because I don’t know. What I do know is that the music of the high gothic era is as beautiful and complex as its architecture and art. If you compare the thick, heavy romanesque buildings of the earlier age to the light, ornate buildings of the gothic era, you can understand the profound difference between the monophonic (one note at a time) plainsong of the early medieval period and polyphonic (many independent notes simultaneously) gothic music.

Pérotin le Grand was one of the few named medieval composers from whom we have music. He is the most famous composer of the Notre Dame School of polyphony, and of the Ars Antiqua (“Old Art”) style. This piece, “Sederunt Principes” sounds a bit strange to our modern ears (each word takes about a minute to sing), but you can’t deny that it’s pretty cool.

I especially like some of the comments on this video: “eeeee e ee ee eee  e ee  ee  ee e e e e  eeee  e e e   ee” Yeah that just about sums it up.