A Musical Interlude

I've written about my enjoyment of the internet music/radio site Spotify.  There are all sorts of things I could write about this morning, but, really, I just feel like listening to music.  What I like most about Spotify is that it is social.  Not only can you link it to Twitter and Facebook, but you can follow others, check out their playlists, share music, and (what I do) steal when someone listens to a song you forgot about.

I have 6 different playlists.  The shortest is a mock-up of the soundtrack to  the film Almost Famous.  For some reason, that's not on Spotify, so I cobbled one together based on the music in the movie.  It ranges from the obscure - "Something In The Air" by Thunderclap Newman - the truly classic, including "Paranoid" by Black Sabbath and "Tiny Dancer", featured in a memorable scene.

I have a jazz playlist and one of choral music, to both of which I listen at work.  The jazz playlist has 217 tracks, spanning from early Louis Armstrong and Duke Ellington up through Weather Report, with a heavy reliance on Miles Davis, Dizzy Gillespie, Bird, and Trane.  The choral music is heavy on the Renaissance composers, but also includes Rachmaninoff's Vespers, Morten Lauridsen's Lux Aeterna, and some choral renditions of traditional hymns.

I have one I call "Morning Mix".  That's music for Lisa and me, in the mornings.  Quiet, probably banal, but it is pleasant enough, and it makes us both smile.

The big one I call "Eclectic Mix of Favorites".  785 songs, spanning funk, soul, pop, rock, and, well, pretty much whatever.  Here's a sample thanks to the "shuffle" button:

The Real Thing - Faith No More
Furry Sings the Blues - Joni Mitchell
Talk Talk - Talk Talk
Wilderness Heart - Black Mountain
Torment of the Metals - Black Math Horseman
Pull Me Under - Dream Theater
Meanwhile - Moody Blues
Save It For Later - The Beat
Rosalita - Bruce Springsteen
Heart of Gold - Neil Young

And because a post like this wouldn't be complete without something extra:

I'm planning on putting together a Gospel playlist, with some help from some friends who know the genre better than I do.  Because the soul can be fed in all sorts of ways, am I right?

Place-Holding Invitation To Share What You're Listening To

See what I did there, ending the post-title with a preposition? Bad me.

Back in January, I mentioned internet music/radio site Spotify. I have come to love it in many wonderful ways, not least because it allows listeners to create all sorts of playlists. Because I'm simple-minded, I have just one, though, unimaginatively called "My Faves". It currently holds 341 tracks, to which I keep adding all sorts of goodies all the time. Below are ten songs, only the first of which is non-random, because when you open Spotify, you have to choose a song with which to begin, then the shuffle takes over and who knows where you'll land.

The challenge, should you choose to accept it, is this: What are you listening to? Pandora? Spotify? Slacker Radio? iTunes? What's on your playlist, either on purpose or by accident? Please share with me because I'm a nosy-nelly.
This Beat Goes On/Switching To Glide - The Kings 
Midnight Rider (Live at Rock-and-Roll Hall of Fame) - Allman Brothers Band 
Mellow Down Easy (Live) - Black Crowes 
Subdivisions - Rush 
Soulful Terrain - Eric Johnson 
Boys Don't Cry - The Cure 
Bad Moon Rising - Creedence Clearwater Revival 
Avalon - Roxy Music 
Pretty Lives - John Wesley 
September - Earth, Wind, and Fire

For those paying attention, that last one is doubly evil. It's a song about losing your virginity, by a band named after three of the four classic elements; Maurice White was a big follower of astrology, and linked it to ancient Egyptian and sub-Saharan African religions. So, paganism, which everyone knows are just demons in costumes.

And Robert Smith of The Cure was androgynous which violates some verse in the Bible that no one can point to.

A Bunch Of New Songs

O sing to the Lord a new song,
for he has done marvellous things.
His right hand and his holy arm
have gained him victory.

Psalm 98:1

An on-going discussion, from a different angle . . .

Meet, if you would, Tony MacAlpine:



I was introduced to him, quite literally, less than two hours ago. Not new, perhaps. New to me, however. Which begs all sorts of questions, not least about what, precisely I thought I was doing with all those music posts for so long.

Then, there's a truly new band. They just released their first collection of music (I really hate calling them albums anymore since I buy it all electronically). They're from Texas. They're a mixture of classic psychedlic rock and good old fashioned Texas blues a la Stevie Ray Vaughan and Albert King. Their release, Conversations in D Minor, was one of the gifts I gave myself with my iTunes bucks.



Then there is the discovery that even in darkness and the celebration of evil, one can find beauty. There is something about the songs of the Norwegian Black Metal band Emperor that I just find . . . entrancing. I am the last person to say I like the whole screaming-rather-than-singing thing that has infected so much rock. Yet, it works here so well, in combination with the whole sonic, tonal approach. I cannot help but call it beautiful. Dark beauty to be sure, but that, too, is a part of God's creation.



Also, I should mention the fun I've been having using the various artist radio stations on Spotify. If you don't have it, I highly recommend it, especially over the far overrated and tired Pandora.

So, there's always all sorts of new things to hear, new sounds to encounter and think about. New songs to sing to the LORD, like the Psalmist says.

Return Unto The Lord Thy God

How lonely sits the city
   that once was full of people!
How like a widow she has become,
   she that was great among the nations!
She that was a princess among the provinces
   has become a vassal. - Lamentations 1:1

I made a happy discovery this past week.  Looking for a variety of music to which to listen while at work, I typed "choral music holy week" in the search bar on Spotify.  Among many other things there appeared several choral settings for the Lamentations of Jeremiah.  It turns out a musical setting for this short book was an integral part of the liturgy of Holy Week, once upon a time.

The Lamentations were used in the office of matins of the Holy Week. matins. There are 3 offices, on Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Over time, the office moved from morning to the night before, so that in some cases the lamentations are named for Wednesday, Thursday and Friday: for example in the Charpentier version. At the Sistine Chapel, where traditions died hard, the matins still took place in early morning in the 19th century.

Each office consists in 3 vigilae; each vigila consists in 3 psalms with respons and 3 lectures with respons. The Lamentations were read/sung in three lectures at each of the first vigila (the other lectures were drawn from the New Testament and Saint Augustine respectively). The Lamentations therefore consist of 3 sets of 3 lectures, for Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Each lecture is ended with the call: Jerusalem convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum (Jerusalem, return onto the Lord thy God) which actually comes from Hosea 14:1.

While there are three offices, the five chapters have been set to separate movements by a variety of composers.  Some of the best are the Renaissance composers  Thomas Tallis, Giovanni Perluigi de Palestrina, and Tomas Luis de Victoria.  I have chosen Palestrina's; ChoralWiki lists sixteen examples from different composers, but these are hardly exhaustive.  In Latin, the text for the first Lamentation reads as follows:

Incipit lamentatio Jeremiae prophetae.

Aleph. Quomodo sedet sola civitas plena populo? facta est quasi vidua domina gentium, 

princeps provinciarum facta est sub tributo. (1,1)

Beth. Plorans ploravit in nocte et lacrimae ejus in maxillis ejus. (1,2)

Jerusalem, Jerusalem, convertere ad Dominum Deum tuum