Music Hath Such Power

Well, despite the title, the real quote is "Music has charms to soothe the savage beast..." (from William Congreve's drama The Mourning Bride).
I specifically altered that quote because it is the POWER of music on which I want to focus. 

It is hard to express how much music is infused through almost all the facets of my life. Some of my earliest memories are of my father singing to me--nonsense songs that even to this day I can recall.

• "Mairzy doats and dozy doats"  
• "Kentucky Babe" 
• "I'm A Lonely Little Petunia in an Onion Patch"

As I was growing up, my father gave me free access to play his 45 rpms. I could play Beethoven string quartets, Mozart symphonies, Verdi operas. To this day, I love classical music.

I sang in school chorus, in college choir, in church and community music groups. 

Among the most joyous associations I have with music are the various choral pieces I have sung. Understand, I am no soloist--I am a solid alto. It is the CHORAL experience that I enjoy. I sang Bach's choral music, Beethoven's "Choral Fantasy," Handel's "Messiah," Haydn masses and requiems.  Maybe you notice that (at least) one great composer name is missing: Mozart.

For all the choral pieces I had participated in singing, I had never sung Mozart's tour de force choral piece--his Requiem.

Until--until one year after the horrific attacks of September 11, 2001.  Someone got the idea to have Mozart's Requiem sung all over the world. Singing the requiem would begin at  9 a.m. and be sung all over the world on September 11, 2002.

I joined with collective choral groups that united in the area where I live to participate in singing the Requiem. We sang  inside the Rotunda in our state capitol building.

Here is the genius of that idea--every time zone around the world assembled at least ONE choir and began singing the Requiem at 9 a.m. in THAT time zone. Thus the rolling Requiem. All around the world, people singing and instrumentalists accompanying in that glorious Requiem mass.

It was perhaps the most perfect way to memorialize all those who died on September 11, 2001.  And to remind us of our connectedness.  

That's why I say--music hath such power.  Power to fill and restore our souls.  Music to remind us of our common humanness. 

If you have the time, you can listen to the entire Requiem Mass here.  

It lasts just under an hour.  Think of it--24 time zones* around the world sharing in this powerful piece--each lasting an hour for a whole day.  If people in the world can come together for one day to all sing the same choral piece, what else might we be able to do?

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*There are actually more than 24 time zones (it's complicated--you can look it up).

Sing Out!

When our kids were just wee, we had several tapes with children's songs. The tapes were called "Wee Sing..." There was a "Wee Sing America," "Wee Sing Silly Songs," "Wee Sing Bible Songs," and on and on with the "Wee Sing" series.

Many of these songs were ones I knew, and had sung as a child. Some I did not know, but had great fun learning. I learned new favorites: "Boom, Boom Ain't It Great to be crazy," and "Little Bunny Foo Foo." Frankly, I mustn't get started recalling all these songs. Remembering them brings a HUGE smile to my face, but it will distract me from my subject here.

Oh, just one more side-track. One favorite song was "Catch A Little Fox." You know the words:

A hunting we will go, a hunting we will go,
Heigh ho, the dairy-o, a hunting we will go!
A hunting we will go, a hunting we will go,
We'll catch a little fox and put him in a box,
And then we'll let him go!

We would play this portion of the tape, and our daughter who was around one year old would listen intently. When the chorus line came--Catch a little fox and put him in a box, And then we'll let him go!" she would sit up, and join in merrily. As soon as the chorus was over, she went back to quiet listening. We would back the tape up again and again, and every time got the exact same reaction from her. Kind of like a wind-up doll.

So, what got me off on the subject of singing "Wee Sing" songs? Well, recently I attended a church meeting. NO, no--we did not sing "Wee Sing" songs--but we may as well have. The entire church was filled, and hardly anyone used the music. Instead, the words were projected on a screen, and people dutifully read the words. Hardly anyone bothered to sing harmony, or even knew that such a thing existed.  What a let-down.

Now, I confess, if there's something I really enjoy it is singing in four-part harmony. But, if Coke ran that old classic commercial today--I'd like to teach the world to sing in perfect harmony--the words would have to be changed.

We are losing--or maybe have already lost--our ability to sing in public. Certain styles of popular music seem to avoid melody at all costs. Televised singing contests, a la American Idol, have elevated harsh vocal performance to an art. I have a friend who teaches voice, and invariably when she gets new students, there's always someone who wants to sing "like they do on American Idol." My friend patiently explains that that's not singing. 

One of the most popular television shows, when I was a college student, was Hootenanny.  OK, you can follow the link and figure out my age...  This show aired on Saturday night.  It was practically required viewing on campus.  Admittedly, in the early days of television, there were very few places to watch it.  So, the college student lounge was a natural gathering place.  By acclimation, Hootenanny was the show of choice.  (And, on Saturday mornings, it was "Rocky and Bullwinkle.  Sigh, the good old days.)  Hootenanny featured many groups who did nothing but sing, sing, sing.

Think of the times now that we do sing together in public?  Don't include church.  And what do you get?  Maybe, if you attend a sports event, you sing the National Anthem--and just hope that someone isn't butchering it in the process.

I can think of a song for almost every occasion.  It doesn't take much inspiration for me.  A day without clouds?  "Oh, What a Beautiful Morning" or "Blue Skies, Smiling at Me."  A cold gloomy day "Oh, The Weather Outside is Frightful."  And so on.

I don't really know how to revive singing.  But, I think we've lost something very special.  Maybe we could start by using songbooks instead of projection screens.  We could skip watching "American Idol" and go instead to a sing-along concert.  We'd better hurry--soon, no one will remember what songs we had.

Sing out!

The List

I am smitten. I have a new favorite singer.

Understand, I am a classical music person, pretty much through and through. And, if I listen to something different from classical, it's likely to be classic rock. I love to play some Queen songs good and loud, as I clean the house. Or the Eagles--I can listen to them for hours. Or Crosby, Stills, Nash--sometimes Young--great songs.

Now, of all the music styles available, the one I have never really gravitated to is country music. I do love folk music, country music's very close cousin, but I just never got into country music. (As a quick aside, I do not consider rap to be music.)

Well, things are about to change.

The other day, I tuned in to Terry Gross's marvelous program Fresh Air. Her guest was Rosanne Cash, daughter of Johnny Cash. I was just getting ready to turn the radio off, when the opening story caught my attention.

As a young enterprising song writer, Rosanne was talking with her father one day as they rode the tour bus. He mentioned a song, and she said she didn't know it. Then he mentioned another--which she also did not know. His response to her was: if you're going to write country songs, there are just some essential songs you HAVE to know. So, his gift to her was the list of 100 essential country songs.

Rosanne has now recorded 13 of those songs on her new album "The List."

Right after listening to the entire show, I went out to I-Tunes, and bought the album. And I am smitten. I have the album playing now, as I write--Rosanne is singing "500 Miles from Home"--which was a staple of many 60s folk singers, including Peter, Paul and Mary.

Most of the songs on the album are familiar to me--for example "Long Black Veil" I first heard sung by Joan Baez.

But the song that is just resonating in my head is "Sea of Heartbreak." Visit the Rosanne Cash website, and you will hear that song playing. This song is nearly perfect. When she wanted someone to sing back-up harmony, she thought--well, what about Bruce Springsteen. So she asked, and he said YES. Bruce Springsteen!

Lest, I gush on too long, I will stop. You can listen to the Fresh Air interview or visit the Rosanne Cash website.

Talk about me doing some against my personal norm.

DISCLAIMER...It's Going Around

DISCLAIMER:

The following items are NOT original with me.

You might even have seen them before, as this list is going around the Internet.

But, they made me laugh. . .and, frankly, any time I can laugh, that is good.

Right now, I am knee-deep in round two of student papers, and, well, I need a laugh. . .
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Some of the artists of the 60s* (and maybe even the 70s) are revising their hits with new lyrics to accommodate aging baby boomers. They include:

Bobby Darin --- Splish, Splash, I Was Havin' a Flash

Herman's Hermits ---Mrs. Brown, You've Got a Lovely Walker

Ringo Starr --- I Get By With a Little Help From Depends

The Bee Gees --- How Can You Mend a Broken Hip

Roberta Flack--- The First Time Ever I Forgot Your Face

Johnny Nash --- I Can't See Clearly Now

Paul Simon--- Fifty Ways to Lose Your Liver

The Commodores ---Once, Twice, Three Times to the Bathroom

Marvin Gaye --- I Heard It Through the Grape Nuts

Procol Harem--- A Whiter Shade of Hair

Leo Sayer --- You Make Me Feel Like Napping

The Temptations --- Papa's Got a Kidney Stone

ABBA --- Denture Queen

Tony Orlando --- Knock 3 Times On The Ceiling If You Hear Me Fall

Helen Reddy --- I Am Woman, Hear Me Snore

Leslie Gore--- It's My Procedure, and I'll Cry If I Want To.

And Last but NOT least:

Willie Nelson --- On the Commode Again

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There, I hope that provided a Friday chuckle. Any favorites here?

* For a sweet take on a 60s hit song writer--Neil Sedaka--reworking his OWN hits, visit Ginnie's blog here.

Sweet Music

We were visiting Boothbay Harbor in Maine, exploring a little shop when we first heard it. This was more than 10 years ago (before we began going to Europe for vacations). Maine is a great state to visit (and I even harbor the occasional thought of retiring there). But that's not what this story is about.

Stepping into this little shop, I heard the most perfect melody playing over the store's sound system. It was an instrumental number, something I had never heard before. I was so taken with the melody that I asked the store clerk what tape they had on--she told me, and I looked up the name of the particular number playing. It was from Andrew Lloyd Weber's newly composed Requiem, the Pie Jesu portion of the mass. Only later did I hear it again, and realize that in fact it was a choral number.

I was reminded of this first hearing when my husband and I attended church today--the Pie Jesu was one of the featured pieces of special music. It always brings a tear to my eye--it is just so exquisitely written. If you don't know it, here is Sarah Brightman singing it (it was for her as original featured soloist that Andrew Lloyd Webber wrote the piece):



There have been other pieces of perfect music that have captured me from the first hearing. I loved the series on the Civil War directed by Ken Burns, and fell in love with the one piece they used repeatedly throughout that series: Ashokan Farewell, written by Jay Unger.



Music, of course, has this incredible ability to insinuate itself into the very fiber of our beings. Years ago, when I was invited to go and see a stage version of "Amadeus" I warned my theater companion that I was likely to cry, if I heard any of Mozart's music. Sure enough--the opening strains of one of Mozart's pieces began, and I dissolved into tears.

One of my favorite movie scenes comes from "The Shawshank Redemption" when Andy Dufresne locks himself in the office, and plays an aria from "The Marriage of Figaro" over the prison loudspeaker system. If you've never seen it, go here.

Sweet music.

Shakespeare makes multiple references to music in his poems and plays. This quatrain sums up the power of music:

How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music
Creep in our ears: soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.

Merchant of Venice Act V, scene i

Let the sounds of music creep in our ears. Ah, sweet music.

Any favorite piece of sweet music that moves you?

Romance at Twin Pines

If this were a movie, or maybe even a Nancy Drew book (not a Hardy Boys), it would be titled "Romance at Twin Pines."

Since I promised, in my last blog, here's the story of how my husband and I met.

It was the summer of 1965. I had just completed my junior year in college; my parents had returned from Africa--having been gone for 5 years. And I was looking for a summer job. My parents were planning to go around the U.S. giving missionary talks at churches. So I needed a job where I would be able to live and work. I am not sure exactly how I learned about this job, but I heard that a local church camp needed a craft teacher. Well, I can do that--I thought. So I applied.

As it happens, this church camp had been founded, in part, by my husband's grandfather, and father, and was sponsored by the church my husband attended as a youth. And, as it happens, he was a counselor for the first week of boys' camp. So that is how we met.

Oh, but there's so much more to this story. You see, even though we knew each other's names--after all, we were co-workers, we really didn't click. In addition to being the craft teacher, I also helped lead the singing at the chapel services. The camp had a lovely outdoor chapel, so all the morning worship times were held outdoors. I had picked a song that involved some motions--singers standing when it was their turn. I divided the group into two segments--and when it came time for the side where the counselors were sitting to sing--they produced a paltry sound. I mentioned that--maybe, if the counselors would sing up, that side would do better.

S-l-o-w burn. The counselors, led by my husband, decided to get even with me. He went out to a local store, and bought a cardboard plaque. This isn't the same plaque--but the words are EXACTLY what that one said.

Yup--you read it correctly: EVEN A FISH WOULDN"T GET IN TROUBLE IF HE KEPT HIS MOUTH SHUT!

I was incensed, non-plused, and speechless. Fume, fume. I don't know if the battle escalated, but I was really mad. So, we had this low-grade rivalry going.

Then came game night--Thursday night. We were playing Cabin Hunt--the point of the game was for one cabin to hide, the other to hunt. But this time, it was counselors against campers, and that's how my husband and I ended up on the same team. And, for some unknown reason, we decided to hide so well that the campers wouldn't find us. A particular detail my husband recalls is that we decided to wear dark clothing, but I didn't have a suitable dark shirt, so he loaned me one of his. This detail will become important later in the story. On the camp grounds were many lovely tall pine trees, including twin pines, their branches within ten feet of each other, reaching majestically toward the sky. Up we climbed. All the way to the top. Each in our own tree. Completely out of sight of campers below.

We watched the campers scamper back and forth, unable to find us. And, after a bit, we got to talking. We talked, and talked. Finally, by game's end--we had not been found, climbed down, raced to the base victoriously. And we had ended our rivalry.

The next night was Sleep Out. Campers and counselors trooped out to the ball field with their sleeping bags. First, there was a campfire service, and then the non-counselor staff was to return to the main camp. I stayed behind, sitting with my former rival, talking some more. And, after campers had fallen asleep, I sang to him--the song "There is a Ship" which was popular at the time, sung by Mary of Peter, Paul and Mary. (And that's why he gave me the first gift he ever gave me--the album by Peter, Paul and Mary which included that song.)

Finally, one of the adults--I mean a real adult--came out and shooed me back to my cabin.

The next morning, Saturday, campers and counselors left for home, including my new found love. I got in the shower that morning, and stood there and bawled my eyes out, convinced I would never see him again. And then on Saturday evening, the one free time before new campers came in, he showed up. He asked me--what would your boyfriend say if I asked you out. (At the time, I was "dating"--nothing serious--someone else.) My answer--why don't you ask me what I would say?

I said YES. We went to Twin Kiss and got icecream sundaes.

The next date we went to Mt. Gretna and saw a performance of "The Sound of Music."

And, as they say, the rest is history!

Oh, the shirt? Well, I was wearing the perfume I wore at the time--"Blue Grass"--and the scent lingered on it. That particular detail my husband remembered--and had to remind me of, as I tell this story.

Wee Sing

I apologize for what I am about to do—I am going to write the words of a song, and I can almost guarantee that, if you know the song, it will get stuck in your head for a while.

It's a world of laughter
A world of tears
It's a world of hopes
And a world of fears
There's so much that we share
That it's time we're aware
It's a small world after all

Not “ringing any bells” yet? Well, here’s the chorus.

It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small world after all
It's a small, small world.

If you click on the link, you will be able to listen to the music. And then? And then, it will be S-T-U-C-K in your head all day. I can think of no other song that so insinuates itself into our minds!

Music has such power. It charms us when we are young and it stays with us as we grow old.

When our children were small, I sang lots of little ditties to them. In fact, when our daughter was little, we got a series of tapes called Wee Sing. There were Wee Sing Camp Fire Songs, Nursery Rhymes, Christmas Songs, Bible Songs—and on and on. The songs were such fun.

We found one particular song our daughter really liked. It’s the song “A-Hunting We Will Go.” The chorus included these lines: “We’ll catch a little fox and put him in a box, and then we’ll let him go.” She loved that line. She’d sit up in her chair, animatedly sing “Catch a little fox” and then relax. I confess, we backed the tape up multiple times just to see her spring to life singing about the little fox.

Children’s songs that include animation have always been a favorite for me. I sang “The Grand Old Duke of York” to my children and their friends, especially if they were outside playing. I marched the kids up to the top of the hill, down the hill, and half way in between. If you want more Kids songs just click on the link.

We also had a softer side to singing. I always sang my children a bedtime lullaby—either Edelweiss (from The Sound of Music) or the lovely old Welsh melody All through the night. I still think the words to this lovely folk song are so appropriate to falling asleep.

Sleep my child and peace attend thee,
All through the night
Guardian angels God will send thee,
All through the night
Soft the drowsy hours are creeping
Hill and vale in slumber sleeping,
I my loving vigil keeping
All through the night.

In fact, singing is what sparked the romance between me and my husband. We met at a church camp, where we were both staff. But our immediate reaction to each other was. . .less than positive. As the camp week passed, though, we began to talk. And then we began to like each other. Then there was the final night when campers camp out overnight. My husband was a counselor, so he was going to be sleeping out with the kids. I was a crafts teacher, so I was supposed to go back to the main cabin. But, I stayed and we kept talking. And then, I sang to him a folk song (made popular by Peter, Paul and Mary) to the melody of O Waly Waly—“There is a ship.” Thus began our romance.

Well, I don’t know if music really has the power to start a romance, but once imprinted in our brains, music stays there long after other memories fade. When my mother-in-law, who suffered from Alzheimer’s disease, had lost her ability to speak, she could still sing songs. I was amazed when the nursing home staff told us she had taken part in Christmas carol sing.

So how am I going to get “It’s a Small Small World” unstuck from your brain? Well the only thing that I know that works is to watch the Knut polar bear video. The song featured on that video will replace the Disney song easily!

Let the sounds of music creep in our ears

One of the banes of my driving existence (when I am not railing against drivers talking on cell phones—that’s a whole blog subject in itself) is to pull up next to a car that is fairly jumping off its tires with super hyped loud speakers blaring, nay thumping, rap. Blecccchhhhh!!! I feel like yelling to the driver—on the assumption that he could actually hear me—to say: Do you mind? I don’t make you listen to my music; please don’t make me listen to yours.

Well, today as I was out running errands and listening to my local NPR station, a piece of music came on that gave me the chance to pay back all the rap thumpers: Charpentier’s marvelous affirming Prelude to Te Deum. What a joy to listen to this magnificent piece. As I pulled up to a traffic light, I cranked the sound up all the way and eased my windows down a bit. Glorious!

I do love music—and for me that means serious (so-called classical) music, some jazz, classic rock and a smattering of other music styles. I love singing. The music experiences I love best are those where music has moved me to tears. Several such occasions come to mind.

Some thirty years ago, when I was singing in our church choir, the then choir director arranged for us to perform Beethoven’s Choral Fantasy. At that time, I had never heard the Choral Fantasy before. Many of the themes that Beethoven would later develop in the 4th movement of the 9th symphony are teased at in the Choral Fantasy. For the piano soloist, the choir director lined up Daniel Epstein, who at that time was a budding young pianist. Since our church did not have a piano worthy of being played for such a performance, the choir director went hunting for a suitable piano. I don’t remember where he found it, but the choir director located a lovely Steinway grand piano, that today is one of the church’s prized musical instruments. Soloists were secured, and the Motet Choir, as we were then called, practiced and practiced. Finally, we performed the piece and all the elements blended. To this day, I cannot hear the Choral Fantasy without my eyes filling with tears. And, yes, I crank the sound up on that piece as well.

Our choir would go on to do other wonderful choral pieces—we sang Haydn’s Lord Nelson Mass that even now I can still sing almost from memory. We sang Haydn’s The Creation (the wonderful opening movement evoking “let there be light” is the best musical rendition of creation I have ever heard) and Haydn’s The Four Seasons. We sang Durufle’s Requiem and works by Langlais. But one signature choral piece that we never sang was Mozart’s Requiem.

I had listened to Mozart’s Requiem many times. In fact, when I first went to see the play Amadeus performed, the first few opening bars of a piece of Mozart’s music set me to weeping. The Requiem is featured prominently in that play (and also in the movie adaptation). But I had never sung it. Until. . .

On the first anniversary of the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center, someone had the inspiration that a fitting way to memorialize that event and those whose lives were lost would be to have Mozart’s Requiem sung in every time zone around the world. The performance would begin at the exact minute the first plane struck the South Tower. Since the piece takes an hour to perform, a choir in one time zone would be finishing as a choir in the next would be beginning its performance. When the choirs were announced for Harrisburg, PA, I signed up. Of course, we practiced; to be sure not so much as if we were performing the piece in a concert performance, but we did practice.

Then on September 11, 2002, we gathered at the Rotunda of the state capitol building in Harrisburg, and with a massed choir of several hundred, and only piano accompaniment, we sang Mozart’s Requiem. Thus I participated in what was called the Rolling Requiem. The work begins with the somber dark tones of the Requiem itself, then moves into the Kyrie. Next comes the crashing fearful Dies Irae (Day of Wrath). My favorite is one of the more lyric portions of the Requiem, the lovely and moving Benedictus. What a thrill—what a somber moment—what an experience moving me to tears.