I’m not a musician in any real sense of the word, only an enthusiast. In good choirs I’ve sung in, my contributions have been limited to reasonably non-incompetent alto-line filler, for pieces like Mendelssohn’s Richte mich Gott. That’s one kind of good choir: the choir which . . . . Continue Reading »
Doesn’t anybody play air guitar any more? Dude, you say. Air guitar? You mean, like, just . . . listening to some loud music and . . . pretending? Yeah, see, back in the day, what you would do was, you would put on a record in your room. A record. It’s a big round thing that comes in a . . . . Continue Reading »
If the New York Times shuts down, at least I won’t have to respond to mind-numbing items like David Brooks’ April 30 peroration, “Genius: the modern view.” Aldous Huxley’s wife Laura infamously said that her husband looked like a stupid man’s idea of what a clever . . . . Continue Reading »
Recently some friends of mine were discussing the misapplication of the word “heroic” to denote efforts which people ought to make simply as a matter of course. Staying married, for example, is not an act of heroism, at least in most cases, yet you read in the tabloids — that is, . . . . Continue Reading »
I missed the news last week that a firm in the Netherlands had purchased the rights to the Rodgers & Hammerstein songbook. Funny to think, isn’t it, that the Dutch now own these musicals? “Amsterdam, where the wind comes sweepin’ down the dikes.” Or that great musical North . . . . Continue Reading »
What do you think, Sally? Would the younger kids in your house enjoy or employ NEW! Feather and Marabou Angel Wings?“Get ready for Christmas plays and other plays in your church group with these adorable Angel Wings,” the advertising copy at the crafts store says. But looking at these, . . . . Continue Reading »
I’m drawing on Jim Jordan’s Biblical Horizons lectures from this summer. “Be filled with the Spirit,” Paul writes, “speaking to one another in psalms, hymns, and spiritual songs, singing and making melody in your heart to the Lord.” The Spirit is the music of the . . . . Continue Reading »
Music is often considered the most mystical, ephemeral, ethereal of all arts. For some, music is for this reason the most perfect, the most purely artistic, of all arts. Maybe. But think: When Bach wants to “comment” (Calvin Stapert’s term) on the chorale “Wachet auf” . . . . Continue Reading »
Stapert points out that in the same motet, Bach breaks off the last part of Isaiah 43:1 (du bist mein -you are mine) when the verse is first introduced. He saves is “until the point where he could introduce them as part of a brief dialogue during the chorale/fugue.” . . . . Continue Reading »
The second half of Bach’s motet “Furchte dich nicht” (“Fear you not”) consists of a Paul Gerhardt chorale, sung over a fugue drawn from Isaiah 43:1. The fugue repeats its subject - ich habe dich erloset, “I have you redeemed” - 33 times. The Redeemer is . . . . Continue Reading »
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