Franck, Panis Angelicus

Elīna Garanča performs with Staatskapelle Dresden, under the direction of Christoph Eschenbach ...

Explosive.

 Dali, Spring Explosive, 1965

Scorpions, "Big City Nights"

1990 ...

A quarter-century later (in HD so you won't miss any subtle nuance) ...

Govern.

The machine-like behavior of people chained to electronics constitutes a degradation of their well-being and of their dignity which, for most people in the long run, becomes intolerable. Observations of the sickening effect of programmed environments show that people in them become indolent, impotent, narcissistic and apolitical. The political process breaks down because people cease to be able to govern themselves; they demand to be managed.

Ivan Illich, from In the Mirror of the Past: Lectures and Addresses, 1978-1990

Continued.

So Matilda’s strong young mind continued to grow, nurtured by the voices of all those authors who had sent their books out into the world like ships on the sea. These books gave Matilda a hopeful and comforting message: You are not alone.

Roald Dahl, from Matilda

Thank you, Sarah.

Arose.

ANCESTOR

It was a time when they were afraid of him.

My father, a bare man, a gypsy, a horse

with broken knees no one would shoot.

Then again, he was like the orange tree,

and young women plucked from him sweet fruit.

To meet him, you must be in the right place,

even his sons and daughter, we wondered

where was papa now and what was he doing.

He held the mystique of travelers

that pass your backyard and disappear into the trees.

Then, when you follow, you find nothing,

not a stir, not a twig displaced from its bough.

And then he would appear one night.

Half covered in shadows and half in light,

his voice quiet, absorbing our unspoken thoughts.

When his hands lay on the table at breakfast,

they were hands that had not fixed our crumbling home,

hands that had not taken us into them

and the fingers did not gently rub along our lips.

They were hands of a gypsy that filled our home   

with love and safety, for a moment;

with all the shambles of boards and empty stomachs,

they filled us because of the love in them.

Beyond the ordinary love, beyond the coordinated life,   

beyond the sponging of broken hearts,

came the untimely word, the fallen smile, the quiet tear,

that made us grow up quick and romantic.

Papa gave us something: when we paused from work,

my sister fourteen years old working the cotton fields,

my brother and I running like deer,

we would pause, because we had a papa no one could catch,

who spoke when he spoke and bragged and drank,

he bragged about us: he did not say we were smart,

nor did he say we were strong and were going to be rich someday.   

He said we were good. He held us up to the world for it to see,

three children that were good, who understood love in a quiet way,

who owned nothing but calloused hands and true freedom,

and that is how he made us: he offered us to the wind,

to the mountains, to the skies of autumn and spring.

He said, “Here are my children! Care for them!”

And he left again, going somewhere like a child

with a warrior’s heart, nothing could stop him.

My grandmother would look at him for a long time,

and then she would say nothing.

She chose to remain silent, praying each night,

guiding down like a root in the heart of earth,

clutching sunlight and rains to her ancient breast.

And I am the blossom of many nights.

A threefold blossom: my sister is as she is,

my brother is as he is, and I am as I am.

Through sacred ceremony of living, daily living,

arose three distinct hopes, three loves,

out of the long felt nights and days of yesterday.

Jimmy Santiago Baca

Thanks, Pop.

Prepares.

Sorrow prepares you for joy. 

It violently sweeps everything out of your house, so that new joy can find space to enter. 

It shakes the yellow leaves from the bough of your heart, so that fresh, green leaves can grow in their place. 

It pulls up the rotten roots, so that new roots hidden beneath have room to grow. 

Whatever sorrow shakes from your heart, far better things will take their place.

Rumi

Singing.

Chenoweth-Firchau, Chippewa, 2021

MY CATHEDRAL

Like two cathedral towers these stately pines

Uplift their fretted summits tipped with cones;

The arch beneath them is not built with stones,

Not Art but Nature traced these lovely lines,

And carved this graceful arabesque of vines;

No organ but the wind here sighs and moans,

No sepulchre conceals a martyr's bones.

No marble bishop on his tomb reclines.

Enter! the pavement, carpeted with leaves,

Gives back a softened echo to thy tread!

Listen! the choir is singing; all the birds,

In leafy galleries beneath the eaves,

Are singing! listen, ere the sound be fled,

And learn there may be worship without words.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

Thanks, Mum!

Happy birthday, Pop!

Ultravox, "One Small Day"

Wyeth.

Ourselves.

To read in the service of any ideology is not, in my judgment, to read at all. The reception of aesthetic power enables us to learn how to talk to ourselves and how to endure ourselves.  All that the Western Canon can bring one is the proper use of one’s own solitude, that solitude whose final form is one’s confrontation with one’s own mortality.

Harold Bloom, from The Western Canon

You.

Discover.

Children should be able to do their own experimenting and their own research. Teachers, of course, can guide them by providing appropriate materials, but the essential thing is that in order for a child to understand something, he must construct it himself, he must re-invent it. Every time we teach a child something, we keep him from inventing it himself. On the other hand that which we allow him to discover by himself will remain with him visibly.

Jean Piaget, from Play and Development

The Oyster Months Notebook, revised March 2023

With the arrival of Spring comes the time to shelve the dirges of the Oyster Months.  

Until September ...

The Spring comes in with all her hues and smells,

In freshness breathing over hills and dells;

O’er woods where May her gorgeous drapery flings,

And meads washed fragrant by their laughing springs.

Fresh are new opened flowers, untouched and free

From the bold rifling of the amorous bee.

The happy time of singing birds is come,

And Love’s lone pilgrimage now finds a home;

Among the mossy oaks now coos the dove,

And the hoarse crow finds softer notes for love.

The foxes play around their dens, and bark

In joy’s excess, ’mid woodland shadows dark.

The flowers join lips below; the leaves above;

And every sound that meets the ear is Love.

John Clare

REVISED March 2023 ...

Finger: The Complete Music For Viola Da Gamba Solo

Ensemble Tourbillon 

Hameln Anno 1284: Medieval Flute Music On The Trail Of The Pied Piper

Norbert Rodenkirchen

REVISED December 2022 ...

Nicola Matteis: Most ravishing things (Music from the Books of Ayres)

Theatrum Affectuum

The Art of Resonance: Archlute & Theorbo Music of the Italian Seicento

Luca Pianca

Figures of Harmony: Songs of Codex Chantilly c. 1390

Ferrara Ensemble and Crawford Young

Schmelzer: Violin Sonatas

Gunar Letzbor & Ars Antiqua Austria

Zelenka: Sonates pour Deux Hautbois et Basson

Ensemble Zefiro

La Bella Minuta: Florid Songs for Cornetto, ca.1600

Liuwe Tamminga & Bruce Dickey

Brade, G. Gabrieli & Scheidt: Tuba mirum

Les Sacqueboutiers and Renaud Delaigue

REVISED October 2022 ...

A Meeting Place: Medieval & Renaissance Music for Lute & Ud

August Denhard and Münir Nurettin Beken 

Notker Balbulus: Sequnezen, Tropen & Gregorianischer Choral aud dem Kloster St. Gallen

Ordo Virtutum and Stefan Morent 

Johann Rosenmüller in Exile

Acronym and Jesse Blumberg

Thomas Morley: Fantasies to Two Voices

Jonathan Dunford & Jérôme Chaboseau

Biber: Harmonia artificioso

Musica Antiqua Köln and Reinhard Goebel

Joseph Bodin De Boismortier: The Complete Opus 37 Trio Sonatas (1732) for Flute, Viola da Gamba and Chamber Organ

Flauti Diversi

Die Weisheit des Alters: Ars moriendi im Minnesang

Ensemble Für Frühe musik Augsburg

REVISED September 2022 ...

Philipp Friedrich Buchner: Plectrum Musicum

Parnassi Musici

Le Secret de Monsieur Marais

Vittorio Ghielmi, Luca Pianca, Il Suonar Parlante Orchestra

Telemann: Sonate for Oboe, Bassoon, and Continuo

Sans Souci

Johann Jakob Walther: Hortulus Chelicus

Sills, Dirst, Dirst, and Wang (no offense)

Thomas Lupo: Fantasia

Fretwork

Fürchtet Euch Nicht: Bassoons & Bombards Music from the German Baroque

Syntagma Amici, Vox Lumini

Johann Georg Weichenberger: Lute Works 

Joachim Held

REVISED March 2022 ...

Fantasia! Dialogue for One

Pauline Oostenrijk

February 2022 ...

Jacon van Eyck: Der Fluyten Lust-hof

Erik Bosgraaf

Marin Marais: Pieces de Viole de Cinq Livre

Jordi Savall, Ton Koopmann, Hopkinson Smith, Christophe Coin, Anne Gallet

The Cosmopolitan: Songs by Oswald von Wolkenstein

Ensemble Leones, Marc Lewis

Toys for Two: Dowland to California

Margaret Koll and Luca Pianca

REVISED January 2022 ...

Scheidt: Ludi Musici

L'Acheron, Francois Joubert-Caillet

Handel: The Complete Sonatas for Recorder

Marion Verbruggen, Ton Koopman and Jaap ter Linden

Buxtehude: Complete Chamber Music

Ton Koopman

Songs of Olden Times: Estonian Folk Hymns and Runic Songs

Heinavanker

Ockeghem: Requiem; Missa Mi-Mi; Missa Prolationum

Hilliard Ensemble

REVISED November 2021 ...

Masters of the Baroque Hurdy-Gurdy

Matthias Loibner

Weiss: Sonatas for Transverse Flute and Lute

Duo Inventio

Holborne: Pieces for Lute

Federico Marincola

THE ORIGINAL COLLECTION (Autumn 2020):

Holborne: Pavans and Galliards, 1599

The Consort of Musicke & The Guildhall Waits, Anthony Rooley & Trevor Jones

Purcell: Sonatas Of 3 Parts, 1683

Pavlo Beznosiuk, Rachel Podger, Christophe Coin, Christopher Hogwood

Telemann: Trio Sonatas

Erik Bosgraaf (recorder), Dmitry Sinkovksy (violin)

German Lute Music of the 18th Century

Alberto Crugnola