The Hammock Papers: Purcell

Showing posts with label Purcell. Show all posts

11 December 2024

Purcell, Come Ye Sons of Art, Z.323

The Georgian Festival Chorale & Orchestra performs, directed by Daniel Robert Cushing ...

24 June 2024

Purcell, The Abdelazar Suite

Isabel Bergerette performs "The Hole in the Wall"...

01 June 2024

Purcell, O Come Ye Sons of Art, Z.323

Rebecca Leggett and Elisabeth Paul perform "Sound the Trumpet" with members of Ensemble Pro Victoria ...

25 February 2024

Purcell, King Arthur, Z. 628

Come if you dare, our trumpets sound.

Come if you dare, the foes rebound.

We come, says the double beat of the thund'ring drum.

Now they change on amain,

Now they rally again;

The Gods from above the mad labor behold,

And pity mankind that will perish for gold,

The fainting Saxons quit the ground,

The trumpets languish in the sound.

They fly! Victoria! the bold Britons cry.

Now the victory's won,

To plunder we run;

We return to our lasses, like fortunate traders.

Triumphant with spoils of our vanquish'd invaders.

TENET Vocal Artists performing from Act I ...

24 February 2024

04 March 2023

Purcell, Old Bachelor, Z. 607

Musica Gloria performs the Hornpipe, Nele Vertommen on the recorder...

26 October 2022

19 July 2022

30 March 2022

Purcell, "Music for a While"

Mezzo-soprano Ann Hallenberg performs with Atsushi Sakaï, viol, Karl Nyhlin, theorbo, and the direction and clanging is done by Christophe Rousset ...

24 October 2021

Purcell, Come Ye Sons of Art, Z. 323

Jean Tubéry leads La Fenice ...

19 June 2021

Purcell, The Old Bachelor, Z.607

Bolette Roed performs the Rondeau with BaroqueAros ...

16 May 2021

Beauty.

The Sixteen, led by Harry Christophers, perform a program of songs titled, Reflection and Hope, captured in the beauty of Wigmore Hall ...

31 December 2020

Purcell, Oedipus, Z. 583

Mireille Asselin performs "Music for a While," accompanied by Lucas Harris ...

15 December 2020

13 December 2020

Purcell/Dryden, "Cold Song"

Sting performs ...

I love this time of year.

22 November 2020

Sustaining.

Sir Christopher Hogwood provides an analysis of what makes the following music masterpieces: Pachelbel's Canon, Purcell's Dido's Lament, and Fauré's Violin Sonata.

Memorability is sometimes achieved by the simple technique of repetition, in addition to more high-flown inspiration. Some of the simplest sustaining devices of great music are ground bass, ostinato or chaconne; this lecture shows that a canon can be more than simply "Three Blind Mice"...

The most important advice he provides about canons is how to stop them.

21 November 2020

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

Autumnal.

20 November 2020

Excellent.

An excellent album ...

01 November 2020

Purcell, Mad Bess of Bedlam, Z. 370

Jarring Sounds, comprised of Danielle Reutter-Harrah, mezzo-soprano, and Adam Cockerham, theorbo, perform ...

BARRY HINES

"That's why it makes me mad when I take her out and I'll hear somebody say, 'Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk. I could shout at 'em; it's not a pet, Sir, hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me, right. And that's why it's great.Look, there's Billy Casper there wi' his pet hawk.' I could shout at 'em. It's not a pet, Sir. Hawks are not pets. Or when folks stop me and say, 'Is it tame?' Is it heck tame, it's trained, that's all. It's fierce, and it's wild, an' it's not bothered about anybody, not even about me right. And that's why it's great." (A Kestrel for a Knave)

WOLFGANG AMADEUS MOZART

"When I am, as it were, completely myself, entirely alone and of good cheer – say travelling in a carriage or walking after a good meal, or during the night when I cannot sleep – it is on such occasions that my ideas flow best and most abundantly. Whence, and how, they come I know not ; nor can I force them. Those ideas that please me I retain in memory and am accustomed, as I have been told, to hum them to myself. If I continue in this way, it soon occurs to me how I may turn this dainty morsel to account, so as to make a good dish of it. That is to say, agreeable to the rules of counterpoint, to the peculiarities of various instruments etc. All this fires my soul, and, provided I am not disturbed, my subject enlarges itself, becomes methodised, and defined, and the whole, though it be long, stands almost complete and finished in my mind, so that I can survey it like a fine picture or a beautiful statue at a glance. Nor do I hear in my imagination the parts successively, but I hear them, as it were, all at once. What a delight this is, I cannot tell."

WALT WHITMAN

The spotted hawk swoops by and accuses me, he complains of my gab and my loitering. I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable, I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world. The last scud of day holds back for me, It flings my likeness after the rest and true as any on the shadow’d wilds, It coaxes me to the vapor and the dusk. I depart as air, I shake my white locks at the runaway sun, I effuse my flesh in eddies, and drift it in lacy jags. I bequeath myself to the dirt to grow from the grass I love, If you want me again look for me under your boot-soles. You will hardly know who I am or what I mean, But I shall be good health to you nevertheless, And filter and fibre your blood. Failing to fetch me at first keep encouraged, Missing me one place search another, I stop somewhere waiting for you.

MARCUS AURELIUS

"Is your cucumber bitter? Throw it away. Are there briars in your path? Turn aside. That is enough. Do not go on and say, 'Why were things of this sort ever brought into this world?' neither intolerable nor everlasting - if thou bearest in mind that it has its limits, and if thou addest nothing to it in imagination. Pain is either an evil to the body (then let the body say what it thinks of it!)-or to the soul. But it is in the power of the soul to maintain its own serenity and tranquility."

VINCENT van GOGH

"What am I in the eyes of most people? A nonentity or an oddity or a disagreeable person — someone who has and will have no position in society, in short a little lower than the lowest. Very well — assuming that everything is indeed like that, then through my work I’d like to show what there is in the heart of such an oddity, such a nobody. This is my ambition, which is based less on resentment than on love in spite of everything, based more on a feeling of serenity than on passion. Even though I’m often in a mess, inside me there’s still a calm, pure harmony and music. In the poorest little house, in the filthiest corner, I see paintings or drawings. And my mind turns in that direction as if with an irresistible urge. As time passes, other things are increasingly excluded, and the more they are the faster my eyes see the picturesque. Art demands persistent work, work in spite of everything, and unceasing observation."