Madrigal Mondays
Some people claim that they don't like madrigals. I've found that in most instances, this is because they think of them as a light, fa-la-la kind of ditty. But these aren't really madrigals at all. They're fun, but not deep. The real thing started in Italy in the first quarter of the 16th-century, joining substantive poetry with serious music, a true art-form which blossomed over the course of the century to be an expressive language of incredible range and capacity to express human emotion on a variety of levels and subjects.
At the beginning of each week, we will update our website with a new madrigal and we will try to include a few notes about each piece and why we think it's great--worthy of study and listening and singing. Then (as with the Chorales and Motets) it'll be up to you to learn your part and sing along, thus absorbing and internalizing and--
in a sense--becoming part of each piece.
Some people claim that they don't like madrigals. I've found that in most instances, this is because they think of them as a light, fa-la-la kind of ditty. But these aren't really madrigals at all. They're fun, but not deep. The real thing started in Italy in the first quarter of the 16th-century, joining substantive poetry with serious music, a true art-form which blossomed over the course of the century to be an expressive language of incredible range and capacity to express human emotion on a variety of levels and subjects.
At the beginning of each week, we will update our website with a new madrigal and we will try to include a few notes about each piece and why we think it's great--worthy of study and listening and singing. Then (as with the Chorales and Motets) it'll be up to you to learn your part and sing along, thus absorbing and internalizing and--
in a sense--becoming part of each piece.
The Coolin' by Samuel Barber
I hope you had a good weekend and were able to get out in the glorious spring weather.
Looking like more of the same for a while now--
I was trying to find a piece for today that somehow reflects or at least suggests the dreamy feeling that we can get in the spring, when we are called to be aware of and in love with nature, with the great outdoors, with each other. As Guarini puts it in Monteverdi's madrigal, 'Spring: Beautiful mother of flowers, of new grass, of new loves'.
Of course, how could anyone say anything better than Monteverdi? But (as you may recall from many weeks ago) 'O primavera' turns to the dark side. After the blissful opening passage, we learn that the protagonist can't feel or really experience the pleasures of spring, for his lover has left him; and the piece ends in a dissonant darkness.
Samuel Barber's 'The Coolin' doesn't do that. It's about a tryst on a hillside,
and it celebrates the delights of love in the great outdoors.
The poem is one of three which Barber borrowed from James Stephens' 'Reincarnations', a 1918 collection of transmogrified--'reincarnated'--poems originally in Gaelic. As he later described, at times he began with only a phrase or a line, “and around these scraps I have blown a bubble of verse and made my poem.”
You can find the entire collection at this link.
The three poems which Barber chose for his eponymous 'Reincarnations' were based in this manner upon verses by the Gaelic poet Antoine O Reachtabhra (1784-1835). The set includes 'Mary Hynes'; 'Anthony O'Daly'; and 'The Coolin'. The title of our piece for today (rendered 'The Coolun' by James Stephens) can be translated as 'The fair-haired one', or, more freely, as 'The beloved one'.
As usual, you will find attached a score, a recording, and a text-translation sheet. But, maybe, first just click this link and sit back with your coffee and listen to the piece. It's so lush and expressive! Many groups (to my taste) indulge a little too much in this aspect of the piece, and it can wallow a bit. But this recording, by Seraphic Fire', is just right. I think you'll agree that the music most effectively captures and meshes with the poem and with the state which Stephens sought to portray, 'a condition of dream'.
Then, if so inclined, download the score and sing along with this wonderful piece. It will make you happy!
If you'd like to hear more, here are links to the other two songs in the set: The thrilling 'Mary Hynes' and the powerful, inexorable lament 'Anthony O'Daly'.
Now get outside today! Fill your lungs with fresh air. Cavort on a hillside.
Smile (even through your mask) at someone you pass.
Spring has sprung!
I hope you had a good weekend and were able to get out in the glorious spring weather.
Looking like more of the same for a while now--
I was trying to find a piece for today that somehow reflects or at least suggests the dreamy feeling that we can get in the spring, when we are called to be aware of and in love with nature, with the great outdoors, with each other. As Guarini puts it in Monteverdi's madrigal, 'Spring: Beautiful mother of flowers, of new grass, of new loves'.
Of course, how could anyone say anything better than Monteverdi? But (as you may recall from many weeks ago) 'O primavera' turns to the dark side. After the blissful opening passage, we learn that the protagonist can't feel or really experience the pleasures of spring, for his lover has left him; and the piece ends in a dissonant darkness.
Samuel Barber's 'The Coolin' doesn't do that. It's about a tryst on a hillside,
and it celebrates the delights of love in the great outdoors.
The poem is one of three which Barber borrowed from James Stephens' 'Reincarnations', a 1918 collection of transmogrified--'reincarnated'--poems originally in Gaelic. As he later described, at times he began with only a phrase or a line, “and around these scraps I have blown a bubble of verse and made my poem.”
You can find the entire collection at this link.
The three poems which Barber chose for his eponymous 'Reincarnations' were based in this manner upon verses by the Gaelic poet Antoine O Reachtabhra (1784-1835). The set includes 'Mary Hynes'; 'Anthony O'Daly'; and 'The Coolin'. The title of our piece for today (rendered 'The Coolun' by James Stephens) can be translated as 'The fair-haired one', or, more freely, as 'The beloved one'.
As usual, you will find attached a score, a recording, and a text-translation sheet. But, maybe, first just click this link and sit back with your coffee and listen to the piece. It's so lush and expressive! Many groups (to my taste) indulge a little too much in this aspect of the piece, and it can wallow a bit. But this recording, by Seraphic Fire', is just right. I think you'll agree that the music most effectively captures and meshes with the poem and with the state which Stephens sought to portray, 'a condition of dream'.
Then, if so inclined, download the score and sing along with this wonderful piece. It will make you happy!
If you'd like to hear more, here are links to the other two songs in the set: The thrilling 'Mary Hynes' and the powerful, inexorable lament 'Anthony O'Daly'.
Now get outside today! Fill your lungs with fresh air. Cavort on a hillside.
Smile (even through your mask) at someone you pass.
Spring has sprung!
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