There was a slight nervousness in the first notes, but then with confidence and authority the rich sound took possession of the room. Nothing is more beautifully and acceptably self-assertive than good singing. The sound filled and honeycombed the collected room, making the rapt audience one with itself, a great golden object rising slowly through space. …

There was in the singing an elusive sense of drama, a mounting atmosphere, as if the audience were sitting forward in their chairs ready to participate in some marvellous transfiguration. Yet Denis himself seemed by now almost invisible, so much had he made sound sovereign over vision.

— From The Unicorn, by Iris Murdoch.

I’ve joined a madrigal choir, which is kind of exciting. We’re singing this:

Isn’t it lovely? Although I have to admit “and cease not” sounds a lot like “and see snot” when you’re singing. There was a certain amount of giggling about this, not all of it mine.

This video is also super useful for learning the song, since it follows right along with the music. I sang alto (although I managed soprano for “Mille Regretz”, which we also sang). I’m technically a mezzo, I think, and am trying to pretend this is a feature, not a defect. Good for both, not good for nothing.
 

Oh, November. You always do this to me. We get toward the end, and I’m like, “Oh good, only a week left!” and then that week lasts two or three weeks. Time dilates in November, I’m convinced of it. There’s way more than there needs to be.

This year’s Quest for the Cure (for November) brings us back, as is so often the case, to the sublime Iarla Ó Lionáird. Here he is when he was young, already the prince of singers:

I find sean nos – Irish “old style” a capella singing – particularly suited to gloomy days. It’s music to be sung in company, cup in hand, around a fire. It’s the musical equivalent of a fire burned down to the mournful embers, to my mind. The bitter winds may blow, but here is understanding, humanity, and warmth.

Here’s the somewhat earthier voice of Lillis O Laoire, who I also enjoy. I wish there were more songs of his to choose from on YouTube, but we take what we can get.

A while ago, someone expressed astonishment at my musical tastes, surprise that I didn’t listen exclusively to classical music while writing, since Seraphina is so evocative of classical music. This got me thinking: I was raised on classical music, almost exclusively, but I don’t really listen to it much anymore. I’m not sure why that is, if I just got tired of it, or if it’s simply that I’m drawn toward the new (to me) and that new (to me) classical music is a) harder to find, and b) requires more work to listen to, and I just don’t have the spare brains for it right now.

I imagine this is one of those questions one could delve into for a long time to little purpose. The upshot is, I have decided to go back in time a bit, to some of my favourite classical pieces I haven’t listened to in ages. A trip down memory lane, as it were.

Here’s some Ravel that one of my sisters reminded me of recently: Le Tombeau de Couperin. I own a recording of it, but I never listen to it, not because I don’t still love the piece but because in my recording they just play it too damn fast. Have a listen (and a look! And check out the awesome oboist!).

I had been baffled by my too-fast recording, but some of the comments below this video have brought something into focus for me: the oboist has to use circular breathing for some of the longer passages. Um, WOW. Playing it faster would mean you got to breathe sooner; maybe that’s why they take it so fast in my recording. Their oboist wasn’t as good as this Albrecht Mayer fellow.

What this really suggests, though, is that I need to look for a better recording for myself. Albrecht Mayer and the Berlin Philharmonic are a good place to start, it sounds like.

Ah, isn’t it gorgeous, though? Pastoral, lively, bright. I first listened to this piece when I was about 11 years old and was just reading Tolkien for the first time, so it’s still inextricably (and absurdly, perhaps) associated with hobbits and elves in my mind. But oh, that flute trill at the end is like audible sunlight. Good times, happy memories.

Blue Oyster Cult! As promised, here are some creepy classics from the oyster boys. First up, a great favourite in our household, a song we play every Halloween, “Harvester of Eyes.”

Second, as anticipated by Lisa in the comments yesterday, “Joan Crawford.” This is a fan video made from real clips of Joan Crawford, which I like much better than the official music video (even though that featured zombie schoolgirls; that sounds cooler than it turned out to be in execution).

And last, but far from least: “Godzilla.”

Happy Halloween, everybody!

We just came across this song recently, and I feel compelled to share it with you all.

The scariest part is the way it is now STUCK IN YOUR HEAD. FOREVER.

Tomorrow I’ll play you some of my favourite Halloweeny Blue Oyster Cult. And no, it’s not “Don’t Fear the Reaper”. They sing much creepier songs than that.

Because you miss these when I’m not writing them, right? You stand around mewling plaintively, “What obscure musical nonsense is Rachel obsessing over now? I must know!”

One of the songs we’re singing in choir right now is a round, written by our director, Earle Peach. It’s super fun to sing, as rounds often are, but it’s a bit tricky as an alto because the melody goes up a bit out of range for most of us. I can do it, because I am technically a mezzo-soprano, but for those of us who can’t, Earle has given us the option of singing down an octave for a couple bars.

I was trying to do that, so there could be unity in the alto section, but I found it very difficult, in no small part because the lyrics at that point are “you’ll rise up in the air, O children.” The melodic line just feels like it needs to go up at that point as a reflection of the lyrics.

And that’s an interesting train of thought, to me: how do lyrics and melody play off each other? I’m sure they don’t always, but is it better when they do? Is that something to aspire to, in a song? I could see the opposite sometimes being desired, where a melody is so divergent from the lyrics that it lends the words an entirely different layer of meaning. I’m sure this is something songwriters are keenly aware of and play with all the time, that it’s a tool to be used deliberately, but that process isn’t necessarily apparent in the finished song.

Which brings me to a couple interesting anecdotes about words and music, and how they strike people differently. My sister once had to memorize a poem, John Masefield’s “Sea-Fever“. Thing is, she’d forgotten until the morning of the day it was due. She had to memorize this thing quick, and was in despair over it. I believe it was our mother who came up with the idea of setting it to music. The poem fits (somewhat imperfectly) the Chrismas carol, “It Came Upon the Midnight Clear.” They put the thing to music, and all of a sudden it was ten times easier. My sister memorized it at the bus stop, and was able to write it out for her test.

Now let’s turn the tables. Another true story: that same sister wrote a round (oh look, we’re back at rounds! Everything comes round again in the end). She was trying to teach it to me so we could sing it together, and I just wasn’t getting it. It was minor or modal or counterintuitive somehow. She was about to give up, frustrated with my denseness, when it occurred to me to ask what the words were. She’d been trying to drill the tune into my thick skull without the words, because that was the way that made the most sense to her (or possibly because the words weren’t as transcendent as the melody, and she didn’t like them as much).

The words: “Busy bees buzzing in the fields / Never stopping until sundown.” Hey, don’t laugh. Once I had the words, I had the melody in short order, and it really is such a beautiful little song that we didn’t want to stop singing until sundown either. The words are, in that way, absolutely apropos.

What’s the moral of the story? Two sisters, two learning styles? Melody as memory palace? Nothing, we’re both weirdos? I don’t even know. I just think it’s interesting, and anything that raises more questions than it answers is always good fun to me.