Johann Sebastian Bach: Everything In Music

 

I was introduced to the music of J.S. Bach as an infant at Mount Calvary Lutheran Church in my little hometown in the mountains of Maryland. The church already had been baptizing members of my father's family for over seventy years. We were a large family within the larger church family. One aunt was the principal organist while several aunts, uncles, and cousins held various position in church administration and in the choir. In the summer of my ninth year our family moved leaving behind not only familiar people and places but also family linkages to my beloved church. I left with a strong faith reinforced in part by Bach's profound music. In time I faced some challenges with faith in my revolutionary days but the awe and appreciation for Bach never waned.

J.S. Bach portrait at age 61     Elias Haussmann, Germany, 1746 

Today marks his birthday - in 1685 - using the Old Style calendar.  Johann Sebastian Bach, gave us some of the most sublime music in western culture and it would be an oversight, especially as a Lutheran, not to honor this master of the Baroque and pillar of Lutheranism. His music was largely forgotten for almost a century following his death, but had been restored by the first quarter of the 19th century. The new-found popularity of Bach was due largely to the composer-performers, Felix Mendelssohn and Ludwig van Beethoven, and the publication of many of Bach's works. 

In this post commemorating the 336th anniversary of his birth, Bach's music is the real content. No need for names, dates, places, and details. Let the music speak for him.

The Canadian pianist, Glenn Gould, was perhaps the most technically perfect interpreter of Bach's keyboard music in our lifetime. His approach - he was well-known for singing along while he performed - was unique and not to every one's preference but no one could deny that Gould was a magician at the keyboard. Here he is playing several of Bach's Goldberg Variations, BWV 988. 

From the St. Matthew Passion, here is the final recitative and chorus, a lullaby to Jesus as he lies in his tomb:

Here is a familiar piece attributed to Bach, Toccata & Fugue in D minor, BWV 565, performed by young Dutch organist, Gert van Hoef:

And finally here is Bach played by the irrepressible American cellist, Yo Yo Ma.

Bach's music has been a part of me for so long that I couldn't begin to tell you when I first heard it other than to say it had to be in church at a very early age. The preludes. fugues, harmonies, the shear wonder of his work, it's all in my blood. And I can't play a single note of it. Wouldn't have it any other way. I simply listen and let it flow.

Music’s ultimate end or final goal…should be for the honor of God and the recreation of the soul.

                                           Johann Sebastian Bach - Leipzig, 1738

Sources

Text; title taken from a quote by Johannes Brahms, “Study Bach: there you will find everything.”

 

Paul Whiteman: When Jazz Meant Syncopation And Hot Dancing

 

Paul Whiteman was born on this day in 1890 in Denver. Once known as the "King of Jazz," but now almost forgotten outside of tight circles of music history, he was primarily responsible popularizing the integration of jazz in popular music throughout the United States. Historian Glenn T. Eskew says this about him:

Alert to the emerging style, Whiteman pioneered standardized settings of the songs, capturing the melodies on paper and leaving room for improvisation while making jazz appear "respectable" for dancing by using symphonic arrangements. Whiteman made recordings in 1920 of "Avalon" and "Whispering" songs that inspired Johnny Mercer. By 1924, in a bid to blend the "serious" with the "popular," Whiteman conducted his Palais Royale Orchestra in the world premier of George Gershwin's 'Rhapsody in Blue,' which revealed the omnipresence of syncopation. Indeed, Whiteman's various approaches to jazz gained him his crown, for he mastered a jazz-inflected light-sweet music that while never the hot music of [Louis] Armstrong nonetheless popularized the genre in the United States. From the cabaret to the symphony hall, musicians embraced the rhythm and blues of playing as Americans consumed Whiteman's liberating jazz.

Whiteman pictured in 1934 in the magazine, Radio Stars

Indeed, Whiteman was quite the showman as can be viewed in this excerpt from the 1930 film, King of Jazz. The film was the first to use a prerecorded studio soundtrack "made independently of the actual filming." It was also one of the earliest Technicolor films.

And we can't let Whiteman's birthday pass without an opportunity to hear his celebrated orchestra performing the syncopated "jazz" music that made them famous. This 1928 recording features 25 year-old Bing Crosby singing his first number one hit. Crosby would go on to shape popular singing for the rest of the century.

That's happy music. Tap your feet, did you?




Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
Whiteman photo, photographer uncredited, archive.org

Text:

Glenn T. Askew, Johnny Mercer: Southern Songwriter for the World, University of Georgia Press: Athens and London, 2013

Palm Sunday 2021

The Bible pictured above served my family well beginning in the 1890's. As one of my earliest memories I recall my parents carrying it every Sunday to Mount Calvary Lutheran Church a few blocks from our home. It's too fragile for use these days and now occupies an honored place in our family archive. The book becomes special to me on Palm Sundays. Among the near eighty years of memorabilia inside are a dozen or so treasured palm crosses from my childhood.

Today is Palm Sunday and Passion Sunday, the last Sunday of Lent, and the beginning of Holy Week. On this day, Christians around the world commemorate the triumphant entry of Jesus into Jerusalem. It is also a time to remember the Passion history as preparation for the Holy Week experience. Readings for the day recall the anointing of Jesus, the institution of the Lord's Supper, the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus's trials before Caiaphas and Pilate, the crucifixion of Jesus, and His burial.

All glory, laud, and honor to you Redeemer King,

To whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.

You are the king of Israel and David's royal Son,

Now in the Lord's name coming, our King and Blessed One.

The company of angels are praising you on high;

Creation and all mortals in chorus make reply.

The multitude of pilgrims with palms before you went,

Our praise and prayer and anthems before you we present.

To you, before your Passion, they sang their hymns of praise.

To you, now high exalted, our melody we raise.

Their praises you accepted; accept the prayers we bring,

Great author of all goodness, all good and gracious King.

All glory, laud and honor to you, Redeemer King,

To whom the lips of children made sweet hosannas ring.

                                                                       Theodulf of Orleans, 750/760-821

On the Sunday following this Passion Week we celebrate a 2000 year-old event that changes everything.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
early 20th century postcards from the OTR family archives

Remembering The American Singer Sarah Vaughan And Her Sassy Style

The magnificent American singer, Sarah Vaughan, was born on this day in 1924. She was a performer if not a magician who could wring emotion out of a song with her warmth and three-octave range. Indeed she was a symphony of sound over her fifty years on the stage. Her passing 31 years ago leaves a void still unfilled in the world of popular music and jazz. Of course with female vocalists like Jane Monhoit, Diana Krall, Nancy LaMott, Madeleine Peyroux, Kat Edmonson, Nora Jones and others we'll be entertained with plenty of top quality. It's just that the sass won't be quite the same.

Here is Sassy, the Divine One, at work on two of her signature songs:

And once more I ask the question, "Where is the spirit of jazz today, a genre birthed in the United States?" It is alive in many limited markets across the country but it remains a small portfolio in the financial departments of our corporate music industry. The corporate bottom line drives the industry today and it drives some of our best musical talent into a parallel universe and very often outside their own country. These niches of excellence exist for those who want seek them out but it is far easier to succumb to the mediocrity forced upon the market by the accountants and their search for profit through the lowest common denominators in music.

The consumers can do better. Start your search tomorrow.

Robert Frost: His Golden Words Stay With Us Though Nothing Gold Can Stay

Frost in 1951

When I think of Robert Frost, born on this day in San Francisco in 1874, three memories come to mind. First, there is the poetry that was likely introduced into my elementary school classroom through The Road Not Taken, Stopping By Woods On A Snowy Evening, and Mending Wall. The vivid imagery in a small package was enough to catch even a young student's attention. The second memory is that of an old, long-faced man standing tall and capped with a mound of white hair. It's an appropriate image as Frost would have been well into his seventies by 1950. Despite his age he was quite a public figure in his later years. I remember seeing him on television many times. Finally, there is the old man standing at the Capitol on a bitter January day in 1961 attempting to read a poem written on the occasion of the presidential inauguration of John F. Kennedy. One could say his inability to complete the reading was an appropriate ending for a man who had led such a difficult life. In two years both Frost and Kennedy would be gone. The Academy of American Poets has this to say about Frost:

Though his work is principally associated with the life and landscape of New England—and though he was a poet of traditional verse forms and metrics who remained steadfastly aloof from the poetic movements and fashions of his time—Frost is anything but merely a regional poet. The author of searching and often dark meditations on universal themes, he is a quintessentially modern poet in his adherence to language as it is actually spoken, in the psychological complexity of his portraits, and in the degree to which his work is infused with layers of ambiguity and irony.

The full article is available here.



Titles, lines, and larger fragments of several of his poems remain very much alive in our popular culture today. In addition, it's difficult for me to believe that a poet I remember has been gone so long that several of his works are in the public domain. One of them is The Road Not Taken written in 1916.

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,

And sorry I could not travel both

And be one traveler, long I stood

And looked down one as far as I could

To where it bent in the undergrowth;

Then took the other, as just as fair,

And having perhaps the better claim,

Because it was grassy and wanted wear;

Though as for that the passing there

Had worn them really about the same,

And both that morning equally lay

In leaves no step had trodden black.

Oh, I kept the first for another day!

Yet knowing how way leads on to way,

I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh

Somewhere ages and ages hence:

Two roads diverged in a wood, and I—

I took the one less travelled by,

And that has made all the difference.

Frost reading at the Kennedy inauguration in 1961

Sources:

portrait photo, Fred Palumbo, World Telegram staff photographer - Library of Congress. New York World-Telegram & Sun Collection.
Inauguration photo, B. Anthony Stewart/National Geographic/Getty

Flannery O'Connor: Exploring Character In The Netherworlds Of The South

One of the most significant writers in America, Flannery O'Connor, was born on this day in Savannah, Georgia in 1925. She spent her early childhood as a devout Catholic there in a home on Lafayette Square. The square features moss-draped live oaks, colorful azaleas, and an abundance of birds, all sitting in the shadows of the towering spires of the Cathedral of St. John the Baptist. Things haven't changed much in this beautiful space. It still has its interesting spectrum of regular visitors: fast-walking pedestrians, lovers holding hand, lunch hour diners, retirees enjoying the benches, touring families, people waiting for the bus, runners and bikers, and children at play. And every day as they have for 120 years, the cathedral bells remind the people of God's grace and their obligations as His children. I think as long as you can visit Lafayette Square, say on any pleasant Sunday afternoon, you can know O'Connor well.

Her family moved to Atlanta in 1938, where her father was diagnosed with lupus, a chronic disease involving the destruction of healthy tissue by the body's immune system. Shortly thereafter they moved 100 miles southeast to her mother's family home in Milledgeville. When her father died in 1941, O'Connor moved a few miles north of town to her uncle's farm where she lived with her mother. Eventually, the farm would be called Andalusia, and it became a refuge following her own diagnosis with lupus in 1950. At Andalusia, she would raise her beloved peacocks and weave her experiences and memories of people, ethics, morals, and religion into her novels, Wise Blood, and The Violent Bear It Away, and scores of short stories published in two collections in her lifetime, A Good Man Is Hard To Find, and Everything That Rises Must Converge. Her Complete Stories appeared posthumously in 1971.

Main house at Andalusia

O'Connor's office-bedroom at Andalusia

Lupus took Flannery O'Connor from us in 1964 when she was in her 39th year. You can visit both her childhood home and Andalusia thanks to foundations that preserve the landscapes and memories she cherished. And, thanks to her, you can visit the South anytime by simply opening one of her books.

Many years ago the management at Andalusia removed scores of the offspring of O'Connor's beloved peacocks to the Monastery of the Holy Spirit, a large Trappist estate about two and a half miles from our ridge top home. At that time the area was still quite rural and the peacocks flourished in and around the monastery grounds.

Thirty years ago on quiet evening when the wind was right it was not unusual for us to hear them calling faintly in the distance. Eventually, they were removed and for some years now  there has been no call to break the silence. But we do remember those urgent and sometimes fearful calls in the dusk. Today the woods remain a gallery of sounds. Some we know well. Others we may not recognize so easily. Those of us who know O'Connor's work well may find it difficult to distinguish between the peacock, the author's veil, or the rich spirit world that inhabits her American South. After all, in the ancient traditions of the Catholic world the peacock is the symbol of immortality.

I think it is safe to say that while the South is hardly Christ-centered, it is most certainly Christ-haunted. The Southerner, who isn’t convinced of it, is very much afraid that he may have been formed in the image and likeness of God. Ghosts can be very fierce and instructive. They cast strange shadows, particularly in our literature. In any case, it is when the freak can be sensed as a figure for our essential displacement that he attains some depth in literature.

Sources

Photos and Illustrations:

Childhood photo, Andalusia Farm, Inc. Photo courtesy of the Flannery O'Connor Collection, Georgia College and State University, Milledgeville, Georgia.
House, deepsouthmagazine.com
Bedroom, photo courtesy of Emily Elizabeth Beck
Adult portrait, openculture.com


Text:

Flannery O'Connor entry, Sarah Gordon, et al, georgiaencyclopedia.org
quotation from Flannery O'Connor, Mystery and Manners: Occasional Prose, selected and edited by Sally and Robert Fitzgerald, New York; Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1969

St. Patrick's Day 2021

Happy St. Patrick's Day

Pleasant surprises abound across this great country, some of them in the most unexpected places. Ordinarily. Savannah would host one of those wonderful annual surprises today. At 10:15, rain or shine, the Saint Patrick's Day parade would step off for the 192nd time. Almost half a million people would line the streets and squares of this historic city to watch a family-friendly event. Alas, there will be no parade this year but that hasn't kept thousands of revelers from visiting the city this week. Organizers have worked hard over the past years to keep the "Saint" and sanity in the holiday, confining most of the adult partying to River Street following the parade. It's only since the arrival of "the book"- Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil - and the discovery of Savannah as a significant tourist destination that issues with irreverent activities became serious on St. Patrick's Day. [See "A Night[and Day] in Old Savannah," August 23, 2008, for details.]

My first parade there was in 1978 when I lived in the downtown historic district. Over the years, I lost count as the events merged one into the other during my eleven years in the Coastal Empire. Eventually, our children became Irish for a day and were part of the parade. They sat on the folded top of a hot convertible and waved their green, white and orange flags to the crowds. They have plenty of ancient Celtic ancestry from Scotland and Wales, but nothing so far from Ireland. Fortunately, even Savannah's old Irish families happily forgive that sin. They seek only great fun for themselves and their neighbors, often complemented with fine spring weather and tens of thousands of azaleas blooming throughout the city.

Were those the good old days? To be honest, the parade is a fond memory. Life has moved on but I wouldn't pass on an opportunity to enjoy the day again. In fact, this historic event is so enjoyable it should be on every one's list at least once. That said, better make your reservations tomorrow before March 17, 2022 becomes "No Vacancy."

From our house to yours, may you have a safe and happy St. Patrick's Day wherever the day finds you!




Sources

Photos and Illustrations:
St. Patrick photo, oca.org
postcards, author's family archive

Today Is St. David's Day And The National Day Of Wales, His Beloved Country

Why is a Welsh national flag flying at our front door today?

In the Christian world in the west March 1 is celebrated as St. David's Day. He was born in Wales in the 6th century, attained sainthood in the 12th century, and today is recognized as the patron saint of Wales. The traditional day of his death is March 1 with the years 589 or 601 recognized as the most likely years. Dewi San (St. David) was buried in the cathedral bearing his name in Pembrokeshire. In his lifetime he was recognized as an extraordinary force for Christian evangelism as well as Welsh nationalism. I doubt there could ever be a better day to celebrated the National Day of Wales than March 1.

Although the red dragon on a  green and white field has been associated with Wales since the 15th century the design was not adopted officially as the national flag until 1959.

German traditions may remain strong in my family, but I'm equally proud to say that I have Welsh ancestors thanks to the bloodline introduced by my grandmother's parents. They immigrated to the United States from Cardiff, Wales, in the early 1870's. Although I don't remember my grandmother - she died before my second birthday - my father always reminded me of her Celtic pride and Welsh ancestry expressed especially in a love for song and singing.

Wales is a small, ancient country located southwest of England between the Bristol Channel and the Irish Sea south of the Isle of Man. The nation has a rich cultural heritage beginning with Celtic peoples in the early Iron Age. Its isolation has left them with strong genetic identifiers as the "last of the 'true' Britons." There are only 3 million people living in Wales today. Historically, the population was never large but there was a limited diaspora beginning two centuries ago particularly with the Industrial Revolution and its need for coal. Only half of one percent of Americans claim Welsh ancestry. I'm pleased to be among them.

Sources


Photos and Illustrations:
Welsh flag, public domain image, Open Clipart Library

Text:
wales.com
wikipedia.com