sadara.be

I was at a funeral on Monday. Not someone I knew well – the father of a friend. In the last week I’ve also been in contact with an old friend in Israel I’ve not heard from for many years, so what with the news from Gaza, maybe it’s not so surprising that I’ve had death and loss on my mind.

So … here’s a mix of music which begins with Fairuz evoking Christ’s Passion closely followed by Emily van Evera singing the famous Dido’s Lament from Purcell’s opera Dido & Aeneas. Two sublime voices from very different traditions.

There’s Chôros No. 1, one of the best-known guitar pieces by Villa-Lobos, followed by another sublime voice, that of Amália Rodrigues, singing Fado da Adiça.

Rokia Traoré sings Finini next. The translation of the words of this song is:

Nobody has both everything and nothing
Everything’s favouritism and inconvenience
That’s the way it is
Some people say that what we are, we asked for it
Others think that everything has a transcendent reason
Still others receive everything with a peaceful fatalism
No matter what your principles are
Hold the cloth that absorbs tears

Ghazal play a piece called Pari Mahal, which is followed by To a Dead Friend, part of the soundtrack to Eternity and a Day, composed by Eleni Karaindrou. The mix ends with a cheeky bit of froth from Werner Egk’s opera La Tentation de Saint Antoine, sung by Janet Baker.

The first time I saw Waltz with Bashir, I fell asleep. No reflection on the film, more a reflection on my irregular lifestyle. Seeing it the second time I was again struck by the opening credits, a masterpiece of scene-setting. But to wind back a bit ….

Waltz with Bashir is an animated documentary telling the story of the director Ari Folman’s search to recover his memories of his own involvement in the 1982 massacres of Palestinians in the Shatila and Chabra refugee camps on the outskirts of Beirut.

This mix is a bit quirky, I have to admit, but then … there’s no telling what people will like.

The first voice is that of Asha Bhosle, the voice of a thousand Bollywood movies.

(Note: The tracks will be in this order the first time you play the mix. If you listen a second time, the tracks will be in random order. Unless you delete the 8tracks cookie first. Or use a different browser.)

Then there’s Hamza el Din, accompanying himself on a ‘tar’, a type of frame drum. Just a voice and a drum. And check out this YouTube video of him singing a song from his native Nubia. He’s accompanying himself on the ud.

Then there’s Purple Rain, by Stina Nordenstam and Red Green and You Blue by Kevin Ayers and the Whole World, featuring a teenaged Mike Oldfield on bass and the amazing Lol Coxhill on soprano sax.

For a bit of early-nineties nostalgia, there’s the hyperactive Alexander Bălănescu and his string quartet commenting on the ex-Warsaw Pact nations’ new-found liking for Democracy.

There are a number of versions of Gavin Bryars’ Jesus’ Blood Never Failed Me Yet. This piece consists of a tape loop of a tramp singing, which Bryars has given a variety of string orchestrations. My favourite version is the one where Tom Waits sings along, but at 19′ 38″ that’s a bit long to be putting on 8tracks. The version in this mix lasts a paltry 6′ 6″. As with so much of Bryars’ music, there’s a story behind it.

Next there’s Funeral Ikos by John Tavener. Unfortunately, in this recording the low basses at the bottom of the chords which end each ‘Alleluia’ are either inaudible or missing, which in the context of an audio CD could be said to be a distinction without a difference. The text is pretty wonderful, too. Here’s one of the verses:

Youth and the beauty of the body
fade at the hour of death,
and the tongue then burneth fiercely,
and the parched throat is inflamed.
The beauty of the eyes is quenched then,
the comeliness of the face all altered,
the shapeliness of the neck destroyed;
and the other parts have become numb,
nor often say:
Alleluia.

Lastly a reworking / recomposition by John Woolrich of a Monteverdi madrigal. The piece is called Ulysses Awakes and is for solo viola and strings.

To mark its 120th anniversary, the Concertgebouw Orchestra has made a number of its recordings available to download as MP3′s.

One of the recordings is of a performance the orchestra gave in 2005 of Bruckner’s 8th symphony, under Bernard Haitink. This clip is the last 3 and a half minutes or so of the 3rd movement. It’s a heavenly peroration for 4 Wagner tubas. There are not many opportunities to hear this beautiful instrument, unless you’re willing to sit through the ear-treacle which is Wagner opera, which is a crying shame.

To make this clip, I used the open-source freeware program ‘Audacity’ (downloaded from Sourceforge). To be able to save your selections as MP3′s, you will also need the LAME MP3 encoder, which you’ll find under ‘Optional downloads’ on the same download page as Audacity.

The first track in this mix is a piece written by Gavin Bryars for David James of the Hilliard Ensemble. It’s called Incipit Vita Nova and was written to celebrate the birth of a child called … Vita. There’s a connection with the piece Diptych by Silvestrov, which was on my previous mix. Diptych appeared on one of Gavin Bryars’ albums, On Photography. He explains why:

I sat in a pew [at a rehearsal by the Latvian Radio Choir] and [they] started to sing the piece they were rehearsing before mine. It was something I did not know but I thought it was the most beautiful music I had ever heard in my life. I sat still, completely overwhelmed by the richness of its harmonies, by its serenity and by the way in which it evolved – slowly but inevitably …. I resolved at that moment to include this music on the recording and enable it to be heard more widely.

Then there’s classical Iranian music from the singer Mohammed Reza Shajarian, with Kayhan Kalhor on kamancheh / spike fiddle. The piece is called Avaz va Saz; the words are a poem by Sa’adi: ‘Those who give themselves to the madness of your love, free themselves from the burden of life’s worries.’

Guitar music follows, from John Fahey, Jack Rose and Carlos Paredes.

Like the first track, the last two tracks feature a male alto / countertenor: Andreas Scholl in O Jesu, nomen dulce by Heinrich Schütz and Carlos Mena in Sances’s Stabat Mater.