3 posts tagged “music”
Reading:
--The Empty Chair, Diane Duane's final Rihannsu novel, in an early-release electronic edition.
--Bonewits's Essential Guide to Druidism. I am not a great fan of Isaac Bonewits, but two things cannot be denied: He is a decent writer, and he has been Johnny-on-the-spot in a great many Neopagan movements in the U.S.
--The Warrior's Apprentice by Lois McMaster Bujold, my second reading. I had forgotten just how insane her protagonist Miles Naismith Vorkosigan actually is. I'd rather cope with the psychotic liegeman who likes to kill things.
--Cordelia's Honor by Bujold. The first novel in the Vorkosigan series, actually a compilation of the first and third books written, which form a single coherent story.
Listening:
--The Complete English Anthems of Thomas Tallis, performed by the Tallis Scholars.
--The Great Service of William Byrd, performed by ditto.
--assorted recordings of consort music by Lawes, Gibbons, etc., roughly contemporary with Tallis and Byrd or a bit later. Ah, viols....
Watching:
--the first season of The Tick. SPOON!
--just finished the first season of Dead Like Me courtesy of Netflix and liked it so much I *bought* the second season, which I hope to crack open tonight.
--Antiques Roadshow and American Experience. Yes, you may think of me as a boring old person now, someone who gets excited by Antiques Roadshow.
--Secrets of the Dead.
Thinking about:
--what I'm going to have for dinner.
--what I ate for lunch and how there was rather too much of it.
--the books I'm reading, and their characters, and their themes.
--what sort of ritual I'm going to do for the Samhain/All Saints/All Souls season, and when, and why.
--a friend who is having some troubles.
--things I'd like to do that involve getting away from the computer and socializing with friends in non-virtual life.
Books, movies, music; what's in your top 5 right now?
Books
Cordelia's Honor: I've just finished my first re-reading of this dual novel, the beginning of Lois McMaster Bujold's chronicles of Miles Vorkosigan. I may be even more impressed with it than before.
Gaudy Night: When in doubt, I re-read this book. Sayer's finest Lord Peter Wimsey novel--mystery, romance, social critique, larded with literary quotations and providing some splendidly quotable bits of its own.
The Ode Less Travelled: Stephen Fry explains it all for you in this engaging, informative primer on writing traditional metered verse. (Yes, I mean *that* Stephen Fry.)
Movies
Dead Like Me: Not actually a movie, but the thing I've been watching with the greatest attention and greatest pleasure, of late. A teenaged slacker's afterlife as a "grim reaper", whose job is to release the souls of people about to die.
Eyes on the Prize: PBS recently re-ran this gripping documentary, now twenty years old, of the premiere events of the civil rights movement. It really makes you appreciate how much the laws have changed and wonder how much attitudes have changed to match them.
The Tick: SPOON!!!
The Twilight Zone: Every so often I order a few discs of this classic series from Netflix, and each time I rediscover *why* it's a classic. I think the secret is that it's not really television, at least not as we understand it now; it's really theatre transposed to the stage. The acting, the makeup, the sets, all belong in a black box as much as on a soundstage, and many of the actors who guested on TWZ, who went on to become fixtures in television, came to TWZ from Broadway and other theatrical venues. It's just plain *good*--drama, comedy, horror, fuelled by Serling's passion for characters and for ideas and the actors' willingess to give the small screen everything they had.
Music
English Anthems of Tallis: Exquisite, crystalline performances of works by The Man Who Invented Anglican Choral Music, sung by the Tallis Scholars. Thomas Tallis and his business partner William Byrd were among the first and certainly among the most influential composers to write for the new, vernacular liturgy of the Church of England.
Royall Consort Suites by William Lawes. Beautiful, complex instrumental music of the seventeenth century, featuring viols. I love viols. I don't like violins--too screechy. Viols are mellow. Lawes was a court composer to Charles I, who was overthrown by Cromwell.
The Great Service by William Byrd. Morning and Evening Prayer, set to music by and for people with attention spans. Suitable for performing in the presence of red-haired Virgin Queens. Magnificent.
Pretty much anything we sing in my church choir, which includes a fair helping of Tallis and Byrd.
And pretty much anything played on the big band show that airs Friday nights on our local NPR station. Even "Elmer's Tune".
What's your favorite song to sing karaoke-style? If you don't have one, why not?
[gives her Vox audience a thoroughly horrified look]
I don't have a favorite song to sing "karaoke-style", whatever that means. I don't have one because I am a trained choral singer who sings professionally in an Anglican church choir. In my prime I sounded exactly like a boy soprano, thank you very much.
[drops pretentions of horror]
I don't much like popular music of the present day, or rock music generally, but I do have a weakness for the popular songs of the big band era and earlier, back to the ballads of the Gay Nineties (the *18*90s, that is). Those are the songs I heard my mother and grandmother singing when I was a child. My mother's chief hobbies, besides smoking and complaining, were doing amateur theatre and frequenting piano bars, and in her company I heard songs from the 1890s, 1920s, and 1940s, songs of Gershwin, Porter, Berlin, Kern, Arlen, and many others. There's a new piano bar opening near me, conveniently located on the route from work to home, and the closest I will ever get to karaoke is singing some of those old songs in a piano bar, as my mother did.
Sweetheart, I love you, think the world of you,
But I'm afraid you don't care for me.
I'd never know it, you never show it--
Everyone says I'm a fool to be
Pining the whole day though!
Why do you act like you do?
You're mean to me,
Why must you be mean to me....
