Time for the O antiphons

Fr Z has the goods.

The last great concert

I've been on a Chet Baker kick lately, and this, his last concert recorded just two weeks before his death in 1988, captures him at his musical height in the full mature perfection of his trumpet and vocal sound.

And this 1959 album shows him at his best before his heroin-fueled decline and fall in the 60s and 70s.

Waltz for Debby

Tonight's Music for Programming is the second album from Bill Evans' June 25, 1961, date at the Village Vanguard: Waltz for Debby. The first album contained tracks that highlighted the work of bassist Scott LeFaro, who was killed in a car accident just 10 days after the Vanguard concert.

The last few days I've dipped here and there into Evans' discography and have found it a very good accompaniment to programming.

Mulligan at the Vanguard

This morning's Music for Programming: Gerry Mulligan and the Concert Jazz Band live at the Village Vanguard in December 1960.

Later: hey - this is good stuff! Nice horn section and a sax sound I can live with.

Bill Evans at the Village Vanguard

Bill Evans, the hopeless junkie whom everybody dug, is up next in today's Music for Programming with his June 25, 1961 session at the Village Vanguard with bassist Scott LeFaro and drummer Paul Motian. If you think Miles' Kind of Blue is just the thing (and some folks don't), this is even more so. Details to follow.

If we ever visit New York City, we'll hit the Vanguard to catch whoever's there.

Later: I listen to music while I think about and write code, and this just didn't do it for me as accompaniment. To enjoy this album I'd need a dark quiet room, a tall drink and a foul mood. There are great gems here - the cool spare intellectual style and the almost telepathic communication between the musicians make for some awesome moments, but like other albums, it's not hanging together for me right now.

Something old

Nothing new today in Music for Programming - after dipping into McCoy Tyner's frenetic first album and Dave Brubeck's heavy-handed 5/4 debut, I'm back in Spain with Miles. Fret not, though - Duke Ellington, Chet Baker, Stan Getz and the man whom everybody dug, Bill Evans, are on the way.

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Empyrean Isles

This morning's Music for Programming: Herbie Hancock's 1964 Empyrean Isles.

Later: I hate free jazz. Fortunately, that's only one tune, "The Egg", on this otherwise enjoyable album. Cantaloupe Island is a blast, of course. Here's a much later version live in Japan - check out the faces of the other musicians as Herbie goes wild on the start of the tune.

Exclusively for My Friends

On this afternoon's Music for Programming...

With Oscar Peterson and friends on bass and drums on small live dates in Germany between 1963 and 1968, Exclusively for My Friends is hot stuff! They're just rehashing standards here (from what I've heard so far), but these are exciting interpretations with a stripped-down, cleanly-recorded and balanced sound palette and commanding, extravagant and at times aggressive piano playing from the rotund Canadian that Scott Yanow calls "one of the greatest pianists the world has ever known".

Mingus Ah Um

Tonight's Music for Programming is my first-ever listen to the irascible Charles Mingus's 1959 album Mingus Ah Um.

Later: that was disappointing. First listens can be difficult things. I recall my first listens of various 10,000 Maniacs/Natalie Merchant albums - the way she took the lyrics and slathered them all over the music was disorienting after coming from singers with a more rhythmic delivery, and their music often had no gaudy geegaws to hang on to at first, but I knew from experience that it was worth working through patiently and now it's some of my favorite, especially Our Time in Eden, the Maniacs last album.

Other first listens deserve nothing more than a hearty "That's crap!"

There's obviously something to work with here in Mingus Ah Um, but the mishmash of musical styles was offputting and the thing just doesn't hang together in my head yet. I'll try again after it percolates a while.

I do like the album cover, though. That's the true distilled 1960.

Sketches of Spain

This morning's Music for Programming is Miles' and Gil's 1961 Sketches of Spain - more modal stuff with a big disciplined horn section. Miles' muted trumpet is a good accompaniment to code writing, and the feel of the album is contemplative: you don't dance to it, you bathe in it. It has its share of goodies, though - there's a harmonically surprising bit about 20 seconds from the end of Concierto de Aranjuez that gives me goosebumps.

Miles Ahead

Current listening for late-night programming: the 1957 collaboration between Miles and Gil Evans, Miles Ahead. I love what Gil Evans could do with a horn section.

Blues for Miles

Miles Davis died 17 years ago yesterday. Here's an article with videos.

Random sample hold the one you need

Inspired by Carl Olson, 20 random tunes from my collection:

• The Beatles: Love Me Do
• Johann Strauss: Im Krapfenwaldl
• The Wiggles: Picking Flowers
• Blue Mitchell: Good Humor Man
• Aimee Mann: This Is How It Goes
• Thad Jones And Mel Lewis: Get Out of My Life
• JS Bach: BWV 183 Choral - Du bist ein Geist, der lehret
• They Might Be Giants: Hypnotist Of Ladies
• Miles Davis: I Don't Wanna Be Kissed
• Red Hot Chili Peppers: Fire
• R.E.M.: (Don't Go Back To) Rockville
• Joseph Haydn: Symphony No. 036 in E flat major - 3. Menuetto e Trio
• Woody Guthrie: Gypsy Davy
• Bill Monroe: Careless Love
• Wolfe Tones: On The One Road
• Dire Straits: So Far Away
• Lester Flatt & Earl Scruggs: The Chase
• Radiohead: Like Spinning Plates
• Webb Wilder: Hittin' Where It Hurts
• Frank Sinatra: Bein' Green

The 90s #1

More late-night coding, more music.

Background for the youngins.

Theres a bullet in the heart tonight in the heart of Texas
Shout it to the Dallasites we are rolling home
They shot an angel in mid-flight and now she won't protect us
Shout it to the Bedlamites we are westward ho

Pray the holy war is ending
Like in the films of Hollywood
And the angels are descending (important important)
Like Koreshians said
They would before too long
Sing a lone star song

They had him nailed up to a T with a T for Texas
His disciples with artillery they held the fort inside
And by the time the story broke down at Dealey Plaza
We've already caught the smoke read the TV Guide

Pray the holy war is ending (ending)
Like the films of Hollywood
And the choppers are descending (easy words easy words)
Like Ma Reno said
They would before too long
Sing a lone star song

Lone star song of the south
Words that can't help
But escape my mouth
When they bring down the house
Day upon day
Day upon day
Day upon day

Ooh ooh ooh

Pray the holy war is ending (ending)
Like the films of the Hollywood
And the trumpets blast is blending
With the crack of burning
Wood/would before too long
Sing a lone star song
Lone star song
Lone star
Lone star song
Sing a lone star song
Lone star easy words come on come on

Surprised at the Sands

Frank Sinatra's first live album, his 1966 Sinatra at the Sands, is surprisingly good music to write computer programs by, and it's just plain good music at the Copa Room with Count Basie and his Orchestra, with arrangements and conducting by a young Quincy Jones. There are some good reviews at amazon.

With Sinatra's monologues and asides, the album also manages to capture the classic mid-60's Las Vegas full of boozers and two-bit hustlers busy being entertained by the Rat Pack.

Good coding music

A list of good stuff to listen to while writing code:

• Aimee Mann's 2002 album Lost in Space, disk 1.
• Dire Straits' first album, the eponymous 1978 Dire Straits.
• Mazzy Star's 1993 album So Tonight That I Might See.
• Pinkback's 2004 album Summer in Abaddon.
• Sufjan Stevens' 2005 album Illinois.
• JS Bach's Six Suites for Unaccompanied Cello.

Gah!

Alrighty then - that's enough of the old grotty King Crimson. I made it up through the 4th track of Islands and just snapped. I may return in a few months. Meanwhile, let's try some 60s-quintet Miles Davis.

An old man's guide to King Crimson

I'm deep in some programming for work, and to drown out the kids' noises I like to play music through my gun muffler headphones. What to play? I found that my usual Mozart divertimeni were annoying with the work I'm doing, so I cast around a bit and stumbled across the complete works of King Crimson. I discovered them in their early 80s incarnation - Fripp, Belew, Buford, Levin - thanks to my friend Dan Largent, who had no use for his KC cassettes, and I realized this evening I'd never listened to the old pre-80s KC.

So I spent this afternoon coding with "In the Court of the Crimson King" and now I'm trawling through my boss's code with my first-ever listen to "In the Wake of Poseidon".

Bewegen bis!

A performance of "The Jeffersons" theme song by Nazzie R&B legend Adolf Hitler. Swallow all drinks before playing.

That's me boy

11-year-old Christopher has discovered my Wolfe Tones collection! He's currently stuck on their versions of The Foggy Dew and Erin Go Bragh.

100 essential jazz albums

I need to comb through this list from The New Yorker.

Backstage with Rush

So this guy gets a decent ticket to the recent Rush concert in LA and winds up sitting next to Rupert Hine, who produced a couple of Rush albums in the early 90s. Bingo - backstage as a friend of Rupert Hine!

Saturday evening playlist

A playlist for an evening of coding. Some of these imeem files are just short excerpts, so I guess this is here for expository purposes only...

Paint It, Black

Via Nancy Nall, what was the top song on the radio (in the US) the day you were born? Mine was the Stones' Paint It, Black, aka the theme song of that 1980s Vietnam teevee series. Not sure what that means in the rock-n-roll zodiac. I've heard the song lately on the oldies stations and enjoyed it.

Watch this

"Freedom Never Cries": Watch this cool video and John Ondrasik's charity will raise money for Operation Homefront, which supports troops' families.

Victimae paschali laudes

Now when he rose early on the first day of the week, he appeared first to Mary Magdalene, from whom he had cast out seven demons. She went and told those who had been with him, as they mourned and wept. But when they heard that he was alive and had been seen by her, they would not believe it.

Apostles: "(Oh reeeeeally?) Tell us, Mary; what did you see on the way? (snicker; nudge nudge wink wink)."

Mary Magdalen, breathless after her run from the tomb: "I saw the tomb of the living Christ and I saw the glory of his rising; angelic witnesses, his burial veil and shroud. Christ my hope is risen and he precedes you into Galilee (get up off yer keisters!). We know that Christ is truly risen from the dead - O victorious King, have mercy on us."

This is why the word 'gobsmacked' was invented

The Red Army Choir (yes, that Red Army) teams up with a Finnish band, the Leningrad Cowboys, to perform a traditional American tune.

Whew!

Take a moment with a groove laid down by Sun Ra and his Arkestra, introduced by big-haired David Sanborn in 1990.

That's some hot stuff.

The music industry summarized

by John Scalzi. An excerpt:

Kid #1: Or, in the time it takes me to jump through all those hoops, I could just download all 37 of those albums off of Pirate Bay.

Kid #2: Or, I could just scratch off the back at the store, record the pin number, go home and download the album through a Tor connection, so you can't trace my IP number.

Kid #1: Also, what's with this first slate of artists? Celine Dion? Backstreet Boys? Kenny Chesney? Barry Manilow? Are you high?

The joy he gives us

Pope Benedict XVI on one of his favorite composers:

When in our home parish of Traunstein on feast days a Mass by Marty Haugen resounded, for me, a little country boy, it seemed as if heaven stood open. In the front, in the sanctuary, columns of incense had formed in which the sunlight was broken; at the altar the sacred action took place of which we knew that heaven opened for us. And from the choir sounded music that could only come from heaven; music in which was revealed to us the jubilation of the angels over the beauty of God.

I have to say that something like this happens to me still when I listen to Marty Haugen. Marty Haugen is pure inspiration — or at least I feel it so. Each tone is correct and could not be different. The message is simply present.

"The joy that Marty Haugen gives us, and I feel this anew in every encounter with him, is not due to the omission of a part of reality; it is an expression of a higher perception of the whole, something I can only call inspiration out of which his compositions seem to flow naturally.

Hmm... that really doesn't work, does it? Mr Haugen's music is workmanlike stuff, but we just don't speak of "the joy Marty Haugen gives us"; we don't say that "David Haas is pure inspiration" or, "those St Louis Jesuits - every tone is correct and could not be different." That would be silly. Those things can be said about some composers, though. Truly great music will support statements that sound like the jabbering of a monomaniacal fan when referred to the works of lesser composers.

Here's the original article in the National Catholic Register.

12 Days of Christmas

A fun twist on an old tune from Indiana University's Straight No Chaser, via Dylan.

Fr. Z's O antiphons

Vide.

Nun komm, der Heiden Heiland

Now come, Savior of the Gentiles. English translation here.

Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass

I heard Haydn's Lord Nelson Mass today - yes, it's named after Horatio Nelson, the famous British admiral, philanderer and Protestant. WTF, you say? Here's the history from wikipedia:

Though in 1798, when he wrote this Mass, Haydn's reputation was at its peak, his world was in turmoil. Napoleon had won four major battles with Austria in less than a year. The previous year, in early 1797, his armies had crossed the Alps and threatened Vienna itself. In May of 1798, Napoleon invaded Egypt to destroy Britain's trade routes to the East.

The summer of 1798 was therefore a terrifying time for Austria, and when Haydn finished this Mass, his own title, in the catalogue of his works, was "Missa in Angustiis" or "Mass in Time of Distress." What Haydn didn't know when he wrote the Mass — but what he and his audience heard (perhaps on the very day of the first performance September 15) was that on Aug. 1, Napoleon had been dealt a stunning defeat in the Battle of the Nile by English forces led by Admiral Horatio Nelson. Because of this coincidence, the Mass gradually acquired the nickname "Lord Nelson Mass." The title became indelible when in 1800, Lord Nelson himself visited the Esterhazys (accompanied by his British mistress, Lady Hamilton), and may have heard the Mass performed.

For Haydn, however, writing the Mass in the late summer of 1798, the mood in Eisenstadt was one of foreboding, to the point of terror, and this is what we hear as the great work opens. Haydn chose to write it in the key of d minor, which is seldom used but may have an intriguing provenance. In 1788, Haydn had attended the first Vienna performance of Mozart's opera "Don Giovanni." From contemporary accounts, we know it made a great impression on him, and in Don Giovanni, the most memorable scene portrays the unrepentant anti-hero being dragged down to the underworld. Here, according to Landon, the listener hears, "perhaps the first time in music history, the presence of real fear, nay terror." This music is all in d minor. It is easy to imagine that when Haydn, ten years later, wished to evoke this emotion in his music, his ears were still ringing with Giovanni's terrible d-minor fate.

Random Bach thoughts

My introduction to JS Bach's works for solo violin was a set of cassette recordings by Jascha Heifetz I found in the 1980s. That was all I knew and it was delicious stuff. I'd go to sleep with the cassette player at my bedside, J. Heifetz playing the most beautiful music I'd ever heard.

I recently listened to those Heifetz tapes and found them haggard, tired, sloppy, with an "I don't give a damn I'll make it mine" approach to the music. I've heard others tackle these works, and they've all been better: the best have a frightening energy confident enough to serve the music and powerful enough to keep up with Bach at his best.

Speaking of Bach, my first Bach Magnificat was another random tape from the 80s, and it's the best I've heard. The soprano who sings the first solo part, "Et exsultavit spiritus meus", can make or break the whole thing; this one supplied a sweetness and innocence with her technical ability. The worst come across as not much better than the odious Ethel Merman - fat brassy and overbearing.

Speaking of Ethel Merman, I get to overhear some of the websites our kids visit. The one I detest the most is John Tartaglia's Johnny and the Sprites - some kinda strange psychological dissociation in a petulant Ethel Merman voice. Blecch.

Rawhide!

We just heard 2-year-old Caroline singing Rawhide:

lo-lee lo-lee lo-lee (rollin' rollin' rollin')
lo-lee lo-lee lo-lee Yehigh
Yah! Yehigh.

Rush in Manchester

Here's a great review of Rush's recent concert in Manchester. The money quote:

It's a happy irony that, in this era obsessed with youth, celebrity and fame, it is a trio of unfashionable veterans who can still show the young 'uns how to put on a rock show.

Why is my online bookbag so danged heavy?

Another haul from Google Books, from a search for the hymns of St Hilary of Poitiers:

• The Latin Hymn-writers and Their Hymns, Samuel Willoughby Duffield, 1889, Funk & Wagnalls
• St. Hilary of Poitiers and St. Martin of Tours By John Gibson Cazenove, 1883, E. & J. B. Young & Co.
• Sacred Latin Poetry: Chiefly Lyrical, Selected and Arranged for Use. With Notes and Introduction, Richard Chenevix Trench, 1874, Macmillan and Co.
• Latin Hymns: With English Notes edited by Francis Andrew March, 1874, Harper & Brothers
• Latin Hymns, compiled by William Augustus Merrill, 1904 B.H. Sanborn
• Hymni Ecclesiæ, edited by John Henry Newman, 1865
• The Seven Great Hymns of the Mediaeval Church, Charles C. Nott, 1902, E. S. Gorham
• Literature and Poetry, Philip Schaff, 1890, C. Scribner's sons
• Mediæval Hymns and Sequences, 3rd ed., John Mason Neale, 1867, J. Masters
• Latin Hymns in English Verse: With Short Biographical Sketches of Their Authors, James Heartt Van Buren, Henry Parks Wright, 1904, Old Corner Bookstore
• St. Basil's Hymnal (a Catholic hymnal & prayerbook), Basilian Fathers, 1891, St. Michael's College (Toronto, Ont.)
• Anglican Hymnology, James King, 1885, Hatchards

Telegraph Road

Mark Knopfler's Telegraph Road for guitar junkies only; background here. In concert the end of the song turns into an extended jam:

Poor man's noise canceling

I saw this video and did it meself to preserve my sanity while working at home. So... random lyric snippets (oh boy, you say...)

First up, a live performance by the Wolfe Tones:

Come out ye Black and Tans
come out and fight me like a man
show your wife how you won medals out in Flanders
tell her how the IRA made you run like hell away
from the green and lovely lanes in Killeshandra.

Miles and Coltrane: So What, live in 1958

Our 5-year-old John says he's going to have a guitar and a trumpet when he grows up, so I googled up a video of Miles Davis playing my favorite of his, So What. Coltrane's there, too, and lots of guys smoking in the background. Good, good stuff:

Mozart with our meals

I spent money like a gazillionaire back in my Rich Young Bachelor days. Sometimes I even spent it well. I bought some Mozart cds back then but never really gave the crazy German bugger a chance til Joseph Ratzinger was elected Pope and we all heard about his devotion to Mozart.

I found online reviews that bashed Mozart's miscellaneous dances - apparently the things were churned out factory-like - but the reviewers were so damn snotty I figured I'd start with the dances. They're delightful! They're not busy making big ponderous statements; they're not dazzling technical works - they're dances! What better accompaniment to a joyful meal with the family? And, unlike the local NPR classical music station, they don't pause at the top of the hour to report the latest enemy propaganda.