Jesus Christ the Apple Tree

Here's some more British choral singing for you Anglophiles. I could not embed the video here, but do click over to it; it's lovely.

My first gig in England, about ten years ago, was a recital of the specialized repertoire in which I had built a modest reputation, at Saint John's College, Cambridge. I learned there that the choirs from the various Cambridge colleges compete with one another; Kings College, whose choir sings this performance, is certainly the most well-known, but my hosts assured me that Saint John's was better. My hosts also brought me to Sunday night evensong at the Saint John's College chapel, where I marveled at the impressive discipline and concentration of the little boys, evidenced also in the video linked to above. I was assured that the children were perfect devils in rehearsal, but you would never know it.

My Sweetheart's Like Venus

I took down the tree today with something of a heavy heart, but I kept the Christmas folder on my iTunes going all day, and noticed that this song seemed to have gotten mixed into the playlist by mistake. It is one of the loveliest things you'll ever hear.

The Children

In my upcoming dissertation voice recital, I'm doing the recently-published Three Scottish Songs by James MacMillan. MacMillan has chosen texts from the work of poet William Soutar, who was a major figure in the Scottish Literary Revival of the early twentieth century in spite of the fact that he was confined to bed for most of his life with ankylosing spondylitis. One of these poems, "The Children," is about the Battle of Britain; Benjamin Britten set the same text in his cycle Who Are These Children?, composed in the late 1960s.

Upon the street they lie
Beside the broken stone:
The blood of children stares from the broken stone.

Death came out of the sky
In the bright afternoon:
Darkness slanted over the bright afternoon.

Again the sky is clear
But upon the earth a stain:
The earth is darkened with a darkening stain:

A wound which everywhere
Corrupts the hearts of men:
The blood of children corrupts the heart of men.

Silence is in the air:
The stars move to their places:
Silent and serene the stars move to their places.

There is a sixth stanza too, which MacMillan chose not to set:

But from the earth the children stare
With blind and fearful faces:
And our charity is in the children's faces.

The song is stark and chilling, with a sing-song, music-box effect. I'm not sure if it would be more or less disturbing with the addition of the last stanza. Without it, the deaths of the children bombed from the air seem to have occurred against the impersonal backdrop of unchanging nature. With it, we are all invoked and implicated.

Musicologist Banned

I'm tempted to joke that more musicologists should be banned, but this is positively chilling. Nalini Ghuman is a member of the "Elgar Mafia," some of whose members are colleagues of mine, and whose only vices are far too boring and abstruse to mention here.