Some Favorite Ditties

 I was mulling over some favorite tunes, and decided to make me a list. It soon grew faster than a politician's spending. Herewith, said list, If anyone can find the commonality around which these songs cluster, they are welcome to try. I tried to keep it down to one tune per songwriter, but all you have to do is say "Dylan," and you see how impossible that is.

 In no particular order. (The tunes constitute an unorderable set,)

• Scott Joplin. Maple Leaf Rag. New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra. Bonus link: Digital recording by Joplin himself!
• Porter Steele (et seq. Alphonse Picou) High Society. New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra. Jelly-Roll Morton's version is here.
• Bob Dylan. A Hard Rain's a-Gonna Fall. But also Like a Rolling Stone although I am not the biggest fan of his put-down songs. Then there is the quirky Xmas song: Must Be Santa.
• Tom Paxton. Outward Bound. Which sounds to my ear like a song about marriage. Back in the day, being a natural contrarian, when everybody was gaga over Dylan, I took a special interest in Paxton. So, I like too many of Paxton songs to list. Just a few: Leaving London.and his classic The Last Thing on my Mind.

Are you going away with no word of farewell?
Will there be not a trace left behind?

• If you ever find yiurself in Munich... O München, Mein München.
• Staying with the Germanic theme: Ein schoenes Fleckchen Erde.
  
• Orange Blossom Special played by Earl Scruggs & Foggy Mth Boys or Charlie Daniels Band: 
• Beach Boys. Sloop John B. Great polyphony!
  
• Moore's beautiful Irish song. Believe Me if All Those Endearing Young Charms (I could not find Treasa Ni Chathain's version on-line.)

the heart which has truly loved never forgets
But as truly loves on to the close

• Billy Joel. Just the Way You Are, which is Joel's take on the same sentiments just expressed by Moore, Technically, this was the Incomparable Marge's favorite song, but how could I leave it off?
• Simon & Garfunkle. Sounds of Silence. Paul Simon is another one of those who could have had multiple entries up here. "The Boxer," "Goin Home," "I Am a Rock," etc. But I am weary of looking up links.
• Preservation Hall. O Maryland, My Maryland. But I could have put "Gettysburg March" here instead.
• Wolfe Tones. We can't have a list like this without a few rebel songs. The Boys of the Old Brigade or The Broad Black Brimmer.  Not that I'm partial to the IRA in either it s Marxist (official) or its nationalist (provo) forms.
• Finbar Furey. Madame Bonaparte. The Irish Pipes have three sets of pipes. The chanter, the regulators (which play chords with the wrist) and the drones. Listen closely to this set dance and you can hear how Furey brings each one in in sequential stanzas.
• Turlough O Carolan. As long as we're talking about real Irish music, try Carolan's Concerto or Fanny Power. by the last of the great blind Irish harpers.
• Theodore Bikel. Katyushka or At Volgi na Dona. for nyemnogo Russiya music.
   Bruce Daigrepont. Laisses Faire or La Valse de la Riviere Rouge. because why leave out the French?
  
• East Side Dave. My Pennsylvania Home. 
• Michael Cooney. John Henry played on a twelve string guitar.
  
• Tommy Makem/Liam Clancy. The Rambles of Spring.

Here's a health to one and all
To the big and to the small
To the rich and poor alike, and foe and friends

I left off longer pieces, like Mozart's Clarinet Concerto and the Act I Finale to Patience by Gilbert and Sullivan, which at one point has seven distinct voices doing their own thing, yet blending into a great whole. I also left off hymns and anthems like Alleluia, Alleluia, Let the Holy Anthem Rise. or Columbia, Gem of the Ocean,  with its great line:

Thy banners make tyranny tremble.

If only, right?

Or like this...

That old deaf guy sure knew how to write 'em

They just don't write them like this any more

I first heard the 1812 in Freshman history class at Notre Dame HS, when Miss Wagner played it for intro to the Napoleonic Wars.

The Fourth of July

'Tis the Season

h/t Mark Shea

And We All See How Well That Worked Out

The same August 29 1966 issue of the Milwaukee Sentinel that carried the stories on the picketing at Judge Cannon's house had a story in Part 2, p. 11, quoted the new leader of the Church Music Association of America regarding a papal commission that had proposed banning "imitation folk songs," "hootenanny masses," etc. from Catholic rites.  "Let the musicians themselves outlaw the music."  The Church's top musicians know good from bad and, like a doctor, should have the final say.  If musical experimentation is given a chance, he said, the good music will eventually win out over the bad. He was supported in this by the outgoing president Archabbot Rembert G. Weakland OSB, whom some may remember as the later-disgraced Archbishop of Milwaukee, so perhaps his tastes in music were no better than his tastes in other matters. 

TOF's Rule for Church Music:
If you can imagine the hymn being sung by a Disney Princess (Pocahontas, Ariel, et al.) then it is not a good hymn.

Corollary: if you can imagine it being sung on a Broadway stage, likewise.  

One song:

An older song:


And.... an even older song:

Best Coin Ever Spent

h/t Mark Shea

He sure could write 'em.

It's the Time of Year That Makes You Want to Sing

The Philadelphia Opera Company

sure do like to sing, even while shopping.  You saw them last at Reading Terminal Market singing opera.  Now, along with 650 close friends and the Friends of the Wanamaker Organ, they do a little seasonal chorale.  A word of explanation on the venue: Wanamaker's was the old downtown department story in Philadelphia, which features a huge organ that plays for shoppers.  There is also a large sculpture of an eagle that is iconic for Philadelphians.  "I'll meet you under the Eagle" was a common phrase when I was going to college down there, and explains all those people we would see sitting around at its feet.  It is also why the Philadelphia Football Team bears that name. 

Toot Suite

A few days back I treated you to some musical entertainment.  Thanks to Mark Shea, we can bring to you now the stunning virtuosity of the St. Luke Bottle Band playing Scott Joplin's Peacherine Rag. 



Followed by Auld Lang Syne and the Quickstep from the 1812 overture, complete with cannons. 

The Musical Mood Continues

with the Finale to Beethoven's Fifth Symphony, conducted by a 3-yr old named Jonathan.  One really must watch up to the end.
h/t The Anchoress

In a Musical Mood

Those of you who remember so far back as In the Country of the Blind will recall that Red Malone played at the clarinet and was heard from time to time attempting the clarinet obligato from High Society, a test piece for jazz clarinetists.  In the final scene, the he plays it successfully in concert with Sarah Beaumont and others. 

In the interests of full disclosure, I also played the clarinet; or rather played at the clarinet.  I was passable for marching band, and could get partway through the slow movement of Mozart's concerto; but I never got really good at it, alas.  But that does not stop me from admiring the expertise of others. 

To get in the mood while writing In the Country of the Blind, I would play a "record" -- these were discs of vinyl on which music was recorded by an analog process.  The record was by the New Orleans Ragtime Orchestra, and so the music was arranged for a small orchestra heavy on band instruments.  This was the sort of orchestra which in the early 1900s played in movie theaters, skating rinks, municipal bandstands, dance halls, etc. 

I found the cut on YouTube!  Though I cannot answer for the odd graphic the tuber chose to accompany it!  Forsooth.  The clarinet solo comes in about halfway through.  In the trio section, the passage is first a violin andante, then a clarinet solo, the both together.  Enjoy.


And, since I am now in a ragtime/jazz mood, I present as a bonus feature "A Real Slow Drag" from Scott Joplin's second opera Treemonisha.  A YouTube commentator on one of the rags said that if Joplin had not been black they would have made a statue of him.  Of course, they did.  It's in the San Antonio Opera House.  Notice that a drag is not a rag; but neither is it a cakewalk.  But the arms-linked side by side goose-stepping was characteristic of it.  (A lot of the popular dances of the early 1900s were adapted from military marches.  In fact, we might compare Joplin to Sousa.


And last but not least, to march you out with your head held high, and feet high stepping, we will close this evening's concert with Preservation Hall Dixieland Jazz Band.  Dixieland is not ragtime.  Rags keep a regular beat in the left hand (bass) but syncopate the right hand (treble).  Dixieland jazzed up both clefs.  (Although they did not either swing or rock the beat.  Swinging meant to play two eighth notes as if they were the first and third note of a triplet.  Swing high and swing low depended on which direction the notes went.  Rock means to shift the beat from 1-2-3-4 to the back beat 1-2-3-4.  But we digress. 

In any case, here is The Gettysburg March.  They play it first in march time, then they jazz it up. 

This is Kewl