so quiet and dark
star has flickered into dust
song has faded away

Down the rabbit hole again.

Listening to my favorite online radio station, a piece of music caught my ear and I was in time to access the play list.

I discovered I was listening to Schwanenlied or swan song written by Fanny Mendelssohn.

You read that right.

Fanny not Felix Mendelssohn.

Fanny is Felix’s little sister.

Into the google goes Fanny Mendelssohn.

The piece I had heard was a flute and harp version of a piece of music or lieder or simple song that according to wikipedia, Ms. Mendelssohn felt, as she wrote to her brother, “lieder suit me best.”

This version is hauntingly (love to use that word) arresting and somehow familiar.

Yet I never heard it before that I remember so how could it be familiar?

It also has words, sung in German of course but I have never had much luck listening to German lieder.

Silly but it may have to do with an episode of Cheers where Woody’s rich in-laws have a party where the entertainment is to be Kindertotenlieder … or Songs on the death of Children.

Just the look on Sam Malone’s face when the word Kindertotenlieder it is explained to him is worth the price of admission.

Anyway the words for Ms. Mendelsshon’s song were written by the German poet, Heinrich Heine.

I am not up on my German poetry but I defend myself saying, who is.

According to one critic, the text and music “resembles a lullaby. In its clear separation of melody and accompaniment it is akin to the style of many Songs Without Words, for piano solo, some composed by Hensel and some by Mendelssohn. Formally it is simple, like most Hensel settings, consisting of two strophes with the second slightly modified. That slight modification proves significant, however, for it fashions the climax of the song.“ (Historical Anthology of Music by Women, Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (1805-1847) by MARCIA J. CITRON – 1987 by Indiana University Press)

I am not sure what to say about using the poetical words of Heinrich Heine for a song without words but I am uneducated in these matters.

The words are simple:

A star falls down
From its twinkling height,
It is the star of love
That I see falling there.
So much falls from the apple tree,
From the white leaves;
The teasing breezes come
And urge on their game.

The swan sings in the pond,
And paddles up and down,
And singing more and more gently,
He disappears into the depths of the river.
It is so quiet and dark,
Scattered is leaf and blossom,
The star has flickered into dust,
The swan song has faded away.

Now the odd part of todays trip.

I was curious as to chicken-egg time of the term Swan Song.

Was it possible that this simple piece by Fanny Mendelssohn was the source of the term swan song as the swan of song of someone’s career?

The Google will tell you that Swan Song has become a euphuism for the final act of someone’s career but it is vague as when this started being used.

I continued down the rabbit hole to read this.

Swan Song as described by the online Merriam-Webster says that: Swans don’t sing. They whistle or trumpet, or in the case of the swan most common in ponds, the mute swan, they only hiss and snort. But according to ancient legend, the swan does sing one beautiful song in its life – just before it dies.

The swan sings one beautiful song in its life – just before it dies.

The swan song.

I wanted to know the name of a piece of music.

Sometimes the world wide web can be a beautiful thing.

so quiet and dark
star has flickered into dust
song has faded away

With a graceful lilt
Autochthonous, Number 4
by William Grant Still

A reoccurring theme in this blog is the access to music that anyone and everyone, has so long as they have access to the world wide web.

I am sure there was NEVER been a time in all of human history that such much music is available to so many people for so little effort.

You can search You Tube (Bach and Emperor) to watch a scene for a movie where Frederick the Great summons Johann Sebastian Bach to the palace to play something.

Well, I can bring up anyone from anywhere for any piece of music with a few taps of my fingers.

Boy howdy!

Almost beyond belief.

As my faithful readers know, I listen to Classic FM when I am working.

It is a Classical Music global radio station from London.

Being from London, it is four or five hours ahead of me so I know that somewhere in the world, someone has already made through the next four or five hours.

It also has the best traffic reports.

When the A1 to Cambridge was backed up all the way to the anti clockwise at Potter’s Bar due to a lorry overturned in the lay by, Atlanta traffic didn’t seem so bad.

It is an interesting radio station in that it uses the same software to determine playlists used by pop radio stations.

This is bad as that you did get to hear a lot of music a lot.

I mean it repeats favorites often.

Maybe I could do with a little less Elgar in my day.

But this is good as you avoid a lot of Mahler.

And it is good because when you hear something unfamiliar there is a chance you will hear it again.

So it happened today.

You see, some time back I caught a piece of music new to me.

While I could browse the online playlists for the stations, I think this was one of those moments when the presenter snuck a piece of music on air to see the reaction.

I could tell from the sound that the piece was American.

And I could tell from the sound that the piece was most like from the Big Band – Jazz era.

It was Aaron Copland-esque without being Aaron Copland.

It was Virgil Thomson-esque without being Virgil Thomson.

But I could not found what it was.

And it was played again today.

This time it WAS listed in the online playlist.

I wasn’t prepared for what I learned.

I had never, NEVER heard of the piece of music or the composer ever.

The piece was the 3rd Movement of the 4th Symphony of one William Grant Still.

The symphony is titled, Autochthonous which is defined as an adjective (of an inhabitant of a place) indigenous rather than descended from migrants or colonists.

The 3rd Movement is titled, ” With a graceful lilt.”

William Grant Still, according to Wikipedia, is known primarily for his first symphony, Afro-American Symphony (1930), which was, until 1950, the most widely performed symphony composed by an American. Also of note, Still was the first African-American to conduct a major American symphony orchestra, the first to have a symphony (which was, in fact, the first one he composed) performed by a leading orchestra, the first to have an opera performed by a major opera company, and the first to have an opera performed on national television.

Wikipedia continues, “Still arranged music for films. These included Pennies from Heaven (the 1936 film starring Bing Crosby and Madge Evans) and Lost Horizon (the 1937 film starring Ronald Colman, Jane Wyatt and Sam Jaffe). For Lost Horizon, he arranged the music of Dimitri Tiomkin. Still was also hired to arrange the music for the 1943 film Stormy Weather, but left the assignment because “Twentieth-Century Fox ‘degraded colored people.’

I typed William Grant Still into the google and am now introducing myself to the wonderful works that Mr. Still created for us.

I didn’t know his name until today.

But I will know his name and his work for the rest of my life.

I have to ask, how many more William Grant Still’s might be out there?

Sometimes the changes brought upon us by the information superhighway are for the better.

I’ll take the access to the music of William Grant Still any day.

That and the search for more like this.

came a melody
in my heart, the sound of love
charles mingus’ bass

Music.

As one person said (and I wish I could find a citation as that always helps so the sake of this essay lets pretend I said this first) music will wake up your mind to know that there is something greater than what we see on the surface.

Fran Lebowitz, in an interview with Spike Lee on Music (arguing who was the greater artist, Duke Ellington or Michael Jordan) made the point that music makes you feel good – feel better – a drug without the down side – makes you happier and doesn’t harm.

I can’t argue.

For Valentine’s is there anything better to express feelings for someone in a way that there is more than what you see on the surface then through music?

For me it is easy to admit I have little to no musical ability or talent.

I am in awe or maybe just jealous of those with voice or instrumental ability.

BUT I can direct others to You Tube.

If it is music and it has been recorded sometime, somewhere, ever in history, you can listen to it on YouTube.

You can also find YouTube clips of a movie made on the Life of JS Bach.

There is a scene where the Emperor of Prussia Frederick the Great has Mr. Bach in for a grip and grin.

Much like the more famous scene in Amadeus where the Emperor Josef II of Austro-Hungary meeets Mozart and Mozart blows them away with his piano playing, Bach is offered up a short tune (written by Freddie the Great) and asked to improvise on it.

Those two Emperors could call in Bach and Mozart.

Who could do that?

Well.

I can.

I have access to music at my fingertips that any monarch or emperor or anyone in the past could only dream of.

With that in mind I offer up for Valentine’s this clip of Charles Mingus’ Duke Ellington’s Sound of Love” from the live album Sound of Love.

I was young and care free,
Not a song have found my soul,
Lost in blues jazz and rag time,
No sound had got to my muse…

I was searching for my melody,
Love blues that gets me ooh,

All alone, sad clown with a circus closed down,
Lost on my merry go round,

Came a melody in my heart,
So yearning…
Taught me to your music out of love,
From the song, for this life,
We all live infinite,
With our lover and beloved,
As one Ellington sound of love…

Ding dong merrily
In heav’n the bells are ringing
Ding dong verily the sky

I discard the haiku I was writing and decided quoting Oscar Wilde on Christmas Eve was just not right.

I will use it next week when thinking retrospectively on the year.

That being said, the Christmas Carol (defined by Wikipedia as “a carol (a song or hymn) on the theme of Christmas, traditionally sung at Christmas itself or during the surrounding Christmas holiday season) Ding Dong! Merrily on high was just playing on the Radio.

Followers of this blog will remember that I listen to Classic FM, an online radio station from London (where its is five hours ahead of local time so I know that somewhere somehow someone has made through the next five hours), and at Christmas time they load up their playlist with Christmas Music.

I enjoy as they do not include the American Music of stars and almost stars singing the classics of Rockin’ Round the Christmas Tree or I’ll have a Blue Christmas.

I mean I gots nothing against these recordings, lest I am taken for a ‘high-brow’ Christmas music snob.

And of course as I start writing, Rudolph the Red Nosed is played on my radio station and it was requested by some 4 year old in Sussex and the presenters spend the next 5 minutes talking about their childhoods and Rudpolph.

Which of course calls to mind Frasier Crane’s outburst on the song in an episode of Cheers, when he says, “the story of “Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer” is one of the most unrealistic and therefore potentially damaging in all of children’s music. It gives them a horribly distorted view of reality. First the other reindeer tease and then ostracize him. And then when his abnormality proves of service, they use him. In fact, not only do Donner, Blitzen, et al, not love him and laugh out loud with glee, but they doubly despise the bulbous-nosed little wimp.”

Which is odd because I also cannot but remember Martin Crane’s efforts to sing “Oh Holy Night” whenever I hear that carol.

But what is really odd is that the carol in question, Ding dong merrily …, sticks in my brain because one night long ago I was flipping the channels on TV at Christmas time and landed NBC’s Holiday Special featuring the CAST OF FRASIER and then out came, Frasier and Niles and Martin and Roz and Daphne (though truth be told I wasn’t watching the show back then and didn’t know who these folks were) and they troop down this extravagant holiday stage and line up and raise their mics and break out in, Ding dong merrily …

I thought how in the world did their agents talk them into this one?

I read somewhere that you can tell when a star needs money or is truly desperate or some marketer is striking while the iron is hot and a holiday album is produced.

Not only is their money to made but 95% of the songs are no longer under copywrite.

Even the Brady Bunch cut a Christmas album.

BUT I DIGRESS.

As I said, Ding Dong! Merrily on high was playing and I thought I would write a stinging post about such goofiness and DING DONG the Witch is Dead Merrily on High.

Once again down the rabbit hole that is the World Wide Web.

I put Ding Dong! Merrily on high into the google and found out, to my suprise, that it is based on a French tune from the 1500’s.

The lyrics came along in 1924 by an English composer George Ratcliffe Woodward (1848–1934), and the carol was first published in 1924 in his The Cambridge Carol-Book.

This is all from Wikipedia which also notes:

The song is particularly noted for the Latin refrain:

Gloria, Hosanna in excelsis!
[Glory! Hosanna in the highest!]

where the sung vowel sound “o” of “Gloria” is fluidly sustained through a lengthy rising and falling melismatic melodic sequence, extending the word to a 33 syllable long lyric.

I have to repeat that last line again.

The sung vowel sound “o” of “Gloria” is fluidly sustained through a lengthy rising and falling melismatic melodic sequence, extending the word to a 33 syllable long lyric.

Who knew?

Fluidly sustained through a lengthy rising and falling melismatic melodic sequence is quite a trick.

Extending the vowel sound “o” to a 33 syllable long lyric even more so.

It looks like this.

Christmas Carols are often like Christmas Packages.

Lots of surprises inside.