The song... resonated with soldiers going off to fight and their families and sweethearts. The assertion that "we'll meet again" is optimistic, as many soldiers did not survive to see their loved ones again. Indeed, the meeting place at some unspecified time in the future would have been seen by many who lost loved ones to be heaven.There have been many versions as modern performers have covered the piece, but Vera Lynn is the obvious choice, since she popularized the song during the war, and it became one of her signature pieces. The video of this song most often seen is the one using the final moments of Dr. Strangelove, but those images of nuclear blasts were a little too dismal for tonight; I thought this one employing stills from WWII was at least a bit more upbeat.
...at the age of 92, she has done it again, hitting No 1 in the album charts last night with her offering We'll Meet Again: The Very Best of Vera Lynn and usurping Bob Dylan, 68, as the oldest artist to grace the top spot... Her album fought off stiff competition from the Beatles, who occupied the 5th, 6th, 9th, 10th, 21st, 24th, 29th, 31st, 33rd, 37th and 38th spots...Third update: I needed some music to post on New Year's Eve, so this repost finds life once more. See you guys next year...
It is 70 years to the month since Lynn, then 22, first recorded We'll Meet Again, which became a symbolic song of the second world war... Last night's No 1 made her the only artist to feature in the UK single and album charts in the 20th and 21st centuries.
Robert Burns sent a copy of the original song to the Scots Musical Museum with the remark, “The following song, an old song, of the olden times, and which has never been in print, nor even in manuscript until I took it down from an old man". Some of the lyrics were indeed "collected" rather than composed by the poet; the ballad "Old Long Syne" printed in 1711 by James Watson shows considerable similarity in the first verse and the chorus to Burns' later poem, and is almost certainly derived from the same "old song". It is a fair supposition to attribute the rest of the poem to Burns himself...Lyrics and text from Wikipedia (where's there's also a useful "English translation".)
Most common use of the song involves only the first verse and the chorus. The last lines of both of these are often sung with the extra words "For the sake of" or "And days of", rather than Burns' simpler lines. This allows one note for each word, rather than the slight melisma required to fit Burns' original words to the melody...
I have identified 140 (sometimes overlapping) possible causes of death, in addition to 85 other conditions. But Mozart died only once. Some causes are plausible, only few—maybe one, or maybe none of them—can be true, so most if not all of them are false...The image is of Mozart's unfinished Requiem.
Many authors have favoured the hypothesis of an acute condition such as influenza; staphylococcal, streptococcal, or meningococcal infection; various septicaemias; scarlatina or measles; typhoid or paratyphoid fevers; typhus; tuberculosis; trichinosis; and so on. Postinfectious glomerulonephritis was first proposed by Barraud in 1905. Schoental, an expert in microfungi, thought that Mozart died from mycotoxin poisoning. Drake, a neurosurgeon, proposed a diagnosis of subdural haematoma after a skull fracture identified on a cranium that is not Mozart’s. Ehrlich, a rheumatologist, believed he died from Behçet’s syndrome. Langegger, a psychiatrist, contended that he died from a psychosomatic condition [!!]. Little, a transplant surgeon, thought he could have saved Mozart by a liver transplant. Brown, a cardiologist, claimed he succumbed to endocarditis. On the basis of a translation error of Jahn’s biography of Mozart, Rappoport, a pathologist, thought Mozart died of cerebral haemorrhage. Ludewig, a pharmacologist, suggested poisoning or self poisoning by drinking wine adulterated with lead compounds. For some, Mozart manifested cachexia or hyperthyroidism, but for others it was obesity or hypothyroidism. Ludendorff, a psychiatrist, and her apostles, claimed in 1936 that Mozart had been murdered by the Jews, the Freemasons, or the Jesuits, and assassination is not excluded by musicologists like Autexier, Carr, and Taboga...
Lange-Eichbaum complained early in 1930 that too often pathography becomes a “historical game, a literary feuilleton, or a medical entertainment.” The motto of Mozart’s biography written by Nissen (Constanze Mozart’s second husband) was: de mortuis nil, nisi vere...
Most of the 27 psychiatric disorders attributed to Mozart result from disregarding or misquoting the criteria that demarcate normal from abnormal behaviour. Some authors upgrade daily worries into paranoid ideas or anxiety neuroses; blues or genuine worries into depression; elation into hypomania; linguistic games into jargonophasia; wit into immature or manic behaviour or into a childish, psychotic other self; the dissonant harmonies of the Haydn quartets into Tourette’s syndrome; and, at the end of his life, a small shuddering into a convulsion... This has resulted in psychiatric narratives that blend an uninterrupted long tradition of defamation—the film Amadeus was one of the last public expressions of this tradition.
In the eighteenth century the term hurdy gurdy was also applied to a small, portable "barrel organ" (a cranked box instrument with a number of organ pipes, a bellows and a barrel with pins that rotated and programmed the tunes) that was frequently played by poor buskers (street musicians). Barrel organs require only the turning of the crank, and the music is played automatically by pinned barrels, perforated paper rolls, and more recently by electronic modules.By a delightful coincidence, this week I also ran across a set of about 20 photos of Russian, European, and American hurdy-gurdy (barrel-organ) men at This is Major Tom to Ground Control, three of which I've embedded above. I've not been able to ascertain the original provenance of the photos.
This confusion over what the name hurdy gurdy means is particular to English, although similar confusion over other terms for the instrument occurs in German and Hungarian due to unfamiliarity with the hurdy gurdy. The French call the barrel organ the Orgue de Barbarie ("Barbary organ"), and the Germans Drehorgel ("turned organ"), instead of Drehleier ("turning lyre").
When I find myself in times of trouble,I've listened to those lyrics for forty years without knowing the backstory. Yesterday while driving to the library, I heard a BBC report about the top five Beatles' songs being uploaded on iTunes, and a commentor mentioned in passing that the "mother Mary" referred to in the song was in fact Paul McCartney's mother. The story, via Wikipedia:
Mother Mary comes to me.
Speaking words of wisdom: Let it be
And in my hour of darkness,
She is standing right in front of me
Speaking words of wisdom: Let it be
McCartney said he had the idea of "Let It Be" after a dream he had about his mother during the tense period surrounding the sessions for The Beatles (the "White Album"). McCartney explained that his mother—who died of cancer when McCartney was fourteen—was the inspiration for the "Mother Mary" lyric. McCartney later said, "It was great to visit with her again. I felt very blessed to have that dream. So that got me writing 'Let It Be'." He also said in a later interview about the dream that his mother had told him, "It will be all right, just let it be."You learn something every day.
It was taken by Michel Le Tac and publiched in french weekly Paris match end of june 1965. It was taken on the 20th of june when they played at the palais des sports in Paris. I saved the photo from the mag and have kept it all those years...
"Today marks the birthday of British composer Gustav Holst. The Holst family had wandered from Sweden, via Latvia and Russia, to settle in England. Gustav (1874 - 1934) is famous for his symphonic suite, The Planets, extracts of which have been used in many different movies and TV productions. On first rehearsal in the Royal Albert Hall the anecdote has it that the cleaning ladies were dancing in the stalls when they first heard the opening of the Jupiter movement…."Text from Ordinary Finds, where there is always something interesting. Embedded above is the aforementioned Jupiter, the Bringer of Jollity [a hat tip to Ryan for identifying the conductor as Taijiro Iimori leading the Tokyo City Philharmonic Orchestra]. I really love Isao Tomita's performance of The Planets on a Moog synthesizer, which I ought to blog sometime.
Previously unseen photographs charting The Beatles’ formative years will go on display at Liverpool’s Victoria Gallery & Museum next week.More details (and photos) at The Independent.
The retrospective of more than 70 photographs by Astrid Kirchherr includes portraits of Paul MacCartney, John Lennon, George Harrison, original drummer Pete Best and Stuart Sutcliffe - the band’s original bass player, known as “the fifth Beatle”-, at the start of their career.
German-born Kircherr met The Beatles in Hamburg in the early 1960s. She dated Sutcliffe, who left the band to pursue a career as an artist in 1961, and the pair became engaged just before his tragic death from a brain haemorrhage the following year.
Their work rate was phenomenal – at one point in 1961 they played for 98 nights in succession, frequently starting at 7pm and going through until 7am. They learnt how to survive on their wits, their flair for improvisation, their innate cockiness – and on a steady stream of uppers...More at the link.
It is no exaggeration to say that it was in Hamburg that the Beatles properly learnt how to play as a band ("It was our apprenticeship," Harrison said); it was in Hamburg where they made their first recording (as the backing band on a Tony Sheridan version of My Bonnie); and it was in Hamburg that John, Paul and George first played together with Ringo Starr (he was at the time the drummer with the rather superior Rory Storm and the Hurricanes, and told the lads that they had better work on their act if they wanted to get him to join).
That first performance 50 years ago was at the Indra Club – a dingy little place that doubled as a strip joint in the Grosse Freiheit ("Great Freedom") on the fringes of Hamburg's Reeperbahn red-light district. The band had driven from the Hook of Holland in an Austin minivan and had been given digs in a couple of bleak storage rooms in the back of a nearby cinema, the Bambi Kino ("It was a pig sty," Lennon recalled later. "We were right next to the ladies' toilet.")...
At the new club they were asked to play long sets seven days a week – and to "mach schau" – or put on a show, something Lennon in particular liked to do (he once turned up on stage wearing nothing but his underpants – and a toilet seat around his neck; he frequently addressed his audience with the greeting "Heil Hitler".)
Hempel explains how they played right through the night with only short breaks and drew on every musical influence they could. They learnt fast. As Lennon recalled: "Every song lasted 20 minutes and had 20 solos in it. That's what improved the playing. There was nobody to copy from. We played what we liked best and the Germans liked it as long as it was loud."
John: "If I had said television is more popular than Jesus, I might have got away with it, but I just happened to be talking to a friend and I used the words "Beatles" as a remote thing, not as what I think - as Beatles, as those other Beatles like other people see us. I just said "they" are having more influence on kids and things than anything else, including Jesus. But I said it in that way which is the wrong way."An original, unopened Meet The Beatles album would sell today for about $300-$700. I wonder if the kid in the picture ever thinks back with a twinge of regret...
Reporter: "Some teenagers have repeated your statements - "I like the Beatles more than Jesus Christ." What do you think about that?"
John: "Well, originally I pointed out that fact in reference to England. That we meant more to kids than Jesus did, or religion at that time. I wasn't knocking it or putting it down. I was just saying it as a fact and it's true more for England than here. I'm not saying that we're better or greater, or comparing us with Jesus Christ as a person or God as a thing or whatever it is. I just said what I said and it was wrong. Or it was taken wrong. And now it's all this."
Reporter: "But are you prepared to apologize?"
John (thinking that he had just apologized, because he did): "I wasn't saying whatever they're saying I was saying. I'm sorry I said it really. I never meant it to be a lousy anti-religious thing. I apologize if that will make you happy. I still don't know quite what I've done. I've tried to tell you what I did do but if you want me to apologize, if that will make you happy, then OK, I'm sorry."
The ethereal sound was created by laboriously building up multiple overdubs of the voices of Stewart, Graham Gouldman, Godley and Creme singing a single note in unison. This multi-track was then mixed down and dubbed down onto 16-track tape. This process was repeated across all sixteen tracks to create a lush 256-voice "virtual" choir that could "sing" chromatic chords. A number of these prepared multi-tracks were then cut into several endless loops, each of which contained the basic notes of the main chords used in the song. The chorus loops could then be played by using the mixing desk rather like a keyboard -- each chord could be sounded by bringing up the fader for that loop.Here's a brief documentary about the creation of the song:
The instrumental break featured the repeated spoken phrase: "Be quiet, big boys don't cry...", which was spoken by Kathy Warren, the receptionist of the Strawberry Studios where the band recorded the track...
In this pre-sampler period, the group was able to simulate a large polyphonic choir, creating a dramatic tonal effect similar to that produced by the well-known choir setting on the Mellotron, but with a far richer sound, and in full stereo.
The carnyx (plural: carnyces)... was a Celtic-Dacian variant of the Etruscan-Roman lituus and belongs to the family of brass instruments. It was an ſ-shaped valveless horn made of beaten bronze and consisted of a tube between one and two meters in length, whereas the diameter of the tube is unknown. Archaeological finds date back to the Bronze Age, and the instrument itself is attested for in contemporary sources between ca. 300 BC and 200 AD. The carnyx was in widespread use in Britain, France, parts of Germany, eastward to Romania and beyond, even as far as India, where bands of Celtic mercenaries took it on their travels...Text from Ancient Celtic Music at Citizendium, via Uncertain Times. Image credit.
The sound of the carnyx was described as lugubrious and harsh, perhaps due to the loosened tongue of the bell... The carnyx was held vertically so that the sound would travel from more than three meters above the ground...
In addition the bronze jaw of the animal head may have been loosened as well in order to produce a jarring sound that would surely have been most dreadful when combined with the sound of a few dozen more carnyces in battle. The demoralizing effect of the Gallic battle music must have been enormous: When the Celts advanced on Delphi under Brennus in 279 BC, the unusual echoing effects of the blaring horns completely overawed the Greeks, before even a single fight could commence...
Brass instruments were regularly used as a means of communication during battle, relaying orders for troop positioning, movement and tactics...
The energy transferred to the platform from each metronome starts out of sync, but the waveforms of the energy interfere with each other, and at the location of each metronome you end up with negative or positive waveforms which in turn have an effect on the interference pattern. This keeps going until there is a balance – this balance is only achieved when all of the metronomes are in sync. The interference pattern is now a standing wave, which keeps the metronomes locked in phase.Found at Synthgear, a blog specializing in everything you might need to know about synthesizers.
