Some musical beauty for this weekend. Close your eyes, and listen:
About this performance of Ralph Vaughan Williams's Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis:
The BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Andrew Davis at Gloucester Cathedral, where in 1910, it was played and conducted for the first time by composer Ralph Vaughan Williams.Some more information about this piece is HERE.
The Authorized King James Version of Psalm 2:1-2, to which Tallis's original tune is connected:
Why do the heathen rage, and the people imagine a vain thing?Read the entirety of Psalm 2 HERE.
The kings of the earth set themselves,
and the rulers take counsel together,
against the Lord, and against his anointed.
Beautiful selection..will come back and use my speakers..a little hard to discern the sound at times. I appreciate your selections of many as I am not as familiar as I should be,
ReplyDeleteThanks, Bunkerville. I enjoy ferreting out lesser-known pieces.
DeleteIt's always a pleasure to experience such Beauty in such a Sublime setting... :)
ReplyDeleteJoe,
DeleteThe setting matters for certain works of music.
Vaughan-Williams was a great master at evoking feelings and visions of serene bucolic splendor in orchestral sound, and always with a highly distinctive, unmistakably English flavor.
ReplyDeleteFT,
DeleteVaughan-Williams has long been one of my favorite composers.
Unortunately, as we see much too easily from the pitiful LACK of RESPONSE to this and most of the other truly fine and beautiful things you present in these Musical Interludes, AOW, most much, prefer the CHOLERIC and CHAOTIC to the BUCOLIC and EXOTIC.
ReplyDeleteI've never understood why the CHEAP, GAUDY, DOWN, DIRTY, BLOODY and UGLY has such wide appeal, while the finest prodicts of the best minds and greatest hearts are generally given a wide berth.
FT,
DeleteI've gotten used to the non-response.
Alas! One has no choice in these matters, AOW. My statement of indisputable fact was in no way intended to be a reflection on you or your tastes in music or other high-minded matters you choose to present here. It IS, however, an accurate assessment of the overall mentality of the now hopelessly ignoranticized American Public.
DeleteOnce upon a time, and not so very ing ago, moviegoers were routinely given substnatial vignettes from the world of Opera, Symphony Concerts and solo recitals of first-rate concert artists. Also the "backgrond music" in most movies was symphonic in nature or derived from the most ingenious elements in sophistocated jazz. It was expertly, often brilliantly composed to fit, illustrate and illuminate the various moods and implied m'eanings in whatever drama was presented. Highly gifted composers such as Max Steiner, Alex North, Franz Waxman, Bronislau Kaper, Bernard Hermann, Kurt Weill, and Henry Mancini functioned as the Mozarts, Rossinis, Verdis, Puccinis of the mid-twentieth century.
The advent of Rock 'n Roll, the crass pseudo-folksiness of Country and Western, et al. along with the horrifying development of electronic guitars and synthesizers dissolved the once-high quality of movie music and transformed it into the gross, monotonous, simplistic, unimaginative, formulaic, iconoclastic, commercially viable, out-and-out GARBAGE that besieges us today.
So again THANK YOU for giving passersby an opportinity to hear something REALLY good for a change.
They'll never get high quality music through any of the popular media outlets, that's for sure.
I've often posted that I enjoy AOW's musical postings.
ReplyDeleteI keep it brief to avoid your screeds.