In the Bleak Midwinter

The problem is that the original poem 

A Christmas Carol

By Christina Rossetti

 

In the bleak midwinter, frosty wind made moan,

Earth stood hard as iron, water like a stone;

Snow had fallen, snow on snow, snow on snow,

In the bleak midwinter, long ago.

Our God, Heaven cannot hold Him, nor earth sustain;

Heaven and earth shall flee away when He comes to reign.

In the bleak midwinter a stable place sufficed

The Lord God Almighty, Jesus Christ.

Enough for Him, whom cherubim, worship night and day,

Breastful of milk, and a mangerful of hay;

Enough for Him, whom angels fall before,

The ox and ass and camel which adore.

Angels and archangels may have gathered there,

Cherubim and seraphim thronged the air;

But His mother only, in her maiden bliss,

Worshipped the beloved with a kiss.

What can I give Him, poor as I am?

If I were a shepherd, I would bring a lamb;

If I were a Wise Man, I would do my part;

Yet what I can I give Him: give my heart.

Copyright Credit: Christina Rossetti, “A Christmas Carol” from The Century Illustrated Monthly Magazine vol. 3 (1871-1872 Nov-Apr), ed. by J. G. Holland. New York: Scribner & Co: 1872. Public Domain.

has A) unusual words, construction and omission making it grammatically difficult to understand, and B) irregular word stress that no melody can fit every syllable of every verse into the same rhythm.  Google Holst's In the Bleak Midwinter to see how different editors solve these in different ways, but Holst himself provided this to Ralph Van Williams for The English Hymnal in 1906:

  

We'll decide soon what verses and rhythms the Rose City Timberliners Chorus will sing in December 2025.

Refs:

http://www.voice-mentor.com/scores/In_The_Bleak_Midwinter.png 

https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/53216/in-the-bleak-midwinter 

https://hymnary.org/hymnal/EH1906?page=0

https://voyagerofhistory.wordpress.com/2021/12/24/in-the-bleak-midwinter-origins-of-a-christmas-carol/ 

About the Star-Spangled Banner

Verse Four speaks to me today:

O thus be it ever when freemen shall stand
Between their lov'd home and the war's desolation!
Blest with vict'ry and peace may the heav'n rescued land
Praise the power that hath made and preserv'd us a nation!
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto - "In God is our trust,"
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Verse one is a question.  The most requested song in the U.S., well-known all over the world, hard to sing, harder to sing well,

https://amhistory.si.edu/starspangledbanner/pdf/ssb_lyrics.pdf

asks "does that star-spangled banner yet wave O'er the land of the free and the home of the brave?" Francis Scott Key, captured and held on a British vessel during the War of 1812, wrote about night and smoke obscuring the rebel's stars-and-stripes flag  over Fort McHenry. "Did it still fly" was unknown to him.

We rarely sing it as a question.  Key's verse two thru four and confirm the flag is flying, so we proudly belt it out verse one, affirming the flag flies where citizens of the United States of America WILL bravely fight for home and freedom.

Free Barbershop Music Score Reference

 From Evergreen District's Monthly Newsletter

FREE MUSIC

During the holidays is a great time to look for new music for your chapter or your quartet. Evergreen District of the barberhop Harmony Society has a huge collection legal music for you to select from and order up to as many copies as we have stored. Download the spreadsheets to see what we have waiting. There's a list of sheet music - and also older portfolios and manual for you all to pick from.

The only cost to you is the postage.

The site reads:

FREE SHEET MUSIC TO REPURPOSE 

 Download the either the spreadsheet or the pdf  

SHEET MUSIC SPREADSHEET

SHEET MUSIC PDF FILE

FREE BOOKS (SPREADSHEET)

FREE BOOKS LIST (PDF)

Read through the titles (which also lists arrangers and number of legal copies)  If you find titles that you’d like to have, send Ken Galloway an email listing the ones that you are interested in.  He will reply and work out the details. Again, kengalloway@gorge.net

Note: Legal music can be given away to other singers, but it can not be sold (which is tempting).  The music has been donated by EVG Chapters and some songs we have up to 100 clean, legal, copies. 

And so, ...

I scanned and found nothing I want to order, since the Rose City Timberliner's Chorus maintains a similar library.  We are currently filing lots of loose music into the four cabinets.  After that, we can make a similar index.  Maybe we'll offer a similar service and/or send the scores to the District to distribute.

 

 

A grammar joke walks into a bar.

 

• An Oxford comma walks into a bar where it spends the evening watching the television, getting drunk, and smoking cigars.

• A dangling participle walks into a bar. Enjoying a cocktail and chatting with the bartender, the evening passes pleasantly.

• A bar was walked into by the passive voice.

• An oxymoron walked into a bar, and the silence was deafening.

• Two quotation marks walk into a “bar.”

• A malapropism walks into a bar, looking for all intensive purposes like a wolf in cheap clothing, muttering epitaphs and casting dispersions on his magnificent other, who takes him for granite.

• Hyperbole totally rips into this insane bar and absolutely destroys everything.

• A question mark walks into a bar?

• A non sequitur walks into a bar. In a strong wind, even turkeys can fly.

• Papyrus and Comic Sans walk into a bar. The bartender says, "Get out -- we don't serve your type."

• A mixed metaphor walks into a bar, seeing the handwriting on the wall but hoping to nip it in the bud.

• A comma splice walks into a bar, it has a drink and then leaves.

• Three intransitive verbs walk into a bar. They sit. They converse. They depart.

• A synonym strolls into a tavern.

• At the end of the day, a cliché walks into a bar -- fresh as a daisy, cute as a button, and sharp as a tack.

• A run-on sentence walks into a bar it starts flirting. With a cute little sentence fragment.

• Falling slowly, softly falling, the chiasmus collapses to the bar floor.

• A figure of speech literally walks into a bar and ends up getting figuratively hammered.

• An allusion walks into a bar, despite the fact that alcohol is its Achilles heel.

• The subjunctive would have walked into a bar, had it only known.

• A misplaced modifier walks into a bar owned a man with a glass eye named Ralph.

• The past, present, and future walked into a bar. It was tense.

• A dyslexic walks into a bra.

• A verb walks into a bar, sees a beautiful noun, and suggests they conjugate. The noun declines.

• A simile walks into a bar, as parched as a desert.

• A gerund and an infinitive walk into a bar, drinking to forget.

• A hyphenated word and a non-hyphenated word walk into a bar and the bartender nearly chokes on the irony.

 

Hah! Detailed explanations at

https://lindaksienkiewicz.com/bar-jokes-and-grammar/ 

 

All the best.  GS

We'll meet again, don't know where, don't know when.

Singers, when can we meet again?

Short answer:  Nobody knows yet.  Click here to help fund the answer.

Long answer:

There is lots of news crossing my desk from choral and singing experts and not-so-experts about "safe singing distances" while we are amid the Covid-19 pandemic.  It's all guesses, everything from 3 feet to 24 feet to "wear masks" and "we can't wear masks" to "who cares" and "nothing is safe".  Some notable answers:

American Federation of Musicians Unions Returning to Work Safely Guidelines

• Six feet/two meters between players in a room—limit number of musicians accordingly.
• Twelve feet/3.6 meters between winds/brass, singers and other musicians if in the same room.

The New York Times and the ACDA Choral Leaders' conversation in May agree  

• Don't sing together yet.  Sit tight"

Multnomah County keeps a webpage for small civic groups: https://multco.us/novel-coronavirus-covid-19/faith-based-and-community-groups-covid-19-guidance with the usual

• Stay home if ill. Fever is a sure indicator of illness
  
• Wear a mask in public
• Do not touch your face
  
• Maintain 6' social distancing 
• Avoid crowds
• Wash your hands often

and:

• Ask volunteers at higher risk — those who are older, have underlying health conditions or are pregnant — to stay home as much as possible and take extra precautions to stay healthy.

Oregon.gov talks about what's allowed for Multnomah County for "Phase One":

• Local cultural, civic and faith gatherings are allowed...
•  for up to 25 people 
•  provided physical distancing can be in place.
• Large gatherings and events are not possible until a reliable treatment or prevention is available. As a result, these are cancelled or significantly modified through at least September.

Since my groups and our audiences are "at risk" and often larger than 25, the rule is still "NOT YET" til we get real answers.  

Happily,  dozens national and international sports and musical organizations, including the Barbershop Harmony Society, National High Schools, and the American Choral Directors Association have commissioned a study to find out the actual answers.  You can read about it and even donate at https://www.nfhs.org/articles/unprecedented-international-coalition-led-by-performing-arts-organizations-to-commission-covid-19-study/

So, right now, what to do?   The most optimistic answer is "No singing together yet, until we find safe ways to do it."   We might know some ways soon, so cancelling meetings and concerts still a few weeks off is probably premature.   If a county isn't open for meetings and concerts, and preventative methods are still unknown, events can and should be cancelled, even "at the last minute".  We can and do replace the cancelled events with online meetings and choosing later dates. 

And that's what we're doing, cancelling and altering our plans, one event and one rehearsal at a time.   That's the best we know right now.  I know we'll meet again some sunny day.

 

Yours, Gary Shannon

 

PS.  Vera Lynn, singer of We'll Meet Again, passed away June 18, 2020 at 103.  See BBC's obituary.

Why are you passionate...

This question in a Learnivore job application via ZipRecruiter stumped me for a while:

3.  Why are you passionate about this field?   

My gut answer is

• Because I can't help it.  I've always been passionate about music and everything to do with it.  Playing instruments, freely singing, composing and arranging new harmonies and melodies, working with ensembles, staging and presentation, and connecting to composers and players and audiences thrill me.  I always am eager for more.  Even when I'd best be resting, sometimes I am awake all night and day enjoying and creating ways to make music.  I have no idea why I'm made this way."

As true as that is, it didn't satisfy the question WHY.  It seems obsessed,  emotional. and unreasonable.  I had to dig deeper to find why an intelligent, balanced, thoughtful man would foster this consuming obsession in himself.  What I sent more answers the question:  "Why should EVERYONE be passionate about this field?"

• I'm passionate about music because it makes everybody involved better people. It's art, communication, teamwork, beauty, improvement, cooperation, learning, enjoyment, and even love, all in one experience.

Yes, that's true and I'm happy.  Is that a good answer for you?

Brahms' German Requiem expressions translated.

As done before, here are translations for

Brahms' German and Italian Expressions in English.

Ein Deutches: A German (Brahms would have gladly called it "Human" ref.)


Requiem: [from Latin requiem, "rest"] Service for the time of death.


#1
Ziemlich langsam:  quite slow

und mit Ausdruck: and with expression

legato:  smoothly
dim.: diminuendo  softening

espress.:  espressivo:  expressively  
dolce:  sweetly

#2
Langsam:  Slowly
marschmäßig:  March moderately

Etwas bewegter:  Somewhat moving

un poco sostenuto:  a little sustained.

Allegro non troppo:   moderately fast.

tranquillo:  tranquil

#3
Andante moderato:  moderately slow.

#4
Mäßig  bewegt:  Moderately animated (in tempo)

#5
Langsam:  Slowly.
m.v.:  (mezza voce: half voice) quiet, retrained

#6  
Andante:  Walking tempo.  Slow  
sotto voce:  whispered.  Literally "under the voice"
Vivace: lively tempo

Allegro:  happy tempo.

#7
Feierlich:  Solemnly.