For 40 years, since the band America came out with the song “A Horse With No Name” (see below), I knew one thing for sure. I was absolutely certain that in the desert you can’t remember your name.

Why? ’Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain.

Can’t remember your name.

And it made a kind of sense. We usually remember our names, I think most of us anyway, and most of us aren’t usually in a desert, and… that horse had no name, but maybe that was just the guy talking, maybe he couldn’t remember that either, ’cause it was hot (“the heat was hot,” he says, that’s a quote, unlike some other heat, I guess, that isn’t so much) and… you know, it kind of fit together, the not knowing names thing.

But now I find—I looked it up on Wikipedia and YouTube and all sorts of places we didn’t have in 1972—that, no no no, in the desert you can remember your name.

Can remember.

You’re asking yourself why, and of course you are; I don’t blame you. I ask this myself. Why, in the desert, can you remember your name? And if you can, I mean, big whoop, why even mention it?

(We usually remember our names, right? So what’s the big whoop about the desert? It’s like, I’m walking around, knowing my name like usual, but now I’m, I don’t know, browsing in the Classical CD section at Barnes & Noble and whoa, I remember my name here too! I think I’ll write a song!)

Well. I’ll tell you why.

’Cause there ain’t no one for to give you no pain, that’s why.

Well there ain’t no one in the Classical CD section either, to give me pain or not to give me pain, so what’s the big whoop about the desert?

OK, that’s got nothing to do with it. But neither does heroin, which is what horse means, wink wink, because “Lucy in the Sky with Diamonds” is about LSD and so is “White Rabbit,” but they mean absolutely nothing, which is what good drug songs ought to mean.

So to sum up: For all these years I was absolutely certain of this one thing, and here it’s the opposite. Aaannd for the same reason. And all I keep thinking is: that poor horse.

La la, lahh, la, la-la la, la la-la, lahh, la. La la, lahh, la, la-la la, la la-la, lahh, la.

Philip Blackburn remixes Robert Moran’s 9/11 memorial Trinity Requiem, combining the shards of that beautiful piece into something new and lovely, Requiem for a Requiem.

David Chesky’s Psalm III for string orchestra hints at resurrection, and the Quartet No. 3 of Philip Glass, a memorial to the Japanese author Yukio Mishima and originally for string quartet, is made new in the liquid playing of the Oasis Saxophone Quartet.

from Philip Blackburn: Requiem for a Requiem 

PROGRAM:
Gloria Coates: Cantata da Requiem
Philip Blackburn: Requiem for a Requiem
David Chesky: Psalm III
Philip Glass: Quartet No. 3, Mishima Quartet

Every Sunday night at 10, Kile Smith brings you Now Is the Time, all styles of contemporary concert music by living American composers on WRTI-HD2 and the all-classical stream at wrti.org. Here are the recording details and complete schedule.

I’m delighted that Jeremy Galyon, the wonderful bass/baritone who premiered my Plain Truths, will reprise it Sunday July 7th at the Ocean Grove Chamber Music Series in Ocean Grove, N.J.

Jeremy’s taking the song cycle from the coastal town of Newburyport, Mass., for whose 10th Annual Summer Music Festival it was commissioned, to the Jersey shore.

I composed Plain Truths on texts by Newburyport authors: fiery abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison (two excerpts from his newspaper The Liberator—one from the first and one from the last edition), “Annie Lisle” writer Henry S. Thompson (an original tune for this song), the uniquely eccentric “Lord” Timothy Dexter, and the romance novelist Harriett Prescott Spofford. She wrote this about the people of Newburyport: “These sea-coast people see the world and learn.”

The texts and more information on Plain Truths are here.

Thank you, Jeremy, can’t wait to hear your gorgeous singing in Ocean Grove!

Our good friend and colleague Kenneth Borrmann accompanied at the piano; we’re so fortunate to be surrounded by lovely musicians who are lovely people as well. Thanks also to Charles Tolton for recording this (the entire recital is below), to Pastor Tavella for his heartfelt invocation, to the Donnellys and everyone for the reception, and to our church for opening its doors. All these people are blessings to us.

Nellie honored me by playing my Spirituals for cello, and so beautifully. My thoughts about our middle daughter, and about her music-making, are included in my, well, baccalaureate sermon I suppose it was, at the end. To say that Jackie and I are proud of her is woefully to understate the case, as it is true of her two sisters.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750). Suite II in D minor, BWV 1008

Prelude
Gigue

Carl Friedrich Abel (1723-1787). Allegro in D minor, WKO 208, from 27 Pieces for Bass Viol  

Robert Schumann (1810-1856). Fantasiestücke, Op. 73

1. Zart und mit Ausdruck
2. Lebhaft, leicht
3. Rasch und mit Feuer

Gabriel Fauré (1845-1942). Elégie, Op. 24 

Kile Smith (b. 1956). American Spirituals, Book Two, for Cello and Piano

1. Jesus, Master, O Discover
2. When the Stars Begin to Fall
3. Little David, Play on Your Harp

(Encore) Schumann. Träumerei 

Nellie’s Dad’s speech 

Another composer/performer is the Philadelphia area’s Steve Bowman, whose electronic Odd Angle of the Isle is mixed down from live club dates (no sequencers! no multi-tracking!). Steven Winteregg imagines an orchestral bullet train speeding through France with a brisk TGV, but David Evan Thomas’s Thrum nudges the Minneapolis Guitar Quartet through layers and soft waves to close the program.

from Steve Bowman: Odd Angle of the Isle 

PROGRAM:
Sergio Cervetti: Candombe
Cervetti: Alberada
Elizabeth Brown: Liguria
Steve Bowman: Odd Angle of the Isle
Steven Winteregg: TGV
David Evan Thomas: Thrum

Every Sunday night at 10, Kile Smith brings you Now Is the Time, all styles of contemporary concert music by living American composers on WRTI-HD2 and the all-classical stream at wrti.org. Here are the recording details and complete schedule.

Randall Thompson: Alleluia. Voices of Ascension, Dennis Keene. Hear My Prayer. Delos 3300, Tr 2

From Randall Thompson, then Director of the Curtis Institute of Music, Serge Koussevitzky wanted a choral fanfare, loud and festive, for the opening of the Berkshire Music Center at Tanglewood. But Thompson couldn’t do festive, not in July 1940. Evil was spreading in Europe, and France had fallen the month before.

Over five days Thompson took the word “Alleluia”—literally, “Praise the Lord”—and turned it on its head, just as (he said later) it is in the Book of Job: “The Lord gave and the Lord has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” Thompson calls this a sad piece, this slow and insistent six-minute layered intoning of “Alleluia,” ending in “Amen.” It’s an atypical fanfare, but the Thompson Alleluia is one of the most beloved choral works of all time.

Stanley Myers: Cavatina. Norbert Kraft, Guitar. Guitar Favorites. Naxos 8.553999, Tr 19

Film composer Stanley Myers scored The Walking Stick in 1970, and then guitarist John Williams convinced him to work up one bit of it for guitar. Williams played it eight years later on the sound track of one of the greatest movies of all time, The Deer Hunter.

Juxtaposing this bittersweet song against the struggle with brutality and love—in Southeast Asian jungles and Pennsylvania mountains—is as piercing now as it was in the years following the Vietnam War. Norbert Kraft performs the solo guitar arrangement with a graceful, glowing sound.

Above, from the scene with one of Robert De Niro’s great lines, “This is this. This ain’t somethin’ else, this is this.”

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart: Ave verum corpus. Kosice Teachers’ Choir, Camerata Cassovia, Johannes Wildner. Mozart: Mass No. 16, ‘Coronation Mass’ / Exsultate, jubilate / Ave Verum Corpus. Naxos 8.550495, Tr 9

Mozart wrote this for a church musician friend of his, for the Feast of Corpus Christi [which was celebrated this past Sunday, as I post this]. “Hail, true Body” is sung at the central moment of the Catholic liturgy, but is here so simple, so self-effacing, that it almost sneaks by.

The melody is nearly too sweet, the harmonies stay put, the bass line doesn’t travel much, the voices move together. But at “May it be for us a foretaste in the trial of death,” Mozart holds back the tenors and basses—just for a space. When they enter, oh so quietly, repeating the women’s “may it be,” Mozart’s genius detonates the mysterious celebration of the power of suffering.

He wrote this in June, 1791. In December he would be dead. Ave verum corpus may be the most stunningly compact explosion of music ever composed.

above, Joos van Wassenhove, The Institution of the Eucharist, 1473-75

Morten Lauridsen: O Magnum Mysterium. Elora Festival Singers, Noel Edison. Morten Lauridsen. Naxos 8.559304, Tr 17

“O great mystery, and wonderful sacrament, that animals should see the newborn Lord, lying in a manger. Blessed is the Virgin whose womb was worthy to bear Christ the Lord. Alleluia!”

This text was first chanted by monks in the cold, pre-dawn hours before Christmas mornings centuries ago. Now, the mystical, soaring music of Morten Lauridsen warms millions worldwide. Simple in structure and harmony, yet quietly overwhelming, the Lauridsen O Magnum Mysterium transcends style with its luminously expressive writing. Morten Lauridsen is one of the most-sung choral composers in America and around the world, and this work is a fine example why.

above, from Domenico Ghirlandaio’s 1480s Nativity

Gerald Finzi: Eclogue for Piano and Strings. Peter Donohoe, piano, Northern Sinfonia, Howard Griffiths. The Best of Finzi. Naxos 8.556836, Tr 14

When the boy was seven, his father died. Three brothers died. His first composition teacher was killed in WWI. He devoured poetry, wrote music, moved to the country, walked for hours in solitude. He cultivated apple trees, and cataloged and published a sick friend’s music. At 50 he learned he had Hodgkin’s disease; he wouldn’t live out the decade.

From this seemingly melancholy life Gerald Finzi sculpted music of soft, shimmering beauty. He never finished a piano concerto, but after his death one movement of it was published as Eclogue. The dictionary calls “eclogue” pastoral poetry. This is the essence of Gerald Finzi.