Christos Anesti!
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Not really a religious piece but makes even a good atheist like me tear up. The Protecting Veil is Tavener’s masterpiece but as short pieces go, this one is special. Who has recommendations for other Orthodox Easter listening?
Great listen. Sublime work. What were we doing before Youtube exhisted? Don’t answer, I’ll Google that, then follow up with a little Wiki action.
Lisa’s comment is precious.
I’ve found that there are certain people who find polyphony and counterpoint like scratching nails on a blackboard – partly because something’s going on and they haven’t got a clue and partly ‘cos it all sounds the same, thus tedious. These people usually know the names and plotlines in all the soaps but cannot sit through Cavallaria Rusticana. In the military, before cassettes, that was a cultural desert. However, this sound, in that space, heavenly – could listen all day.
Well, #1 is that maybe it’s more of an English thing, and if you ain’t got it then you ain’t got it;
#2 is that for the composer-geek in us there’s this snatch of a program note on the piece:
“It contrasts sections where a simple, short phrase (first heard to the words “Little lamb, who made thee?”) is turned upside-down and back-to-front with sections where the same musical phrase appears in rich four-part harmony, with special dissonance (a chord with an added seventh and ninth) every time on the word “Lamb”.
And #3, It shares a lot of traits with something like this small Bulgarian song:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s2TmmCJcc_g
(including the trait of reformulating the “pure” tradition).
Wow, I am always fascinated by wide gaps in taste. Personally I find this excruciating. I dislike it so much that I have a hard time even believing that anyone actually enjoys this. Someone please explain.
Alithos Anesti!
Ivan Moody “Passion and Resurrection”, Arvo Part “Kanon Pokajanen”, Grechaninov “Passion Week”, Tavener “As One Who Has Slept”…and of course Rimsky-Korsakov’s “Russian Easter Festival Overture”. : )
We’ve done several pieces by Ivan Moody, a British, Orthodox kinda guy in the Tavener vein. His work has always been well received.
This is indeed the setting Blake’s “Little lamb, who made thee?” “The Protecting Veil” is for cello and strings. There’s a good recording of Yo-Yo Ma on the Sony label.
And I think their diction is pretty good… 🙂
Olivier Messiaen “La Transfiguration de Notre Seigneur Jésus-Christ”; Sofia Gubaidulina’s “St John Passion & St John Easter”; Vyacheslav Artyomov’s “Symphonies: On the Threshold of a Bright World” and “Gentle Emanations”… Rachmaninoff and Gretchaninoff’s Vespers …
and, for today’s [pre-Christian] ‘Wet Monday’ Myroslav Skoryk’s “Shadows of Forgotten Ancesters.”
*
[And for last Friday’s ‘Sad Friday’, Valentin Silvestrov’s Requiem.]
Michael Finnissy has some gorgeous choral works including “Stabant autem iuxta crucem” (recorded by the Hilliard Ensemble), “Anima Christi,” and “Palm-Sunday.”
Oops…. are they singing in English? I can barely understand the words.
!!!
Walter Ramsey
Very well done… what are they singing? I know this piece as a setting of William Blake’s “Little lamb, dost thou know who made thee?” And it is often sung as a Christmas song.
Walter Ramsey