Juno—not last year's teen-pregnancy sensation, but the 1959 musical adapted from Sean O'Casey's Juno and the Paycock—must have had insurmountable casting or book problems, because I have been listening to the original cast recording and the music is extraordinary. For everyone who thinks of Marc Blitzstein as the secondhand American Weill, this album should be compulsory listening: it's a startlingly successful blend of folk opera and musical comedy which supports two non-singers in the lead roles of Juno and her shiftless "paycock" of a husband while allowing some truly lovely melodies for the secondary cast; the opening chorus, "We're Alive," a kind of teeth-gritted paean to Irish nationalism in the building face of civil war, is a lot scarier than "Tradition" or "Fugue for Tinhorns." I suppose the story's tragic ending (because it is O'Casey) might have crashed and burnt straight off with Broadway audiences; it's also a little counterintuitive that the only authentically Irish actor in the cast is Jack MacGowran. But given the quality of the score, I'm astounded the show hasn't been revived more often, at least in concert performance. Thank God for Columbia Records.
Although I have been handing out my family's eggnog recipe left and right this holiday season, traditionally I don't drink much of the stuff myself. It's like fruitcake; I have a ritual sip, determine that I still don't like it, and move on to tea or cider or something else completely different. I theorized it was something about the combination of milkfat with alcohol: either you want one or you want the other, but you don't put them together in the same punch bowl. It turns out I'm just a snob. Apparently this year we invested in some really top-flight brandy and rum and I drank three cups. Reason #∞ I am unlikely ever to become an alcoholic, I suppose. If I could afford that quality of drink on a regular basis, I would already have spent the money on books.
I assume Sting's If on a Winter's Night . . . (2009) is named after Italo Calvino. I am out of touch with everything, so I hadn't known it existed until this afternoon, which allowed me to be awesomely surprised by "The Hurdy-Gurdy Man." It is a version of "Der Leiermann," the cold and haunting, unresolved finish of Schubert's Winterreise: adapted for violin and melodeon. This is just cool. Sting does not have remotely a folk or a classical voice, but he does unusual things with medieval carols as well as contemporary settings and original songs; probably the other standout for me is Chris Wood's setting of Robert Southwell's "The Burning Babe," a terrifying sixteenth-century vision of Christ as a child burning naked in the air like something out of Cloud & Ashes, but "The Hounds of Winter" makes a bleakly fond flipside to Swinburne, "Christmas at Sea" braids Gaelic waulking songs into Robert Louis Stevenson, and just because I have preferred versions of "Soul Cake" or the "Cherry Tree Carol" doesn't mean I'll turn his off when they come around. I simply like this CD, much as I liked his previous foray into the past, Songs from the Labyrinth (2006). He writes winter well, and the sea.
I could watch a fire for hours.
Although I have been handing out my family's eggnog recipe left and right this holiday season, traditionally I don't drink much of the stuff myself. It's like fruitcake; I have a ritual sip, determine that I still don't like it, and move on to tea or cider or something else completely different. I theorized it was something about the combination of milkfat with alcohol: either you want one or you want the other, but you don't put them together in the same punch bowl. It turns out I'm just a snob. Apparently this year we invested in some really top-flight brandy and rum and I drank three cups. Reason #∞ I am unlikely ever to become an alcoholic, I suppose. If I could afford that quality of drink on a regular basis, I would already have spent the money on books.
I assume Sting's If on a Winter's Night . . . (2009) is named after Italo Calvino. I am out of touch with everything, so I hadn't known it existed until this afternoon, which allowed me to be awesomely surprised by "The Hurdy-Gurdy Man." It is a version of "Der Leiermann," the cold and haunting, unresolved finish of Schubert's Winterreise: adapted for violin and melodeon. This is just cool. Sting does not have remotely a folk or a classical voice, but he does unusual things with medieval carols as well as contemporary settings and original songs; probably the other standout for me is Chris Wood's setting of Robert Southwell's "The Burning Babe," a terrifying sixteenth-century vision of Christ as a child burning naked in the air like something out of Cloud & Ashes, but "The Hounds of Winter" makes a bleakly fond flipside to Swinburne, "Christmas at Sea" braids Gaelic waulking songs into Robert Louis Stevenson, and just because I have preferred versions of "Soul Cake" or the "Cherry Tree Carol" doesn't mean I'll turn his off when they come around. I simply like this CD, much as I liked his previous foray into the past, Songs from the Labyrinth (2006). He writes winter well, and the sea.
I could watch a fire for hours.
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