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And the hounds of winter, they harry me down
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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Glad you're enjoying the cast album, in any event.
I've liked what I've heard of the Sting album whereof you speak--he did "Soul Cake" on Letterman (had Eileen Ivers playing fiddle--I'd not seen her in years, nearly didn't recognise her). Glad you're enjoying it, and thank you for the tracks.
I could watch a fire for hours.
I hope it pleases and inspires you.
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No; that wasn't me. Let's hear it for synchronicity.
I found myself feeling amazed that anyone would have thought to make a musical of Juno and the Paycock in the first place.
I'll check with the liner notes and let you know if I have an explanation. But it may have the best score of any wildly unsuccessful musical I've heard so far.
he did "Soul Cake" on Letterman (had Eileen Ivers playing fiddle--I'd not seen her in years, nearly didn't recognise her).
Oh, neat. I'll look that up.
Thanks!
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Fascinating. Yes, hurrah for synchronicity!
I'll check with the liner notes and let you know if I have an explanation. But it may have the best score of any wildly unsuccessful musical I've heard so far.
Brilliant. I'm glad you're enjoying it.
Thanks!
Most welcome!
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They say:
"O'Casey went into something of an eclipse during World War II and the years immediately following. But after Paul Shyre's adaptation, I Knock at the Door, was done off-Broadway in 1956, followed by Pictures in the Hallway, an O'Casey renaissance got underway in America. Productions included Red Roses for Me in 1956, and a staging of Purple Dust that ran for more than a year. (Shyre later directed a TV version of Juno and the Paycock featuring Hume Cronyn and Walter Matthau.)
In this climate Juno was born. But the musical did not begin with Blitzstein. Librettist Joseph Stein first approached O'Casey in July 1956 with the idea of making a musical of Juno and the Paycock. The 66-year-old Casey resisted at first. He ahd previously discussed the idea of making the property into an opera with composer Hugo Weisgall and was unfamiliar with the American musical theatre form. But Stein, who had previously written books for the musicals Plain and Fancy, Mr. Wonderful and Body Beautiful with Will Glickman, visited O'Casey at his home in Devon, England, and explained how the play could work as a musical. That summer's phenomenal success of My Fair Lady, based on Pygmalion by fellow Irishman George Bernard Shaw, also helped to make Stein's case . . .
Blitzstein biographer Eric A. Gordon wrote that it was Helen Harvey at the William Morris Agency who put forward Blitzstein's name as someone who had the right balance of gravitas, melody and brass-tacks Broadway experience do justice to the subject matter. Stein and Blitzstein had worked together once briefly in the 1940s, and, coming off the 1955 flop of his Reuben, Reuben, for which he wrote his own libretto, Blitzstein was eager to get back into the saddle with an experienced collaborator.
They began work in late spring 1957 and completed a majority of the first draft over that summer and early fall. For Blitzstein, who had always championed society's underdogs and questioned the power of both government and money in his work, the material seemed heaven-sent. The rich musical background of Ireland, with its hymns, jigs, reels and clog-dancing, also gave him a vivid palette to draw from . . . Blitzstein was encouraged in his work by O'Casey himself, who gave thumbs up to a recording of the in-progress score."
After which things went into a terrible state o' chassis (starting with three different directors, none of whom knew much about musicals), but the score remains lovely.
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The rich musical background of Ireland, with its hymns, jigs, reels and clog-dancing
I do have to admit that this made me wonder if whoever wrote the liner notes was confusing Ireland and Wales. There's not much tradition of hymn-singing in Ireland, and while sean nós dancing is similar to clogging it's not called that. But I'm probably just being an academic again.
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You're welcome. Happy Boxing Day.
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That sounds cool. I didn't really know what a hurdy-gurdy was; I thought it was something like an accordion until I saw this video (thanks to
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It would admittedly have been more awesome if Sting had arranged "Der Leiermann" for voice and hurdy-gurdy, but maybe someone else has already done that.
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That would be awesome. I hope someone has.
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This thought makes me smile. Also, this warning about the quality of brandy and rum shall not go amiss. I don't like brandy, so I was willing to skimp, but no more.
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Quod bene vertat!
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Oh, that's Haldane's Law hit for this entire month.
Juno and the Paycock was the play I did for Leaving Cert, and I had the great good fortune to see the revival of the production with Donal McCann as Captain Boyle in the Abbey that summer, which is up there with the best theatre I have ever seen.
(You know the story about the original opening night of Shadow of a Gunman, yes ?)
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You mean you don't hear "O'Casey" and automatically think "Musical!"
and I had the great good fortune to see the revival of the production with Donal McCann as Captain Boyle in the Abbey that summer, which is up there with the best theatre I have ever seen.
Lucky. It's one of the plays I have only read, never seen.
(You know the story about the original opening night of Shadow of a Gunman, yes ?)
I don't think I do, no. Tell me.
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It was close enough to the end of the Civil War in Ireland that the first-night audience went into a panic under the impression someone outside had really started shooting, and it apparently took considerable time and effort to get things to a point where the play could proceed beyond said noises off.
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I think that did get in, subliminally...
Chris Wood is a fine fine musician.
Nine
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I like his contributions here.
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I'll have to look up the original, then; I liked this version very much.
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Hope the music I sent via Eric arrived okay.
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I seem to have come to him completely backward: I can't think of three songs by the Police, but I love The Soul Cages. (I don't love If on a Winter's Night . . . as much, but I wouldn't expect to.) I hope you like this one as well.
Would love to see that eggnog recipe too -- my favorite drunk was on eggnog, 25 years ago, because it was mellow and sweet, though like you I tend not to drink much, thank goodness.
As follows, copied out from my mother's book of recipes:
Beat twelve egg yolks. Add gradually two cups brandy and two cups rum, beating all the time. Slowly stir in two cups sugar. Stir in six cups milk and two cups heavy cream. Fold in stiffly beaten egg whites. Sprinkle nutmeg on each cup.
It's very economical; you can have a heart attack and a hangover all in one go. Enjoy!
Hope the music I sent via Eric arrived okay.
It not only arrived okay, I have it literally in hand as I checked my e-mail and received your message; I had just taken the tape off and seen the names. Thank you so much! I will attempt a full report once I have listened to both discs: I am encouraged by titles like "Jack-in-the-Green" and "March the Mad Scientist."
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I dearly hope you like Jethro Tull. I will refrain from voicing the many superlatives I've used over the years; but I will say that the best of Tull's music awakens something in me that I can only call ancestral memory. I made this collection with you in mind; it's probably the best argument I can make for their music. But they are definitely not for everyone.
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