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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.
no subject
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.
no subject
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!
no subject
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!
no subject
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.
no subject
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.