I’ve written about bluebirds before, when I asked why Uncle Remus had a bluebird on his shoulder in the song “Zip-A-Dee-Doo-Dah,” and I revisited that image when I talked about “Over the Rainbow.” Now I want to re-revisit the topic in a short post about the short piece “The Blue Bird” by Charles V. Stanford with lyrics by Mary Coleridge. I probably can’t add anything to the musical analysis given below by a professional, so I’ll confine myself to some info on the author of the text and also about the composer.
Who’s Sylvie, and Why Is She Carrying Water?
Well, Sylvie, or Silvy, or Silvie, may have been a real person, a slave woman on a plantation being implored by someone in the fields to bring him a drink. Or she may have been the aunt of the man who popularized the song. Let’s start with him, the great black folk and blues singer Huddie “Lead Belly” Ledbetter, who performed throughout the first half of the 20th century, making recordings, holding concerts, and hosting his own radio program for a brief time. He came to the attention of the father/son team of John and Alan Lomax, who traveled the South during the 1930’s recording folk music on “portable aluminum discs” for the Library of Congress. He also spent a fair amount of time in prison for various offenses, including a stabbing, and his nickname was apparently assigned to him there:
Does the song “Don’t Let the Rain Come Down” make any sense?
This cheerful, seemingly simple song is far from simple and not even all that cheerful. I’ll have to admit up front here that my rabbit trails petered out before any definitive conclusions were reached. But here’s what I was able to come up with:
Let’s start out with the original nursery rhyme about a crooked man and his various crooked accoutrements:
(or, in some versions, he had a crooked smile,)
Was the Song “Singin’ in the Rain” Written for the Movie “Singin’ in the Rain,” or Vice Versa?
I had watched the entire movie Singin’ in the Rain at some point many years ago, and my memory of it was spotty. I remembered Gene Kelly’s description of his childhood and early career: “Dignity. Always dignity,” and of course the title song, and that the whole plot centered around the advent of talkies and the demise of silent movies. I also had this vague notion that the song had something to do with smiling in the face of adversity, sort of along the same lines as “Raindrops Keep Fallin’ on my Head.” (Rabbit trail alert: Of course I had to look up “Raindrops” and watch the clip of its occurrence in the movie Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. It doesn’t make a whole lot of sense for Sundance to take the time for this little romantic bike-riding interlude with Etta Place, his schoolteacher girlfriend, since he and Butch are on the run from the law, but there it is. Maybe someone decided that the story had been going on too long without any fun stuff. The song itself doesn’t advance the plot directly, but the director wanted something to go with the scene, and Burt Bacharach, who was writing the score, apparently had the first line in his head and wanted to use it. You can shoehorn the lyrics into the plot of the story somewhat, but it takes effort. I will point out, by the way, that this scene includes no rain. Sheesh.) But back to “Singin’,” which isn’t about adversity at all. Gene Kelly’s character is simply in love. He’s just said goodnight to his new girlfriend Kathy, and he’s so happy that he’s perfectly willing to dance through the storm. No angst at all is involved.
What Are the Main Water Images in “Wade in de Water”?
Black spirituals are true folk songs that were passed down by word of mouth over many years, with various versions being developed, before they were eventually written down. The texts reflect this variety, as there’s no one “official” version. The arrangement I’m using as a reference for the spiritual “Wade in de Water” has stripped-down lyrics, so that’s what I’m using as the for this commentary. Even with the limited text used, though, there’s still a lot to say! (Betcha you couldn’t have guessed that one.) Bear in mind that a lot of commentary on any type of folk song is at least partly supposition and hypothesizing, as we don’t have access to the authors. We don’t even know their names.
Parts of Vivaldi’s “Gloria” Sound Very Christmas-y. What Gives?
The texts of the first two sections of Vivaldi’s Gloria are the words of the angels in their announcement of Christ’s birth, words that are sung repeatedly in Christmas music, either in Latin or English:
Gloria in excelsis Deo
Glory to God in the highest
Et in terra pax hominibus bonae voluntatis.
And on earth peace to men of good will.
Get to Know the Real Vivaldi
If you’ve been reading my essays for any length of time, you know that I’m kind of obsessed with the details of a composer’s life, or how a certain piece came to be written, or the meaning of the words in a song. Things can get pretty granular at times! So this essay is an attempt to get at the real Vivaldi, the man behind the wig, as it were. He’s a much more interesting—and complicated—figure than you may have thought. As you sing or listen to his glorious music, I hope you’ll be able to picture him going about his life and dealing with all its complications.
Let’s start with Vivaldi’s father, Giovanni Battista Vivaldi, a resident of Venice. We are told that he was a barber before becoming a professional violinist at St. Mark’s Basilica, a little factoid that raises all sorts of interesting questions: Did that post pay more than barbering? Was Mrs. Vivaldi on board with all this? (They ended up with nine children, so money was very definitely a factor in any employment decisions, as there doesn’t seem to be any hint that the Vivaldis were well off.) How exactly did Giovanni decide to make this rather drastic career change? In any case, sources agree that Antonio’s first violin teacher was his dad. Antonio must have been somewhat of a prodigy, because Giovanni took him around Venice to perform, but I don’t know exactly how this worked. Were they basically buskers? When I first read about this “touring,” I thought my sources were saying that Vivaldi had traveled around Europe à la the young Mozart, but then Giovanni wouldn’t have been around to play at the basilica. No, it was just a hometown thing, a side hustle.
Lambs in the “Requiem”
To begin with this week I’m bringing back some material that I wrote two years ago about the Mozart Requiem. Hey, we’re all in favor of recycling, aren’t we? I was struck by Rutter’s choice to put two sheep- or lamb-related sections together; the “Agnus Dei” from the Latin Mass and Psalm 23 as it is worded in the Book of Common Prayer.
So here’s what I wrote about the “Agnus Dei” back then:
Agnus Dei, qui tollis peccata mundi-–
“Lamb of God, who takes away the sins of the world”
What Roman Architectural Element Plays a Part in the Structure of Rutter’s “Requiem”?
And the answer is: an arch. We all know about Roman arches, don’t we? The architectural point, which ties in with the musical point, is that there are matching stones on each side of the arch, each one bending closer and closer to the center, with the top stone, the one that holds it all in place, called the “key stone.” Without that center stone that whole thing collapses.
So I had read in several places that the Rutter Requiem had this arch form with the “Sanctus” serving as the keystone. But after all, that idea may just be something