Budapest – Kozma utcai izraelita temető (Jewish cemetery at Kozma street), the mosaics
music for Good Friday – Lamentu di Ghjesu
For today’s music let’s go back to the ancient Corsican tradition of performing the Passion story during the procession of Good Friday: Lamentu di Ghjesu, based upon the folia theme, which is probably the oldest known ostinato ground (a harmonical line played repeatedly while the player/singer improvises a melody upon it). I could write pages about its origin and use through the centuries* without making you understand what it actually is, so let’s make it really simple instead:
- You have a few bars long harmony line that goes on and on and on, always in the same way
- Try to sing the main music theme of Vangelis‘ 1492 upon it
- Does it fit?
- a) Yes, it does – congratulations, you have a folia!
- b) No, it does not
- it must be some other ostinato line
- sorry, you probably didn’t sing it properly, try it again
Christina Pluhar‘s band L’Arpeggiata has been lately accused in early music circles** with “popularizing” early music, but I’m not sure if this expression really fits what they do, and even if it does, I don’t mind it at all. Because, actually, that’s exactly what this music needs: to made be known and loved by as many people as just possible. And, a fact that most of these devoted and oh so critical early music players tend to forget: this kind of music was intended to be performed mostly by common people. Just for pleasure. With no higher purpose than to serve everyday life events and/or to entertain. It should be taken for what it is: popular music at its best.
PS: While last year’s Good Friday music was the great classic Es ist vollbracht from the Johannespassion, the year before I posted another, very beautiful Corsican passion song on another ancient ostinato line: Maria (sopra la Carpinese).
* I’ve actually done this for one of my music theory courses at the university
** not that I’ve had anything to do with early music circles since my depression other than writing vague, very unprofessional music posts twice a year, haha
music for Christmas Eve – Jakub Jan Ryba: Česká mše vánoční – Hej, mistře!
The first movement of the traditional (and very famous) Czech pastoral mass of Jakub Šimon Jan Ryba. With cute animations; because we are talking Baby Jesus here. In a proper Central European manner.
conversations with my coworkers – part 6
(Sunday morning at my previous workplace. We are having breakfast and doing small talk.)
coworker: I never ever work on Sundays.
me (perplexed): Well, it’s Sunday and you are here, working.
coworker: It doesn’t count. It’s for money. But I never do laundry or vacuuming on Sundays. It’s not allowed. If you work on Sundays, God will punish you. I knew a man, he worked on a Sunday and his pigs got sick, all of them. Then he worked again and his son had a car accident and died. God punished him.
me: Whom did He punish? The son or the father?
coworker: Both of them.
me: It doesn’t make much sense to me. Which religion do you actually belong to?
coworker: I’m a Christian.
me: Oh. I thought Jesus has already dealt with these kind of problems, like working on a Shabbat or punishing sons for the sins of their fathers…
coworker: I don’t know what you are talking about.
me: The Bible. The differences of religious attitude in the Old and the New Testament.
coworker: I haven’t read the Bible. I don’t like reading.
me: Well, you know, there is this story about the Pharisees trying to trick Jesus out and asking him about his healing actions that happened on a Shabbat…
coworker: I don’t know what you are talking about. If you work on Sundays, God will punish you.
me: Like, kill your son?
coworker: That’s the laws.
me: Well, those laws you are referring to were originally meant as a survival guide to a small desert nation in a hostile environment, formulated more than 3300 years ago, on the level of ethical and moral development of a society of those times. There is this hypothesis of comparing the evolution of the human society to the ontogenesis of personality…
coworker: I don’t know what you are talking about. Which nation?
me: The Jews, of course. I’m talking about the practical role of the Ten Commandments in the survival of Judaism under disadvantageous conditions. And about the difference between Judaism and Christianity.
coworker: I don’t get why you are speaking about Jews. These are the laws of God. God made them, not the Jews. God has nothing to do with Jews.
me: You mean, except calling them His own, chosen people? Actually, the problematic of whether the one and only God made the Jewish people or the Jewish people made up the idea of the one and only God is certainly very interesting…
coworker: I don’t know what you are talking about.
me: You know what? This discussion doesn’t make any sense. People should not be allowed to discuss religion on an empty stomach. Let’s have our breakfasts and talk about the weather.