Livre d'Or

There aren't as many amazing livecast versions of plays and shows now as there were in the first lockdown, partly because venues either tried to reopen for in-person shows when restrictions were lifted, or because the long dragged out pandemic has closed them altogether. But we did find a semi-staged Duke Bluebeard's Castle, from the London Symphony Orchestra, which amazingly enough was recorded this summer.

( thoughts about the music and the circumstances )

Almost there! Today, A song that breaks your heart. I'm going to cut all of this, not just the video, because the source of heartbreak is upsetting things.

( references to suicide and domestic violence, also an embedded video )

ghoti_mhic_uait observed that a really really exciting musical event was happening somewhere just about within travel distance of Cambridge. And initially I'd offered to babysit but we concluded that I was more excited about the concert than she was, so we changed things round so I could go with cjwatson. So last week I got to see the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment doing Semele, Handel's secular oratorio. I'm still bouncing and full of squee a week later.

( review, referencing typical non-serious anglo attitudes to Hellenic legends )

I think that was about the most amazing musical experience I've ever enjoyed. Well, seeing VNV Nation in New York with redbird most of a decade ago comes pretty close. Anyway I'm so incredibly happy I got to go, and heartfelt thanks to all my wonderful partners for making it possible.

A song that moves you forward. I spent ages thinking about this one, and I think the answer is To be with you by Mr Big. It's a linchpin of my 'happybouncy' playlist. I think if I were actually going through a break-up, someone telling me, don't worry, I can be with you instead, would be mostly annoying. But in a broader sense, I hear

Build up your confidence
So you can be on top for once
Wake up. Who cares about little boys
That talk too much?

not as a blandishment from someone who wants to seduce me, but as a kind of encouraging, supportive inner voice which I try to cultivate. The self-nurturing part of my own mind is allowed to call me 'little girl' in a way that some male acquaintance chatting me up definitely wouldn't be.

Also I am very, very fond of the tune and it works pretty reliably to give me energy. Sometimes what moves me forward is more poppy, sometimes it's more intense hard rock or goth music, but this really works even though it's a relatively slow, relaxed style.

( video embed )

Let's get the political complaining off the top of my journal, and talk about One of your favourite classical songs.

Because I always end up picking Fauré's Requiem every time I answer a meme about music, I'll stick to a strict definition of 'song' and go with Les roses d'Ispahan instead:

( video (singing over animation of the score) )

The story behind this is that I fell in love with Fauré when I heard the school choir singing the Requiem when I was 12, and the singing teacher saw me falling in love and decided to try to teach me to sing, even though I notoriously couldn't hold a tune. And we talked a lot about singing Christian sacred music, but she also pointed out that Fauré wrote plenty of secular stuff, so I could learn that. Alongside lots of simpler things more appropriate for a beginning singer. And I loved all the repertoire I learned, but Les roses d'Ispahan best. Spending absolutely months trying to learn songs that were too hard for me gave me an appreciation that just listening to them never would.

Or, if I'm going with a strict definition of Classical, to get even further away from always going on about Fauré... most of the music I like is either Baroque or Romantic really, but I'm not against the entire Classical period. So let's go with Schubert, whom I always reliably like. I'm choosing the song Heidenröslein for the tune, even though I'm not wholly enamoured of the lyrics. I mean, it's Goethe, but it's also about the poet destroying his lover to punish her for rejecting him. Also because I discovered recently that there's a Rammstein song alluding to it, so I'm using the meme as an excuse to tell you about that.

( video embed, containing religious violence )

A song from your pre-teen years is a challenge for me, because I almost didn't listen to recorded music at all before I was in secondary school, and the only singing I did was in school or synagogue.

I'm probably not going to find online versions of the Jewish music I grew up with because the anglo-Reform tradition is very little recorded anywhere. I think this אין כאלהינו at least shares some musical ancestry with the one I used to get my Dad to sing to me when I was really tiny, because I liked the repetitive structure of the hymn, There is none like our God, there is none like our Lord, there is none like our king, there is none like our saviour. I think this memory is from when we still lived in my first house ie when I was under five, and being an unmusical child from an unmusical family, I didn't have a clear idea that songs were supposed to be tuneful, I thought of them as like poems but with even more obvious rhythm.

And I'm certainly not going to find a recording of the children's musical my music teacher wrote based on our learning to read system. I remember being terribly impressed that the song about the 'round' letter Oscar Orange was in the musical form of a 'round'. So there must have been a smattering of nursery rhymes, I think we had one tape at least, plus the stuff you learn as part of early school acculturation. And the obvious children's hyms from a bit older.

When we visited my cousins in Australia when I was 7 or 8, we listened to songs from the children's TV show Feathers, fur or fins. I was fond of Please don't call me a koala bear because it's about taxonomical pedantry.

So I think the choice for this item in the meme is going to have to be I should be so lucky by Kylie Minogue. I reckon I was listening to this when I was 10 or 11, so just about pre-teen. A few years later some of my classmates put on a play with a character who was really obviously a parody of me and was so uncool she listened to Kylie and even... Mozart, and I remember being offended not that my classmates thought I was uncool – that was obvious – but that one of the greats of the European classical tradition was somehow being associated with some pop singer so ephemeral that it was a social faux pas to admit to still liking her three years I'd tried to listen to her stuff in an attempt to fit in.

Honestly my immediate pre-teen years in the late 80s were a pretty terrible time for easily accessible music, as they were for fashion, (wow, look at Kylie's hair and clothes in that video!) Well, for white music at least, I was peripherally aware of Michael Jackson's Bad which is just magisterial, but it was well outside my musical context. And the alt scene, especially rock, had plenty of good stuff going on, but that's only with hindsight, as a child at the time I was almost entirely unaware of rock music, and it was still considered somewhat taboo, not respectable.

( the most 80s possible video embed )

A song that makes you want to dance. I'm not much of a dancer, really. What gets me on the dancefloor is old skool goth stuff that I'm nostalgic about, stuff that's mostly beat rather than rhythm that makes me feel not self conscious if I just jump about and headbang in a not really coordinated way. Or I'll sometimes do folk dancing; most of the Scottish dance music I know is tunes rather than songs, though I have been known to dance Israeli folk stuff that more commonly has songs to go with it, eg Od lo ahavti dai ['I haven't loved enough yet'].

So I've picked a song that is quite bouncy and has lyrics which are about wanting to dance: Because it's not love (but it's still a feeling) by The Pipettes. I think it's blue_mai who got me into this band.

( video embed )

I had a weekend full of extrovert delights, a day with jack and an evening with doseybat and verazea and an extra bonus ewt, when we talked and talked and were surprised to find it was after midnight. And had a long phonecall with my mother who's more of a morning person than most of my friends, and then cjwatson joined us for dim sum at my perennial favourite Joy King Lau, and lots lots lots more talking until it was time to go back to Keele.

Which is the kind of thing I not only don't do, but never have done. Only ghoti wanted me to go to a Blue Öyster Cult gig with her and although they claim they're always on tour they are not so very young any more and their only UK gig was Ramblin' Man Fair. So we decided to attend the fair, and in fact had a great time.

( not very successfully pretending to be cool )

So yes, I'm really too boring for rock festivals, but it was fun to pretend for a few days that I'm the kind of person who travels across country and sleeps in a tent (albeit a posh tent) and stands around in muddy fields in the rain to hear bands I like.

I feel like I'm turning into a terrible old fogey when it comes to music. I mean, not that I was ever at the cutting edge of fashion, but I used to at least recognize some current stuff. ( long-winded description of my problem )

Recommendations of actual music always welcome, of course. I really appreciate people who do share music on their journals, like oursin and seekingferret and ceb. But what I'm really looking for is recommendations of how to music in 2015. How to discover new music, how to do music in a modern social media context, recommendations of places to go to look for recommendations. And how to buy music once I've discovered it. Any suggestions appreciated!

So sfred asked:

what would your eight Desert Island Discs be? (Optionally, also pick a book and a luxury item.)

I'd been meaning to do DID ever since I saw cosmolinguist's excellent post on the topic, and then I wasn't sure I wanted to do it in December because it's the kind of thing that takes thought to do well. But I'm going to give it a go anyway, it's not going to be as polished as it would be if I hypothetically actually went on the show, but I'll have a go at 8 pieces of music.

( my musical tastes are embarrassingly conventional )

[December Days masterpost]