Category Archives: Music

Camille Saint-Saëns’ The Swan (1886)

Charles-Camille Saint-Saëns was born in Paris in 1835 and raised by his wid­owed moth­er and his great-aunt, who intro­duced the young Camille to the piano and gave him his first lessons. The boy was a real prodi­gy, demon­strat­ing per­fect pitch at the age of two and giv­ing his first pub­lic con­cert at five. Over the course of his long life Saint-Saëns was incred­i­bly pro­lif­ic: after writ­ing his first sym­pho­ny at 16 he went on to write four more, along with five piano con­cer­tos, three vio­lin con­cer­tos, two cel­lo con­cer­tos and some 20 con­cer­tante works.

Nor were his tal­ents lim­it­ed to music. He was pro­found­ly knowl­edge­able about geol­o­gy, botany, lep­i­dopterol­o­gy, and maths, and his celebri­ty allowed him to enjoy dis­cus­sions with Europe’s finest sci­en­tists.

Of all Saint-Saëns’ aston­ish­ing out­put, though, the most famous is undoubt­ed­ly The Car­ni­val of the Ani­mals, com­posed in 1886. He hadn’t con­sid­ered it a seri­ous piece at all and in fact wor­ried that it might dam­age his rep­u­ta­tion. He needn’t have wor­ried. The 13th and penul­ti­mate move­ment of The Car­ni­val of the Ani­mals, The Swan (Le Cygne), became acclaimed world­wide as The Dying Swan after 1905 when it was chore­o­graphed for leg­endary bal­le­ri­na Anna Pavlo­va, who per­formed it about 4,000 times.

The leg­end of the “swan song” grew from the pop­u­lar belief among the ancient Greeks that the mute swan is silent until its final moments of life, at which point it sings the most beau­ti­ful of all bird­songs. Saint-Saëns cap­tures this idea in the music…and here we see bal­le­ri­na Uliana Lopatk­i­na effort­less­ly evok­ing in dance the grace­ful­ness of the ani­mal (almost entire­ly en pointe) and the heart­break of its demise. Beau­ti­ful.

 

Andrea Bocelli sings Con Te Partirò at Sanremo Music Festival (1995)

Most peo­ple are famil­iar with the 1996 col­lab­o­ra­tion between Andrea Bocel­li and Sarah Bright­man, Time to Say Good­bye, since it was a world­wide smash, sell­ing over 12 mil­lion copies and mak­ing it one of the best-sell­ing sin­gles of all time. How­ev­er, it was the year before, in 1995, that Andrea Bocel­li first per­formed this sump­tu­ous neo-clas­si­cal song in its orig­i­nal Ital­ian form, as a solo piece: Con Te Par­tirò.

The song was writ­ten spe­cial­ly for Bocel­li by Francesco Sar­tori and Lucio Quar­an­tot­to, and appeared on his sec­ond album. Bocel­li had already had his big break a few years ear­li­er in 1992 when Luciano Pavarot­ti heard a demo tape of Bocel­li singing Mis­erere, a song intend­ed for Pavarot­ti (and co-writ­ten by U2’s Bono of all peo­ple). Pavarot­ti was impressed and in the end, he and Bocel­li record­ed it togeth­er. That song became a world­wide hit and cat­a­pult­ed Bocel­li into the lime­light. At Italy’s San­re­mo Music Fes­ti­val in 1994 he won hon­ours in the new­com­ers’ cat­e­go­ry, and suc­cess was cement­ed.

In the fol­low­ing year, Bocel­li appeared at San­re­mo again. Watch him here, per­form­ing his sig­na­ture piece, Con Te Par­tirò. His hon­eyed voice and dis­tinc­tive tim­bre, togeth­er with the beau­ti­ful melody and rich orches­tra­tion, pro­duced a mas­ter­piece of emo­tion­al strength. Stu­pen­dous.

Andrea Bocel­li

 

The Pogues and Kirsty MacColl play Fairytale of New York (1987)

Fairy­tale of New York by the Pogues and Kirsty Mac­Coll is an Irish folk-style bal­lad and Christ­mas song, writ­ten by Jem Fin­er and Shane Mac­Gowan. It was released in Novem­ber 1987 after two years in the mak­ing and – although it nev­er quite made the num­ber one slot in the UK Sin­gles Chart (it was kept off it by the Pet Shop Boys’ Always on my Mind) – has proved endur­ing­ly pop­u­lar, con­sis­tent­ly top­ping polls of the “nation’s all-time favourite” Christ­mas songs.

The open­ing lines make it evi­dent that this is no typ­i­cal Christ­mas song: it’s Christ­mas Eve in a New York City drunk tank, with an Irish immi­grant in ine­bri­at­ed rever­ie about the song’s female char­ac­ter, and their hopes and dreams, des­tined to be crushed by alco­hol, drugs and cir­cum­stance. No bells jin­gling and chil­dren play­ing here.

The famous call-and-response duel between Shane Mac­Gowan and Kirsty MaColl is doubt­less the ele­ment that stamps its mark on the listener’s con­scious­ness, with its amus­ing tirade of abuse in words only just on the right side of the radio cen­sor (in fact, Radio 1 did ban the words “slut” and “fag­got” on 18th Decem­ber 2007, only to reverse the ban lat­er in the same day due to crit­i­cism from lis­ten­ers, the band, and Kirsty MacColl’s moth­er!). I might add, inci­den­tal­ly, that “fag­got” is Irish slang for a lazy, no-good per­son, so need not be con­fused with the pejo­ra­tive word for “gay”.

The melo­di­ous voice of Mac­Coll fits in per­fect­ly with MacGowan’s rough drawl, though the involve­ment of Mac­Coll only came about due to a fall­out between the band and the orig­i­nal choice for the female voice, bass play­er Cait O’Riordan. When O’Riordan left the band in Octo­ber 1986, pro­duc­er Steve Lily­white sug­gest­ed let­ting his wife (Mac­Coll) lay down a new guide vocal for the song, sim­ply with a view to help­ing future audi­tions. When they heard it, the band of course loved it and realised that this was the voice for the song. As Mac­Gowan was quot­ed lat­er: “Kirsty knew exact­ly the right mea­sure of vicious­ness and fem­i­nin­i­ty and romance to put into it”.

Backed by the con­sum­mate musi­cian­ship of the Pogues, the song’s vocals and lyri­cism add up to a very round­ed, mean­ing­ful and bit­ter­sweet piece of music that has unar­guably cap­tured the imag­i­na­tion of a nation. Mer­ry Christ­mas!

It was Christ­mas Eve babe
In the drunk tank
An old man said to me, won’t see anoth­er one
And then he sang a song
The Rare Old Moun­tain Dew
I turned my face away
And dreamed about you

Got on a lucky one
Came in eigh­teen to one
I’ve got a feel­ing
This year’s for me and you
So hap­py Christ­mas
I love you baby
I can see a bet­ter time
When all our dreams come true

They’ve got cars big as bars
They’ve got rivers of gold
But the wind goes right through you
It’s no place for the old
When you first took my hand
On a cold Christ­mas Eve
You promised me
Broad­way was wait­ing for me

You were hand­some
You were pret­ty
Queen of New York City
When the band fin­ished play­ing
They howled out for more
Sina­tra was swing­ing,
All the drunks they were singing
We kissed on a cor­ner
Then danced through the night

The boys of the NYPD choir
Were singing “Gal­way Bay“
And the bells were ring­ing out
For Christ­mas day

You’re a bum
You’re a punk
You’re an old slut on junk
Lying there almost dead on a drip in that bed
You scum­bag, you mag­got
You cheap lousy fag­got
Hap­py Christ­mas your arse
I pray God it’s our last

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing “Gal­way Bay“
And the bells were ring­ing out
For Christ­mas day

I could have been some­one
Well so could any­one
You took my dreams from me
When I first found you
I kept them with me babe
I put them with my own
Can’t make it all alone
I’ve built my dreams around you

The boys of the NYPD choir
Still singing “Gal­way Bay“
And the bells are ring­ing out
For Christ­mas day

Kirsty Mac­Coll and Shane Mac­Gowan

Arvo Pärt’s Spiegel im Spiegel (1978)

Some music is made for play­ing whilst cruis­ing down the high­way or get­ting ready to go out on the town. And some music is made for play­ing whilst wear­ing slip­pers, sip­ping cof­fee and glanc­ing at the Sun­day papers. Spiegel im Spiegel is most def­i­nite­ly in the lat­ter cat­e­go­ry.

Writ­ten by Arvo Pärt in 1978, in his native Esto­nia, Spiegel im Spiegel is a min­i­mal­ist piece in the so-called tintinnab­u­lar style of com­po­si­tion (a term coined by Pärt him­self, from the Latin tintinnab­u­lum, “bell”), where­in a melod­ic voice oper­at­ing over dia­ton­ic scales, and a tintinnab­u­lar voice, oper­at­ing with­in a tri­ad on the ton­ic, accom­pa­ny each oth­er. The effect is calm­ing and med­i­ta­tive.

The piece was writ­ten for a sin­gle piano and vio­lin, and here is a beau­ti­ful ver­sion fea­tur­ing Nico­la Benedet­ti on vio­lin and Alex­ei Grynyuk on piano. The piano plays ris­ing crotch­et tri­ads and the vio­lin plays slow, sus­tained notes, alter­nate­ly ris­ing and falling, and of increas­ing length.

Inci­den­tal­ly, Spiegel im Spiegel in Ger­man lit­er­al­ly means “mir­ror in the mir­ror”, rep­re­sent­ing, I sup­pose, the idea of an infin­i­ty of images reflect­ed by par­al­lel plane mir­rors: the ton­ic tri­ads are end­less­ly repeat­ed with small vari­a­tions, as if reflect­ed back and forth. In any event, if, like me, you cher­ish an occa­sion­al calm and still envi­ron­ment in a hec­tic world, this is for you. I rec­om­mend just putting the piece on at a qui­et time and, rather than con­cen­trat­ing on it, sim­ply let it fill the room with its serene qual­i­ty whilst you do some­thing else. You will be spir­i­tu­al­ly refreshed with­out even real­is­ing it!

 

Arvo Part

Charles Trenet sings La Mer (1946)

I first prop­er­ly heard this clas­sic exam­ple of chan­son française at the funer­al of a friend’s dad, who had evi­dent­ly loved the song and elect­ed to mark his cross­ing with it: La Mer by French singer, Charles Trenet. The song pos­i­tive­ly drips with gal­lic non­cha­lance and romance. Leg­end has it that Trenet wrote a first ver­sion of the song when he was just 16, but La Mer as we know it was born in 1943, dur­ing a train trip in the South of France. Trenet, along with singer Roland Ger­beau and pianist Léo Chau­li­ac, was trav­el­ling from Mont­pel­li­er to Per­pig­nan, along the beau­ti­ful French coast. Inspired by the scenery, Trenet wrote La Mer before the jour­ney was over, and he and Chau­li­ac per­formed the song that very evening.

At first, Trenet didn’t like the final ver­sion of La Mer, for some rea­son, so in fact it was Roland Ger­beau who first record­ed it, in 1945. But a year lat­er, Trenet’s record com­pa­ny boss con­vinced Trenet to have a go at the song as well. The music was rearranged and the song began its jour­ney prop­er to chan­son clas­sic, becom­ing a huge suc­cess and a jazz stan­dard.

By the time of Trenet’s death in 2001, over 70 mil­lion copies of La Mer had been sold and 4000 dif­fer­ent ver­sions record­ed. The song has been trans­lat­ed suc­cess­ful­ly into mul­ti­ple lan­guages (hence Beyond the Sea, Il Mare, De Zee, Das Meer etc), and cov­ered by a mul­ti­tude of artists, of whom I think Rod Stew­art does a par­tic­u­lar­ly good ver­sion. But it is Trenet’s charm­ing­ly pol­ished orig­i­nal in the French that irre­sistibly cap­tures the imag­i­na­tion.

Lis­ten here:

La mer
Qu’on voit danser le long des golfes clairs
A des reflets d’ar­gent
La mer
Des reflets changeants
Sous la pluie

La mer
Au ciel d’été con­fond
Ses blancs mou­tons
Avec les anges si purs
La mer bergère d’azur
Infinie

Voyez
Près des étangs
Ces grands roseaux mouil­lés
Voyez
Ces oiseaux blancs
Et ces maisons rouil­lées

La mer
Les a bercés
Le long des golfes clairs
Et d’une chan­son d’amour
La mer
A bercé mon cœur pour la vie

Charles Trenet

The Beatles play I Want To Hold Your Hand (1964)

Of course the Bea­t­les had to make an appear­ance in this blog. Unde­ni­ably the most influ­en­tial bands of the rock era, they took the musi­cal world by storm, hav­ing grad­u­al­ly built their rep­u­ta­tion over three years from their for­ma­tion in 1960. They hold a rock-sol­id place in the hearts of most peo­ple of my gen­er­a­tion and of many peo­ple since. But which song to choose from a canon so replete with the sub­lime?

I have gone with a song so utter­ly exem­plary of the Bea­t­les sound and feel, from their ear­ly hey­day, and pos­i­tive­ly drip­ping with their youth­ful exu­ber­ance and melod­ic vir­tu­os­i­ty. Writ­ten by Lennon and McCart­ney in the base­ment of Jane Ash­er’s par­ents’ house in Wim­pole Street, Lon­don; record­ed at Abbey Road’s stu­dio two; and released in the UK on 29th Novem­ber 1963, it’s I Want To Hold Your Hand. It sold more than a mil­lion copies on advanced orders alone, on the back of the suc­cess of She Loves You, and became the group’s first US num­ber one, kick-start­ing the British Inva­sion of Amer­i­ca.

Of all the tele­vised ver­sions of the song (notably on the Ed Sul­li­van Show, with the famous intro­duc­tion “Here they are…the Bea­t­les!”), I found this ver­sion from the More­cambe and Wise Show in 1964. Played live, it’s absolute­ly bril­liant. Lennon’s and McCart­ney’s voic­es are con­stant­ly switch­ing between uni­son and har­mo­ny, and there is a won­der­ful inter­play between Lennon’s riffs and George Harrison’s sub­tle gui­tar fills. And through­out, of course, they just look so damn good togeth­er; it’s a delight to watch.

The Bea­t­les 1964

Sergei Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights from Romeo and Juliet (1935)

Sergei Prokofiev’s Dance of the Knights, also known as The Mon­tagues and Capulets, comes from his bal­let, Romeo and Juli­et. It’s an emo­tion­al­ly charged piece of music, with strong horns and wood­winds lay­er­ing over a pow­er­ful melod­ic line played by the strings. Prokofiev’s dark and brood­ing pas­sages send chills up the spine and cre­ate a won­der­ful­ly dark atmos­phere, pre­sum­ably to express the ten­sion between the rival fam­i­lies of the Mon­tagues and Capulets. No won­der it’s used in film and tele­vi­sion so often; not least, of course, in the BBC’s The Appren­tice.

Like the orig­i­nal play Romeo and Juli­et, the sto­ry of Sergei Prokofiev and his famous bal­let with the same title is filled with betray­al, strug­gle and untime­ly death. After the Rev­o­lu­tion, Prokofiev had left Rus­sia with the offi­cial bless­ing of the author­i­ties, and resided in the Unit­ed States, Ger­many, and Paris, respec­tive­ly, mak­ing his liv­ing as a com­pos­er, pianist and con­duc­tor. He was lured back to the Sovi­et Union in 1936 with promis­es of lucra­tive com­mis­sions, but the bureau­crat who com­mis­sioned Romeo and Juli­et was exe­cut­ed, as was the Cen­tral Com­mit­tee flunky who approved the bal­let’s orig­i­nal hap­py end­ing (Prokofiev had orig­i­nal­ly changed Shake­speare’s trag­ic end­ing but this evi­dent­ly did not go down well with the Russ­ian author­i­ties!). The author­i­ties then exiled Prokofiev’s first wife to the Gulag, and in 1938 con­fis­cat­ed Prokofiev’s pass­port, deter­min­ing that he need­ed “ide­o­log­i­cal cor­rect­ing” from too much West­ern influ­ence.

Despite all this inter­fer­ence, how­ev­er, what comes down to us today is an icon­ic piece of musi­cal dra­ma, with Dance of the Knights being the stand­out piece. We watch it here per­formed by La Scala Milano, as the Capulets strut their stuff on the dance floor. Great cos­tumes too!

Sergei Prokofiev

Noël Coward’s Don’t Put You Daughter On The Stage, Mrs Worthington (1935)

Sir Noël Cow­ard: play­wright, com­pos­er, direc­tor, actor and singer, known for his wit, flam­boy­ance, debonair charm and what Time mag­a­zine called “a sense of per­son­al style, a com­bi­na­tion of cheek and chic, pose and poise”. We’ve met Cow­ard before in this blog, due to his involve­ment with Brief Encounter. His songs have amused and charmed me for years: wit­ty and know­ing word­play, pre­cise­ly enun­ci­at­ed and put togeth­er with an extra­or­di­nary degree of scan­sion and uni­ty, and often with a killer title: Don’t Let’s Be Beast­ly To The Ger­mans, Could You Please Oblige Us with a Bren Gun?, I Went To A Mar­vel­lous Par­ty

Typ­i­cal of his glo­ri­ous­ly sar­don­ic songcraft, is this week’s glimpse of the sub­lime, Don’t Put Your Daugh­ter On The Stage, Mrs Wor­thing­ton. In the Thir­ties, at the height of his pow­ers, Cow­ard was apt to receive a con­stant stream of let­ters from women beg­ging him to find parts for their respec­tive daugh­ters in what­ev­er he hap­pened to be stag­ing next. As Cow­ard him­self put it:

“Some years ago when I was return­ing from the Far East on a very large ship, I was pur­sued around the decks every day by a very large lady. She showed me some pho­tographs of her daugh­ter – a repel­lent-look­ing girl – and seemed con­vinced that she was des­tined for a great stage career. Final­ly, in sheer self-preser­va­tion, I locked myself in my cab­in and wrote this song – “Don’t Put Your Daugh­ter On The Stage, Mrs Wor­thing­ton”.

The slap­down is exquis­ite. Enjoy its deft lyrics and jaun­ty tune, below. How­ev­er, you won’t hear the fourth verse because this was pulled from the song as it was con­sid­ered by the Lord Cham­ber­lain too offen­sive for the prim 1930s Britain!

Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage, Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage,
The pro­fes­sion is over­crowd­ed
And the strug­gle’s pret­ty tough
And admit­ting the fact
She’s burn­ing to act,
That isn’t quite enough.
She has nice hands, to give the wretched girl her due,
But don’t you think her bust is too
Devel­oped for her age?
I repeat
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Sweet
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage.

Regard­ing yours, dear Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Of Wednes­day the 23rd,
Although your baby
May be,
Keen on a stage career,
How can I make it clear,
That this is not a good idea.
For her to hope,
Dear Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Is on the face of it absurd,
Her per­son­al­i­ty
Is not in real­i­ty
Invit­ing enough,
Excit­ing enough
For this par­tic­u­lar sphere.

Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage, Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage,
She’s a bit of an ugly duck­ling
You must hon­est­ly con­fess,
And the width of her seat
Would sure­ly defeat
Her chances of suc­cess,
It’s a loud voice, and though it’s not exact­ly flat,
She’ll need a lit­tle more than that
To earn a liv­ing wage.
On my knees,
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Please
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage.

Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage, Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage,
Though they said at the school of act­ing
She was love­ly as Peer Gynt,
I’m afraid on the whole
An ingénue role
Would empha­size her squint,
She’s a big girl, and though her teeth are fair­ly good
She’s not the type I ever would
Be eager to engage,
No more buts,
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
NUTS,
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage.

[Song nor­mal­ly ends here, but here’s the refrain that fell foul of the Cen­sor]

Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage, Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage,
One look at her bandy legs should prove
She has­n’t got a chance,
In addi­tion to which
The son of a bitch
Can nei­ther sing nor dance,
She’s a vile girl and ugli­er than mor­tal sin,
One look at her has put me in
A tear­ing bloody rage,
That suf­ficed
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Christ!
Mrs Wor­thing­ton,
Don’t put your daugh­ter on the stage, or your son!

Noel Cow­ard

The Who’s Substitute (1966)

Lon­don in the Six­ties was, famous­ly, “swing­ing”, with much of the music and fash­ion influ­enced by the Mod sub­cul­ture. Mods had their roots in the Lon­don of the late Fifties where a small group of fash­ion­able young guns came to be known as mod­ernists because of their pen­chant for mod­ern jazz. By the Six­ties, the move­ment had become the dom­i­nant, and now plu­ral­ist, cul­tur­al force of the times, had broad­ened its hori­zons, and had accu­mu­lat­ed cer­tain iden­ti­fy­ing sym­bols such as the tai­lored suit, the Par­ka, and the motor scoot­er. Mod music, mean­while, had become a diverse mix of soul, R&B, ska, and blues-root­ed British rock.

The ear­ly six­ties had seen a clash of this new cul­ture with the so-called “rock­ers”, a rival sub­cul­ture cen­tred on motor­cy­cling, leather and 1950s rock and roll, which led to the infa­mous South Coast brawls of “mods and rock­ers”, and the ensu­ing “moral pan­ic” of the Estab­lish­ment. But by the mid-six­ties, British rock bands, such as the Small Faces and the Who, were adopt­ing mod fash­ion and atti­tude.

This week, I give you a sub­lime dose of mod sound in the form of the Who’s Sub­sti­tute. Nat­ty threads, swanky atti­tude, and above all a killer song from the band’s one true song­writer, gui­tarist Pete Town­shend. Town­shend wrote the song hav­ing being inspired by a line in Smokey Robinson’s Tracks of my Tears: “Although she may be cute, She’s just a sub­sti­tute”.

The song has a great bassline, amply sup­plied by John Ent­whis­tle and assist­ed on drums by ami­able loon Kei­th Moon, gui­tar chops cour­tesy of Town­shend and a suit­ably louche vocal from Roger Dal­trey. The lyrics are clev­er­ly wrought, though it’s no sur­prise that the line “I look all white but my dad was black” was altered for the more racial­ly sen­si­tive Amer­i­can mar­ket (to “I try walk­ing for­ward but my feet walk back”, which was pre­sum­ably thrown togeth­er at the last minute to cries of “yeah, that’ll do”).

What­ev­er, the fin­ished prod­uct is a great exam­ple of styl­ish mod sound from the orig­i­nal “cool Britannia”…enjoy!

You think we look pret­ty good togeth­er
You think my shoes are made of leather

But I’m a sub­sti­tute for anoth­er guy
I look pret­ty tall but my heels are high
The sim­ple things you see are all com­pli­cat­ed
I look pret­ty young, but I’m just back-dat­ed, yeah

Sub­sti­tute your lies for fact
I can see right through your plas­tic mac
I look all white, but my dad was black
My fine-look­ing suit is real­ly made out of sack

I was born with a plas­tic spoon in my mouth
The north side of my town faced east, and the east was fac­ing south
And now you dare to look me in the eye
Those croc­o­dile tears are what you cry
It’s a gen­uine prob­lem, you won’t try
To work it out at all you just pass it by, pass it by

Sub­sti­tute me for him
Sub­sti­tute my coke for gin
Sub­sti­tute you for my mum
At least I’ll get my wash­ing done

But I’m a sub­sti­tute for anoth­er guy
I look pret­ty tall but my heels are high
The sim­ple things you see are all com­pli­cat­ed
I look pret­ty young, but I’m just back­dat­ed, yeah

I was born with a plas­tic spoon in my mouth
The north side of my town faced east, and the east was fac­ing south
And now you dare to look me in the eye
Those croc­o­dile tears are what you cry
It’s a gen­uine prob­lem, you won’t try
To work it out at all you just pass it by, pass it by

Sub­sti­tute me for him
Sub­sti­tute my coke for gin
Sub­sti­tute you for my mum
At least I’ll get my wash­ing done

Sub­sti­tute your lies for fact
I can see right through your plas­tic mac
I look all white, but my dad was black
My fine-look­ing suit is real­ly made out of sack

The Who in 1966

 

Hubert Parry and John Leaf Whittier’s Dear Lord and Father of Mankind (1888)

Are hymns capa­ble of being a sub­lime art-form? Or does the Dev­il have the best tunes? Well, cer­tain­ly, we might dis­miss the arche­type of the mod­ern folk-derived “wor­ship song”, fee­bly crooned to the accom­pa­ni­ment of a strummed gui­tar, but how about the con­tents of the clas­sic Hymns Ancient & Mod­ern from the hey­day of Vic­to­ri­an hymnody?

Many of these paeans come across to mod­ern ears as some­what plod­ding and, pep­pered as they so often are with that staunch­ly God-fear­ing lyri­cism laid down by the likes of Charles Wes­ley, strict­ly for die-hard Methodists.

How­ev­er, most peo­ple tend to con­nect with at least one hymn from their youth that stirs their spir­it, be it Abide With Me, I Vow To Thee My Coun­try, or that oth­er hardy peren­ni­al, Amaz­ing Grace. One such hymn that I con­tend is capa­ble of sub­lime heights is Dear Lord and Father of Mankind, the won­der­ful mar­riage of Hubert Parry’s 1888 music writ­ten for Rep­ton School in Der­byshire and words tak­en from John Leaf Whittier’s 1872 poem, The Brew­ing of Soma.

The title of that poem may appear odd; the “soma” of the title was a sacred drink in the Vedic reli­gion with hal­lu­cino­genic prop­er­ties and which was used by devo­tees in an attempt to expe­ri­ence divin­i­ty (cf. the “ide­al plea­sure drug”, soma, of Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World). Whit­tier’s point is that one doesn’t need an exter­nal agent to expe­ri­ence divin­i­ty; all one needs is to lis­ten to the “small, still voice” inside and to live the sober, self­less lives as prac­tised by the Quak­ers to whom he was aligned.

Be that as it may, it’s when words and music com­bine in the hands (or throats) of a decent choir that the music comes alive. Joe Wright’s film, Atone­ment, has an acclaimed five-minute track­ing shot depict­ing war-torn Dunkirk dur­ing which we begin to hear a choir of sol­diers, in a bat­tered band­stand, singing Dear Lord and Father of Mankind. An effec­tive and iron­ic poignan­cy aris­es from the jux­ta­po­si­tion of the bleak and des­per­ate scene with the rous­ing majesty of the hymn.

In that spir­it I present a love­ly ver­sion of the hymn, sung excel­lent­ly by the choir of the Abbey School, Tewkes­bury, set, in sim­i­lar jux­ta­po­si­tion, to footage from the Great War.

Dear Lord and Father of mankind,
for­give our fool­ish ways;
reclothe us in our right­ful mind,
in pur­er lives thy ser­vice find,
in deep­er rev­er­ence, praise.

In sim­ple trust like theirs who heard,
beside the Syr­i­an sea,
the gra­cious call­ing of the Lord,
let us, like them, with­out a word,
rise up and fol­low thee.

O Sab­bath rest by Galilee,
O calm of hills above,
where Jesus knelt to share with thee
the silence of eter­ni­ty,
inter­pret­ed by love!

Drop thy still dews of quiet­ness,
till all our striv­ings cease;
take from our souls the strain and stress,
and let our ordered lives con­fess
the beau­ty of thy peace.

Breathe through the heats of our desire
thy cool­ness and thy balm;
let sense be dumb, let flesh retire;
speak through the earth­quake, wind, and fire,
O still, small voice of calm.