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.
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.
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
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!
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
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.
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!
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!
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
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.
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