Tales from the jar side: A playlist of haunting beauty
Welcome to Tales from the jar side, the Kousen IT newsletter, for the week of Dec 22 - 29, 2019. This week was thankfully quiet, so instead of the normal summary, this year-end post offers some YouTube recommendations that I put in the category of "haunting beauty".
This year has been very difficult for so many people. Professionally I'm doing better than ever, but that makes me more aware of the suffering I see around me. Combined with how the world has evolved into a darker, crueler place, it's easy to sink into sadness if not despair. In such times, I find it helpful to remind myself that there is still beauty in the world. With that in mind, I've assembled a YouTube playlist that I'd like to share with you. I've chosen all YouTube recordings (rather than a Google Music or Spotify) to ensure that anyone can listen to any of them.
I should mention that while I pride myself on keeping up with popular culture, my appreciation for popular music has fallen way behind the current trends. Whenever I watch Saturday Night Live (which I felt obligated to do when Eddie Murphy guested last week), I never know the music guests, unless they're old people from my generation. Instead, I've become fond of the old masters, and by old I mean classical artists like Beethoven and Debussy. I'm sometimes reminded that many people are unaware of anything in the classical field other than the biggest of big hits, so hopefully you will find something enjoyable in this list.
The entire playlist can be found here, but individual song links are given below. I added links, but also embedded the videos into this message for convenience.
NOTE: The embedded versions don't appear in the email (though Gmail includes them as attachments at the bottom of the message), but they are included on the web site.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5PYt2HlBuyI
This piece, Au fond du temple saint, is usually just referred to as The Pearl Fishers' Duet, from the opera of the same name by Bizet. Like everyone, I'm familiar with Bizet's Carmen, where the music is amazing but the plot is such horrible stalker porn that I almost can't bear to watch it. I've never seen The Pearl Fishers opera, but I love this duet. It's one of the few tenor/baritone duets to become famous, and I've enjoyed it since I first heard it many years ago. I managed to perform it once, with a good friend of mine as part of a concert my wife and I held back in the 1990s.
My own background in music is that while I performed in a couple of musicals in high school and spent my freshman year in college as a member of the MIT Logarhythms, I didn't have any formal vocal training until my last year of graduate school. After I finished my Ph.D. and moved to Connecticut for a job in October of 1988, I promised myself I would get the voice lessons I always wanted. In the Spring of 1989 I acted in a community theater production and another cast member recommended Mildred Coleman, who became my voice teacher.
Long story short, I took voice lessons for about ten years, during which time I appeared in many community theater productions in my area and in the chorus of Connecticut Opera*, as well as sang a few notable roles like the tenor soloist part in a Mozart Requiem. Once I began traveling a lot for my job, I was no longer able to be in any formal shows, but I'm fine with that. Every once in a while my wife and I will do a concert (like the one we did last April), but for me music is an avocation rather than a vocation. My voice has gotten richer and more emotional over the years, but I also sadly lost my high notes. I'm good up to an A-flat and an occasional A-natural, but I've got nothing above that any more. That means this duet is now firmly out of reach, but it was fun the one time I did it.
*You know you're getting older when people and places that meant a lot to you are no longer around. My voice teacher passed away a couple years ago, and Connecticut Opera went out of business in 2009.
There are, of course, many versions of this duet on YouTube. I decided to stick with the one with the most views, by Jussi Björling and Robert Merrill. If you're a fan of Andrea Bocelli (and who isn't?), you might prefer this one with him and Placido Domingo.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SuBQZFOnk7s
Samuel Barber's Adagio for Strings is lush and beautiful. His arrangement debuted in 1938, but later he set it as the choral part of Agnus Dei. I've included one of each here. The link above is for an Agnus Dei performed by VOCES8, who I talked about in an earlier newsletter and who my wife and I were lucky enough to see in concert back in October. They didn't perform this at that concert, but the YouTube video captures all the beauty and grace of both the music and the group. To me, VOCES8 is characterized by two things: a high soprano part that floats into the stratosphere, and an almost infinite patience that allows them to draw every last beat out of each phrase. This performance highlights both.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=N3MHeNt6Yjs
Here is a performance of the original string orchestration, performed by the Detroit Symphony. Again, there are many, many versions of this on YouTube, but this one is excellent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o9al6HNOgSo
Speaking of VOCES8, here they are performing the Pie Jesu from the Fauré Requiem. In every requiem, the Pie Jesu is an opportunity to show off a soaring soprano in a beautiful passage, and this is no exception. Years ago the choir at First Church of Christ, Congregational in Glastonbury, CT (where my wife is the soprano section leader) performed the Faure Requiem and I was fortunate enough to sing the baritone (!) solo parts. (That will never happen again. Good baritones are everywhere; just not in our choir the year they did the Requiem.) This version is, as usual, quite beautiful.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycAtH_b7PnI
This is the Biebl (not Bieber :) Ave Maria, a seven-part a cappella piece normally performed by a men's chorus, but here by VOCES8. It's one of my all-time favorites. I've only gotten to perform it a couple of times, but I love doing it. This is the piece where I "discovered" VOCES8, because this version came up when I was searching for other performances of the same work.
I need to mention this version, however, by Chanticleer:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ycAtH_b7PnI
This is probably the definitive version, and it's awesome. This remastered version is fantastic. Seriously, if you're a men's choral group and you haven't done this piece, what are you waiting for?
I need to add one more version, however, because this is the first of the "distributed" pieces I ever encountered.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nP1ZCj7BNC0
By distributed, I mean each of the parts was recorded by a different singer in a different country and then mixed together. The accompanying video is excellent, as the animation travels around the world and shows the different locations of the singers. Best of all, it was all done for charity.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WNcsUNKlAKw
This is Debussy's Clair de Lune, which is the third movement from his Suite bergamasque but which you may recall from the end of the Ocean's Eleven movie when the thieves are all gathered around the fountain after successfully robbing the three casinos. This version is by someone called Rousseau, who I sponsor on Patreon. The video demonstrates a "reactive visualizer", which is like Guitar Hero on Expert mode. Rousseau is one of the finest pianists I've found on YouTube and this song doesn't really let him show off what he can do, but it's gorgeous.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8O-1wkQ-6T0
Speaking of amazing pianists, meet Tiffany Poon. Tiffany was a true prodigy (you can find videos of her performances of this piece from as early as age 10) and she was accepted to Juilliard at age 8. Again, the Clair de Lune doesn't really show off her abilities, but her version is so good I had to include it anyway.
Finally, I thought I'd include something seasonal:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yPSvR_or16w
This is a mashup of the Bach/Gounod Ave Maria (not the Biebl one included above and not the famous Ave Maria by Shubert -- here's the great Pavarotti version of that one) and O Holy Night, by the duo known as The Piano Guys (even though one plays the piano and the other the cello), featuring the amazing Lexi Walker as a soloist. Got all that? She, too, has been singing this for several years, even though she's only about 17 now. Like so many young singers, her voice is very pure, with little or no vibrato, and that works very well here.
I could go on, but I think that's enough. Let's be honest -- 2020 is going to be a very difficult year for a lot of people. I like to use music as a reminder that despite everything, there is still beauty and joy in the world, and that the arts are a wonderful way to see and feel the meaning in life.
Finally, I should mention that this newsletter is the first one in my second year of writing them. I started the week before New Year's in 2018 not expecting to crank these out every single week, but here we are. Thank you for accompanying me on this journey. I'll try to keep it worthwhile in the future.
Last week:
Mercifully little, though I did do some writing
This week:
Probably not a heck of a lot more, though I still plan to do some writing