ByzantineCalvinst youtube channel

A few weeks ago I set up a ByzantineCalvinist youtube channel. Among the items posted are my own guitar arrangements of Away in a Manger and Genevan Psalm 13. I hope at some point to access a venue with better acoustics for recording purposes. But for now this will have to do.

A favourite Ravel piece

One of my all-time favourite musical pieces is Maurice Ravel's Le Tombeau de Couperin, a highly imaginative work that nevertheless follows traditional classical forms. In its original piano version, written between 1914 and 1917, Ravel composed six movements: the Prélude, Fugue, Forlane, Rigaudon, Menuet and Toccata. Each was dedicated to the memory of a friend who had died during the Great War. Despite these personal losses, and despite the title's allusion to the tomb of baroque composer François Couperin, it is not at all a morose piece — except possibly for the Forlane — as can be heard from the Prélude below:



In the months after the end of the war, Ravel scored four of the movements for orchestra: the Prélude, Forlane, Menuet and Rigaudon, changing their order so as to conclude with a moderately fast movement. Although Ravel was a master orchestrator (his version of Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition is more frequently performed than the Russian composer's original piano version), he chose not to score the Fugue and Toccata, possibly because the latter would have required a larger number of instruments than he had envisioned for the piece. The orchestral version thus has a somewhat different feel from the piano version. The complete orchestrated version can be heard below:



Many have wondered what the piece would have sounded like if Ravel had scored all six movements. Jack Jarrett has tried his hand at orchestrating the two missing movements below:



The results are intriguing, although I believe that Hungarian conductor Zoltán Kocsis has better captured the spirit of the piece and approximated Ravel's own orchestral timbre in the following performance of the spectacular Toccata:



Whether the following is Kocsis' arrangement of the Fugue I cannot say, but the Chicago Reed Quartet's performance seems very much along the lines of what Ravel would have done, that is, using a small wind group and giving the oboe a prominent place.



What I would love to hear is a performance of the full six movements of Le Tombeau de Couperin, in their original order and with Ravel's and Kocsis' orchestrations. That would be one thrilling concert.

Soprano recital

I may be prejudiced, but I think this is worth sharing with the world:

Talking with Plato?

This is the sort of thing I find utterly fascinating. Greek-speaking Muslims continue to live in the Turkish Pontos speaking a dialect of ρωμαίϊκα, a language with grammatical structures retained from classical Greek. Listen as well to the distinctive Pontic music in the background. Incidentally, ρωμαιϊκά means Roman, which harks back to the time when Orthodox Christians living in the Eastern Roman Empire called themselves Ρωμαίοι, or Romans.

O Magnum Mysterium

The best-known version of this ancient Christmas matins hymn may be that of Tomas Luis de Victoria, but American composer Morten Johannes Lauridsen's lovely setting movingly conveys the spirit of the text:

O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!
Blessed is the Virgin whose womb
was worthy to bear
Christ the Lord.
Alleluia!

Constantinople

A song beloved by Byzantine-Rite Calvinists everywhere, though it's been decades since I last heard it. The University Six perform.

Random act of worship

Bartók's ethnomusicological efforts

A century ago Béla Bartók, along with Zoltán Kodály, travelled the countryside recording and collecting the folk songs of the native populations of the old Habsburg lands. Here is the original recording and his own piano transcription of the Swineherd's Song:

In the phrygian mode

Not too long ago I was puzzled to hear my father tell me that a lot of Greek folk music is in the key of E. How could he know the precise key of a folk song with so many variations in so many parts of the Greek-speaking world? It quickly dawned on me that he meant that it was in what we now call the phrygian mode, which spans the octave between any two E's on the white keys of the piano. Here is an example from one of the Aegean islands:

Te Deum Laudamus

Ancient tradition tells us that the early Christian creedal hymn, Te Deum Laudamus, originated spontaneously with Sts. Ambrose and Augustine at the latter's baptism near the end of the 4th century. It was more likely written in the early 5th century by Nikitas, bishop of Remesiana, whose feast day is today.

The Te Deum is sung in Latin below by the Schola Gregoriana Mediolanensis of Milan, Italy. Anyone wishing to learn to read mediaeval musical notation, which is easier than one might think, will find it instructive to watch this.



Below the Concordia Oakland Choristers sing the Te Deum in English translation:



Many Christians will be aware of metrical versions of this hymn, the best known of which is probably Holy God, We Praise Thy Name, a translation of the German Großer Gott wir loben dich, written around 1774 by Ignaz Franz for the Ka­thol­isch­es Ge­sang­buch.



In 1696 Nahum Tate and Nicholas Brady included a versification of the Te Deum for their "New Version" Psalter. Some years ago I adapted their three stanzas and added three of my own to complete the hymn: O God, we praise you, we confess that you alone are Lord. In whatever form it is sung, the Te Deum deserves to be better known and more widely used amongst English-speaking evangelical Christians.

Crossposted at First Things: Evangel

The cimbalom

From my father I have inherited a love of central and east European folk music. The cimbalom is played throughout the territories that once made up the old Habsburg domains prior to the Great War. Hungarian composer Zoltán Kodály, known also for his arrangements of the Genevan psalm tunes, used the cimbalom in his popular Háry János suite. Here is Jeno Farkas with his Szalai Hungarian Gypsy Band. I challenge listeners to identify the time signature in the final sequence. It's not easy to do.

Varosha

Varosha is the vast district of Famagusta, Cyprus, which extends south from the Venetian-era walls of the old city. Here most of my paternal relatives once lived until 1974. Since that time Varosha has been inside the UN buffer zone along the Green Line and is effectively a ghost city. A few years ago one of our students, Austin Miedema, was enroled in one of my classes where I talked about my extended family's experience in that troubled island. A musician, he was inspired to compose a song about Varosha, which he performed at Hamilton's Freeway Café at the weekend.

Cat Stevens, ex-Greek singer

While we're on the subject of Greek music, remember Ruby Love by sixties great Cat Stevens? Some of the lyrics are even in Greek, while the bouzouki adds a distinctive hellenic flavour to what is in effect a kalamatianos. More than three decades ago Stevens, who was born in England to a Greek Cypriot father, converted to Islam and changed his name to Yusuf Islam.

Οι 'Ελληνες της Μικράς Ασίας — The Greeks of Asia Minor

A decade ago I was reading everything I could on the fate of the Greeks of Asia Minor, including Marjorie Housepian Dobkin's Smyrna 1922: The Destruction of a City. Greeks had inhabited this region for nearly three millennia until the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne mandated the exchange of populations between Greece and the new Turkish Republic, uprooting hundreds of thousands of refugees from their homes and sending them to countries that were not their own. A grand effort to secure ethnic uniformity wreaked havoc on deeply rooted communities, something my own relatives experienced in Cyprus half a century later.

In memory of the Greeks of Asia Minor, I link to the following folk song, Γιαννούλα Τσανακαλιώτισσα (Giannoula Tsanakaliotissa), whose title refers to a girl from what in Turkish is called Çanakkale (Τσανάκκαλε) and in Greek Δαρδανέλλια (Dardanellia). This town is located on the northwest coast of Asia Minor immediately across from the Gallipoli Peninsula. I had been looking for this song for ten years and finally found it a few days ago.

O Kerstnacht

Some two decades ago one of my colleagues gave me a copy of his own nonmetrical English translation of the Dutch Christmas hymn, O Kerstnacht, Schoner dan de Dagen. The text was written by the Dutch poet and playwright Joost van den Vondel in 1637. The melody is attributed to Cornelis Padbrué and is performed below by Harald Koll on a most unusual instrument known as a kontra guitarre. I recently found that I had versified this text for two of the stanzas some time ago, but not for the third. My discovery today of this performance perhaps provides an occasion to complete the job so that it can finally be sung in English.

Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying

I would love for our churches to sing Advent hymns all year round. Why? Because they convey the aching sense of longing that all of us Christians have as we continue to live between the times. As Dietrich Bonhoeffer put it,

Advent is a time of waiting. Our whole life, however, is Advent — that is, a time of waiting for the ultimate, for the time when there will be a new heaven and a new earth, when all people are brothers and sisters and one rejoices in the words of the angels: “On earth peace to those on whom God’s favor rests.” Learn to wait, because he has promised to come. “I stand at the door?” We however call to him: “Yes, come soon, Lord Jesus!” Amen.

Another of my favourite hymns nicely communicates this sense of anticipation of Jesus’ second Advent: Philipp Nicolai’s immortal 1599 text: Wachet Auf, Ruft Uns die Stimme, translated into English in the mid-19th century by Catherine Winkworth as Wake, Awake, for Night Is Flying. Inspired by Jesus’ parable of the wise and foolish virgins in Matthew 25: 1-13, it describes the coming nuptial feast in which the Bridegroom arrives to receive his bride, summoning the wise virgins who have been ready and waiting for this moment:

“Wake, awake, for night is flying,”
The watchmen on the heights are crying;
“Awake, Jerusalem, arise!”
Midnight hears the welcome voices
And at the thrilling cry rejoices:
“Oh, where are ye, ye virgins wise?
The Bridegroom comes, awake!
Your lamps with gladness take!
Hallelujah!
With bridal care
Yourselves prepare
To meet the Bridegroom, who is near.”

I had some difficulty locating a video performance of Wachet Auf that was not from J. S. Bach’s eponymous cantata, numbered BWV 140. I finally found this organ performance at the Friedenskirche in the north German city of Fedderwardergroden. This arrangement is closer to the original rhythm of Nicolai’s tune and is suitable for congregational singing.

All Saints

Reformation

Autumn

I must admit that autumn is my least favourite season, primarily because the daylight hours are noticeably shortening and the nighttime lengthening. However, listening to this great song by the incomparable Nat King Cole makes the season almost bearable.



More: As most of my readers are on the younger side, they likely do not remember the old 45-RPM vinyl records, which had a hit song on one side and another, less popular song by the same artist on the other. Yet my generation grew up with these. The very first one I owned was of Nat King Cole singing Those Lazy Hazy Crazy Days of Summer. To be sure, it's not one of his better pieces, but it was cheerful and catchy enough to appeal to a 6-year-old. He died – a few weeks short of my tenth birthday – of the lung cancer that came from years of smoking. He was only 45. I recall a feeling of sadness at hearing the news.

Here is the great jazz musician once more with another song devoted to the season:

Drakensberg Boys Choir

On this Thanksgiving Day there is much for which to give thanks, but I would like to offer special thanks for the remarkable Drakensberg Boys Choir from South Africa, whose repertoire runs the gamut from western classical to African traditional. Here are two fine performances below: