Being Alive

[RobSS]

Mentioned a few times I sing... here's something recorded earlier...

 

 

[RobSS]

A complete change of style. The above song was a from a Broadway musical. This number, recorded earlier this evening, is an English song from the early 1920's.

 

'The Magic Carpet' painting by Victor Vasnetsov

Most of the other paintings by Edwin Lord Weeks

Words and music by Albert Ketèlbey

 

 

 

[spideysensei]

You have a quite a unique voice. Are you playing the piano also?

Thanks for sharing.

[RobSS]

7 hours ago, spideysensei said:

You have a quite a unique voice. Are you playing the piano also?

Thanks for sharing.

 

Thanks, I don't play the piano to performance standard, but do play the violin and clarinet.

 

[TetraG]

Excellent on the second video too...

 

Have a go at Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash, can you maybe?... I kid not... Unless you know in advance that would not suit your particular preference or style to keep, but of stuff to have a go at I wonder could you anyway? 

 

Thanks for sharing,

As Spideysensei says you have unique voice. I like it. 

[RobSS]

1 minute ago, TetraG said:

Excellent on the second video too...

 

Have a go at Ring of Fire by Johnny Cash, can you maybe?... I kid not... Unless you know in advance that would not suit your particular preference or style to keep, but of stuff to have a go at I wonder could you anyway? 

 

Thanks for sharing,

As Spideysensei says you have unique voice. I like it. 

 

Thank you TetraG. I have performed Ring of Fire, but never done a proper recording it... I'll have a go!

 

This afternoon, I was halfway through recording a fun version of Harold Arlen's Ding-Dong! The Witch is Dead, from The Wizard of Oz, with bits of the film as background visuals, but my flatmate came in. Hopefully, I'll be able to finish it tomorrow.

 

I love the way Gene Wilder used his voice in the song, "Pure Imagination"...

 

 

[RobSS]

I had a listen back through one of the recordings I did earlier, and am sort of happy with this... but see what you think... any constructive comments welcome!

 

 

[Guest m754]

 

You sing quite well..

[RobSS]

On 1/5/2022 at 3:30 AM, m754 said:

 

You sing quite well..

 

Thank you.

 

 

[RobSS]

Recorded earlier this evening, a Johnny Cash cover... Ring of Fire 

 

 

 

[Captainlove]

1 hour ago, RobSS said:

Recorded earlier this evening, a Johnny Cash cover... Ring of Fire 

 

 

 

In my opinion this song doesn't suit you. I think you would do better with a number from Les miserables, or phantom. Hope you don't mind.

[RobSS]

32 minutes ago, Captainlove said:

In my opinion this song doesn't suit you. I think you would do better with a number from Les miserables, or phantom. Hope you don't mind.

 

Of course i don't mind... it's not possible to cater for everyone's tastes.

 

 

[RobSS]

Also recorded another earlier, a German song by Franz Schubert, which he composed to a poem by Goethe when he was 17 years old, in 1815. There are three paintings in the video... the fist and third are by Caspar David Friedrich, a contemporary of Schubert, and like Schubert, a Romantic. The second (Evening scene with full moon and persons) is by Abraham Pether, who died three years before the song was composed. The third is titled Two Men Contemplating the Moon, and the first, Moonlight Landscape and has some interesting background explained in this quote:

 

Quote

Moonlight Landscape - A fantastic, ethereal painting in which a full moon floats brightly and symbolically (representing Christ) above a shadowy lakeside scene.  The painting is unusual because it is a 'transparent' – the moon's almost halo-like clarity is achieved by inserting a piece of plain paper behind a hole cut in the painting.  The idea was for transparents to be viewed in a darkened room, lit from behind by a candle, accompanied by music. (source, scroll down towards the bottom of the page...)

 

 

Edited January 8, 2022 by RobSS

[RobSS]

Parsifal's exclamation, just after Kundry's kiss, an excerpt from Act II of Richard Wagner's music drama, Parsifal, recorded with my pianist, late summer 2021 (sung in German with English subtitles).

 

In Klingsor's enchanted castle, Parsifal encounters Kundry, a beautiful enchantress. She seems to know more about his past than he does himself.

 

Almost succeeding in seducing him, Kundry's kiss awakens within Parsifal a memory of Amfortas's agony (a wound which will not heal). Parsifal witnessed Amfortas's agaony during a Grail ceremony as a boy in Act I. He didn't understand the meaning of what he saw then, but the kiss now makes the meaning clear.

 

Video picture: The Grail ceremony from Act I (1981 Bayreuth production, directed by Wolfgang Wagner). The picture depicts the king of the grail, Amfortas, despite his wound, preparing to hold aloft the Grail to fortify and inspirit the knights.

 

 

Quote

The wound is experienced as burning. Kundry's fire of passion becomes Parsifal's fire of aversion. As Parsifal in union with Amfortas experiences the wound, he sees how everything "trembles, quakes and quivers in sinful desire". Compare this with Buddha's Fire Sermon:

 

'Everything is burning. What is burning? The eye is burning. Forms are burning. Consciousness at the eye is burning. Contact at the eye is burning. And whatever there is that arises in dependence on contact at the eye -- experienced as pleasure, pain or neither-pleasure-nor-pain -- that too is burning. Burning with what? Burning with the fire of passion, the fire of aversion, the fire of delusion. Burning, I tell you, with birth, aging and death, with sorrows, lamentations, pains, distresses, and despairs.'

 

At this point Heinrich Porges, possibly quoting Wagner, noted:

 

'Now all at once Parsifal sees that the entire world is nothing but a sacrificial victim (ein Schlachtopfer)'.

 

The shock of the kiss triggers in Parsifal an awareness of Amfortas' suffering. According to Wagner's Prose Draft, he sees what the knights could not see, that Amfortas is wounded not only in his body but also in his soul. Then, "he hears the Saviour's cry for the relic to be freed from the custody of besmirched hands". In the poem, this becomes a request for redemption (or release). This suggests that the Saviour is, in some mystical sense, present in the Grail and that the work of salvation has been inhibited first by the unworthiness of its guardian, now by the confinement of the Grail in its shrine. It will be the mission of Parsifal to redeem the Saviour by succeeding that guardian and once more, for all time, uncovering the Grail.

 

Here Heinrich Porges noted: ‘Now Parsifal has been transported to the state in which he had seen Amfortas’. Here Parsifal refers to himself as a fool and a sinner. He is not "the sinless fool", nor is he "the holy fool", but rather "the pure fool". Although we should treat Wagner's explanations as given to his patron with some caution (Adam and Eve became 'knowing') it is interesting that he drew attention to a parallel between Amfortas and Adam (as he did between Kundry and Eve, Parsifal and Christ). It would also be possible to compare Parsifal with Adam, or with Christ as a second Adam. ‘Recent theology rightly attributes to Adam a kind of dreaming innocence, a stage of infancy before contest and decision.’ [Paul Tillich, Systematic Theology, Vol. 1 Part II, 1951]

 

Source: https://www.monsalvat.no/parsifal-libretto-act2.htm
 

 

Edited January 9, 2022 by RobSS

[RobSS]

Love went a-riding

Live concert performance, London, 2014  

 

Music by Frank Bridge
Poem by Mary Coleridge

 

 

[RobSS]

Warmoesstraat, mid-June, not long after dawn. One of the oldest streets in Amsterdam, it's attracted lovers for many decades.

 

 

[RobSS]

Sleepy Lagoon (Eric Coates) - This song originally existed as a piece of light orchestral music in the style of a French waltz serenade with the title, "By the Sleepy lagoon". In 1940, ten years later, lyrics were added with Coates's approval by Jack Lawrence. Coates is reported to have said to Lawrence, “You have set the words to my music so cleverly that one would never suspect that the music had been written first!"

 

In 1942, as Britain was in the midst of World War II, Coates's original orchestral version was chosen (with added seagulls) to introduce the BBC Home Service radio series "Desert Island Discs" that's still going to this day, on Radio 4.