(The Dream of Gerontius) tells the story of a soul’s journey through death, and provides a meditation on the unseen world of Roman Catholic theology. Gerontius (a name derived from the Greek word geron, “old man”) is a devout Everyman. Elgar’s setting uses most of the text of the first part of the poem, which takes place on Earth, but omits many of the more meditative sections of the much longer, otherworldly second part, tightening the narrative flow.
In the first part, we hear Gerontius as a dying man of faith, by turns fearful and hopeful, but always confident. A group of friends (also called “assistants” in the text) joins him in prayer and meditation. He passes in peace, and a priest, with the assistants, sends him on his way with a valediction. In the second part, Gerontius, now referred to as “The Soul”, awakes in a place apparently without space or time, and becomes aware of the presence of his guardian angel, who expresses joy at the culmination of her task (Newman conceived the Angel as male, but Elgar gives the part to a female singer). After a long dialogue, they journey towards the judgment throne.
They safely pass a group of demons, and encounter choirs of angels, eternally praising God for His grace and forgiveness. The Angel of the Agony pleads with Jesus to spare the souls of the faithful. Finally Gerontius glimpses God and is judged in a single moment. The Guardian Angel lowers Gerontius into the soothing lake of Purgatory, with a final benediction and promise of a re-awakening to glory.
That there’s the synopsis of the The Dream of Gerontius as determined by Wikipedia. It’s the last line of that which really gets to me: “the soothing lake of Purgatory.” Ok, so I wasn’t raised Catholic but I’m pretty sure that purgatory isn’t all that soothing. I mean just look at this artist’s rendition of these dead dudes chilling in that lake:
Yeah, those guys’ asses are on fire. Flames lickin’ everything the eye was not meant to see. So, it’s not really that health spa that Wikipedia makes it out to be.
I was raised Mormon and instead of having Purgatory on our plate we had Spirit Prison. That’s right, it was actually called Spirit Prison. Like most other doctrine in the Mormon religion there wasn’t a good explanation of exactly what that meant. I always envisioned I was going to be locked up in some heavenly Super Jail because I lied to my mom about making the neighbor kid eat grass or something. How exactly does one lock up a spirit? Can’t they walk through walls and all that jazz? Do you get conjugal visitation rights? Do spirits bone? Do they have difficulty maintaining satisfying erections after 60 years in the slammer? So many questions left unanswered.
If we’re going to have to deal with a “soothing lake” until we’re cleansed of our earthly asshole tendencies it better look something like this:
***Bonus! Check out Tomita’s fantastic Japanese electronic spin on The Planetsby clicking here!
*download below*
Powerful classical music is the route to take to get pumped. Forget metal, forget punk, forget crunk, forget techno. Forget all of it and surround yourself with The Planets. It’s almost hard for me to sit down and really fully audition this because I instantly want to form a militia and invade Canada. Invade them with comet cannons and gamma blasters. Just explode the hell out of them, Intergalactic Style.
And then Sir Adrian Boult made me realize how stupid that idea is with his wise words posted below. He told me war is stupid and worthless. It produces nothing but gooey flesh masses, orphaned babes, and really pissed off future-terrorists. And besides, who really wants Canada anyway?
Below is a technical description of the album by the conductor , Sir Adrian Boult. Enjoy
The seven movements of this Suite last for almost an hour in performance. It must be re-affirmed also that the message of each movement can only be sought in the astrological significance of each Planet–it has nothing to do with mythology, and any though of the personalities of the Greek deities can only lead to misunderstanding of the purpose of the music. Holst has given a sub-title to each with can help us more than anything else.
The work is laid out for a very large orchestra: 2 piccolos, 4 flutes, bass flute, 3 oboes, cor anglais, bass oboe, 3 clarinets, bass clarinet, 3 bassoons, double bassoon, 6 horns, 4 trumpets, 3 trombones, tenor tuba, bass tuba, 2 harps, celesta, a large contingent of percussion, organ and strings. In the last movement there is also a small 6-part female chorus.
1. Mars, The Bringer of War
It is worth remembering that the composer wrote this in the summer of 1914 and so had no experience of what it describes.
A vigorous rhythmical figure permeates the whole movement against the subjects in longer notes which come and go; it is heard even in the slow middle section, as is the first the side drum and then the trumpets and other instruments remind us of it in every bar. The piece lasts seven minutes and is planned on a broad ABA basis, al three sections rising to a climax, the second of which plunges us into the return of the main figure, fff, in a crashing unison of the whole orchestra.
I will remember the composer’s insistence on the stupidity of war as well as all its other horrors, and I feel that the movement can easily be played so fast that it becomes too restless and energetic and loses some of its relentless, brutal, and stupid power.
2. Venus, The Bringer of Peace
Nine minutes of beauty act as a wonderful contrast to the shattering music we have just heard. Pease is expressed here by means of several different figures, first calm, then more active, and finally very slow and quiet. The movement closes with a rich amplification of the opening.
3. Mercury, The Winged Messenger
Host has here succeeded in making the orchestra give us a perfect impression of winged lightness and speed. The heavier instruments are, of course, silent, even in the central section (where we have eleven and a half repetitions of a six-bar phrase piling up to the only climax and receding) and we find that almost every bar is in two keys at once. The music swings rapidly between chords that are almost as distant from each other as is harmonically possible; from this comes a wonderful sense of elusiveness as of quicksilver throughout its four minutes.
4. Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity
Holst had a Falstaffian sense of Humour, and I can remember his description of Jupiter: “one of those jolly fat people who enjoy life”. There is no doubt about the fun of Jupiter, and its eight minutes radiate happiness. For those who like to see the construction of their music, Jupiter has a number of subjects, though they all achieve their balance finally. ABACABA might perhaps be a rough scheme, though at first A and the third have two distinct sections in them, and the final repeat is quite overshadowed by a powerful reference to C. Miss Imogen Holst has warned us against linking the slow middle section, C, with the patriotic words with which it was later associated. The Tune as it stands reflects the good humour of Jupiter, no more, no less.
5. Saturn, The Bringer of Old Age
Miss Holst says that her father was fond of this movement. He might well be–nowhere is music of greater penetration to be found. The movement’s nine minutes began with a moving picture of the sorrows of slow and gloomy figure from the string basses. This grows into a march-like tune in the brass, four flutes go on with the march in slower time–again the trumpets take over and lead us to a terrible climax ith brazen bells in addition. This subsides for a few bars and we suddenly feel that the Sun is pushing through the clouds. The basses play again their opening figure, but subtly transformed to show us how beautiful and peaceful old age can be after all. Quiet trombones, strings and organs all take up the message and the movement ends with calm perfection.
6. Uranus, The Magician
It is interesting that staccato bassoons seem so exactly to reflect the spirit of a magician. One things of Dukas’s “Sorcerer’s Apprentice” and Host’s “Uranus” as the most obvious examples and it is worth nothing that Holst, who came second, had never heard Duka’s work, or even seen the Score, when he wrote “Uranus”. The bassoons start their exercises after three forcible repetitions of a four-note figure which permeates the movement, assailing us sometimes form the bass department, sometimes from the drums, and sometimes from the piccolo. Three bassoons then take over, the most of the orchestra joins in gradually until a rollicking unison tune comes in all the strings. The music is held up for a moment, and after a loud band on the big drum the four-note figure takes on the rhythm of the bassoons’ dance, and by a magical transformation suddenly becomes the background of a new tun on the tubas. This works up to one of Holst’s supreme tuttis, and a glissando scale on the full organ casts a spell of sudden silence over the whole picture. Harps suggest the four-note figure, another stream from everybody follows, and this chord, reduced to nothing, changes colour several times as a magician might, and the notes ppp bring us back to silence after six minutes of magical fun.
7. Neptune, The Mystic
In this final movement every instrument is directed to play pianissimo throughout, and the tone is to be “dead”, except for one moment near the end, when the clarinet plays a succession of notes which might almost b e called a tune in this otherwise tuneless, expressionless, shapeless succession of cloudy harmonies, suggesting as it does in infinite vision of timeless eternity. We spoke of the end but this is inaccurate, for if it is possible for a piece of music never finish, this is what happens here. A slow, irregular swing between two distant chords fills nearly every bar of the 3+2 metre, and imperceptibly we become conscious that female voices have joined the orchestra. Soon the instruments gradually melt away, and the voices carry on with the two swaying chords, whose diminuendo is prolonged until we wonder whether we still hear them or only hold them in our memory, swinging backward and forward for all time.
This is for everyone that’s been watching Ken Burns’ ongoing 12-hour documentary “The National Parks: America’s Best Idea” this week on PBS. Included in this MP3 are the following excerpts from a 1967 Pops Festival performance by Arthur Fiedler & The Boston Pops:
-Painted Desert
-On The Trail
Alfred Kfrips, Violin Solo
Leo Litwin, Celsta Solo
-Sunset
-Cloudburst
The record was converted into 320 kbps MP3 and has a run time of 25:59.
Here’s a great classical recording brought to you by the folks at JBL. It spans the inner, outer, and aquatic reaches of the orchestral world. You can’t miss with it.
I decided to finally sit down and listen to the JBL Sessions album that I bought on eBay a few weeks ago. I’ve a fair amount of sound effects and super-duper-stereophonic-bam-wow-oh-man-look-at that-what-is-that-sound-spewing-like-blood-from-the-speakers records but they are always pretty hokey and turn out to be more hype than actual high fidelity. However, this JBL album has turned out to a bit more serious, if a tad corny and antiseptic, but it’s proved to be a good buy so far. Actually both of those aspects add a touch of credibility. If anyone has read any articles from any “hi-fi” stereo equipment magazines from, well, any time you’d find them pretty self righteous, almost to the extent of piety. But anyway, I digress.
First, I’d like to share a list of the equipment that I’m using to check this out. There really wouldn’t be any point to reviewing the album if I was playing it through this:
This is a sound the pony makes.
The speakers that I’m using are a pair of JBL 4311B Control Monitors I picked up two years ago from a guy in the West Side that had posted them on Craigslist.
I’ve been through a lot of speakers at an alarming pace, from Sansui to Polks to Pioneers, to EPIs to Bang and Olufsons and a little bit in between. Every other speaker gave the music it’s own coloring or, even worse, just made the music sound lumpy and required gobs of equalization to iron them out. These 4311B’s just seemed to give me the music I’d been searching for; sound reproduction precisely how the sound engineer intended. You can find information on them here: http://www.jblpro.com/pub/obsolete/4311b.pdf
JBL 4311B Control Monitor
For my amp I’m using monster-turned-songbird Luxman L-100 which, according to the creepy foot fetishist from the now closed local amp repair shop, was owned by many African American NFL players in the 70′s. If you ever have the chance to pick up some Luxman equipment do not hesitate–it’s truly amazing gear. You can check out info on the L-100 from one of my favorite websites, the Vintage Knob, at this address: http://www.thevintageknob.org/LUXMAN/L100/L100.html#The Vintage Knob is currently down. Let’s pray it comes back soon.
Luxman L-100 Integrated Amplifier
Finally, to spin the damn thing I’m using my recently acquired Technics SL-10. It’s been a huge upgrade from my Technics SL-212, which is somewhat similar to the 1200 in certain aspects. The SL-10 is a linear tracking turntable, which means that it doesn’t have a conventional tonearm. The cartridge travels on a track situated over the record and travels in a straight line from the outer ring inward as opposed to an arcing pattern followed by a conventional cantilever tonearm. Also, it can be played vertically which is pretty neat. More detail can be found at: http://www.thevintageknob.org/TECHNICS/SL10/SL10.html
Anyway, now that’s out of the way we can get back to the record. I think one of the excerpts from the narrator’s monologues best sums upthis entire album.
The function of high fidelity loudspeaker (sic) is to reproduce recorded music. A good loudspeaker will reproduce music with clarity, detail, separation and definition…qualities that can’t be reduced to a set of tabulated numbers on a piece of paper. That’s why some of our friends got together with us at Capital Records to make an album you could use as a standard of reference.
We’ll take each section of this record apart and let you hear each instrument individually; then we’ll put them back together again so you can make a valid comparison between louspeakers.
As you will hear on Sides 3 and 4, the sound of a record depends greatly on the monitor loudspeakers used in the studio. Most of today’s records are monitored on JBL loudspeakers just as this one was. List to this music on our speakers to see how we intended it to sound–then listen on any other speakers.
After making your comparisons , we think you’ll prefer ours for the same resons that most of the major studios in the world prefer them–clarity and definition. However, if you find that another is more to your l iking, we’d like to think of it this way: We’d like to think of it this way: We’ve profvided a basis for comparison, you’ve made the choice that pleased you m ost and we’ve contributed to your pleasure.”
It’s a big advertisement for JBL but it fits like a warm glove. The narrator makes several references to the JBL Dealer that the previous owner of this album must have visited to get this copy for review. This, however, is the only advertisement that I would never turn off. It’s just too fab.
I accidentally played side two first but I’m glad I did because it started off with a series of tone tests that are designed to check the limitations of both your loudspeakers and your ears. The narrator explains that because of methods of analog recording, remember this is 1973, many tones will sound different, much different from how they are originally recorded if not played through true high fidelity loudspeakers.
He also explained that the majority of frequencies reproduced by conventional recording instruments–the guitar, bass guitar, drums, piano, etc.-do not, for the most part, delve deeper than 50hz. Now with any speaker or amplifier that you see online on eBay or audio forums you’ll notice often that the tonal ranges are listed along with many of the specs. A typical higher quality amp will play from 20 hertz to 20,000 hertz without any significant change in volume while a quality speaker will claim to play roughly in the same range. It was also fun to sit down through the high frequency test which revealed the acoustic ceiling of myself and the three others that I auditioned this album with. (My limit was 18,000 hertz through the speakers but 20,000 hertz through my enclosed Sony Studio headphones. I’m going to chalk that up to the continual white noise generated by the intersection of McMillan and Vine outside my window.)
Mainly, this album professes that any company can throw all sorts of numbers and jargon at you that, unless you are a trained mechanical or sound engineer, isn’t worth a hill of beans. What really matters is how things reach your ears.
To give you a real world test of your speakers JBL takes the time to show you different instruments and describe how they should sound in your listening room. I’d like to go into detail on how each 12-string guitar and 9-foot harpsichord should tickle your ears but the narrator of the album does a much better job with his exquisite technical jargon.
Disc 1 is mainly a dissection of instruments and tonality that comes together in a sweet buffet of high fidelity recordings. The songs at the the tail end of side one are surprisingly good; not just in sound reproduction but even more so in the musicality. They’re just bitchin tracks.
Disc 2 delves deeper into explaining the actual recording process as opposed to the reproduction process. It goes into length about the actual recording session and 16-track recording. It’s pretty neat listening to the discourse between the sound engineers and the musicians from a session over 30 years ago.
On a side note, it appears that JBL’s marketing campaign has decided to take corny to the next level. I feel like this is something they would have played on the tv screens perched above the roller coaster lines at Kings Island when it was owned by Paramount.
