Celebrating Music, Celebrating Humanity, Celebrating Life

Growing up Baptist, I missed so much of the incredibly beautiful and meaningful music associated with this season of the year because Baptists avoided anything that was too liturgical. It wasn't until I sang this piece with the Stillwater Chamber Singers several years ago did I realize how truly magnificent it is.

I no longer celebrate the religious aspect of this season, preferring to celebrate it in a fashion that reflects its pagan origins of fertility and rebirth, but that doesn't mean that I don't appreciate its significance to others and to western history and culture. Happy Easter to all my friends, however you celebrate it, or not.


Pergolesi's magnificent Stabat Mater for Soprano & Alto

Just because it's my favorite

I can't resist posting this today because for some reason I keep being drawn to it. It's my all-time favorite movement from any of Mozart's concerti--the adagio from Piano Concerto No. 23 in A major. Perhaps it's because I'm in the throes of writing the end of my book, and this particular movement reflects the mood perfectly.

The song of old lovers

Of course we’ve fought with angry faces:
For twenty years love’s mad at best.
A thousand times you’ve packed your cases,
A thousand times I’ve flown the nest.
Each chair and table still must smart
From war and thunderstorm and frost
That it’s endured from the beginning.
The whole is greater than the parts:
The taste for water you have lost
And me, I’ve lost the taste for winning.

Oh my love,
My sweet, my marvellous, my tender love,
From early dawn until day’s end, my love,
I love you still, you know, I love you.

I know your tricks and your deceptions,
You know my spells and wiles and charms.
From traps you’ve given me protection:
Sometimes I’ve lost you from my arms.
Sure we’ve had lovers in our beds:
It helped when there was time to kill
Or with our bodies’ passions raging,
But in the end when all is said
It seemed our only special skill
Was never growing up, just ageing.

Oh my love,
My sweet, my marvellous, my tender love,
From early dawn until day’s end, my love,
I love you still, you know, I love you.

And each succeeding year uncovers
More opportunities for hurt.
Of traps that lie in wait for lovers
This one’s the hardest to avert.
Of course you take more time to cry,
I take a lot more work to crack,
We get more devious and clever.
You can’t let chances pass you by,
You have to learn to watch your back:
The tender war goes on forever.

Oh my love,
My sweet, my marvellous, my tender love,
From early dawn until day’s end, my love,
I love you still, you know, I love you.