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Tags: “INCLUDING ATHEISTS”, medieval music, music, the internet, youtube
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My favorite comment section is for Spem in Alium by Thomas Tallis because it’s a mixture of A. People who really love Fifty Shades, B. People who really HATE Fifty Shades, C. People who are really confused by what the song has to do with Fifty Shades and D. People mourning Terry Pratchett.
Wow. Thank you for this. I would have been one of the people confused by what it has to do with Fifty Shades, and it’s further confirmed my decision not to read it. Spem in Alium is a lovely piece, but it’s overly complicated and completely unsexy, which was the impression I got secondhand of the book.
This has sent me down a rabbit hole of trying to identify a really sexy setting of part of the Song of Songs from the turn of the 17th century that I heard once in an undergrad seminar a decade ago, and I don’t remember the composer, the first line, or the instrumentation, all I remember is the really amazingly orgasmic upward melismas on “Surge, amica mea.” Anyway, you can’t get much more erotic than Monteverdi. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zfaQUl-adSk
I LOVE SPEM IN ALIUM SO MUCH. There’s this absolutely brilliant installation at the National Gallery that has 40 speakers, each playing an individual voice recording of a singer performing it. You can hang out by a specific speaker and hear the singer pausing and starting again, or taking a breath, or coughing and clearing their throats. It’s really cool. I will be very sad when it goes on the road later this summer because I love popping in on Thursday nights (when the National Gallery has free admission) just to listen to it.
I didn’t know Cardiff’s Forty-Part Motet was still on display! I saw it when it was in the Cloisters in NYC at the end of 2013 and it was tremendous. I mean, the Cloisters is an amazing venue regardless — bits and pieces of five medieval abbeys cobbled together into one building — but when they installed the Cardiff, they put it in one of the more interior rooms so you heard it from quite a way away before you got to it, and the sound sort of ghosted through the other galleries even after you left it.
http://www.metmuseum.org/exhibitions/listings/201…
I love that installation too! I could spend literally ALL DAY watching people react to that installation, nevermind the (absolutely delightful) music.
I actually went in last night and just sat on a bench with my eyes closed. Then the music stopped and all I could hear was loud chattering. I opened my eyes to glare at the people responsible, and then I realized it was the sound installation. Oops.
I hadn’t known about Spem in Alium and Pratchett, and now I’m sad. but you’re right, that does turn it into the most gloriously surreal comments section ever. I’m sure he would’ve approved.
“made of sack”.
That person’s comment is my favorite one.
I wonder whether that commenter and this kid would be BFFs or mortal enemies:
I love this so much.
One one hand all I can think is, “Oh, darling, if you only KNEW” and on the other hand I keep remembering that if we set The Wonder Years today, it would take place in 1995, so
This still trips me up. 1995 being 20 years ago, 1985 being 30 years ago, 1975 being 40 years ago, etc. It’s like my understanding of relative distances in time gelled and congealed IN the 90’s and differentials between how long ago I think something happened and how long ago it actually happened will never again match up right.
I guess that may mean my personal “back in my day” has already been localized and set?
Yes, you are right; most people’s sense of place/time seems to set in their early twenties, by about 25. (By observation) After that it seems to take consciously exerted will for the average mind to recalibrate. I believe this is part of the reason people so often (anecdata, anecdata!!) settle in the area where they went to college: they internalize this place as the norm, often it is a place they have chosen for themselves too, and it becomes their own personal default setting. A lot of mixed metaphor there, sorry. Anyway, the passage of time telescoping: yes, that’s a thing. It can get a little disorienting. Suddenly something isn’t ten years ago. It’s twenty. And you feel a gap of time open between you and your own past. For some people that leads to perspective and a more detached, mature viewpoint, and others kind of double down.
I must bring this up sometime in a mixed group childless/child-rearing people and see if having children grow up in front of one’s eyes somehow keeps the time register more plastic and resets it…
I have never moved away from my college town. I transferred here in my junior year of college and…just never got around to leaving. I’ve lived here since 1987, met my partner in 1989, and got my current job in 1994.
Somewhere in my head, Bill Clinton is still president, cell phones are rare and chunky, and digital watches are still a pretty neat idea. Now get off my lawn.
I have seen this before and resolutely refuse to believe it’s real. It has to be a parody written by someone born in 1980, right? …right? Don’t answer that; I don’t want to know.
I was born in the wrong era; I would love to have been a teenager when Beyoncé, Taylor Swift, and Bruno Mars were on the radio, and not stupid Compliance Vox. When not everybody was hardcabled and ensconced, and you had friends instead of pollclades and you could text <3 to them. When jeggings and oversize sweaters was the fashion, not protein sheaths like it is now. When kids cared more about music than worth scores and calorie markets. When you could go outside and had parents and your assist lobe wasn’t slowly replacing your brain. HBO and Adult Swim, dyed locks and Hitler Youth haircuts, when punks and outcasts were suffered to live. People didn’t cake themselves in joy wax,. just some makeup was enough; on boys and girls and agender and fluid. When we thought people could be happy with themselves.
I’d read this YA dystopian novel though
Hahahahah oh honeyyyyy. This can’t be real, can it???
I’ve seen that thing before, and my response is still NO.
this is too much for me to handle this early in the day.
Shut up kid. It was shit, everybody was super-insecure, punks were still laughed at etc.etc.etc. One thing I do have to admit though, is that I have a feeling that we were all so much less STYLISH than today’s kids. Shapeless Sacks & Questionable Fashion were our trademarks.
Saw a girl on the train today wearing a floral onesie and purple herringbone trouser socks. I think Shapeless Sacks and Questionable Fashion are doing JUST FINE.
Baaaahahahaha this person’s idea of that era and the reality of that era are on two completely separate planes of existence.
Wait, when were people happy with themselves? Because I’m pretty sure people were never happy with themselves.
Jam yesterday and jam tomorrow, but never jam today.
That is my favorite comment, hands down.
I hate it when my victories are in vein.
GIVE ME ARTERIAL VICTORY OR GIVE ME DEATH
I give blood, a child survives surgery, but was that victory in vein?
I want to explain to poor Sofiab that it’s not illegal to dance to old music in this day and age. Unless they live in some weird cult, which I admit is possible.
Someone should tell her about the SCA.
Right? Sofia, you can dance if you want to. You can leave your friends behind.
I would spend at least an hour watching a .gif of this set to that song.
I’m going to start commenting on everything I like with the phrase: “including Atheists.”
“This pecan pie is super good, everyone would like it, including Atheists.”
“This car has such great pick up, anyone can easily merge into traffic, including Atheists.”
“This early human artistic achievement, born of humanity’s incredible capacity for learning and expression, and supported by the Christian church because that institution controlled everything, speaks to people on a primal level, and anyone can relate to it, including Atheists.”
“Perfect for anyone, including atheists” is even better without any context. All descriptions should be this suspiciously specific.
– “Washes brighter (for cyclists too)!”
– “Measurements: 16 x 12 x 12; measurements (Dave only): 16 x 12 x 12”.
laughing out loud at (Dave only)
If I ever write a book, OR have to give a quote on someone else’s book, I am going with this.
If you could time travel, you’d go back in time to dance to plainchant?
Well, we can’t ALL kill Hitler.
….can’t we?
Kill Hitler on the Orient Express!
Maybe if we all picked an order and then each went back in time, sequentially, earlier and earlier? Or would we just create a compounded paradox or cause the universes to split or something?
I’d go back to hear the first public performance of polyphony.
I’d go back to the first performance of Monteverdi’s lost opera, Arianna, and steal the score.
…. what if you did, and that’s why it’s lost?
During “revision” for my medieval lit paper I became addicted to watching these videos just for the comment sections – they are life altering. See also: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DBhB9gRnIHE and any other lyre music.
Now begin the greatest procrastination you will ever experience.
Whenever I have to write anything medieval related I usually end up listening to those sorts of youtube playlists and getting sucked into reading the comments in a half-delighted/half-confused fog. Even when I don’t and decide to listen to normal things like a normal person, my ipod decides to throw the Lion in Winter soundtrack on shuffle just to spite me. There’s no escape.
OH MAN another comment by this poor kid stuck in the ‘wrong generation’ bemoaning nicki minaj and justin bieber! But a different username? If these are different kids we need them to meet up STAT
“anyway heres Wonderwall”
DYING
As an aspiring musicologist, I have a soft spot in my heart for the insufferable pedant who insisted that it wasn’t Gregorian chant because of the homophony. I just want to whisper to him in soothing tones and put him to bed with a quaalude and a warm glass of milk.
I hear you. Also, anyone who insists on the distinction between Medieval and Renaissance, like people woke up in 1400 and said “Yay, it’s the Renaissance now!”
The first comment has me exceptionally confused as I thought King Arthur was fictional. Is this not the case?
This was the subject of Much Academic Debate. I too was taught that he was probably made up to fill a gap in a history book (or if there was a real king with that name, he had very little in common with the legends).
Same here, same here.
shibbyman is my kind of music critic.
I am feeling an emotional connection with shibbyman right now.
Remember when Pope Gregory decreed that chants should have parental labels warning of heresy and pagan idolatry?
youtube comments sections make more sense–indeed, a profoundly beautiful sense–when you imagine every youtube commentor as the main character of his or her own picaresque novel
all my friends get vaccines and use antibiotics and stuff but i take an emetic made of violets to correct my overbalance of yellow bile!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
all my friends watch Gossip Girl on Netflix and dye their hair unnatural colours, but I illuminate manuscripts and have a tonsure!!!!
You can’t post this and not post the music links. I am paralyzed by my thirst.
“It’s homophonic, which I think is a renaissance innovation…”
NOPE NOPE NOPE!
Renaissance-era musical politics: Members of The Holy See wholly see* the value of homophony, which had been in use since the Middle Ages. Polyphony came into use during the Renaissance and was thought distasteful by The Church…
*C?
I read canberk özel’s comment as, “Modernism = some french fries . . .”
I’m hungry, you guys.
I don’t think I realized it didn’t say ‘French fries’ until I read your comment, then went back to doublecheck. Wow. Nice job, brain.
If some kind soul would point young Scuzzlebutt there toward his local chapter of the SCA, he will find His People. He won’t even have to change his name. “Brother Scuzzlebutt” is perfect.
A friend of mine is on the board of an early music performing group, and their donors include a strong contingent who regularly complain that the season does not include enough recorder concerts.
There are people who actually WANT to listen to just recorders? That’s the part I suffer through to get to the strings and singers. I mean, a couple recorders in a larger ensemble can be nice, but on their own the sound is just annoying to me. Of course, I like shawms and bagpipes, so different strokes, I guess.
I went to an all-sackbut concert once. It was pretty good, even if I had accidentally been envisioning shawms when I bought the tickets.
I love sackbuts! But I think people just continue calling them sackbuts because LOL Sack butt. They’re really just trombones and in any language but English, people call them trombones so they should admit they’re trombones.
Maybe following language used on English composers’ scores? I don’t know enough about early music MS to know if that’s a reasonable assumption, but in my own field we go with the term the author used even if it’s not entirely accurate either then or now. It makes for a lot of hilarious explanatory footnotes.
I cannot stop laughing at “tunic made of sack” kid and I’m not sorry.*
*Laughing because I love them so much.
I keep thinking of Falstaff, whose tunic has doubtless merged with all the sack he’s spilled on it since the last time he did laundry.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sack_%28wine%29
Sack got me like:
Damn those French lies…
I would spend at least an hour watching a .gif of this set to that song.
Just as "perfect for anyone, including atheists" is now my go-to standard for quality, "my friend Maggie really needs help with that cheese" is now my escape pod for any and all awkward social situations.
I went to an all-sackbut concert once. It was pretty good, even if I had accidentally been envisioning shawms when I bought the tickets.
Maybe following language used on English composers' scores? I don't know enough about early music MS to know if that's a reasonable assumption, but in my own field we go with the term the author used even if it's not entirely accurate either then or now. It makes for a lot of hilarious explanatory footnotes.
Relevant: http://www.livescience.com/44599-medieval-reality…
"What are you doing? Are you painting a HALO? Are those some people who are the size of houses?"
"Why yes, that's what we do, right?"
"WRONG. Have you not checked the calendar today? It is the Renaissance, my good fellow! You must start being more anatomically correct with all the people. Try putting them inside the houses, perhaps? Also, your drapery is disgraceful. Look into that."
Thank you. I'm clearly going to go down the rabbit hole today looking up Medieval things on the internet … !
I told my daughter that sometimes you could date Medieval and Renaissance paintings/art by the style of the drapery. She gave me a WTF look said "that cannot possibly be true. How is that true? Drapery?" Yes, drapery. LOL.
“Look, we're doing perspective now; I don't know why you didn't get the memo on that. Here, I've made this handy box to demonstrate how that works.”
Two weeks late with this, but I really love Le Menagier de Paris (translations are usually titled "The Goodman of Paris" and I think there's one called "The Good Wife's Guide"). It's really interesting – you have to begin with being not weirded out that medieval girls in the middling-noble classes often married young to older men. Financially, it's sensible, right, because then he died and she inherits, and is financially well off, experienced in running a large estate, and can get married again without having to ask her dad. So, this book was written by an older guy in the late 1300s, whose new wife was quite young, and he had a notion he might die before he had a chance to teach her everything she needed to know about running his estate, so he wrote it all down.
Second fave are the Paston letters – he's a wealthy merchant, frequently abroad; she's his highly capable wife running the business and estate at home. But when their daughter refuses to marry the guy they chose for her…. What to do!? It's like medieval reality tv only letters.
And *I* like Christine de Pizan, but I'm not sure I'd recommend it to anyone who was a beginner, because medieval allegory can be a little much, but it's pretty great. It's all about getting women's voices heard in the conversations about gender, which is still a pretty relevant topic. :/
For straight up good historical fiction, though, Connie Willis' The Doomsday Book is really hard core flea-bitten medieval life on a manor.
And that show that just ran on Amazon? The White Queen? Aside from the parts that are obviously fiction, because it's *fiction,* I felt like the background details were pretty good "medieval studies." Like, I was the one in the room going, ooooh, look at those sleeves! Those are totally historically accurate sleeeeeee…… oh. Now they're on the floor with all the rest of everybody's clothes; that's fine. And everybody else is like, Are they historically accurate boobs? But it kind of made me want to read the books. The sleeves did, I mean.
I realize I trailed off into historical fiction but I do think for people who are not historians, sometimes really well researched fiction can give a more vivid sense of what life must have been like.