Day 41: August 26 - Humpty-Dumpty Songs
Music about building yourself back up, because not everyone is Humpty-Dumpty with access to all the King’s men.
Bjork - All Is Full Of Love
Bjork’s 1997 album, Homogenics, saw a reborn Bjork, one touched by the dark sides of fame (obsessive fans, bomb threats) and broken relationships. Yet, at the end of a traumatic period came an album about, primarily her native country of Iceland, but also confronting life’s challenges and growing from them. All Is Full of Love is the final track in the album and the last to be written. Bjork had been in the mountains outside Malaga, Spain for the winter, sequestered away in the studio. One day, lonely from the isolation, she went for a walk in the hills, heard new birds, meaning spring had come, and went back to the studio, writing and recording this track in a day.
There are a scant connection, as well, to Icelandic mythological saga, Ragnarok, in which calamities bring about the ruin of the world, submerged entirely in water. However, at the end of these events, the world will emerge lush with life and hope and two humans. This is the capstone of an amazing album about that sort of rebirth.
Musically, this is ethereal Bjork, gorgeous and lush. New layers, bathed in reverb, unfold in a rich counterpoint as life would at the end of Ragnarok or as we do at the end of a trying season.
Josquin Des Prez - Miserere mei, Deus
Written in 1503, Miserere mei, Deus came about when des Prez was commissioned to write a work commemorating the Catholic heretic/reformer Girolamo Savonarola, who wrote a long letter excoriating the hypocrisies of his captors, based on Psalm 51. Des Prez here sets the psalm, which asks God to come and work on us to ‘create in us a new heart’ as we are cast in sin. It is a stunning, if austere (for the times), exegesis of the text, a series of imitative episodes on the text, interspersed with tutti refrains of ‘Miserere mei, Deus,’ (‘Have mercy on me, O God’). For the first two sections are predominantly in the Phrygian mode (close to the minor scale), with each new refrain of Miserere descending down the scale, as if bowing deeper and deeper each with each supplication. Then, at the lowest point, the third section opens with a stunning major chord which opens sublimely out from octaves and fifths on the word ‘Domine’ (‘God’), followed by a beautiful descending close imitation and the refrains rise again in pitch center. It’s an incredible arrival and one of my favorite moments in music. The sinner is reborn, saved, rises up prouder than before. Performed wonderfully here by Capella Amsterdam under Daniel Reuss.
Chet Baker - I Get Along Without You Very Well (Except Sometimes)
A classic tune. Not really rebuilt, but trying.
Beastie Boys - It Takes Time To Build
A 2004 Beastie Boys tune, this bopper boils Bush’s administration and the destruction he is causing, urging us to step out and make our voices heard and rebuild the country. Seems prescient, eh. Classic Beastie Boys vibes.
Franz Schubert - String Quartet no. 15 in G Major: 1. Allegro molto moderato
What a twist in this piece! The dramatic opening, of the behemoth that is the first movement of Schubert’s 15th string quartet, the angular, massive minor chords get transfigured, after a loooong journey, into the soft major chords at 15:49. It’s a beautiful and subtle transmorgification. What an incredibly human story of rebirth. I would write more, but the piece is too big to really do it justice here without making myself look like I’m writing meaningless drivel (which I usually am). Instead, I’ll just say: the journey is worth it. Played here wonderfully by the Belcea Quartet.
BONUS: Chumbawumba -Tubthumping
I mean, how, honestly, Could. I. Not.