Ron Black, writing from the North Countrie, where they hunt foxes on foot, and more vertically than horizontally, forwarded this morning a charming older video of a local hunter performing a major portion of The Mardale Hunt, accompanied by fellow patrons of the St. Patrick Well public house.

The Mardale Hunt
composed by Winston Scott, circa 1904

[The morn is here, awake, my lads
Away, away
The hounds are giving mouth, my lads
Away, my lads, away
The Mardale Hunt is out today
Joe Bowman strong shall lead the way
Who ne’er has led his hunt stray
Away, my lads, away

Our Bowman is a huntsman rare
Away, away
His Tally-ho’s beyond compare
Away, my lads, away
We always find him just the same
At Grasmere Sports you’ll hear his name
His Mardale Hunts will live in fame
Away, my lads, away]

The Mardale pack is on the trail
Away, away
The fox is heading thro’ the dale
Away, my lads, away
Hound Miller’s on the scent, I’m told
So fast it lads thro’ frost and cold
Away, my lads, away
The mountain breeze is pure as gold
Away, my lads, away

On Branstree Fell the fox is seen
Away, away
The hounds are off, the scent is keen
Away, my lads, away
This music sweet to dalesman’s ear
When hounds give mouth so loud and clear
So off my lads and lend a cheer
Away, my lads, away

[The air is keen, our hearts are light
Away, away
We scale with glee the frowning height
Away, my lads, away
The fox has slipped and made his cave
So in we send the terrier brave
The fox will bolt his brush to save
Away, my lads, away

Our terrier Frail will win or die
Away, away
So too will Wallow Crag, say I
Away, my lads, away
On Roman fell in mountain cave
We lost alas, a terrier brave
For good old Frisk we failed to save
Away, my lads, away]

Who’d weary with a sport like this
Away, away
Or who a Mardale Hunt would miss
Away, my lads, away
Our hardy fellsmen, hunters born
Will rally to the huntsman’s horn
Nor heeded be by rain or storm
Away, my lads, away

[Who’d hunt the fox with spur and rein
Away, away
To have a mount we’d all disdain
Away, my lads, away
We love our hill, our tarns, our fells
We ken our moors, our rocks and dells
We love our hounds, we love our selves
Away, my lads, away]

When darkness comes to Mardale, hie
Away, away
For who the ‘Dun Bull’ dares decry
Away, my lads, away
Hal Usher kind will find a bed
To rest our limbs and lay our head
We’re welcomed, warmed, and housed, and fed
Away, my lads, away

In winter Mardale’s dree and drear
Away, away
But ‘tis not so if Hunt is here
Away, my lads, away
We trencher well, we trencher long
We meet in dance, we meet in song
[For days are short, and nights are long
Away, my lads, away

We’re lads from East and lads from West
Away, away
And North and South, but all the best
Away, my lads, away
With Auld Lang Syne and Old John Peel
With foaming glass and nimble heel
We’ll drink to all a health and wealth
Away, my lads, away]

Here’s link to Wikipedia’s list of Number 1 singles by year to start you off.

My result was: Pee Wee Hunt’s 12th Street Rag. Could have been worse.

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Wśród nocnej ciszy

Wśród nocnej ciszy głos się rozchodzi:
Wstańcie, pasterze – Bóg się wam rodzi!
Czem prędzej się wybierajcie,
Do Betlejem pospieszajcie
Przywitać Pana.

Poszli, znaleźli Dzieciątko w żłobie,
Z wszystkimi znaki danymi sobie.
Jako Bogu cześć Mu dali,
A witając zawołali,
Z wielkiej radości.

Ach, witaj Zbawco, z dawna żądany!
Tyle tysięcy lat wyglądany;
Na Ciebie króle, prorocy
Czekali, a Tyś tej nocy
Nam się objawił.
—————————————
Amidst the stillness of the night

Amidst the stillness of the night, a voice proclaims:
Arise ye shepherds – God is born to you!
Seize the moment,
Hasten to Bethlehem
To welcome the Lord.

They came, they found the child in the manger
With all the signs of honor
given by God ,
They shouted a greeting,
With great joy.

Welcome Savior, long desired!
Looked for for one thousand years
By kings and prophets
They waited, and you tonight
Revealed yourself to us.

Hat tip to Andrew Sullivan.

Hat tip to Anna Borewicz-Khorshed.

You kids know Mick Jagger is 68, right? I’m sure he’s in relatively limber, perhaps drug-preserved state for a near-septuagenarian, but really? Tim Noah’s nephew [Adam Levine] is singing that he can dance like him and Kesha’s only interested in guys collecting Social Security? Did our pop culture get stuck on “pause” at some point?

It seems a bit strange to me that he still performs and that people so young even know who Mick Jagger is. The Stones ought to be, at this point, headlining on Cruise ships and in Florida retirement homes.

Personally, I have a suspicion that on very damp mornings like this, I move exactly like Jagger (before he’s had plenty of meds).

NSFW

Variety has some good news.

The classical recording industry is managing to experience sales growth despite the recession, and capitalist enterprise is gradually excavating the enormously valuable recorded repertoire lost to contemporary humanity in the cataclysmic media transition which eliminated the long-playing record.

Nielsen SoundScan’s report for the first half of 2011 indicates that classical music had the biggest gain in sales of all genres, 13%, over the first half of 2010, for a total of 3.8 million albums.

Granted, that’s still a small percentage of the total market (about 2.4%), but it shows that classical is holding its own and then some, with other genres up slightly or slipping.

Moreover, the majors are being supplanted by a swarm of activity from other, smaller, nimbler sources.

Many orchestras increasingly take matters into their own hands, no longer relying on the majors for exposure. The Chicago Symphony has its own label, CSO Resound, so do the Boston and St. Louis symphonies, as well as the London Symphony, London Philharmonic and several other foreign orchestras. With Telarc reduced to a shell of its former self after the takeover by Concord, its two once-regular orchestras, the Cincinnati and Atlanta symphonies, have just formed their own labels.

Probably the most successful and luxuriously packaged inhouse orchestra label is the San Francisco Symphony’s SFS Media, which in 2010 completed its decade-long Mahler project on 17 SACDs and just issued a capstone documentary, “Keeping Score: Mahler,” on DVD and Blu-ray. SFS Media claims to have sold more than 130,000 Mahler CDs worldwide at premium prices—a roaring success for a classical series.

Likewise, individual artists and small ensembles now routinely bypass the majors and minors alike in favor of their own boutique CD labels—like New York new music collective Bang on a Can’s Cantaloupe, pianist Wu Han and cellist David Finckel’s ArtistLed, plus composer Philip Glass’ Orange Mountain Music.

Free of the old restrictions, these labels can offer as many choices to their fans as their markets will bear. In the prolific Glass’ case, Orange Mountain Music has issued at least 75 releases since its launch in 2003, and the Music@Menlo festival in Silicon Valley exhaustively documents its concerts in massive annual boxed sets.

Naxos, the budget label that upended the classical record industry in the 1990s with its no-frills, high-quality recordings, has turned itself into a big distributor of small labels, with 148 of them (mostly classical) now under its umbrella. Harmonia Mundi, once and still a specialist in early music, also distributes a long string of small labels.

If the majors don’t want to keep their rich classical catalogs in print, others are happy to step into the breach. The online retailer ArchivMusic, now owned by piano manufacturer Steinway, has been making deals with the majors that allow it to press custom copies of out-of-print classical CDs and sell them on its website (the titles now number well in the thousands).

Hat tip to Adam Krims.

Ravel was expressing a curious personal nostalgia for the culture and sensibilities of Antique Spain, but his Pavanne mysteriously also seems to go nicely with the melancholy image of this 1869 Hudson River School painting of Lake George by John Frederick Kensett.

Hat tip to Michel Grebert.

It was probably the bill introduced in both houses in March which would place elected representatives in a class of persons having “good cause” to carry firearms.
———————————————————
Eve Cassidy was a beautiful girl with an extraordinary voice, but she never received a major recording company contract because her repertoire was too eclectic. When she died of melanoma at age 33 in 1996, her recordings were posthumously published, and the album Songbird became a number one hit in England selling a million copies. YouTube has a collection of her recordings.

From Fred Lapides.
———————————————————
Iowahawk’s Weinermandius, “Look on my junk, ye mighty, and despair!”
———————————————————
Mitt Romney has a reasonably effective new commercial.

The Pharoah Tutankhamen ruled Egypt for nine years, from approximately 1355 to 1346 BC. He ascended the throne at age nine, and he remained in power until his sudden death at age 18.

His tomb was discovered in the Valley of the Kings, Luxor, Egypt on November 22, 1922, by Howard Carter, who described the discovery thusly:

“At first I could see nothing, the hot air escaping from the chamber causing the candle flames to flicker, but presently, as my eyes grew accustomed to the light, details of the room within emerged slowly from the mist, strange animals, statues and gold – everywhere the glint of gold.

For the moment – an eternity it must have seemed to the others standing by – I was dumb with amazement, and when Lord Carnarvon, unable to stand the suspense any longer, inquired anxiously, ‘Can you see anything?’ it was all I could do to get out the words, “Yes, wonderful things.”’

Among the wonderful things found in Tutankhamun’s tomb were two trumpets, one silver and one bronze.

The shorter silver trumpet is in the key of B natural. The bronze trumpet from the tomb is about 3cm longer, and is in the key of A flat.

In 2001 the BBC broadcast a series of programmes about Verdi’s operas to mark the centenary of the composer’s death; in the programme about Aïda, the conductor Edward Downes explained how two groups play on very long trumpets during the Grand March, one in A flat and the other in B natural, which is very unusual.

He commented on the amazing coincidence that Verdi chose these extraordinary keys for his trumpets, 50 years before the tomb was discovered and about 3,200 years after the two very long trumpets were buried with Tutankhamun.

When rioting broke out recently in Cairo, the silver trumpet was away on display at a touring exhibition, but the bronze trumpet was one of the objects looted from the Cairo Museum. It was, however, recovered, a little later, found discarded in a bag with some other items stolen from the museum in a Cairo metro station.

The trumpets have only been rarely played since the time of their discovery, but a recording of the kind of sounds which once must have signaled the advance to battle of the infantrymen and chariots of the pharoahs in Antiquity was made in 1939 for the BBC.

The trumpets were played by Bandsman James Tappern of the 11th Hussars (Prince Albert’s Own).

3:15 audio

The BBC story (characteristically and traditionally for journalistic pieces of this kind) ends with a bit of superstition.

Bandsman Tappern… played the trumpet shortly before World War II broke out. Cairo Museum’s Tutankhamun curator claims the trumpet retains “magical powers” and was blown before the first Gulf War, and by a member of staff the week before the Egyptian uprising.

But, which one?

One is inclined to guess the more opulent silver trumpet, but the bronze trumpet is longer, and reputedly more difficult to blow.

Hat tip to Karen L. Myers.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

Via Theo.

An arrangement created by the New York Pro Musica circa 1954 is now a popular standard performed by many a cappella choirs, especially during the Christmas season.

Performed here by the Nashville Early Music Ensemble at Christ Church Cathedral, Nashville, TN.

Riu, riu chiu / [nightingale sounds]
La guarda ribera / The river bank protects it
Dios guarde el lobo / As God kept the wolf
De nuestra cordera, / From our lamb.

El lobo rabioso / The rabid wolf
La quiso morder, / Tried to bite her
Mas Dios poderso / But God Almighty knew
La supo defender, / How to defend her.

Quizole hazer que / He wished to create her
No pudiesse pecar, / Impervious to sin
Ni aun original / Without Original Sin
Esta uirgen no tuuiera. / The virgin was born.

Este qu’es nascido / He who is born
Es el gran monarcha, / Is the Great King,
Christo patriarcha / Christ, God
De carne uestido, / Made flesh.

Hanos redimido / He has redeemed us
Con se hazer chiquito,/ By making Himself a child
Aunque era infinito, / Although everlasting,
Finito se hiezir. / He made himself finite

Este uiene a dar / He comes to give life
A los muertos uida, / To the dead
Y uiene a reparar / He comes to redeem
De todos la cayda, / The fall of man;
Es la luz del dia / He is the light of day,
Aqueste mocuelo, / This child
Este es el cordero / He is the lamb
Que San Juan dixera. / St John prophesied.

———————————————————-

Wśród nocnej ciszy

Wśród nocnej ciszy głos się rozchodzi:
Wstańcie, pasterze – Bóg się wam rodzi!
Czem prędzej się wybierajcie,
Do Betlejem pospieszajcie
Przywitać Pana.

Poszli, znaleźli Dzieciątko w żłobie,
Z wszystkimi znaki danymi sobie.
Jako Bogu cześć Mu dali,
A witając zawołali,
Z wielkiej radości.

Ach, witaj Zbawco, z dawna żądany!
Tyle tysięcy lat wyglądany;
Na Ciebie króle, prorocy
Czekali, a Tyś tej nocy
Nam się objawił.
—————————————
Amidst the stillness of the night

Amidst the stillness of the night, a voice proclaims:
Arise ye shepherds – God is born to you!
Seize the moment,
Hasten to Bethlehem
To welcome the Lord.

They came, they found the child in the manger
With all the signs of honor
given by God ,
They shouted a greeting,
With great joy.

Welcome Savior, long desired!
Looked for for one thousand years
By kings and prophets
They waited, and you tonight
Revealed yourself to us.

Es ist ein’ Ros’ Entsprungen is an early German Christmas carol and Marian hymn performed in a harmony written by Praetorius in 1609 by the Tölzer Boys Choir.

Hat tip to Walter Olson.

A delightful excerpt from a superb performace by Marc Minkowski and the Musiciens du Louvre of Jean-Philippe Rameau’s comic opera Platée, written to a libretto by Adrien-Joseph Le Valois d’Orville as part of the entertainments for the wedding of Louis, Dauphin of France, son of King Louis XV of France, to the Infanta Maria Theresa of Spain at Versailles on March 31, 1745.

In order to cure Juno of jealousy, the gods plot a joke marriage of Jove to the homely water nymph Platée. Mireille Delunsch performs with exceptional panache the famous aria in which La Folie (Madness) attempts to warn Platée by recounting the story of Apollo and Daphne.

Dedicated on Facebook by the gallant Constandin to the fair D.L.

The Independent reports on a less-than-warm White House appearance last February.

Most of his contemporaries have mellowed with age, but as he approaches his 70th birthday, Bob Dylan remains splendidly reluctant to embrace efforts to turn him into part of the fusty establishment he once railed against.

That, at least, is the experience of President Barack Obama, who has revealed that he was given what amounts to the bum’s rush by the musician when he visited the White House to perform at a concert celebrating the leaders of the Civil Rights movement.

Dylan, 69, was “sceptical” about performing his protest song “The Times They Are A-Changin” to the assembled dignitaries at February’s event. And while most musicians who perform for the most powerful man in the world ask for a “meet and greet” during their visit, Mr Obama told Rolling Stone magazine that Dylan refused to even speak with him. “He wouldn’t come to the rehearsal; usually, all these guys are practising before the set in the evening. He didn’t want to take a picture with me; usually all the talent is dying to take a picture with me and Michelle before the show, but he didn’t show up to that.”

After performing, it was the same story. “He finishes the song, steps off the stage – I’m sitting right in the front row – comes up, shakes my hand, sort of tips his head, gives me just a little grin and then leaves. And that was it. He left. That was our only interaction with him.”

Mr Obama nonetheless described the experience as “a real treat,” adding: “That’s how you want Bob Dylan, right? You don’t want him to be all cheesin’ and grinnin’ with you. You want him to be a little sceptical about the whole enterprise.”

Hat tip to Jose Guardia.