Well, I am very blessed to share a home with musicians, which means that on any evening there's a chance of the house having Mozart arias billowing around it as violin and flute duets — and that brings me joy for sure!
To participate in music is probably the most joyous of all. Here's the father of my children as a young man singing with the friends we lived with in York, and here are my children playing for a chapel Christmas coffee morning a few years ago.
A memory's treasure for me is the long-gone days of sitting round the table singing folk songs after supper — I am so glad I had that in my life, even if it has gone now. Norma Waterson and her family and friends singing together reminds me of those days. We still sing round the piano sometimes, and it's a wonderful thing that we have such a wealth of music online, and here are some of my favourites:
- Just about anything by George Ezra — I love Budapest, Shotgun and this glorious video of Listen to the Man with Ian McKellen.
- I love the music of Joni Mitchell, and I used to have her album Blue and listen to it over and over. My favourite song of all was Carey.
- I love classical music too, of course, and Mozart is my favourite composer — just about anything by Mozart, but two favourites are the Queen of the Night aria from The Magic Flute, and this aria from The Marriage of Figaro (though I wish Dame Kiri of the sublime voice wouldn't slide the notes so much). Oh, and there's the incomparable Laudate Dominum from Mozart's Vespers, sung here by Cai Thomas. When I was writing my Hawk and Dove novels, it was one of the pieces in which I soaked my soul.
- I love music from a variety of religious traditions — like the songs of Taizé, or the Plum Village community, or the a cappella harmonies of Anabaptist choirs, or this long and beautiful chant from Robert Gass and friends which was the last thing my husband Bernard heard on this earth; his soul slipped free and left us just as it finished playing. He had the Mozart Laudate Dominum (above) at his funeral, and chose this to play as we bore his coffin in.
10 comments:
Music can soothe us, uplift us and is an integral form of worship for me. Personally I love harmony and I cannot sing harmony without a mountain of work. My mother and my daughters can sing harmonies just like that. My girls learned music. Bethany learned violin and cello. Philippa learned cello and flute. They both sang in choirs. My mother was offered a position to study voice as a coloratura soprano but was pregnant with me. Music surrounds me mostly vocal and I love that.
I truly love to hear families sing. The blends have the ability to be spine tingling. Later when mum is asleep I will listen to your family sing.
God bless.
Yes, families singing together is special. I don't think I included any links to us singing in this post, apart from the one that has my first husband on it singing the Agnus Dei, but on my Youtube channel there's a Campfire Church Songbook playlist of the videos we made for online worship during the Covid lockdown.
It's here:
https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLaKgJHr-DmDWtPg2ncoEgQAFzPbgGVB8n
Thank you Pen. I forgot to mention the first Christmas we shared with Bethany's now husband Marc was a total surprise to him. We had baked Christmas biscuits and provided everyone with tubes of icing and decorations and had a blast decorating them. This was an activity to keep everyone awake until time for midnight services. The girls and I started singing and Marc and his sister were blown away.
Oh, gosh, how lovely! These memories are a treasure store.
I particularly like watching the videos from Campfire Church, even if they're sometimes a bit ropey. Making music with other people is one of my favourite things to do, and I've done it with all sort of groups of people - but making music with my family is my favourite. There is an implicit understanding of what to do, and in which fraction of a moment, which can be achieved either by intense and lengthy practise under direction of a maestro, or by knowing each other extremely well and having grown into the same sensibility. Finishing a note at the same instant, or coming in louder or quieter without having to follow someone's lead, but because you are naturally together. You still have to plan and practise at times, but the whole thing has an ease when done with the people you know best.
Like a murmuration of starlings or a shoal of fish.
Btw, since we altered our settings after the new regs on Youtube came in, I can no longer access the videos on your channel of us singing Burdens Are Lifted, and Sinners Jesus Will Receive — you've adjusted them to private, so the link tells me when I try to access them from my sidebar here. Any chance of having them unlisted but not private?
I loved hearing all the music you linked, Ember. I listen to Taize choir music often in the mornings when I get up, get my coffee, light my beeswax candle, pick up my books and journal, click on the furnace. I also used to play Joni's "Blue" on repeat, and felt it go so deep I had to stop listening for a while. I love "Carey" and also "California," since that state infused into me from birth until I was 23 years old. Hearing that song makes something well up I can't put words to. I can't imagine life without music. Thank you for sharing, and God bless you and your loves, dear Ember. xoxo
So many others, too — swing jazz, and Bob Marley and Paul Simon and Gheorghe Zamfir's pan pipes and Willie Nelson and Yma Sumac singing Gopher Mambo . . . xx
The setting change must have been something automatic YouTube did. I’ll go and change it.
Hurrah! They're back — thank you! x
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