The Song From the 1500’s That Blows Rick Beato Away: An Introduction to John Dowland’s Entrancing Music

In 2006, Sting released an album called Songs from the Labyrinth, a col­lab­o­ra­tion with Bosn­ian lutenist Edin Kara­ma­zov con­sist­ing most­ly of com­po­si­tions by Renais­sance com­pos­er John Dow­land. This was regard­ed by some as rather eccen­tric, but to lis­ten­ers famil­iar with the ear­ly music revival that had already been going on for a few decades, it would have been almost too obvi­ous a choice. For Dow­land had long since been redis­cov­ered as one of the late six­teenth and ear­ly sev­en­teenth cen­tu­ry’s musi­cal super­stars, thanks in part to the record­ings of clas­si­cal gui­tarist and lutenist Julian Bream.

“When I was a kid, I went to the pub­lic library in Fair­port, New York, where I’m from, and I got this Julian Bream record,” says music pro­duc­er and pop­u­lar Youtu­ber Rick Beato (pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture) in the video above. Beato describes Bream as “one of the great­est clas­si­cal gui­tarists who ever lived” and cred­its him with hav­ing “pop­u­lar­ized the clas­si­cal gui­tar and the lute and renais­sance music.” The par­tic­u­lar Bream record­ing that impressed the young Beato was of a John Dow­land com­po­si­tion made exot­ic by dis­tance in time called “The Earl of Essex Gal­liard,” a per­for­mance of which you can watch on Youtube.

Half a cen­tu­ry lat­er, Beat­o’s enjoy­ment for this piece seems undi­min­ished — and indeed, so much in evi­dence that this prac­ti­cal­ly turns into a reac­tion video. Lis­ten­ing gets him rem­i­nisc­ing about his ear­ly Dow­land expe­ri­ences: “I would put on this Julian Bream record of him play­ing lute, just solo lute, and I would sit there and I would putt” — his father hav­ing been golf enthu­si­ast enough to have installed a small indoor putting green — and “imag­ine liv­ing back in the fif­teen-hun­dreds, what it would be like.” These pre­tend time-trav­el ses­sions matured into a gen­uine inter­est in ear­ly music, one he pur­sued at the New Eng­land Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music and beyond.

What a delight it would have been for him, then, to find that Sting had laid down his own ver­sion of “The Earl of Essex Gal­liard,” some­times oth­er­wise known as “Can She Excuse My Wrongs.” In one espe­cial­ly strik­ing sec­tion, Sting takes “the sopra­no-alto-tenor-bass part” and records the whole thing using only lay­ers of his own voice: “there’s four Stings here,” Beato says, refer­ring to the rel­e­vant dig­i­tal­ly manip­u­lat­ed scene in the music video, “but there’s actu­al­ly more than four voic­es.” Songs from the Labyrinth may only have been a mod­est­ly suc­cess­ful album by Sting’s stan­dards, but it has no doubt turned more than a few mid­dle-of-the-road pop fans onto the beau­ty of Eng­lish Renais­sance music. If Beat­o’s enthu­si­asm has also turned a few clas­sic-rock addicts into John Dow­land con­nois­seurs, so much the bet­ter.

Relat­ed con­tent:

The His­to­ry of the Gui­tar: See the Evo­lu­tion of the Gui­tar in 7 Instru­ments

Bach Played Beau­ti­ful­ly on the Baroque Lute, by Pre­em­i­nent Lutenist Evan­geli­na Mas­car­di

Watch All of Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons Per­formed on Orig­i­nal Baroque Instru­ments

Hear Clas­sic Rock Songs Played on a Baroque Lute: “A Whiter Shade of Pale,” “While My Gui­tar Gen­tly Weeps,” “White Room” & More

Renais­sance Knives Had Music Engraved on the Blades; Now Hear the Songs Per­formed by Mod­ern Singers

What Makes This Song Great?: Pro­duc­er Rick Beato Breaks Down the Great­ness of Clas­sic Rock Songs in His New Video Series

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Hear the Evolution of Mozart’s Music, Composed from Ages 5 to 35

More than a quar­ter of a mil­len­ni­um after he com­posed his first pieces of music, dif­fer­ent lis­ten­ers will eval­u­ate dif­fer­ent­ly the spe­cif­ic nature of Wolf­gang Amadeus Mozart’s genius. But one can hard­ly fail to be impressed by the fact that he wrote those works when he was five years old (or, as some schol­ars have it, four years old). It’s not unknown, even today, for pre­co­cious, musi­cal­ly inclined chil­dren of that age to sit down and put togeth­er sim­ple melodies, or even rea­son­ably com­plete songs. But how many of them can write some­thing like Mozart’s “Min­uet in G Major”?

The video above, which traces the evo­lu­tion of Mozart’s music, begins with that piece — nat­u­ral­ly enough, since it’s his ear­li­est known work, and thus hon­ored with the Köchel cat­a­logue num­ber of KV 1. There­after we hear music com­posed by Mozart at var­i­ous ages of child­hood, youth, ado­les­cence, and adult­hood, accom­pa­nied by a piano roll graph­ic that illus­trates its increas­ing com­plex­i­ty.

And as with com­plex­i­ty, so with famil­iar­i­ty: even lis­ten­ers who know lit­tle of Mozart’s work will sense the emer­gence of a dis­tinc­tive style, and even those who’ve bare­ly heard of Mozart will rec­og­nize “Piano Sonata No. 16 in C major” when it comes on.

Mozart com­posed that piece when he was 32 years old. It’s also known as the “Sonata facile” or “Sonata sem­plice,” despite its dis­tinct lack of eas­i­ness for novice (or even inter­me­di­ate) piano play­ers. It’s now cat­a­loged as KV 545, which puts it toward the end of Mozart’s oeu­vre, and indeed his life. Three years lat­er, the evo­lu­tion­ary lis­ten­ing jour­ney of this video arrives at the “Requiem in D minor,” which we’ve pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for its exten­sive cin­e­mat­ic use to evoke evil, lone­li­ness, des­per­a­tion, and reck­on­ing. The piece, KV 626, con­tains Mozart’s last notes; the unan­swer­able but nev­er­the­less irre­sistible ques­tion remains of whether they’re some­how implied in his first ones.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Hear All of Mozart in a Free 127-Hour Playlist

Hear the Pieces Mozart Com­posed When He Was Only Five Years Old

Read an 18th-Cen­tu­ry Eye­wit­ness Account of 8‑Year-Old Mozart’s Extra­or­di­nary Musi­cal Skills

Mozart’s Diary Where He Com­posed His Final Mas­ter­pieces Is Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

What Movies Teach Us About Mozart: Explor­ing the Cin­e­mat­ic Uses of His Famous Lac­rimosa

See Mozart Played on Mozart’s Own Fortepi­ano, the Instru­ment That Most Authen­ti­cal­ly Cap­tures the Sound of His Music

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Radiohead’s “Creep” Sung by a 1,600-Person Choir in Australia

Every­body can sing. Maybe not well. But why should that stop you? That’s the basic phi­los­o­phy of Pub  Choir, an orga­ni­za­tion based in Bris­bane, Aus­tralia. At each Pub Choir event, a con­duc­tor “arranges a pop­u­lar song and teach­es it to the audi­ence in three-part har­mo­ny.” Then, the evening cul­mi­nates with a per­for­mance that gets filmed and shared on social media. Any­one (18+) is wel­come to attend.

Above, you can watch a Pub­Choir per­for­mance, with 1600 choir mem­bers singing a mov­ing ver­sion of Radio­head­’s “Creep.” On their YouTube chan­nel, you can also find Pub Choir per­for­mances of Cold­play’s “Yel­low,” Toto’s “Africa,” and The Bee Gees “How Deep Is Your Love.”

Find oth­er choir per­for­mances in the Relat­eds below.

via Kot­tke

Relat­ed Con­tent

A Big Choir Sings Pat­ti Smith’s “Because the Night”

A Choir with 1,000 Singers Pays Trib­ute to Sinéad O’Connor & Per­forms “Noth­ing Com­pares 2 U”

Watch David Byrne Lead a Mas­sive Choir in Singing David Bowie’s “Heroes”

Pat­ti Smith Sings “Peo­ple Have the Pow­er” with a Choir of 250 Fel­low Singers

Hear Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” Performed in Classical Latin

By the ear­ly nine­teen-nineties, at least in the Unit­ed States, Latin instruc­tion in schools was­n’t what it had once been. Stu­dents every­where had long been show­ing impa­tience and irrev­er­ence about their hav­ing to study that “dead lan­guage,” of course. But sure­ly it had nev­er felt quite so irrel­e­vant as it did in a world of shop­ping malls, cable tele­vi­sion, and the emerg­ing inter­net. Thir­ty years ago, few stu­dents would have freely cho­sen to do their Latin home­work when they could have been, say, lis­ten­ing to Nir­vana. But now, in the age of Youtube, they can have both at once.

In the video above, the_miracle_aligner cov­ers “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” in a medieval (or “bard­core”) style, using not just peri­od instru­men­ta­tion but also a trans­la­tion of its lyrics into Latin. Since its release a few years ago, this Colos­se­um-wor­thy ver­sion of the song that defined grunge has drawn thou­sands upon thou­sands of appre­cia­tive com­ments from enthu­si­asts of Nir­vana and Latin alike.

As one of the lat­ter points out, “most Latin words rhyme because of con­ju­ga­tion,” and when they don’t, the lan­guage’s unusu­al free­dom of word order pro­vides plen­ty of oppor­tu­ni­ty to make it work. Still, the song con­tains more than its share of tru­ly inspired choic­es: anoth­er com­menter calls it “just immac­u­late” how “the ‘hel­lo, how low’ rhymes as ‘salvé, parve.’ ”

As tends to be the way with those of us here in the twen­ty-first cen­tu­ry inclined to dig deep into a lan­guage like Latin, some take the oppor­tu­ni­ty to get into char­ac­ter: “I vivid­ly remem­ber the night Gaius Kur­tus Cobainius the Elder pre­miered this song at the Amphithe­ater of Pom­pey in the Sum­mer of 91AD. The plebs went nuts and were throw­ing Ses­ter­ti and Denari on the stage. I even saw a patri­cian woman lift her tunic! Oh how I miss those days.” In what­ev­er lan­guage it’s sung, the instant­ly rec­og­niz­able “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” will send any Gen­er­a­tion-Xers in earshot right back to the stren­u­ous slack­ing of their own youth. And the cry “Oblec­táte, nunc híc sumus” would have cut as sharply in the age of bread and cir­cus­es as it did in the MTV era — or, for that mat­ter, as it does now.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Learn Latin, Old Eng­lish, San­skrit, Clas­si­cal Greek & Oth­er Ancient Lan­guages in 10 Lessons

How Nirvana’s Icon­ic “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” Came to Be: An Ani­mat­ed Video Nar­rat­ed by T‑Bone Bur­nett Tells the True Sto­ry

Hip 1960s Latin Teacher Trans­lat­ed Bea­t­les Songs into Latin for His Stu­dents: Read Lyrics for “O Teneum Manum,” “Diei Duri Nox” & More

Nirvana’s “Come As You Are” Played By Musi­cians Around the World

The First Live Per­for­mance of Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spir­it” (1991)

What Ancient Latin Sound­ed Like, And How We Know It

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities, the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les and the video series The City in Cin­e­ma. Fol­low him on Twit­ter at @colinmarshall or on Face­book.

Keith Richards Performs “I’m Waiting For The Man”: A New Tribute to Lou Reed

“To me, Lou stood out. The real deal! Some­thing impor­tant to Amer­i­can music and to ALL MUSIC! I miss him and his dog.” — Kei­th Richards

On what would have been Lou Reed’s 82nd birth­day (March 2), Kei­th Richards released a cov­er of “I’m Wait­ing for the Man,” a track orig­i­nal­ly writ­ten by Reed in 1966, then record­ed by the Vel­vet Under­ground the next year. Pre­vi­ous­ly cov­ered by David Bowie, OMD, and French singer Vanes­sa Par­adis, the song makes sense in Kei­th Richards’ hands. As one YouTu­ber put it, “See­ing Kei­th per­form this Vel­vet Under­ground clas­sic is watch­ing him take a vic­to­ry lap over his addic­tion. He’s been away from that life for decades and now he’s telling the sto­ry about some­one else, even though he lived it for a long time. This is a tri­umph for him.”

Richards’ cov­er will appear on the forth­com­ing album The Pow­er of the Heart: A Trib­ute to Lou Reed, where songs move from Reed’s “ground­break­ing years with the Vel­vets into his majes­tic solo career.” Con­trib­u­tors include Joan Jett and the Black­hearts, Rufus Wain­wright, Lucin­da Williams, Rick­ie Lee Jones, Bob­by Rush, and Rosanne Cash. The album will be released on Record Store Day (April 20th). Get more deets here.

Below, as a bonus, watch Reed and Bowie per­form “I’m Wait­ing for the Man” togeth­er, appar­ent­ly at Reed’s 50th birth­day bash in 1997.

Relat­ed Con­tent

Hear Lou Reed’s The Raven, a Trib­ute to Edgar Allan Poe Fea­tur­ing David Bowie, Ornette Cole­man, Willem Dafoe & More

Kei­th Richards Shows Us How to Play the Blues, Inspired by Robert John­son, on the Acoustic Gui­tar

Lou Reed and Lau­rie Anderson’s Three Rules for Liv­ing Well: A Short and Suc­cinct Life Phi­los­o­phy

Chuck Berry Takes Kei­th Richards to School, Shows Him How to Rock (1987)

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

When the Berlin Philharmonic Performed John Cage’s Iconic Piece 4′33″, Capturing the Solitude of the Pandemic (2020)

In late Octo­ber 2020, amidst anoth­er surge of the COVID-19 virus, the Ger­man gov­ern­ment asked the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic to close down for a month. On the eve of their clo­sure, the Phil­har­mon­ic per­formed John Cage’s mod­ernist com­po­si­tion, 4′33″, which asks per­form­ers not to play their instru­ments through­out the entire dura­tion of the piece, allow­ing the audi­ence to expe­ri­ence the some­times awk­ward, some­times unex­pect­ed sounds of silence. In this par­tic­u­lar moment, the Berlin Phil­har­mon­ic offered a poignant com­men­tary on the silence and iso­la­tion expe­ri­enced dur­ing the pan­dem­ic.

The web­site, Clas­si­cal Voice North Amer­i­ca, breaks down the per­for­mance as fol­lows: The con­duc­tor Kir­ill Petrenko “defined each of the three move­ments in 4’33” with a par­tic­u­lar affect. In the first move­ment, he seemed to be con­duct­ing a con­ven­tion­al piece that wasn’t there. In the sec­ond move­ment, his hands were posi­tioned near his face, as if ask­ing for qui­et or like a priest pro­nounc­ing a bene­dic­tion. In the third move­ment, his hands stretched toward the orches­tra, fin­gers splayed in one hand, with a search­ing facial expres­sion. He was near tears with sor­row and grief. ‘What is this? What is hap­pen­ing?’ he seemed to ask. ‘I don’t under­stand!’ ” We all felt that way at some point.

Watch the per­for­mance above.

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch John Cage Play His “Silent” 4′33″ in Har­vard Square, Pre­sent­ed by Nam June Paik (1973)

The Curi­ous Score for John Cage’s “Silent” Zen Com­po­si­tion 4′33″

Watch John Cage’s 4′33″ Played by Musi­cians Around the World

Hear Grace Slick’s Hair-Raising Vocals in the Isolated Track for “White Rabbit” (1967)

“One pill makes you larg­er and one pill makes you small…”

Some­time in the sum­mer of 2016, this iso­lat­ed track of Grace Slick’s vocals for “White Rab­bit”–prob­a­bly the most famous Jef­fer­son Air­plane song and def­i­nite­ly one of the top ten psy­che­del­ic songs of the late ‘60s–popped up YouTube. As these things go, nobody took cred­it, but every­body on the Inter­net was thank­ful.

Drenched in echo, Slick sings with mar­tial pre­ci­sion, com­plete­ly in com­mand of her vibra­to and dip­ping and ris­ing all through the Phry­gian scale (also known as the Span­ish or Gyp­sy scale.) And no won­der, the song was writ­ten in 1965 after an LSD trip at her Marin coun­ty home where Slick had lis­tened to Miles Davis’ Sketch­es of Spain over and over again for 24 hours. Com­pare the orig­i­nal ver­sion to Davis’ track “Solea” to hear what I mean.

Bob Irwin, who was in charge of remas­ter­ing Jef­fer­son Airplane’s cat­a­log in 2003, was the first to hear Slick’s iso­lat­ed vocals after many, many years:

When you put up the mul­ti- tracks of the per­for­mances to some­thing like “White Rab­bit” and iso­late Grace’s vocal…you can’t believe the inten­si­ty in that vocal. It’s hair-rais­ing, and absolute­ly unbe­liev­able. I was telling Bill Thomp­son about that. It’s not that I’m so well-sea­soned that noth­ing sur­pris­es me, but boy oh boy, when I put that mul­ti up and I heard Grace’s vocal solo-ed—and it’s absolute­ly whis­per-qui­et, there’s not an ounce of leak­age in there at all—-you can hear every breath drawn and the inten­si­ty and the con­cen­tra­tion…

Inter­est­ing­ly, when Slick wrote the song, Air­plane hadn’t start­ed. Instead she was in a band called The Great Soci­ety, and the orig­i­nal jam ver­sion doesn’t do jus­tice to the com­po­si­tion.

Rhythm gui­tarist David Minor recalled that the song came out of a song­writ­ing request to the oth­er mem­bers of the band.

“When we start­ed work­ing, nobody had any­thing because I couldn’t write any more,” he recalls. “I was too busy keep­ing up with my var­i­ous jobs. So Grace’s hus­band Jer­ry chal­lenged them: ‘What are you gonna do? Let David write all the songs?’ Y’know, ‘Do some­thing!’. So Dar­by came back with a cou­ple of songs and Grace came back with White Rab­bit.”

When the Great Soci­ety fell apart, Jef­fer­son Air­plane chose Slick as their singer in 1966 and she brought with her “White Rab­bit.” The rest is rock his­to­ry, and a large part of the now-retired Slick’s income.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017. It’s a favorite, and today we’re bring­ing it back for an encore.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

How Grace Slick Wrote “White Rab­bit”: The 1960s Clas­sic Inspired by LSD, Lewis Car­roll, Miles Davis’ Sketch­es of Spain, and Hyp­o­crit­i­cal Par­ents

Watch Jazzy Spies: 1969 Psy­che­del­ic Sesame Street Ani­ma­tion, Fea­tur­ing Grace Slick, Teach­es Kids to Count

Dick Clark Intro­duces Jef­fer­son Air­plane & the Sounds of Psy­che­del­ic San Fran­cis­co to Amer­i­ca: Yes Par­ents, You Should Be Afraid (1967)

Jef­fer­son Air­plane Plays on a New York Rooftop; Jean-Luc Godard Cap­tures It (1968)

Ted Mills is a free­lance writer on the arts who cur­rent­ly hosts the artist inter­view-based FunkZone Pod­cast and is the pro­duc­er of KCR­W’s Curi­ous Coast. You can also fol­low him on Twit­ter at @tedmills, read his oth­er arts writ­ing at tedmills.com and/or watch his films here.

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 15 ) |

The Jazz Classic “Take Five” Played Beautifully on a 1959 Classical Guitar

Above we have George Sakel­lar­i­ou per­form­ing Paul Desmond’s jazz clas­sic, “Take Five,” on a vin­tage 1959 Viu­da y Sobri­nos de Domin­go Este­so (Conde Her­manos) clas­si­cal gui­tar. First record­ed in 1959 by the Dave Brubeck Quar­tet, the track even­tu­al­ly became the best-sell­ing jazz song of all time. It’s also a song fre­quent­ly cov­ered by oth­er tal­ent­ed musi­cians. Orig­i­nal­ly from Athens, George Sakel­lar­i­ou joined the San Fran­cis­co Con­ser­va­to­ry of Music and lat­er became chair­man of their Gui­tar Depart­ment. As his bio notes, his gui­tar style places an empha­sis “on clear tone and smooth lyri­cal lines,” all on dis­play here. Enjoy…

Relat­ed Con­tent 

Watch an Incred­i­ble Per­for­mance of “Take Five” by the Dave Brubeck Quar­tet (1964)

How Dave Brubeck’s Time Out Changed Jazz Music

Pak­istani Musi­cians Play a Won­der­ful Ver­sion of Dave Brubeck’s Jazz Clas­sic, “Take Five”

by | Permalink | Make a Comment ( 1 ) |

More in this category... »
Quantcast
Open Culture was founded by Dan Colman.