January 2017 – Underhill Lounge

086.OComeAndMournWithMe

Please turn to number 86 and join with the clarinets in “O Come and Mourn with Me”.

Number: 86
First Line: O Come and Mourn With Me
Name: ST. CROSS
Meter: L.M.
Tempo: Slowly
Music: John Bacchus Dykes, 1823-76
Text: Frederick William Faber, 1814-63

Clarinet Arrangement: 086-OComeAndMournWithMe

I really like this hymn.

However, regarding Mr Dykes, while popular in Victorian times, his tunes fell out of favor in the 20th Century.

Whereas the proliferation of Dykes’s tunes in hymnals published throughout the nineteenth century, together with some surviving correspondence by hymnal compilers and by clergymen, in the UK and overseas (including the US and Nyasaland (now Malawi)), show that his compositions were highly regarded, the end of his century brought a widespread reaction against much of the Victorian aesthetic, and Dykes’s music did not escape a censure which was often vituperative. In particular, his music was condemned for its alleged over-chromaticism (even though some 92% of his hymn tunes are either entirely, or almost entirely diatonic) ^[34] and for its imputed sentimentality. (Speaking of Victorian hymn-tunes generally, but evidently with Dykes in his sights ^[35] Vaughan Williams wrote of ‘the miasma of the languishing and sentimental hymn tunes which so often disfigure our services’ ^[36]) Whereas it is indeed reasonable to characterise his music as often being sentimental, his critics never paused to explain why nineteenth century church services, which were replete with sentimental imagery, prose and choreography, should not be accompanied by music of a like kind. Nor did they explain why sentimentality per se is a bad thing, nor why music invariably improves in inverse proportion to its sentimental content. As one writer put it, in a wider consideration of the subject: “Something is wrong with sentimentality: the only question is, What is it?” ^[37] As for Dykes’s harmonies generally (of which the twentieth century writers Erik Routley and Kenneth Long were outspoken in their disparagement), scholars in recent years have questioned the twentieth century orthodoxy which condemned Dykes’s music out of hand, with Professors Arthur Hutchings, Nicholas Temperley and (especially) Jeremy Dibble seeing the importance of Dykes’s pioneering work in moving hymn-tunes from the bland and four-square long metre tunes which had been the staple of Tate and Brady’s New Version of the Psalms.

And regarding the author of this hymn, which is nothing if not sentimental…

Frederick William Faber was born in 1814 at Calverley, then within the Parish of Calverley in the West Riding of Yorkshire,^[1] where his grandfather, Thomas Faber, was the vicar. His father served the local bishop of the Church of England as his secretary.^[2]

Faber attended grammar school at Bishop Auckland in County Durham for a short time, but a large portion of his boyhood was spent in Westmorland. He afterwards attended the Harrow School for five years, followed by enrollment in 1832 at Balliol College at the University of Oxford. In 1834, he obtained a scholarship at the University College, from which he graduated. In 1836 he won the Newdigate Prize for a poem on “The Knights of St John,” which elicited special praise from John Keble. Among his college friends were Arthur Penrhyn Stanley and Roundell Palmer, 1st Earl of Selborne. After graduation he was elected a fellow of the college.

Faber’s family was of Huguenot descent, and Calvinist beliefs were strongly held by them. When Faber had come to Oxford, he was exposed to the Anglo-Catholic preaching of the Oxford Movement which was beginning to develop in the Church of England. One of its most prominent proponents was the popular preacher John Henry Newman, vicar of the University Church of St Mary the Virgin. Faber struggled with these divergent forms of Christian beliefs and life. In order to relieve his tension, he would take long vacations in the Lake District, where he would write poetry. There he was befriended by another poet, William Wordsworth. He finally abandoned the Calvinistic views of his youth and became an enthusiastic follower of Newman.^[2]^[3]

O come and mourn with me awhile; O come ye to the Savior’s side; O come, together let us mourn: Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

Have we no tears to shed for him, While soldiers scoff and foes deride? Ah! Look how patiently he hangs: Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

Seven times he spake, seven words of love; And all three hours his silence cried For mercy on the souls of men: Jesus, our Lord, is crucified.

O love of God, O sin of man! In this dread act your strength is tried, And victory remains with love: For he, our Love, is crucified!

085.AhHolyJesus

Please turn to number 85 and join with the clarinets in, “Ah, Holy Jesus”.

Number: 85
First Line: Ah, Holy Jesus
Name: HERBSTLIEBSTER JESU.
Meter: 11 11 11, 5.
Tempo: Slowly and solemnly
Music: Johann Cruger, 1598-1662
Text: Johann Heerman, 1585-1647
Tr. Robert Bridges, 1844-1930
Text from The Yattendon Hymnal, edited by Robert Bridges

It appears that Robert Bridges was a rather well known English poet in the early part of the 20th Century.

Robert Seymour Bridges, OM (23 October 1844 – 21 April 1930) was Britain’s poet laureate from 1913 to 1930. A doctor by training, he achieved literary fame only late in life. His poems reflect a deep Christian faith, and he is the author of many well-known hymns. It was through Bridges’ efforts that Gerard Manley Hopkins achieved posthumous fame.

Bridges made an important contribution to hymnody with the publication in 1899 of his Yattendon Hymnal, which he created specifically for musical reasons. This collection of hymns, although not a financial success, became a bridge between the Victorian hymnody of the last half of the 19th century and the modern hymnody of the early 20th century.

His translation of the hymn is a bit Masochistic. I suppose that is very English, as well.

Ah, holy Jesus, how has thou offended,
That man to judge thee hath in hate pretended?
By foes derided, by thine own rejected,
O most afflicted.

Who was the guilty? Who brought this upon thee?
That man to treason, Jesus, hath undone thee.
‘Twas I, Lord Jesus, I it was denied thee:
I crucified thee.

Lo, the good Shepherd for the sheep is offered;
The slave has sinned, and the Son has suffered;
For man’s atonement, while he nothing heedeth,
God intercedeth.

For me, kind Jesus, was thine Incarnation,
Thy mortal sorrow, and they life’s oblation;
Thy death of anguish and thy bitter Passion,
For my salvation.

Therefore, kind Jesus, since I cannot pay thee,
I do adore thee, and will every pray thee,
Think on they pity and thy love unswerving,
Not my deserving. Amen.

084.AtTheCrossHerStationKeeping

Please turn to number 84 and join with the clarinets in “At The Cross, Her Station Keeping”.

Number: 84
First Line: At the Cross, her station keeping
Name: STABAT MATER
Meter: 8 8 7. D.
Tempo: Slowly, with dignity
Music: Mainz Gesangbuch, 1661
Text: XIII cent.
Tr. Edward Caswall, 1814-78, and others

Clarinet Arrangement: 084-AtTheCrossHerStationKeeping

The Stabat Mater is a 13th-century Catholic hymn to Mary, which portrays her suffering as Jesus Christ‘s mother during his crucifixion. Its author may be either the Franciscan friar Jacopone da Todi or Pope Innocent III.^[1]^[2]^[3] The title comes from its first line, Stabat Mater dolorosa, which means “the sorrowful mother was standing”.^[4]

The hymn is sung at the liturgy on the memorial of Our Lady of Sorrows. The Stabat Mater has been set to music by many Western composers, most famously by Palestrina (~1590), Vivaldi (1712), Domenico (1715) and Alessandro Scarlatti (1723), Pergolesi (1736), Joseph Haydn (1767), Rossini (1831-42), Dvořák (1876–77), Verdi (1896-97), Karol Szymanowski (1925–26), Poulenc (1950) and Arvo Pärt (1985).

I wanted to do something unusual with this rather well known and short hymn.

I played first played through the hymn 3 times at 35bpm. Then I doubled it and played at 70bpm. Finally I finished it playing at 140bpm. I was tempted to add another verse at 280bpm, but that proved a bit elusive.

An interesting exercise, trying to keep the beats in all the parts lined up despite the different tempos.

Enough About You Professionally

“Enough about you professionally. I see from your resume that you write ‘SavoyStomp.com’. Tell me about the Aviation Cocktail. I’ve been trying to perfect it…”

One of the biggest challenges to stopping drinking, well, more accurately, continuing to not drink, is redefining your life without alcohol, and finding the acceptable parameters for interactions in your life, which might, in the past have included alcohol.

One method is to stop hanging out with drinkers when you stop drinking.

However, for most of us, after, say, 30 years of drinking socially with friends and family, it’s pretty impossible to completely isolate yourself from alcohol and drinkers.

I mean, unless you pick up and move yourself to a Muslim country and start a new life, you’re going to have to talk to your friends and family, and you’re probably going to have to talk about drinks and drinking. Not to mention deal with people drinking around you when you’re not.

I may have a particular problem here, as, for most of the last 10 or 15 years much of my identity, and many of my interactions with friends, have revolved around a singular obsession with cocktails, spirits, and drinking.

So, frankly, with a lot of people I know, we don’t have much else to talk about besides booze and cocktails.

And, also, I do still know A LOT about booze and cocktails.

I didn’t forget everything I know about alcoholic drinks because I stopped drinking, (though I did try a bit to forget and avoid those conversations for a while.)

I don’t have any real answers.

But it’s something I’m going to be thinking about, and writing about for this blog.

Imitation of Life

A lot of the available non-child, non-alcoholic beverages in the US are alcohol-free versions of boozy beverages.

Non-alcoholic beer, non-alcoholic wine, and such.

I am ambivalent about most.

First, as a non-drinker, I don’t super want to be reminded of what I am missing in alcoholic beverages when I drink a non-alcoholic beverage.

With every non-alcoholic wine I’ve ever tried, about all I’ve ever thought is, “Wow, this is a suckier version of wine, without the alcohol. I’d rather drink grape juice.”

Likewise, with non-alcoholic beer, while some are actually pretty OK, the point of drinking non-alcoholic beer is sort of lost on me.

As my friend Camper English once said about the non-alcoholic beverages at a certain tiki bar, all the calories and none of the buzz.

I guess part of it is, imitations always fall short.

The best non-alcoholic versions of alcoholic beverages ever get is “OK”.

They’re never “great” beverages.

And to get back to my issues with a specific example, I like sparkling tonic water with a squeezed lime wedge, but mostly drinking them reminds me that I miss the Gin and Tonics I used to drink. And frankly, a tonic and lime is just a pale imitation of a Gin and Tonic.

So that’s not SUPER ideal. For a lot of reasons.

So, I propose some rules for non-alcoholic beverages:

First, and foremost, they must be tasty on their own merits. They should be great drinks without alcohol.

Second, please leave off reminding me of alcoholic beverages with pale imitations.

Third, they should not be over rich. My main rule for adult beverages is they should be “more-ish”.

You should get to the bottom of your drink and say, “That was tasty! Maybe I’ll have another!”

Not, “That was kind of tasty to start, but I could barely finish it by the time I got to the bottom, and now I don’t feel like drinking anything else. Or even eating my dinner.”

Dealer’s Choice No. 1, 2017.01.21

Notes from a non-drinking bartender.

I see you have coffee liqueur.

Perhaps a cocktail with that.

I feel like it might be better with a Dark Spirit, but I like most spirits.

Surprise me.

Dealer’s Choice No. 1, 2017.01.21

2 oz Bourbon
1/2 oz St. George Coffee Liqueur
1/2 oz Carpano Antica Vermouth
1/4 oz Leopold’s Maraschino Liqueur
2 dash Walnut Bitters

Stir until chilled and strain into a stemmed cocktail glass. No Garnish.

083.BeholdTheLambOfGod

Please turn to number 83 and join with the clarinets in “Behold the Lamb of God”.

Number: 83
First Line: Behold the Lamb of God
Name: WIGAN
Meter: 6 6 6 4, 8 8 4
Tempo: Devotionally
Music: Samuel Sebastian Wesley, 1810-76
Text: Matthew Bridges, 1800-94 a.

Clarinet Arrangement: 083.BeholdTheLambOfGod

This is the first hymn in celebration (if that is the appropriate word) of Good Friday. Supposedly the day Jesus Christ was crucified.

The lyrics are not particularly amazing, but the tune is pretty cool. I always like a minor hymn.

This hymn is a bit challenging for Hymprovisation as it’s kind of hard to exactly tell what the keys should be. It starts in G minor, modulates to G major for a bit, then to (maybe) d major, back to d minor, and finishes in d major. All within the space of 15 measures.

However, you can mostly play in G minor for the whole thing, if you are a bit careful.

Samuel Sebastian Wesley (14 August 1810 – 19 April 1876) was an English organist and composer.

Born in London, he was the eldest child in the composer Samuel Wesley‘s second family, which he formed with Sarah Suter having separated from his wife Charlotte.^[1] Samuel Sebastian was the grandson of Charles Wesley. His middle name derived from his father’s lifelong admiration for the music of Bach.

Famous in his lifetime as one of his country’s leading organists and choirmasters, he composed almost exclusively for the Church of England, which continues to cherish his memory.

—

One notable feature of his career is his aversion to equal temperament, an aversion which he kept for decades after this tuning method had been accepted on the Continent and even in most of England. Such distaste did not stop him from substantial use of chromaticism in several of his published compositions.

While at Winchester Cathedral Wesley was largely responsible for the Cathedral’s acquisition in 1854 of the Father Willis organ which had been exhibited at The Great Exhibition, 1851. The success of the Exhibition organ led directly to the award of the contract to Willis for a 100-stop organ for St George’s Hall, Liverpool built in 1855. Wesley was the consultant for this major and important project, but the organ was, arguably, impaired for some years by Wesley’s insistence that it was initially tuned to unequal temperament.

Wesley, with Father Willis, can be credited with the invention of the concave and radiating organ pedalboard, but demurred when Willis proposed that it should be known as the “Wesley-Willis” pedalboard. However, their joint conception has been largely adopted as an international standard for organs throughout the English-speaking world and those exported elsewhere.

082.ComeToCalvarysHolyMountain

Please turn to number 82 and join with the clarinets in, “Come to Calvary’s Holy Mountain”.

Number: 82
First Line: Come to Calvary’s Holy Mountain
Name: HOLY MOUNTAIN.
Meter: 8 7, 8 7, 7 7.
Tempo: In flowing style
Music: Ludvig M. Lindeman, 1812-87
Text: James Montgomery, 1771-1854

Clarinet Arrangement: 082.ComeToCalvarysHolyMountain

The tune for this one is actually called, “NAAR MIT ØIE” and was composed or arranged by a Norwegian composer and collector of Norwegian folk songs named Ludvig M. Lindeman:

Ludvig Mathias Lindeman was born in Trondheim, Sør-Trøndelag, Norway. He was the seventh of ten children born to Ole Andreas Lindeman (1769–1857) and Anna Severine Hickmann (1782–1844). In 1833 he was sent to Oslo to take his final exams and then studied theology at the university. In 1839, Lindeman succeed his elder brother, Jacob Andreas Lindeman (1805–1846), as cantor and organist of the Oslo Cathedral. Lindeman was in the position for 48 years until his death in 1887.

Lindeman was a contributor to Jørgen Moe‘s song and folk-ballad collection, Samling af Sange, Folkeviser og Stev i norske Alumuedialekter (1840), putting together the melody supplement to the volume at Bishop Moe’s request. The following year, he published his own selection of Norwegian folk melodies, Norske Fjeldmelodier harmonisk bearbeidede for Pianoforte (1841).^[2] In 1848, he applied for a university grant to support a trip in the hill country in order to recorded folk melodies. Later he made two collecting trips, in 1851 and 1864. The first trip was to Telemark, Hardanger, Bergen and Hallingdal and the last to Lillehammer. In all, he collected about 3,000 melodies and lyrics. He published Ældre og nyere norske Fjeldmelodier “Earlier and more recent Norwegian mountain melodies,” in twelve-volumes during 1853–1863. This first edition contained 540 melodies, but Lindeman supplemented the corpus with Halvhundrede norske Fjeldmelodier (“Fifty Norwegian maountain melodies,” 1862).^[2]

When in 1871, the major new organ in the Royal Albert Hall in London was inaugurated, Lindeman was invited to perform, along with other noted organists including Anton Bruckner and Camille Saint-Saëns. Lindeman was appointed Knight of the Royal Norwegian Order of St. Olav during 1870. Between 1871 and 1875, he published Melodier til Landstads Salmebog, containing music for use within the Church of Norway. In 1873, he was invited to write music for the coronation in Trondheim of King Oscar II of Sweden and Queen Sophie. In 1876, he wrote a cantata for the inauguration of Bygdøy chapel. In 1883, together with his son Peter, he started the Organist School in Oslo. The Conservatory was in operation until 1973, when the Norwegian Academy of Music was established. To honour the memory of the Lindeman family the biggest concert hall at the Academy is named the Lindeman Hall.^[3] Ludvig Mathias Lindeman died in Oslo at 75 years of age. He was buried at Oslo Cathedral. In 1912, a bust of Lindeman was erected at the church.^[4]

081.TheWordsOnTheCross

Please turn to number 81 and join in singing, “The Words on the Cross”.

Number: 81
First Line: Jesus, in thy dying woes
Name: SWEDISH LITANY.
Meter: 7 7, 7 6.
Tempo: Solemnly
Music: Swedish Melody, 1697
Text: Thomas Benson Pollock, 1836-96

Clarinet Arrangement: 081.TheWordsOnTheCross

Along with the words Jesus Christ supposedly uttered on the cross, there are 21 verses to this short hymn.

To get some of the feel for that repetition, I decided I would play the melody once for each spoken part on the cross, and once between each utterance. I also decided I would read the “words on the cross” along with playing the hymn.

Count your lucky stars, it only ends up being 15 times through the hymn.

Tips for a Successful Detox-uary

A lot of people choose to not drink for a month a year, and a lot of those people choose January to do it.

Worn out by the holiday parties, drinking, and eating to excess, a Dry January seems almost like a relief.

When I was drinking, I also used to try to do this.

(Of course, nearly every year I would find some excuse to start drinking again after a couple weeks.)

As a now somewhat seasoned non-drinker, here is some advice for making it through January.

If you are a heavy drinker, and stop drinking, the first month is the worst. Maybe the worst part of the whole experience.

(If you are a really heavy drinker, be careful. Talk to your Doctor first. It may make more sense to taper off, or just reduce your intake for January, rather than to go cold turkey. Be honest with yourself.)

And the first few days of the first week will be awful, especially if you overdid it on New Years’ Eve.

(I can never decide where the apostrophe goes on New Years Eve. is it after or before the ‘S’?)

Eventually, after the really bad part, you’ll get to a sort of “up” place, after a week or two.

I believe AA calls this the “Rosy Glow” period.

Then afterwards, you will level off, things will start seem back to normal again.

This is when you will really start to crave drinking again.

That is just the way it works.

Some tips:

If you are committed to a successful alcohol “Detoxuary”, don’t be too hard on yourself about sugar/calories.

Your body’s metabolism is going to be seriously missing the empty calories from alcohol and you are going to have all sorts of cravings. A little ice cream (probably) isn’t going to kill you. For the record, I have found it harder to deal with my body’s craving for the empty calories related to drinking, than my craving for alcohol itself. Metabolism is very powerful, once it has been trained.

Find something else to do instead of drinking. Go for hikes. Watch movies. Re-take up an instrument you enjoyed playing as a kid. Join an athletic league. Go to the gym. Exercise. In general, I cannot stress enough how important it is to find something, anything, else to occupy yourself and your mind instead of drinking.

Avoid situations which you previously associated with drinking. Go to the cafe instead of the bar. If you drink at home, change up your routine. Skip your serious drinking friends for a month, they will just rib you and give you a hard time. They’ll still be there at the bar after your “Drynuary”. I guarantee it. Though, they will probably still make fun of you for calling your exercise in abstinence “Drynuary”.

If you can’t avoid situations which you previously associated with drinking, be honest and forthright with people about not drinking. Don’t lie or try to sneak around the subject. It doesn’t work, people who drink are super aware of what other people are drinking. If you waffle about it, or try to lie, in my experience, you’ll just end up drinking one way or the other. If you’re honest, you’ll probably be surprised by how supportive your friends will be.

As I’ve mentioned before, find a substitute drink, which you enjoy enough to imbibe as frequently as you drank beer/wine/spirits/cocktails. I don’t know what works for you, but I currently like an equal parts mix of Lime LaCroix and Cloudy Apple Juice/Cider with a splash of Knudsen Just Cranberry. Have your drink on hand at all times. Bring it with you to parties. Take it to picnics.

If you are in a relationship, if it is at all possible, make not drinking a team effort. Make up charts. Cross of the calendar. Whatever you need to do, but you will have a much better chance at success if your partner isn’t next to you on the couch with a Mai Tai or Martini tempting you with a drink. If you can’t convince them to join you, tell them you would prefer if they didn’t drink around you for a month. But don’t shame them into closet drinking, or distance them from you. Keep the lines of communication open.

Also, just sort of FYI, it’s weird, but after not drinking for a bit, you may find you are hyper sensitive to the smells associated with drinks and drinkers. Things you never noticed while drinking. The breath and smell of people who have been drinking, that sort of thing. That is what I’ve found, anyway. It’s fun, and you too can start playing the “hand sanitizer user or vodka drunk” game on public transit.

Best of luck and don’t be too hard on yourself if you slip up a bit. You can always try again next year (or next month)!

Keep it positive!