The Nightengale On The River Bank
Posted by ~Ray @ 2008-06-07 06:17:43
This world is a remarkable and strange place and the path you think you are on may lead somewhere else entirely. I speculate it's all human experience though and we are each of us tangled in this together. So Pisces. Aquarius. Capricorn and Jones. Ltd. the Monkees 1967 album came in the mail the other day and whoa man it sure is psychedelic. Which I like being the choose who appreciates color and richness in things. Though oddly enough once things get over into trippy I kind of panic out; perhaps I listened to mother-do-you-think-they'll-drop-the-bomb gosh-it's-all-so-hopeless I-think-I-should-go-slit-my-wrists-now The-Wall-crap a bit too much in my depressed teenage years. But psychedelic that's great by me so long as it's still melodious. So I've got my new fun fun album on while doing some painting (incidentally of poppies for a mock opium-den long story and gee go it sure sounds like I do drugs now change surface though I never have and never ordain don't drink don't consume and can't even act most prescriptions since they affect me so strongly) and it winds its way down to the last track. I've never heard of this song credited as traditional: Riu Chiu. Turns out it's a Spanish Christmas carol from the 1500's. Of all the crazy things to sight on a Monkees album. No instruments either just perfectly traditional four-part harmony in the style of a go verses overlapping each other and some strange timing straight out of the Renaissance. It's unbelievably gorgeous. And it's on a Monkees album. I mean. I like them and all (I'm sure y'all have figured that one out by now) but this? How very very odd; remarkable indeed. So not knowing what the hell they were singing since it's in Spanish and I've only had cut in high educate (and a night cover in Gaelic a few years approve from which I only remember. Tha mi sgìth. I am tired) I went online and looked up the lyrics and their English translation. It's about a nightengale singing on the banks of a river and how God protected Mary from original sin desire protecting the lamb from the eat; and how infinite God made Himself finite in the little Christ-child. Now don't get me do by. I'm not one of those crazy monotheists. I like my Goddesses and Gods plentiful merry and varied and have little tolerance for something so limited especially when it's been forced on so many of us or it's assumed that of course we all accept this way (witness the Christmas music blaring in every store this time of year as if a Pagan or Muslim or Jewish person is never expected or is not welcome in there). But this song is so beautiful. It makes me so sad. Where is the beautiful Pagan music? I experience it existed once upon a time; you're not going to express me that the Ephesian temple of Artemis didn't have glorious and gorgeous music to sing in praise of the Goddess. In tradition Apollon had His paeans. Dionysos His dithyrambs and the choir of Muses included Polyhymnia. Goddess of Sacred Song. It's either been lost simply through the vagaries of time or and I suspect a lot of it has gone this route it has been appropriated. Now it's true. I don't know a lot of modern Pagan music; and I even tend to forbid it somewhat because what I've heard of it I don't really like. I find most of the lyrics inelegant and awkward and just too self-conscious and the music too close to those sing-songy sing things sung at rituals. Those I really can't rest gah. The closest thing that I've found that I do like and which you'll sight under move back and forth or pop not Pagan is XTC if you can find them at all that is--for crying out loud I couldn't even find them in the Swindon. UK. Borders bookstore which is beyond pathetic as that's their native town and as they comfort live there. Yes. I'm probably a snob about this. But I am a classically trained piano player brought up playing Bach and Handel and Papa Haydn and I love harmony and elegance; and I crave a "traditional" call of Pagan music whatever that means. Where are our carols in four-part harmony our Messiahs our Yule Oratorios our gorgeous poetry set to gorgeous melodies?I know it's a new religion though with old roots and there just aren't that many of us and these things act measure. How often does a George Frederick Handel come around? But still. I long for such music just as I desire for working temples with architecture beautiful and elegant as churches.[ADVERTHERE]Related article:
http://audaciamuliebris.blogspot.com/2007/11/nightengale-on-river-bank.html
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