For today’s music therapy, some simply beautiful poetry and compositions for contemplating the night sky, nature, and inward peace, for all religions, pagans, agnostics, and atheists:
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Hi, I’m Itzl!
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The Heavens and the Glory of the Firmament - Late Renaissance/early Baroque composition by Heinrich Schutz, just sublime. Fantastic performance here by Voces8:
This beautiful 8-part motet by Schutz has a text which shows a relatively open appreciation of astronomy for the time — of course it mentions God, but the sun and stars and space are the real stars of the show:
The Heavens Declare His Glory
- The heavens declare the glory of God: and the firmament sheweth his handywork.
- One day telleth another: and one night certifieth another.
- There is neither speech nor language: but their voices are heard among them.
- Their sound is gone out into all lands: and their words into the ends of the world.
- In them hath he set a tabernacle for the sun: which cometh forth as a bridegroom out of his chamber, and rejoiceth as a giant to run his course.
- It goeth forth from the uttermost part of the heaven, and runneth about unto the end of it again: and there is nothing hid from the heat thereof.
- Glory be to the Father, and to the Son, and to the Holy Ghost; as it was in the beginning, is now, and ever shall be, world without end. Amen.
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Franz Joseph Haydn’s magnificent The Creation (‘Die Schöpfung’) Oratorio:
Check out the above elemental intro, The Representation of Chaos with Ring Nebula image as backdrop. The entire piece is over an hour so we have excerpted the most impressive choruses:
Awake The Harp, (Recitative and Fugue):
A stirring Fugal Chorus, recalling Handel. Ah, Papa Haydn!
Achieved is the Glorious Work:
At 5:10 a magnificent Double Fugue follows the Chorus and Interlude. Handelian in conception, thanks Haydn!
The fantastic Finale: Praise the Lord Ye Voices All:
A triumphant ending with an inspired double choral fugue at 0:40, and all soloists joining in the counterpoint to a wonderful finale, rivalling The Messiah.
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Music of the Spheres Waltz by Josef Strauss. Beautiful, ethereal introduction evoking the night sky:
This might have you liking Josef Strauss even more than his famous brother Johann! Both fine Viennese composers of the later 19th Century and friends of Brahms. Johann said his brother was the more talented; he may have been right since Josef was a polymath inventor, engineer, scientist, poet, playwright, painter, and fine pianist and composer who shared conducting duties for the Strauss Orchestra.
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Tomorrow is the last Supermoon of this cycle, so celebrate with Debussy's famous Clair De Lune (Moonlight), easy on the ears but not an easy piano piece: Clair De Lune from Suite Bergamasque with the original piano score by Claude Debussy, just gorgeous:
Played brilliantly here by Stanislav Stanchev. Must be flowing and sound easy, smoothly executing the 4-part counterpoint - 4 independent musical voices, sometimes divisii - without muddying them too much with the pedal, which should be leggiero except in the Harmonic Planing passages (i.e. the Harmonic Planar movement of the Quartal Chord structures in the middle section — those can be somewhat more blended where there’s long bass notes or chords). Debussy’s original score is not for novices!
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Choose Something Like A Star, a very likeable NeoClassical/Modern choral piece by Randall Thompson; a movement from his Frostiana for Mixed Chorus and Chamber Orchestra:
Based on this lovely and profound poem by Robert Frost:
Choose Something Like a Star
- O Star (the fairest one in sight),
- We grant your loftiness the right
- To some obscurity of cloud -
- It will not do to say of night,
- Since dark is what brings out your light.
- Some mystery becomes the proud.
- But to be wholly taciturn
- In your reserve is not allowed.
- Say something to us we can learn
- By heart and when alone repeat.
- Say something! And it says 'I burn.'
- But say with what degree of heat.
- Talk Fahrenheit, talk Centigrade.
- Use language we can comprehend.
- Tell us what elements you blend.
- It gives us strangely little aid,
- But does tell something in the end.
- And steadfast as Keats' Eremite,
- Not even stooping from its sphere,
- It asks a little of us here.
- It asks of us a certain height,
- So when at times the mob is swayed
- To carry praise or blame too far,
- We may choose something like a star
- To stay our minds on and be staid.
- Robert Lee Frost
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