Shave and a haircut, two bits

One of the reasons I love what I do is the unmitigated delight of being surprised by music; whether it's a workman whistling a tune I've never heard before, a party celebrating a wedding, or grieving family mourning a bereavement, every now and then, the music just bursts out in a spontaneous expression of our humanity no matter where, or when, in the world we live.
Throwing in my lot with Jacob Smollett and his granddaughter Amelia, on their way down to Wilmington delivering farm produce to Bencher's chandler has been enjoyable, but not particularly profitable. Old Mr.Smollett has admitted to knowing several songs which he has no intention of teaching young Amelia and Amelia has taught me a couple of interesting, but generally unremarkable schoolyard songs.
While Jacob fine-tuned the details of his deal with Captain Bencher, Amelia and I watched the longshoremen shouldering and carrying barrels, bales, and crates up the gangplanks to the Caroline. For a while, Amelia was held spellbound by the noise and smoke of a steam-powered derrick working further down the quay but the quay is a working environment, with heavy loads, strong men, and powerful machinery at work, and I was able to deter her from trying to get a closer look.
Lunch break for the longshoremen doesn't happen at 12 noon sharp; these men work until the ship is loaded or unloaded, one or two men taking a break at a time, as needed under the watchful eye of the bo'sun. By three o'clock the Caroline's cargo had all been loaded and the ship was only waiting on the harbour pilot and the tide.
With an hour or so before they would be needed again, a small group of stevedores had settled themselves on a stack of woolen bales and formed an impromptu choir. What surprised me was that these men (three negroes and two white men) were improvising what I would have termed barbershop harmony and their performance was in no way blemished by the occasional discord:

The youngest member of the group had a question about rhythm:
“Perfesser, yes'day you tole me you can write music down, on paper, same as writin' on paper? kin you show me how?”
“Well now, young Amos, let's take a real simple example – ‘shave an' a haircut; two bits’, I would write that like this:”
And taking a pencil and a scrap of paper from his pocket he jotted down the following sample:

The written content of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

Danny Boy - just squeezing in, in time for TOMORROW!

http://www.scribd.com/doc/28303925/Danny-Boy
If you don't know the words to this song, perhaps you should steer clear of the Shamrock Bar this week! Or if you have a musical bone in your body, get a free copy of the song.

What has Ireland done for you?

• Well, there's the Coffey still, used in making Whiskey (but nobody has invented a Whiskey still for making Coffee yet. Bad luck.)


• Francis Rynd invented the hollow needle used in hypodermic syringes. I leave it to you to decide if that was a good thing or not


• Earnest Walton, working with John Cockcroft, helped to split the atom for the first time, at which point I refer my reader to historic footage of The First Irish Moon Shot

A mouse in her room woke Miss Dowd,
She was frightened, it must be allowed.
Soon a happy thought hit her
To scare off the critter:
She sat up in bed and meowed

... and New York

Has anyone told you, you look like a penguin? Seriously, you look very dashing. Are you ready to hit the street? I think I could fall in love with the Chrysler Royal that you hired for our runabout! I was thinking that drinks before the show wouldn't be an option and of course, we wouldn't want to risk getting on the wrong side of the law, but I had a word with the desk clerk earlier and he hinted in the broadest terms that Fifth Avenue is a very hospitable area for folks like us from out of town.
When I was checking the paper earlier, I saw that Jerome Kern's Show Boat is playing at the Ziegfeld Theater, and if they don't have any seats there, Merry-Go-Round is playing at the Sam Harris Theater.

At this point, I need several aspirin and a shot of java to facilitate the proper recollection of the events of last evening. Show Boat was wonderful. I love live theater and now my head is full of songs like “After The Ball”, “Can't Help Lovin' Dat Man” and “Ole Man River” (although I would have liked to see Paul Robeson in the role, I have to say that Jules Bledsoe was very good). And I apologize sincerely for complaining (I remember that part very clearly) about not taking the breezer; after ankling into “Jumpin’” Jack Jones’ Jazz Joint we both would have been a danger to traffic. Are you sure we weren't a danger to the cab that took us home? Did I do anything frightfully embarrassing? I really don't remember.
What I do remember was the hopped-up kids in the place. And I don't mean just the babies, I'm sure I saw flappers, dappers, and Methuselah himself putting away the coffin-varnish. I couldn't have imagined such a mix; from dewdroppers to face-stretchers. If they weren't getting a wiggle on they were sinking the juice like it was going out of style! And maybe it's the product of my gin-soaked imagination, but I remember the band being hot stuff, they were rocking the dive with their jive! Was it my imagination again, or did they have a negro up there tooting that horn? It's details like that that make me realize how far we have come even if we still have a long way to go.

References

Get hip to the jive with a little help.
And stay out of the way of the ladies of the Manhattan Women's Christian Temperance Union!
And when you visit the watering-hole, make sure you know where the other back door is. Better leave your soda in a hurry than wait all night in the cooler to talk to the beak in the morning.
                    

The    written content of this work is licensed under a Creative    Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.      

A Passage to India

When the director asked me if I liked curry, I should have suspected something. Apart from the routine debriefing questions, my director never asks me anything unless there's an ulterior motive of some kind. And here I am, having vowed never to risk life and limb on a wooden ship, sailing for India! We're only ten days out of Portsmouth and already I am developing a potentially lifelong aversion to salt herring. For variety we have some fresh fruit aboard, but it is strictly rationed, as is cheese and the rum which the crew gulp down like nectar but which in my opinion might serve as mouthwash.
The good thing about my growing aversion to dried fish is that I am developing a rapport with the ship's cat, very imaginatively named "Blackie". So, what else have I learned so far?

• Life at sea is damp.
• The crew aren't altogether happy about having a passenger aboard. Particularly a female passenger. But I am allowed on deck for a couple of hours each day as long as I don't distract the sailors from their duties.
• Since my (tiny - think broom-closet) cabin is relatively warm and comfortable the handful of books I brought along are relatively safe from the aforementioned damp and I have as much time for reading as I could ever want.
• In an effort to relieve the monotony of my diet, I tried a piece of hardtack. Hard is right. Even after soaking it in the soup of the day, it remains like homebaked concrete.
• Sailors are an impossibly superstitious group. I hope to write more about that later.

The best part of the voyage, in my opinion, is that the sailors are well-versed in all forms of recreation and during off-hours when more-or-less one third of the crew are off watch there is music, games and chatter to be found all over the ship. Which is to say, in an area roughly half the size of my front yard at home.
Having never been much of a knitter, I thought a lengthy voyage like this might provide me with ideal opportunity to learn and a couple of days ago I was on deck winding the yarn I bought before leaving Portsmouth when Blackie found me. The help of the ship's cat might have been enough trouble for me, but the ship's carpenter who also plays the viol saw the mischief that Blackie was threatening and struck up with the following ditty which has since been entered in my list of some of the most ribald I have ever heard!
                   

The    written content of this work is licensed under a Creative    Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.       

In the arms of the Angels

Thank you, Sharon, for permission to share this song.

                   

The    written content of this work is licensed under a Creative    Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.       

A Dedicated Follower of Fashion!

Ordinarily, I don't approve of the I'm so glad that didn't happen to me attitude. But after celebrating Thanksgiving with Annabelle Sarah Hale (and with not only her permission, but her encouragement) the following song (to the tune of "Oh Susanna" for those of us who don't read music) struck us both as an entertaining gift to share with music-lovers for ages to come.

I think the lyrics tell a better story than anything I could concoct!

                   

The    written content of this work is licensed under a Creative    Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.       

Love is ... the oldest, yet the latest thing

To paraphrase Lewis Carroll's "Alice", all this jumping back and forth in time makes one quite giddy! I used to think it was bad enough when I woke up in the morning and couldn't remember where I was. Now I have to think "when am I?"
And as if that wasn't enough, I almost didn't get to go with the excursion I had requested. Madame director wanted me to go to France at the beginning of the seventeenth century, while I wanted to follow the link back from John of Salisbury.
In the end I managed to convince her of the value of the trail I was following, and since the technicalities make it impossible to travel to the same place and time more than once, my request was reluctantly granted. And so it is that I find myself in the company of some of the most extraordinary minds ever to gather in a single place:
Here, in 1139, at the Abbey of St.Gildas-de-Rhuys in Brittany, Father Abbot Pierre Abelard takes time from his monastic duties to engage students from some of the furthest reaches of the known world in philosophical and religious debates.
I am surprised (but perhaps, unfairly so) that among the young men who attend so eagerly and listen so attentively to his discourses, are several dark faces with features suggestive of Arab, or Indian heritage. I would have thought that differences in religious belief might have deterred these fellows from aspiring to learn from someone who is now known as much for his sermons as for his rhetoric and knowledge of classics.
Of course, Pierre Abelard was not always a friar. As a young man, quite apart from his promise as a scholar, he had opportunity to indulge his appetites at the various hostelries that catered to the students of Notre Dame university in Paris, but it seems physical pleasures were generally less enticing than intellectual ones. Until, that is, he got to know Heloise, a most unusual young woman taking full advantage of her uncle's guardianship to study alongside the menfolk.
The unhappy outcome of their relationship was that Heloise was compelled to enter holy orders, while Abelard was castrated by her uncle! But not before Heloise had conceived a child.
Despite their forced separation, it seems their love for one another never died.
In tribute to one of the great love stories of all time (for more information, I recommend the tale of Abelard and Heloise), I would like to reproduce in modern notation, the chant of Abbess Hildegard von Bingen, received recently at this abbey with other correspondence.

The full text of Pierre Abelard's own account of their story, Historia Calamitatum is available as an online e-text.

The written content of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

With the tongues of Men and of Angels

"For he who sings praise, does not only praise, but also praises joyfully; he who sings praise, not only sings, but also loves Him whom he is singing about/to/for. There is a praise-filled public proclamation in the praise of someone who is confessing/acknowledging (God), in the song of the lover (there is) love."

(St. Augustine, Commentary on Psalm 73, 1)

Whenever I see John of Salisbury, Bishop of Chartres, I can't help thinking of the Bishop from the Lewis chessmen. A stocky saxon nobleman, with a permanently fixed distracted expression as if he's always in conversation with someone hiding under his mitre, but lively, ice-blue eyes, a firm handshake, and those extraordinary brightly-colored clerical robes.
The reason I sought out the Bishop was to learn more from him about the practice of singing organum which is rapidly gaining popularity in the church community. Since the earliest days of the established church, song has been an integral part of worship, but until recently the singing was limited to the style which eventually became known as Gregorian chant, although there is no solid connection between the tradition of an unaccompanied choir singing a melody in unison. In the year we are visiting, 1179, opinions are still divided over the question of whether chant should be in blessed unison or heavenly harmony.
In conversation with one of the Deans of the Université de Notre Dame here in Paris, the Bishop expressed his opinion which seems to favor continuing progress with careful moderation:

"When you hear the soft harmonies of the various singers, some taking high and others low parts, some singing in advance, some following in the rear, others with pauses and interludes, you would think yourself listening to a concert of sirens rather than men, and wonder at the powers of voices … whatever is most tuneful among birds, could not equal. Such is the facility of running up and down the scale; so wonderful the shortening or multiplying of notes, the repetition of the phrases, or their emphatic utterance: the treble and shrill notes are so mingled with tenor and bass, that the ears lost their power of judging. When this goes to excess it is more fitted to excite lust than devotion; but if it is kept in the limits of moderation, it drives away care from the soul and the solicitudes of life, confers joy and peace and exultation in God, and transports the soul to the society of angels..."

I was also surprised and delighted when I learned that in his youth, the Bishop was a student here himself, under the tutelage of Pierre Abelard, famed forever in the story of Abelard and Heloise!
For the students here in Paris, this is an age of wonders. A time when the glory of God seems almost tangible, the Kingdom of God is certainly at hand, and anything might be possible. And even hiding behind the persona of one of the Bishop's retinue, I can feel the tide of excitement surging as young men engage in lively debates in the taverns nearest to the schools of the Université, and learned doctors speculate on ways in which the majesty of the Creator is revealed in His creation.
Undoubtedly the most exciting evening of my own visit here is attendance at an evening service in the cathedral at which the Bishop will officiate; the music the choir is singing is an organum triplum composed by Magister Perotin.

Perhaps it is because they are used to helping students to answer queries, that when I approach the Bishop with my question about the beginnings of organum singing, not only does he answer me from his own experience, but he also tows me along through the huddle of worshippers to ask Magister Perotin himself!
Between the two of them I manage to understand that as early as the ninth century, choirs had begun to embellish the music on special occasions by dividing into two groups, one group singing tenor, the plain melody, and the other singing the same melody at a fourth, or fifth above, or below. And although there is a new development being tried experimentally by some choirs, the organum contrarium, in which the tenor is inverted by the vox organalis, the Bishop is not as enthusiastic for it as he is for Perotin's organum duplum and triplum.
Magister Perotin asks me whether I can read (have you ever tried reading a medieval manuscript? in latin, too); the library of the Université contains copies of the treatises Ad Organum Faciendum, (To Make Organum) and Musica Enchiriadis. As much as I would love to stay and study the manuscripts, I worry that my ineptitude as a reader might provoke too many questions about my background, and not for the first time, I find myself confounded. While the technology of my native time has made it possible for me to explore history, it has not provided me with any better recording media than my own brains.
I should mention that I didn't learn until almost I was ready to return to my own time, that Magister Perotin is well into his eighties, but I would have guessed his age to be roughly contemporary with the Bishop. Like Moses, his eye was not dimmed, nor his natural force abated!

In Memoriam: Midnight_In_Gethsemane 1953-2008

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank Szmytke of Flickr, for permission to use the image of the Lewis chessmen, and the M.A.B. soloists and M.Moriwaki for their transcription of Perotin's organum, shown above.

The written content of this work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 3.0 Unported License.

A Nine Days Wonder!

Even with a warm travelling cloak, on days like this I miss comforts like central heating. And the settle near the fireplace is already occupied so we will have to make do with one of the less conspicuous tables in the corner.

"Potboy? Two halves of mulled cider, if you please, for me and my companion here. And I fancy we shall have an ounce of Virginia tobacco if you have any." I chose this seat for us, so that we can eavesdrop on the conversation between Master Kemp (the fellow with the ruddy complexion) and Master Pinchbeck (pale face, straggly hair. Nice suede jacket though.)

Did you hear that? I love it when we can be in at the beginning of something like this! He just wagered with Kemp that he wouldn't jig from London to Norwich!

OK, by way of introduction, Will Kemp enjoys quite a reputation as a clown, and has done several seasons with the various theaters of London which is probably how Pinchbeck knows him. Before he went solo he was in the service of the Earl of Leicester for a while, which seems to be how he began building the network of contacts that brought him to London.

While I love Kemp's sense of humor, I find his keen observation a little daunting, so personally I would prefer to keep a little distance between us, but watch him, particularly if there's a dog in the vicinity. He can turn anything into business.

To conclude their wager, Pinchbeck and Kemp raise a toast and Kemp's tongue sticks to his mug! His expression goes through shock, desperation, and a sort of forlorn hope as he gestures to the landlord to indicate his plight. The landlord of course doesn't believe it (and neither do most of his customers who have turned to watch the spectacle. When one of the gentlemen present steps up with a poniard bared and offers (with a broad wink) to free master Kemp's tongue, Kemp adds gestures and some raucous protests to the facial expressions. Considering the business afterward, I think it must have lasted about five minutes until he managed to communicate to the landlord that a pinch of nutmeg might free his tongue, if he could be recompensed for his inconvenience with another drink.

Ladies and Gentlemen, without further ado, from Will Kemp's own written account of his Nine Daies Wonder;

To the true ennobled Lady, and his most bountifull Mistris, Mistris Anne Fitton, Mayde of Honour to the most sacred Royall Queene Elizabeth.

HONORABLE Mistris in the waine of my litle wit, I am forst to desire your protection, else euery Ballad-singer will proclaime me bankrupt of honesty. A sort of mad fellows seeing me merrily dispos'd in a Morrice, haue so bepainted mee in print since my gambols began from London to Norwich, that (hauing but an ill face before) I shall appeare to the world without a face, if your fayre hand wipe not away their foule coulors. One hath written Kemps farewell to the tune of Kery, mery, Buffe: another his desperate daungers in his late trauaile: the third his entertainement to New-Market; which towne I came neuer neere by the length of halfe the heath. Some sweare in a Trenchmore I haue trode a good way to winne the world: many say many thinges that were neuer thought. But in a word your poore seruant offers the truth of his progresse and profit to your honorable view, receiue it I beseech you, such as it is, rude and plaine, for I know your pure iudgement, lookes as soone to see beauty in a Blackamoore, or heare smooth speech from a Stammerer, as to finde any thing, but blunt mirth in a Morrice dauncer, especially such a one as Will Kemp, that hath spent his life in mad Iigges and merry iestes. Three reasons moooue mee to make publik this iourney, one to reproue lying fooles I neuer knew: the other to co[m]mend louing friends, which by the way I daily found: the third to shew my duety to your honorable selfe, whose fauours (among other bountifull friends) makes me (dispight of this sad world) iudge my hart Corke, & my heeles feathers, so that me thinkes I could flye to Rome (at least hop to Rome, as the olde Prouerb is) with a mortar on my head. In which light conceite I lowly begge pardon and leaue, for my Tabrer strikes his huntsup, I must to Norvvich: Imagine Noble Mistris, I am now setting from my Lord Mayors, the houre about seauen, the morning gloomy, the company many, my hart merry. Your worthy Ladiships most vnworthy seruant,

William Kemp.

Kemp's Jig on Google Maps References

Kemp's Nine Daies Wonder, by Will Kemp

To convert the code above to sheet music, or listen to the tunes, copy the code for a single song, then paste it here and [submit].