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+--- Thread: the best songs ever (/thread-160.html)
RE: the best songs ever - Eric the Green - 10-06-2016
Don't miss this one. The world-famous French organist Marie-Claire Alain (died february 26th, 2013 at the age of 86) plays Litanies by her brother Jehan Alain (1911-1940):
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jehan_Alain
http://www.jehanalain.com/contrib.jsp?tab=articles&lang=en
Jehan Alain specialized in dance-like, semi-jazzy, semi-modernist, neo-baroque works. One of the greatest organ compositions ever, especially among those pieces not by J.S.Bach, "Litanies" (1937) has a great story behind it, and some personal meaning for me too. Jehan Alain was a great young composer of great promise. Amid all the existential angst of his time, personally and historically, he wrote this piece based on an old Gregorian plain chant, and gave this explanation a few weeks later:
When in its extremity the Christian soul can find no new word to implore God's mercy, it tiredlessly repeats the same plea with vehement faith. The limits of reason are reached, and only faith can pursue its ascension.
He was an accomplished motorcycle rider. Three years later, Jehan volunteered to help hold back the German invasion of his country, and he was cut down in battle. "Always interested in mechanics, Alain was a skilled motorcyclist and became a dispatch rider in the Eighth Motorised Armour Division of the French Army. On 20 June 1940, he was assigned to reconnoitre the German advance on the eastern side of Saumur, and encountered a group of German soldiers at Le Petit-Puy. Coming around a curve, and hearing the approaching tread of the Germans, he abandoned his motorcycle and engaged the enemy troops with his carbine, killing 16 of them before being killed himself. He was posthumously awarded the Croix de Guerre for his bravery,[2] and according to Nicolas Slonimsky was buried, by the Germans, with full military honours" (wikipedia)
The piece does rise to lofty heights and transcends its time. I was able to learn this piece and play it in a local concert. I also got to hear his sister, organist and teacher and Bach expert/interpreter Marie-Claire Alain, play it at one of my favorite church venues, Grace Cathedral in San Francisco, on its wonderful Aeolian-Skinner/Harrison organ; I had also been named after one of the ministers there, and was baptized there (yes even I was baptized!). At the concert she also played Vierne's great finale to be posted later. Another time, I went to Grace Cathedral on new years eve 1985-1986 to hear Vierne's "Carillon of Westminster" (1927) ring in the new year, but my new car was "christened" by getting its tail light cracked while trying to get out of my parking place on Nob Hill!
Here's other great performances of "Litanies"
https://youtu.be/rVoLxmtgnsk
https://youtu.be/8jyNogNXMUc
Three Dances (1937/1940)
https://youtu.be/DgxeaWDNd3I
A few years later, Jehan Alain's friend and colleague Maurice Durufle wrote this reknowned tribute piece, loosely based on (and including) the theme of Litanies:
https://youtu.be/Or147RQSBOM
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maurice_Durufl%C3%A9
RE: the best songs ever - pbrower2a - 10-06-2016
Jehan Alain, a very promising composer who died young... another data-point of evidence of the destructiveness of fascism and militarism. I can only wonder what he could have become, as with Juan Crisostomo Arriaga (illness at 20 or so), Franz Schubert, George Gershwin, and Holocaust victim Gideon Klein.
We of course knew what Wolfgang Amadeus would have been as a mature composer.
RE: the best songs ever - Eric the Green - 10-07-2016
"They Can't Take That Away from Me" is a 1937 song written by George Gershwin and Ira Gershwin and introduced by Fred Astaire in the 1937 film Shall We Dance.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/They_Can%27t_Take_That_Away_from_Me
RE: the best songs ever - Eric the Green - 10-12-2016
Adagio For Strings by Samuel Barber, from String Quartet Op.11 (1936)
This piece became more famous as a part of Oliver Stone's movie "Platoon" (1986)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Adagio_for_Strings
RE: the best songs ever - Eric the Green - 10-12-2016
The Way You Look Tonight (1936)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Way_You_Look_Tonight
The song was written by Jerome Kern with lyrics by Dorothy Fields, and has become a standard. Fields later remarked, "The first time Jerry played that melody for me I went out and started to cry. The release absolutely killed me. I couldn't stop, it was so beautiful."
RE: the best songs ever - pbrower2a - 10-13-2016
Just to announce something important: an American has won the Nobel Prize for literature... Bob Dylan... for his song lyrics.
"Come senators, congressmen please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside and it's ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a' changin'!"
RE: the best songs ever - gabrielle - 10-13-2016
(10-13-2016, 08:45 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: Just to announce something important: an American has won the Nobel Prize for literature... Bob Dylan... for his song lyrics.
"Come senators, congressmen please heed the call
Don't stand in the doorway don't block up the hall
For he that gets hurt will be he who has stalled
There's a battle outside and it's ragin'
It'll soon shake your windows and rattle your walls
For the times they are a' changin'!"
Congratulations, Bob Dylan!
RE: the best songs ever - pbrower2a - 10-13-2016
How good are his lyrics?
IBM used his song lyrics as a model for the diction of its supercomputer "Watson".
RE: the best songs ever - Eric the Green - 10-15-2016
I'll go listen to a "song" about another young person learning about the world, and the orchestra too.
1936, Prokofiev.
RE: the best songs ever - pbrower2a - 10-16-2016
I hope that I have this right. I am not sure of the year for this highly-accessible, ironic, half-ecstatic, half-tragic piece.
Just wait for the delightful waltzes by the Strauss family.
RE: the best songs ever - Eric the Green - 10-17-2016
(10-16-2016, 09:51 AM)pbrower2a Wrote:
I hope that I have this right. I am not sure of the year for this highly-accessible, ironic, half-ecstatic, half-tragic piece.
You still don't have it right. Let me try again. Delete the added http:// from the end of the url in your post. Can you see the url when you make your posts? What's going on there? Please let me know that you understand what I'm saying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suite_for_Jazz_Orchestra_No._2_(Shostakovich)
RE: the best songs ever - pbrower2a - 10-17-2016
(10-17-2016, 12:41 AM)Eric the Green Wrote:(10-16-2016, 09:51 AM)pbrower2a Wrote: I hope that I have this right. I am not sure of the year for this highly-accessible, ironic, half-ecstatic, half-tragic piece.
You still don't have it right. Let me try again. Delete the added http:// from the end of the url in your post. Can you see the url when you make your posts? What's going on there? Please let me know that you understand what I'm saying.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Suite_for_Jazz_Orchestra_No._2_(Shostakovich)
I see only the video in my post.
RE: the best songs ever - Eric the Green - 10-17-2016
pbrower2a
The video does not show; only an empty screen. Click on edit in the lower right, and you can see what you posted. Delete the extra http://at the end of the url, and then we can all see the video.
RE: the best songs ever - Eric the Green - 10-26-2016
I don't know if it's a favorite of mine, but it was when I was a child. It deserves at least honorable mention. Porgy and Bess by Gershwin, 1935
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Porgy_and_Bess
Porgy and Bess contains many songs that have become popular in their own right, becoming standards in jazz and blues in addition to their original operatic setting.
Some of the most popular songs are:
"Summertime", act 1, scene 1
"A Woman Is a Sometime Thing", act 1, scene 1
"My Man's Gone Now", act 1, scene 2
"It Take a Long Pull to Get There", act 2, scene 1
"I Got Plenty o' Nuttin'", act 2, scene 1
"Buzzard Keep on Flyin'", act 2, scene 1
"Bess, You Is My Woman Now", act 2, scene 1
"Oh, I Can't Sit Down," act 2, scene 1
"It Ain't Necessarily So", act 2, scene 2
"What You Want Wid Bess", act 2, scene 2
"Oh, Doctor Jesus", act 2, scene 3
"I Loves You, Porgy", act 2, scene 3
"A Red-Haired Woman", act 2, scene 4
"There's a Boat Dat's Leavin' Soon for New York", act 3, scene 2
"Bess, O Where's My Bess?", act 3, scene 3
"O Lawd, I'm on My Way", act 3, scene 3
RE: the best songs ever - pbrower2a - 10-26-2016
Good choice for a collection of songs... we're going to see lot;s of Gershwin here. Giacomo Puccini coming up in the early 1920s.
RE: the best songs ever - pbrower2a - 11-04-2016
Smile, introduced by Charlie Chaplin (tune) in Modern Times:
Nat King Cole... have we forgotten?
Judy Garland -- oh, could she belt it!
Barbara Streisand, if a bit slick for my taste:
RE: the best songs ever - gabrielle - 11-05-2016
(11-04-2016, 12:39 PM)pbrower2a Wrote: Smile, introduced by Charlie Chaplin (tune) in Modern Times:
Nat King Cole... have we forgotten?
Judy Garland -- oh, could she belt it!
Barbara Streisand, if a bit slick for my taste:
Good job, pbrower! We can play these vids.
RE: the best songs ever - Eric the Green - 11-05-2016
Like..............
RE: the best songs ever - Eric the Green - 11-28-2016
My favorite 20th century Christmas pop children's song; I didn't used to like it as a kid because it was telling me to be good! But now I think it's a great melody and lyric! Santa Claus is Coming to Town (1934).
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Santa_Claus_Is_Coming_to_Town
RE: the best songs ever - Eric the Green - 01-02-2017
Stormy Weather, written by the same writer of Somewhere Over the Rainbow, Harold Arlen, with Ted Koehler.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stormy_Weather_(song)