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Post #67 Friday 22 December 2017 – Starry enchanted Christmas eve and Summer solstice

December 17, 2017 by MG Leave a Comment

Posted in: Aesthetics, Animals, Love, Music

Letters from America

Friday 22 December 2017

Today is the Summer solstice, a suitably brilliant time of the year for earth and sky worshippers.  And it’s almost Christmas eve.

My mother loved Christmas when we were children, especially Christmas Eve.  And I have very happy memories of her Christmas delight, which was so attractive to children.  She specially loved the music, all music, and  it was endless performance and harmonies by me and my sisters singing into the twilight night.  My mother died in June this year and the last music she heard was this Christmas Eve music.  I was able to play it for her from my trusty Android.

This music is the Latin Christmas church song O Magnum Mysterium, O Great Mystery.  This setting is by the American Danish composer Morten Lauridsen and is best listened to while you have your eyes closed I reckon (especially if classical music is not your thing lol).

In this Latin song the best thing is the presence of the animals in the scene.  It’s not all lofty churchy stuff, it is warm animals with warm breath and animal noises and animal restlessness and tiredness in the straw.   And if you listen to the music I swear at certain points it actually sounds the way animals move about when they are tethered, the same rhythm.   There is a gentle pagan vibe about those animals round the infant’s manger.  And an entirely utilitarian and plausible one too:  it would have been cold that night.  The Latin verse seems very simple but it conjures the picture:

O magnum mysterium,

et admirabile sacramentum,
ut animalia viderent Dominum natum,
iacentem in praesepio!
…
 translates (I am assured):
O great mystery,
and wonderful sacrament,
that animals should see the new-born Lord,
lying in a manger!
…

Animals!  They get dress circle and see everything first.  Would that we return the respect and treat all animals more lovingly (says a slightly preachy Madame MG :-)).  And this is the song itself:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GqCtbR8PktU

In fact there is another Lauridsen song which I actually think is a more beautiful as a song although not as high art perhaps.  It also reminds me of the twinkling Christmas Eves with my mother when we were small, and all the stars and endless enchantment of childhood.  But you probably have to be in the mood for classical music and it is entirely forgivable if you are not (even permanently not in the mood is OK too).

Sure On This Shining Night

Sure on this shining night
Of star made shadows round,
Kindness must watch for me
This side the ground.
The late year lies down the north.
All is healed, all is health.
High summer holds the earth.
Hearts all whole.
Sure on this shining night I weep for wonder wand’ring far
alone
Of shadows on the stars.
 

It’s a beautiful poem by an Irish poet, set to Lauridsen’s music:

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l8Sc0I7bAIg
 
 

Love to you, to animals, and the high summer solstice Christmas Eve
MG xx

Post #66 Sunday 17 December 2017 – The Little Prince, complex love and the rose

December 17, 2017 by MG Leave a Comment

Posted in: Art, Books, Letters from America, Love

Letters from America

Sunday 17 December 2017

I have just come home from my December visit to Canberra, just in time to send out this week’s Letter from America.

It was a great visit.  The weather was pure Canberra summer, all hard blue sky although we had a huge thunder storm in the middle of the second night.  I had an unexpected pleasure from the profusely flowering roses planted right under the balcony of the hotel room.  With the intense heat during the day and the long afternoon, by early evening the scent of the roses coming up  into the room was very strong – a lovely evocative perfume which took me by surprise.  Here is a photo taken by me looking down over the balcony straight onto one of the culprits:

This beautiful flower reminded me of an unforgettable book that is treated as a children’s book (which plainly it is not), Antoine Saint Exupery’s The Little Prince.

Here is a link to Chapter 8 of the book which concerns the Little Prince’s relationship with the rose.  It is a tale of complex love and painful awakening to the meaning of things.  I highly recommend looking at it and the author’s charming drawings.  The chapter is quite short perhaps 300 words, and, as I said before, unforgettable.

http://papermine.com/pub/2005#article/34735

“The fact is that I did not know how to understand anything! I ought to have judged by deeds and not by words. She cast her fragrance and her radiance over me. I ought never to have run away from her . . . I ought to have guessed all the affection that lay behind her poor little stratagems. Flowers are so inconsistent! But I was too young to know how to love her . . .”

MG
xx
never complacent in love

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