httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xBbuWMzOAi4
The Swingle Singers
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6ju4uCFzBz4
Approach to Bach with the Swingle Singers – with original member Ward Swingle. He says if we can listen to Bach in the morning we lead better lives because of it…
I remember hearing the Swingle Singers a LOT as a kid in the early seventies. Great stuff and some of my favorite all time renditions of Bach and Mozart. Vive la mystere.
The Christmas Gloria – One Year Later
In early December 2007 I had let go of all but one of my posts in preparation of leaving to work for Cirque Du Soleil. I received notice at the beginning of December that my date to join Cirque had been moved to three weeks later so I had some time on my hands. My last job I still retained was music director at Mount Vernon Presbyterian Church in Mount Vernon, WA.
I wanted to do something with my newfound free time; so decided to do something crazy that I had always wanted to do: To write a complete orchestral and choral work in one week like JS Bach used to do for his weekly church services. My last service for the church was Christmas Eve 2007 so I decided to write a Gloria for presentation at the evening Christmas Eve service.
Bach Badinerie
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xVxwuirUX-M
Two video recordings of a Badinerie by JS Bach. I have heard several absolutely horrible renditions on YouTube – but I like both of these. My favorite of these two is the first on top. The musicians take a little more chance with the tempo and interpretation – and to my ears it has a little more sizzle than the performance at the Vatican.
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Wittenberg Theater
WITTENBERG THEATER CLOSES 2001
Theater Wittenberg Closes Its Doors –
The Theater Wittenbergs sustaining institution, a special purpose association, has resolved to close the theatre beginning in summer 2001. The decision will affect 156 jobs. A theatre for children and young people and a project-based music theatre will remain in operation.
HISTORY OF THEATER IN WITTENBERG
Wittenberg has a long tradition in cultural events. The City Theatre Mitteldeutsches Landestheater reached a great importance in GDR times. Since 1996, the City proposes Open-Air theatre shows based on the Lutheran history still alive in many historical places of the ancient town. As highlights, in 2001 and 2005, Fernando Scarpa became the artistic director of the “Bühne Wittenberg” (Stage Wittenberg), a project for theatre, art and culture in the whole of Germany which attracts to the City plenty of audience and whose success achieves European echo. Hamlet is said to have studied here.
Nazi Censorship on the Arts and Music – Entartete Kunst
The years 1927-37 were critical for artists in Germany. In 1927, the National Socialist Society for German Culture was formed. The aim of this organization was to halt the “corruption of art” and inform the people about the relationship between race and art. By 1933, the terms “Jewish,” “Degenerate,” and “Bolshevik” were in common use to describe almost all modern art. http://fcit.usf.edu/HOLOCAUST/ARTS/artDegen.htm
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Kristallnacht – The Night of Broken Glass
Kristallnacht — the Night of Broken Glass
On November 9, 1938, the Nazis unleashed a series of riots against the Jews in Germany and Austria. In the space of a few hours, thousands of synagogues and Jewish businesses and homes were damaged or destroyed. For the first time, tens of thousands of Jews were sent to concentration camps simply because they were Jewish. This event came to be called Kristallnacht (“Night of the Broken Glass”) for the shattered store windowpanes that carpeted German streets.
“Those that do not learn history are forced to repeat it.” Never forget.
http://www1.yadvashem.org/exhibitions/kristallnacht/homepage.html
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Things They Didn’t Teach Me About Luther in Sunday School
I have been doing a lot of reading on Martin Luther lately. The book HERE I STAND is a classic biography and THE WIT OF MARTIN LUTHER gives insight to his lighter and naughtier side. But the two shocking discoveries were his encouragement to use violence against peasants in the early 16th century as well as his vehement and bold anti-semiticism. I have spent many hours grappling with these events; trying to reconcile that this is the great Luther of the Reformation. The hero. The changer and uplifter of society and religion.
As of yet I have not been able to personally reconcile these events. It is a painful chasm in once again realizing the world that history is perhaps not the same as we were brought up to believe. Here are the thoughts of Nadine E. Ridley on the same issues. This is a sermon she gave on November 20, 2005 at The King Lutheran Church in Vestal NY called “Things They Didn’t Teach Me About Luther In Sunday Schoolâ€.
She tidies up the end with a happy ending which I think can work well for a Sunday sermon. But the truth may be that in reality the end is not so tidy after all….
I was also raised Lutheran, and went to Lutheran Confirmation, attended Pacific Lutheran University and a summer at St. Olaf; was even an acolyte in the Order of St. John in my youth. And yet this side of Luther is nothing that I remember ever discussed. Thank God for the internet.
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Les Miserables – Do You Hear the People Sing
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R4924xJl38E
[Les Miserables] 10th anniversary – 17 VALJEAN Do you hear the people sing.
Sweeney Todd – Shave Scene
httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oy2Oqr3zjnw
Angela Lansbury and George Hearn starring in Sweeney Todd by Stephen Sondheim
A great scene from Sweeney Todd that keeps the attention with the growing anticipation of the shave’s outcome…