The best of music in the worst of times
These composers stepped up during the worst of the plagues
Leave it to a pandemic to make everything old new again. Especially when it comes to music.
Down through the ages, a number of composers have given some of their best to the worst of the plagues.
So today, for your reading pleasure, here’s a glance at several such efforts. Don’t panic, but feel free to add them to your ever-proliferating pandemic playlist or give them a look-see-hear on YouTube.
He had their backs, yes he did
It’s always good when someone has your back. Even more so when that someone is God. And back in the biblical day when the Israelites were enslaved in Egypt, God had their backs. Just check out the Book of Exodus and the 10 plagues God brought upon Egypt for Pharaoh’s refusal to “Let my people go.”
Back in October 1738, George Frideric Handel must have had an absolute blast working on Part the First of his sacred oratorio, “Israel in Egypt.” Just listen to the violins hopping around in the alto solo, “Their land brought forth frogs,” and their flying 30-second notes in “He spake the word and there came all manner of flies.” And how about those scampering eighth and sixteenth notes coupled with thundering timpani in “He gave them hailstones for rain,” and the languorous “He sent a thick darkness over all the land.” Who said Handel couldn’t paint in sound?
Ten lepers a-leaping
Zowie, Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata for the Fourteenth Sunday after Trinity was a doozy. Back in 1723, the Gospel reading for that day in Leipzig’s Thomaskirche was Jesus’ healing of the 10 lepers as recorded in Luke 17:11-19. So, Bach composed “There is nothing sound in my body,” or in the original German,
“Es ist nichts Gesundes an meinem Leibe.” The opening chorus, a setting of Psalm 38:3, whence the cantata’s title, is followed by a tenor recitative on Johann Jakob Rambach’s words, excerpted here in Pamela Dellal’s English translation: “The entire world is just a hospital, where humanity, in innumerable great throngs
and also children in their cradles have been laid low with sickness … Ah! This poison rages also through my limbs.
Where shall I, wretch, find a healer? Who will stand with me in my suffering? Who is my doctor, who will help me again?”
If that and the rest of Bach’s music don’t drive you straight into Jesus’ arms, nothing will.
Everybody do “The Pest”
Music abounds with examples of the “Dance of Death” or “Danse macabre” or “Totentanz.” However, none are more pestilential than “Rondo burlesca: King Pest,” an instrumental number British critic, composer and ballet conductor Constant Lambert included in his 19321935 “Summer’s Last Will and Testament,” a masque for orchestra, chorus and baritone solo to words from Thomas Nashe’s eponymous play referencing London’s 1592 plague. Warning: contains trace amounts of Franz Liszt and early jazz.
Calling all heroes
Lastly, here’s something more up-todate. Thanks to the coronavirus and physical distancing, the internet has been flooded with videos by lockeddown-at-home musicians. Among the latest of these is the Boston Pops Orchestra’s “Summon the Heroes,” an instrumental fanfare composed by John Williams for the 1996 Olympic Games, but here repurposed to honour first responders, front-line and essential workers.
“It was meant to celebrate our great athletes, our hero(es) and heroines and their athletics,” said Williams, from his home in Los Angeles. “And today, we have a different set of circumstances, a different set of heroes and heroines who sacrifice every day and bring their commitment and dedication to their work.”
For this project, BPO conductor Keith Lockhart and 77 musicians culled from the BPO and the Boston Symphony Orchestra, including BSO principal French horn and former HPO music director Jamie Sommerville, recorded their individual parts in their homes. BSO recording engineer Nick Squire and video engineer Brandon Cardley then wove their wizardry to produce the “virtual” orchestra’s video tribute. Enjoy.
More to come?
This likely isn’t the last we hear of the coronavirus or the last we read of the classical pandemic playlist. Stay tuned and stay safe.