Sometimes I quite forget exactly why this blog still exists...
It is, of course, for just two main reasons: A list of friends I admire and read; and for the songs - an international treasure - and the very special people who perform them.
Of course, they're also a reminder -- a note to self, if you will -- that I am the living, breathing beneficiary of wonder. Especially inasmuch as I know or have some sort of kinship with these people -- in a primary sort of way.
Vai, Azulao, Azulao, copanheiro, vai!
Vai ver minha ingrata,
Diz que sem elo
Sertoa nao e mais sentao!
Ai voa Azulao
vai contrar companheiro, vai!
---Translation---
Go, bluebird, my companion, go!
Go and see my ungrateful love,
say that without her
the forest is no longer the forest!
Alas, fly bluebird,
go and tell her, my companion, go!
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Son come i chicchi della melograna
vellutatie e vermighli i labbri tuoi
gareggi colla fragola montana
pel profumo del'alito tu puoi.
Come le piante che gemme odorate
distillano dal tronco e dalla chioma
tu stilli dalle tue labbra rosate
baci che sono del tuo cor l'aroma.
Fammi mutrir di baci si soavi
come si nutre di rugiada il fiore:
baciami sempre come me baciavi
la prima volta he ti strinsi al core!
Se tu fossi rugiada le tue stille
di vita altrici neghenisti al fior?
Baciami dunque, e fa nove scintille
arder di vita in quest'a rido cor!
Son come i chicchi della melograna
vellutati e vermigli i labbrie tuoi!
--Arnaldo Fratelli
Translation:
Like pomegranate seeds are your velvet, vermilion lips
The scent of your breath competes with the wild mountain strawberries.
Like plants which distill jewels from their stems
and leaves you,
from your rosy lips exude kisses
which are the aroma of your heart.
Nourish me with such sweet kisses
as the flower is nourished with the dew:
kiss me always as you kissed me
the first time that I pressed you to my heart.
If you were dew, would you deny
your life-giving essence to the flower?
Kiss me then, and make new sparks flame
with life in this arid heart!
Like promegranate seeds are your velvet, vermilion lips.
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"Standchen" -- by Richard Strauss
Mach auf, mach auf, doch liese mein Kind
um Kinnen vom Schlumer zu wecken,
kaum murmeit der Bach, kaum zittert im Wind
ein Blatt an den Buschen und Hecken.
Drum leise mein Madchen,
dass nichts sich regt,
nur leise die Hand auf der Klinke gelegt.
Mit Tritten, vie Tritte der Elfen so sacht,
um uber die Blumen zu hupfen,
Fliegt leicht hinaus in die Mondschheinnacht,
zu mir in den Garten zu schlupfen.
Rings schlummern schlummern die Bluthen,
--am rieselnden Bach
und duften im Schlaf nur mir in den Garten zu schlupten.
Rings schlummern die Bluthen
am rieselnden Bach
und duften im Schlaf
nur die Liebe ist wach.
Sitz' nieder, hier,
dammerts geheimnisvoll
unter den Linden baumen,
die Nachtigal uns zu Haupten soll
von uns'ren Kussen traumen.
und die Rose
wenn sie am Morgen erwacht
vonden Vonne schaudern der Nacht.
-- A.F von Schack
Open up! Open up, but softly,
my child so as to wake no one from slumber!
The brook hardly murmers,
hardly a leaf on bush or hedge
trembles in the wind!
All around softly, my dear, so that nothing is disturbed.
lay your hand gently on the door handle.
As gently as the steps of elves.
skipping gingerly over flowers,
fly easily out into the moon-filled night
and glide to me in the garden.
All around, the blossoms by the rippling brook are slumbering.
even in sleep emitting gragrance.
only Love is awake.
Sit down here under the linden trees
the twilight falls mysteriously.
The nightingale above our heads
shall dream of our kisses.
and the rose,
when she awakes in the morning
shall grow sublimely
from the blissful raptures of the night.
About the composer:
Richard Strauss (1864-1949) wrote more than 200 lieder (songs), which span the composer's career. His first efforts date from his seventh year; the final glorious outpouring came in the Four Last Songs of 1948. But the bulk of Strauss's songs (including the one recorded here) were composed between 1885 and 1908, during the same period as virutally all of his symphonic poems as well as the first two mature operas, Salome, and Elektra. Many of these songs were written for the composer's wife, the soprano Pauline de Ahna, who was then in the midst of a flourishing career, often touring with her husband as pianist.
Like Schubert, Strauss was often unselective in his choice of texts; some of his finest songs are setting of surprisingly uninspired poems. As the composer himself explained, his chief consideration was to find words which stirred a musical reaction. "Musical ideas have prepared themselves in me -God knows why - and when, as it were, the barrel is full, a song appears in the twinkling of an eye as soon as I come across a poem more or less corresponding to the subject of an imaginary song..." Standchen, one of the composer's best known songs, dates from 1887.
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"Why, No One To Love?"
by Stephen Foster (1826-1864)
No one to love in this beautiful world,
Full of warm heaats and bright beaming eyes?
Where is the lone heart that nothing can find
That is lovely beneath the blue skies?
No one to love! No one to love!
Why, no one to love?
What have you done in this beautiful world,
That you're sighing of no one to love?
Dark is the soul that has nothing to dwell on!
How sad must its brightest hours prove!
Lonely the dull brooding spirit must be
That has no one to cheriesh and love.
No one to love!
No one to love!
Why, no one to love?...
Many a fair one that dwells on the earth
Who would greet you with kind words of cheer,
Many who gladly would join in your pleasures
Or share in your griefs with a tear.
Poesie by Vicomte Victor Marie Hugo (1802-1885),
from Marie Tudor, Journée 1, Scene 5.
*
Quand tu chantes, bercée
Le soir entre mes bras,
Entends-tu ma pensée
Qui te répond tout bas?
Ton doux chant me rappelle
Les plus beaux de mes jours.
Ah! Chantez, Chantez, ma belle,
Chantez, chantez toujours!
Chantez ma belle, chantez toujours!
[ L' homme c' est mon homme. La Voix elle s' approche à chaque couplet.]
Quand tu ris, sur ta bouche L'amour s'épanouit,
Et soudain le farouche Soupçon s'évanouit.
Ah! le rire fidèle prouve un coeur sans détours!
Ah! Riez, ma belle, Riez, toujours!
Quand tu dors, calme et pure, al' ombre, sous mes yeux,
ton haleine murmure des mots harmonieux.
Ton beau corps se révèle sans voile et sans atours...
Ah! Dormez, dormez ma belle... dormez dormez toujours!
--This verse is traditionally omitted:
Quand tu me dis: je t' aime ! ô ma beauté! Je croi ! Je crois que le
ciel même s' ouvre au-dessus de moi! Ton regard étincelle du beau feu des amours... aimez, ma belle, aimez toujours! Vois-tu? Toute la vie tient dans ces quatre mots, tous les biens qu' on envie, tous les biens sans les maux! Tout ce qui peut séduire tout ce qui peut charmer...chanter et rire, dormir, aimer
An English Translation:
When you sing in the evening cradled in my arms,
can you hear my thoughts softly answering you?
Your sweet song recalls to me the happiest days I've known.
Sing, sing, my pretty one, sing on forever!
When you laugh, love blossoms on your lips,
and at once cruel suspicion vanishes.
Ah, faithful laughter shows a heart without guile.
Laugh, laugh, my pretty one, laugh on forever!
When you sleep calm and pure beneath my gaze, in
the shadow, your breathing murmurs harmonious words.
Your lovely body is revealed without veil or finery.
Sleep, sleep, my pretty one,
sleep on (always) forever!
Partir, c'est mourir un peu,
C'est mourir a ce qu'on aime:
On laisse un peu soi-meme
En toute heure et dans tout lieu.
C'est toujours le deuil d'un voeu,
Le denier vers d'un poeme;
Partir c'est mourir un peu
C'est mourir a ce qu'on aime.
Et l'on part, et c'est un jeu,
Et jusqua' l'adieu supreme
C'est son ame que l'on seme,
Que l'on seme en chaque adieu:
Partir, c'est mourir un peu, bis.
C'est toujours le deuil d'un voeu, etc.
l'anglais with accent marks
To go away is to die a little,
is to die to what one loves:
One leaves a little of one's self
in every moment, every place.
It always means a broken promise,
the last line of a poem.
To go away is to die a little,
it is to die to what one loves.
Yet one leaves, and 'tis a game,
and until the final farewell,
it is one's spirit that is strewn,
strewn at each farewell:
to go away is to dia a little....
It always means a broken promise....
O del mio amato ben perduto incanto!
Lungi è dagli occhi miei
chi m'era gloria e vanto!
Or per le mute stanze
sempre lo cerco e chiamo
con pieno il cor di speranze?
Ma cerco invan, chiamo invan!
E il pianger m'è sì caro,
che di pianto sol nutro il cor.
Mi sembra, senza lui, triste ogni loco.
Notte mi sembra il giorno;
mi sembra gelo il foco.
Se pur talvolta spero
di darmi ad altra cura,
sol mi tormenta un pensiero:
Ma, senza lui, che farò?
Mi par così la vita vana cosa
senza il mio ben.
The French
Ô mon aimée, ô ma beauté perdue!
Voici qu'a disparu celle qui était ma gloire et ma fierté!
Sans cesse je la cherche,
je l'appelle dans le silence du logis,
Le coeur plein d'espoir. Mais en vain.
Les pleurs me sont si chers
Qu'il ne me reste qu'à inonder mon âme de larmes.
Tout m'est tristesse sans elle.
Le jour a pour moi la noirceur de la nuit,
Le feu a pour moi la froideur de la glace.
J'ai beau parfois tenter d'oublier,
Son seul souvenir revient me hanter.
Que vais-je faire sans elle?
Vaine est cette vie sans ma bien-aimée.
The English
Oh, lost enchantment of my dearly beloved!
Far from my eyes is (s)he
who was, to me, glory and pride!
Now through the empty rooms
I always seek him/her and call him/her
with a heart full of hopes?
But I seek in vain, I call in vain!
And the weeping is so dear to me,
that with weeping alone I nourish my heart.
It seems to me, without him/her, sad everywhere.
The day seems like night to me;
the fire seems cold to me.
If, however, I sometimes hope
to give myself to another cure,
one thought alone torments me:
But without him/her, what shall I do?
To me, life seems a vain thing
without my beloved.
*
To our beloved, wherever they may be found.
How many times can one play and so listen to the same song? For a lifetime, and then some, if we are indeed so blessed.
I often word TextEdit to produce plain-text. But now that Google has come out with their doc and spreadsheet module (to be comparede favorable with MS Office, I wonder if that just might be the thing to do. Use a decent word processor to write the text check the grammer, and check the spelling...
Then just cut and paste or save it as .rtf and away we go. No more typos. What do you all think about this?
I admire you for your pursuit at school. There indeed lies one creature of revisions. The other I know well, is that of the writer, compelled by unseen forces to set his/her sentences upon the page. A humble offering...that others might occasionally know the mind of God, through one such journey here.
And as we listen so we weep for the beauty of this wondrous music, and for the loss of out greatest treasure on earth.
"Lay ye not up treasures on earth...For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also." And so it is true.
The tears just are. For now all of this music will forever be associated with her, a and I'm glad of it. And if I never sing it again myself (because I can't hold it together long enough to get through it) well then, there's another song that applies. A finale, to be sure.
An Old song:
One by Earnest Charles:
When I have sung my songs to you, I'll sing no more.
T'would be a sacrilege to sing at another door.
We've worked so hard to hold our dreams, just you and I,
I could not do it all again, I'd rather die,
at just the thought, that I have loved so well,
so true,
That I could never sing again,
that I could never,
never sing again,
except...
to you.
There. Finished. Memory is a tricky thing sometimes.
