11 April 2004
Modern church music - urghhhh....
Happy Easter all! I hope the bunny was kind... He was pretty good to me - even though I can't eat chocolate at the moment. I've got a nice stash though for June, when I can eat whatever I want. Heh heh.
The weekend was lovely and restful, apart from a traumatic trip to church on Easter Sunday. What has got into church leaders in Australia? Why won't they let us have proper hymns? It seems to have escaped their notice that Easter is the time when all their irregular congregation members come back to the fold & the last thing they want to deal with is trashy "happy-clappy" songs, most of which are musically undistinguished and unsuited for congregational singing - not to mention unfamiliar to a large part of the congregation. Real hymns are the way to go - bring back "Jerusalem", I say! The church we go to is normally reliable in this respect, and they do have a lovely pipe organ, but this year, for some reason they ditched the real hymns (with the exception of "Thine be the glory" which they just mangled to make the words "modern" - "Yours be the glory": euuughh.) and inflicted happy-clappies on us. Very very disappointing.
On a brighter note, my Easter weekend project turned out very well: home-made marshmallows! Great fun, and much more flavour (and creamier) than the bought variety. I'm going to try peppermint ones for my next batch. If you're thinking of trying them, though: one thing - do not even contemplate it unless you have a heavy duty stand mixer. Read the reviews if you don't believe me!
On more of a musical note (which is probably why you're here in the first place), I've just updated the bibliography on Erik Satie's Crystal Ball for the first time in (literally) years. I haven't yet been able to review any of the articles added, but am planning on getting into this in May. I now have half of Daniel Harding's thesis on Modernism and will be starting work on turning it into an article for the Modernism section of the Crystal Ball as soon as he sends through the other half - shouldn't be long now. This will be posted on the site as soon as I've finished it & Dan has then said it's OK to go up with his name on it.
Another link courtesy of the fabulous NewMusicBox: In my latest browse around NMB, I discovered a news item talking about the US public radio show American Mavericks. Now, don't suddenly switch off if you're not in the US - the marvellous producers have put all 13 1-hour episodes of the series on the website! Plus two new music "radio" stations (one "smooth", one "crunchy"), interviews, discussions and other resources (see if you can spot Satie in their clip L'inhumaine: The audience riots)... it's an amazing site - I haven't yet explored a tenth of it and I'm hugely impressed. Hours and hours of amusement to be had here...
