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Larry
Krieg
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Interests |
Music - Yes!I used to listen to WUOM, the University of Michigan's radio station, until they changed format in 1996 and became little more than a pipline for Public Radio feeds. For many years, they had a program called "Desert Island Discs" - modelled by Joel Seguine after the BBC's long-running programme of the same name. (Thanks to Dr. Gregory McCormick of Brunel University for bringing the BBC programme to my attention!). The idea was that if you were being abandoned on a desert island with nothing but five records and a solar-powered record player, what records would you bring, and why? They invited the rich and famous of the Ann Arbor and Detroit area to come and record a two-hour interview telling of their lives and musical loves. It usually worked quite well. Of course I was never invited, being neither rich nor famous, but I think I could have provided an interesting program. So here's my playscript of a "Desert Island Disks" interview. If I ever get access to a RealAudio server (don't laugh!) I'll see about getitng some samples of the music up. (Well, don't hold your breath about that either.)
CHILDHOODHandel's Water MusicOne of my earliest musical memories is from the Guatemala days, when I was about six. Every morning while my father shaved, he would play records - always classical music. One of my favorites, and the first I came to recognize, was the Water Music Suite of George Frederick Handel. I recall one morning skipping into the bathroom where my father was standing in front of the mirror, all lathered up, and proudly announcing, "I know that music: it's the Warble Music!" Buxtehude Organ Music By sixth grade, back in Bethesda, I developed a deep awe and love for organ music. After walking home from school most days, I would put on a record and sit back in the armchair, letting the majestic tones wash over me, soaking out the tiredness and frustration, but also stimulating deep and nameless emotion. My father and I sought out the collection of Buxtehude's complete organ works played by Alf Linder on the organ of Vårfrukyrka in Skänninge, Sweden, issued by Westminster Records. The most moving to me has always been Buxtehude's Toccata and Fugue in g-minor, which brings to mind this passage in C. S. Lewis's Out of the Silent Planet describing a music of the Hrossa: "A sense of great masses moving at visionary speeds, of giants dancing, of eternal sorrows eternally consoled, of he knew not what and yet what he had always known, awoke in him with the very first bars..." The first place we were taken on our visit to Denmark in 2000 was Vor Frelsers Kirke (Our Saviour's Church) where Buxtehude worked for many years in Copenhagen. I was elated to see the organ built by King Christian V for Buxtehude to play, and to attempt singing along with our host, Bent Karkov, in some of the wonderful Danish hymns played on that majestic instrument. (The pipe case is upheld by two magnificent carved elephants.) ADOLESCENCE My early adolescence was spent in Santiago, Chile. In spite of growing pains and family illnesses, I still have the fondest memories of my Santiago days. I flirted (musically) with late 50's Rock both at parties that our set* enjoyed together, and on the radio, sitting in the dark in our car after supper, in the driveway. Elvis was just becoming well-known then; I'm not sure I'd bring any of the music to a desert island, but I remember a couple of them with some fondness: particularly, a funny one about a "little Nash Rambler" and the sentimental "I'll be With You in Apple Blossom Time." (Does anyone know who wrote and/or sang these?) I always enjoyed the slow numbers most, because at parties it made it possible to dance really close - bailando pegados, as proclaimed by the title of a recently popular Spanish song. >:-> * By the way - our little group of friends has largely dispersed. The only one I've run into since growing up is Nathan Kling, but what about the rest of you? Write me if you see this... Rex Gustavus, Tessa Chao, Rodney Morris, Bob and Barbara Brill, Gwen and Menna Jones, Danny Sobral, Holly Colon, Linda Townley, Elaine Greenock, Kenny Blackburn, Jill Sutherland, Signe Ecklund, Clint Huckins, and anyone else who remembers! In high school, back in Bethesda, I gradually learned to sing. I owe much to Mrs. Shaw, the choir director at Bethesda-Chevy Chase High School (BCC), and Roger Petrich, organist and choirmaster at Christ Lutheran Church. The wonder of spring is inseparably linked with a BCC choir trip to the regional contest in D.C. We travelled through streets lined with flowering cherry, dogwood, and crabapple to sing Randal Thompson's "Last Words of David" and "Alleluia", while my entire being lay prostrate in awe at the romance of Music and Spring. Also in high school the family health problems continued and worsened. Maybe that influenced my fascination with Gustav Mahler's music; I listened avidly to all I could get hold of, and his Second Symphony spoke to me with particular strength. Since then, I've come to distrust the spirit of his music - it's so laden with despair and longing, but so short on hope. Sacred music had an increasing importance to me in high school. I developed a very deep love for hymns "with bones" - that is, not the mushy, sentimental type, but the strong ones, often minor-mode melodies. That was the time when I started to memorize hymns (I know ten or fifteen in various languages now) starting with "A Mighty Fortress" (Catherine Winkworth's translation) and James Russell Lowell's "Once to Every Man and Nation". The latter helped me understand the powerful effect a tune can have on the words. Our hymnal, the Lutheran Service Book and Hymnal of 1958, has only Thomas John Williams' "Ebeneezer" ("Ton-y-Botel"). That's a real tune with "bones", despite its bar-room origin - an origin it shares, after all, with "Ein feste Burg". But there is another tune it's set to in some hymnals that completely fails to convey the soul-wrenching urgency of the choice Lowell is urging on us - originally, the choice of opposing slavery, but any choice between good evil will do. It had an important role in my decision a few years later to serve my time in the Army as a non-combatant conscientious objector...but that's another story! Other hymns that meant a lot to me in high school include:
After my infatuation
with Mahler, I developed a more lasting respect for Bach chorales and
cantatas. Most powerful for me was Cantata 4, Christ lag in Todesbanden.
I also love the original plainsong, the Victimi Pascali sequence, and
the older related chorale "Christ ist Erstanden". In addition to the strong
tune and message, I identified with the opening words of the second verse,
"It was a strange and dreadful strife, When Life and death contended"
(Richard Massie's translation). The original German is Es war ein wundelicher
Krieg... The fact that my name was "strife" seemed more than
coincidental; somehow the struggle between Life and death in my adolescence
was embodied and ennobled in that music. COLLEGE YEARS The College of Wooster has always had a strong music program that reached beyond the music majors to include anyone with any leaning toward music. On arrival, I immediately tried out for and was accepted in the Westminster Choir, the chapel choir that sang on Sundays. We also did one fairly major work each year. The most powerful for me was the first: Mozart's Requiem. If you've seen the movie Amadeus, you know how expressively gripping it is, and how dramatic the story of its composition. The following years we learned Fauré's Requiem, Gabrielli's In Ecclesia, and Duruflé's Requiem. All are noble compositions, though tops for me is Duruflé's. You may wonder at the predominance of requiems. A very few years after graduating, I learned with great sorrow that our director, Dr. Jack Carruth, had died of a heart condition. I believe that he had been warned by his doctors of this condition, and was preparing for his own death. I remember Jack with great respect and affection. He certainly faced his death with courage, and never let on to us how numbered were his days. Speaking of the Westminster Choir reminds me of the many wonderful people who sang in it. In the bass section with me, and one or two years ahead was Ken Fischer ("Feesh",we used to call him) who is now also in Ann Arbor as director of the University of Michigan Musical Society. Oh yes, and there was that friendly, long-haired soprano named Martha... Two other life-long musical loves entered my life during Wooster days: Welsh hymns, and music of Paraguay. Neither had anything particular to do with Wooster, so I should mentioned that my great enjoyment of bagpipe music dates from Wooster days. I don't generally go out of my way to hear it, but when it comes to me, I enjoy it deeply. Why, just this May at Marjorie's graduation it made my heart beat high to hear the pipers march through Kauke Arch piping "Scotland the Brave" and "Green Hills of Tyrol". (Such sappiness. Sorry!) I have always enjoyed Welsh hymn tunes, since so many of them have "bones" - good, powerful, gutsy melodies. I don't quite remember where I happened across A Nation Sings: Royal Albert Hall Welsh Singing Festival. But it has never been far from me since, and I keep a tape of it at all times in my car for those days when I need fortitude, comfort, or just plain good fun. I've come to realize that though my name is German, my heart is Welsh. In Surprised by Joy, Lewis wrote, "My father's people were true Welshmen, sentimental, passionate, and rhetorical, easily moved both to anger and to tenderness; men who laughed and cried a great deal and who had not much of the talent for happiness." In fact, looking at a photograph of my father, a dear Irish friend remarked, "There's a true Welshman!" And certainly my father's great grandfather, Robert Owen, was as Welsh as anyone can get. He was a preacher or elder of the Welsh church in Newark, Ohio - where there has been a settlement Welsh immigrants since 1802. I have a picture of Robert Owen on the flyleaf of his Y Drysorfa Gerddorol - his Welsh hymnal, dating from 1857. The hymnal is well used, and the gentleman in the picture has twinkling eyes beneath a bald pate with many a stray wisp of white hair. His smile is almost puckish over a bristly white beard that comes halfway down his chest. He had inscribed the front of the book, "Robt. R. Owens Book, Newark, Ohio. O Carry me back." I believe Robert Owen is my closest spiritual ancestor. So it's not surprising that I took to the Welsh hymns with such enthusiasm. I listen with much laughter and tears to the 5,000 Welsh men and women singing their hearts out in the Royal Albert Hall. It wasn't long before I was singing along with them, using the insert. Over the years I've memorized six of the hymns, and would sing them for you at the drop of a hat. They are:
The music of Paraguay charms us into the regions of beauty and love. It's a blend of harp, guitar, and voice, embodying Paraguay's meld of Spanish and Guaraní cultures. Most of the Paraguayan recordings I've heard tend to wander a little too easily into sentimentality. Somewhere, though, I found a record that retains the love and beauty without the mush: Los Chiriguanos of Paraguay: Guaraní Songs & Dances from the noble Nonesuch Explorer series. The entire ensemble consists of Angel Sanabria (guitar and lead vocals) and Pablo Vicente (harp, harmony, and repartee), two members of the Chirigua Guaraní group. Both lived in Paris and have toured extensively, but their music gallops on the broad plains and forests of Paraguay, with occasional excursions to the mountains for a Bolivian baguala or Argentine provincial music lauding the provinces of Jujuy and Catamarca. The music expresses
joys and sorrows in clear, primary colors. The harp instrumentals are
fountains of joyful colors - bright sun dancing on the leaves and sparkling
in the rivers. The songs themselves...let me just give you the flavor
of some!
(These
translations are no attempt at capturing the passionate dignity of the
poetry -
"Subo" - clearly
Bolivian or Peruvian from the reference the the qena, a flute-like Andean
instrument... just a hint of the meaning. Sorry!)
From "Paisaje
de Catamarca" (a province in northwestern Argentina):
...to be continued... |
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