Olde Music
Jun 10, 2009 12:29 PM Filed in:
Now Playing
Okay,
so after writing about some new favorite music, I thought I’d
add a little bit about some old favorite music, old in that
I’ve been listening to it for some 26 years now, and old also
because it’s period music, in this case madrigals. Most of my
good friends know that my musical tastes are all over the map. When
you drop by my house or hop in my truck you never know what
you’re going to hear coming out of my stereo. Well, when I
was in high school I spent a couple of years singing in the high
school madrigal group. I liked it. And then my good friend Dave
McCausland introduced me to the annual
Madrigal DInner at
Western Illinois University, and that was it. I was
hooked!
Something
about that merger of the music and the theater awoke in me an
affinity for ancient music and
performance
I never knew I had. This would lead me several years later to join
the
Revels
in
Cambridge, MA, and to searching out
RenFairs in
whatever
part of
the country I might be
living in,
and really to a life long interest and exploration of various
medieval and Renaissance musical and theatrical artists. It’s
enriched my life in many ways over these many past
years.
Well, back in 1983 as it were, I was a poor graduate student living
in Austin, TX studying Organizational Communication at The
University of Texas. The university had a wonderful public radio
station called
KUT,
and I spent many an afternoon and evening listening to the various
programs on KUT because they were both excellent and cheap! And
some of what I heard on KUT I taped to cassette. A few of those
cassettes I ended up carrying around with me for decades
afterwards.
One
such tape was of some very lovely madrigal style music. Years later
I was able to discover that the first 13 songs on that particular
tape were by
The
King’s Singers. A
happy discovery for sure. But the remaining 22 songs I have never
been able to verify, even all these years later. At the time I
labeled the tape as The Julian Greene Consort and that’s how
I have come to know the music ever since, but even in this internet
age I have had no luck tracking down any information about The
Julian (Julienne? Julien? Julianne???) Greene (Green?)
Consort.
Well,
here for your listening pleasure are a few choice selections from
that (now digitized) ancient cassette tape. I hope you enjoy them
as much as I have over the years, and if anyone out here actually
recognizes any of these performances and can share information
about them, please do send me an email!
01.
Processional I
02.
A
Heart To Desire It
03.
Processional II
04.
I Am The
Vine/O, Cease This Crying
05.
Interlude
III
06.
O,
Metaphysical Tobacco
07.
Interlude
IV
08.
Come
Forth
09.
Betsy And
Jamie
10.
The Cuckoo/Country Lodges
11.
Processional III
12.
Processional IV
Oh, and by the way, for any of you out there who really do enjoy
these pieces, the 22 ‘mystery’ songs are available for
download on the Crow Corner page. Just look for the
Fill The Pipe
zipfile. Cheers, JB
