Don Armando
Sr. Maria Valentina. This setting of the words is by Sr, Glenda, one of the few by a woman that I found. Here is her recording.
Given that Mary was a Jewish peasant girl, living under Roman occupation in a place also under the cultural domination of alien, Greek culture, it's a little odd that I've been concentrating mostly on settings made in accord with musical practices that aren't exactly of and by the people of her class and condition. One of the reasons for that is that folk versions of her prayer aren't as available and common. Certainly not in the English speaking people who are more likely to set other texts. Part of that might be the demotion of Mary under some forms of protestantism that came in with the reformation. I don't know.
But it would seem that the impressive and succinct summation of the law and prophets in the First Testament, contained in the song resonate more in Spanish speaking countries, especially those who have also been under colonial and class domination, as in the passage posted below. I'd feel a lot better if there were more English language, folk settings of the words like these. The Gospel is radical and of unprecedented ability to bring about change when it is believed. That's a matter of history, not of wishful thinking. And so, it either must be suppressed, as it was by some governments or coopted and neutralized, as the entire Gospel has been.
Neutralized especially by people who create a straw man of religion and then gleefully set it on fire.
ReplyDeleteMore and more I'm convinced that one of the central tenets of religion (or wisdom traditions, too) is the requirement of introspection and self-reflection and responsibility; and the young (especially) atheists on-line (or in Femen; see the latest Salon article) are not interested in those there things: they are only interested in being right.
ah, youth; it is, indeed, wasted on the young.
Self-reflection and self-awareness do much to slow down one's desire to see the world remade in one's image, or according to one's preferences. I think the other problem with institutional religion is that it allows so many different people to be a part of it, and that makes it hard to anyone to truly be in control. The screamers I meet on-line are especially interested in power, and control. Dawkins and company are imperialists. Femen wants the world to conform to its vision. On-line and "New" Atheists want everyone to keep their religion to themselves, the better to make the world comfortable for atheists.
And the radical nature of the Gospel keeps churning things at the margins. Nietzsche called it a slave mentality, but then his thought gave us (indirectly) Nazi Germany, and the teachings of an Mediterranean peasant gave us the teachings of the saints, the Magnificat of Mary (all of Luke's songs are radical; hers is the most radical of the four), and the efforts of people across millennia to do right in the world.
Salon has another article where a "humanist chaplain" wants to reduce that effort to the Ten Commandments (because Cecil B. DeMille and a few blowhards today) and, frankly, I can't stop laughing. It's the Children's Hour somewhere everywhere all the time, these days.
I like fires this time of year.
ReplyDeleteOT, but Lily Tomlin was honored by the president and Kennedy Center tonite, much to somebody's chagrin:
ReplyDeletehttp://thehill.com/blogs/in-the-know/in-the-know/226268-obama-i-kind-of-wish-i-was-called-sting