Friday, October 13, 2017

For N. - Thomas Tallis - Third Mode Melody - Sung to "Why F'umth in fight" a paraphrase, kind of, of Psalm 2

Theater of Voices
Paul Hillier, conductor

The "Theme of Thomas Tallis" which Ralph Vaughn Williams wrote his fantasia on, originally one of nine 4-voice pieces Tallis wrote to be sung to metrical paraphrases of the psalms in Archbishop Parker's Psalter.  The same setting could be used for any text that shared the same metrical structure.  This one is notable for being in the third, of Phrygian mode which, in my analysis, gives it the distinctive feel it has and which gives it both a definite feeling of  non-repose and harmonic motion, even though the actual melody dwells and lingers on the fifth degree,  a feeling of active not altogether easy meditation.  Though Tallis, like William Byrd, remained a faithful Catholic for the entire period of the Tudor persecution of Catholicism, he also wrote music used by the Protestant establishment.  Williams included it in the Anglican song book that he edited in 1906 set to a much later hymn by John Addison, as well as his Fantasia. 

14 comments:

  1. Aren't you the asshole who told me how mediocre Vaughan Williams was?

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    1. I don't recall saying it, can you document me having said it? As to your question, the only asshole in this discussion is you. So, no.

      RVW isn't my favorite composer but, then, I didn't post a piece by him, did I. I posted a piece by Thomas Tallis, who was a great composer, apparently RVW would agree with that opinion.

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  2. "Tallis, like William Byrd, remained a faithful Catholic for the entire
    period of the Tudor persecution of Catholicism, he also wrote music used
    by the Protestant establishment."

    Kinda like all those black r&b/soul singers who let Jews publish their music.

    What's your fucking point?
    :-)

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    1. Oh, Stupy, you couldn't get a point if you put your little wee wee in a pencil sharpener.

      Archbishop Parker was an Angican, his psalter which Tallis wrote the pieces for is an Anglican psalter, they were and still are used in the Protestant service, Thomas Tallis like William Byrd have a feast day in the American Episcopal calendar, though both of them were Catholics, who managed to work and stay out of hot water even as Henry, Edward and after the brief Catholic period of Mary (the least bloody of all the Tudors) under bloody Bess.

      I suspect that anyone else who read that and who isn't either as ignorant or as lazy as you could have understood it or could have with a minimal amount of looking stuff up.

      I don't write for lazy, ignorant people. I write for people who read and think and paid attention during their school years. I write for people like NTodd and RMJ and other people smart enough to read what I write without misrepresenting it.

      What R&B singers and what Jews are you babbling about? Name names.

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  3. Yes, you told me how mediocre Vaughan Williams was. He was part of the list of genuine artists you inexplicably feel superior to. Including the Beatles, Oscar Wilde, Leonard Bernstein, the Rolling Stones, Raymond Chandler, George Gershwin, Richard Wagner, Gertrude Stein, Woody Allen, all standup comedians and I can't remember who else. I'm gonna have to start establishing a data base.

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    1. Your assertion that I said something is not documentation of anything other than you claimed I said something, given your record of lying about what I said is about the only near perfect score you've ever achieved in your life, it' more likely reliable evidence that you're lying, again.

      It's pretty hilarious for someone who got paid to be a professional pop music critic, who regularly said bad things about other peoples' music and work as a media whore to be claiming that someone else doing for nothing what they did for money is claiming they are superior to those whose work they criticized.

      I documented everything I ever said about any of those writers and musicians and composers. I never claimed that I'd produced work superior to theirs, though you like to play rock star to such tedious effect in your promotion of your garage band's recorded detritus.

      I would claim to be better than your favorite Nazi collaborator, Gertrude Stein. She was a 100% phony and a moral atrocity. The others, no I don't think I'd claim that in some general way I was their superior. I've said good things about Oscar Wilde, Leonard Bernstein and even Woody Allen (the pedophile pervert). I believe I've never said anything bad about George Gershwin, having defended him against the vandalism of Brian Wilson and his heirs who prostitute his work for money. George Gershwin was a very good songwriter and even a composer. Though he was certainly not the superior of Duke Ellington, Mary Lou Williams or any number of other song writers of his time.

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  4. "I write for people like NTodd and RMJ and other people smart enough to read what I write without misrepresenting it. "



    HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAH!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

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    1. Stupy, either of them could whip you to a crouching, cowering crybaby if they wanted to. Both of them were smart enough to get out of Duncan's Den of Futility while the getting was good.

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  5. "I would claim to be better than your favorite Nazi collaborator, Gertrude Stein."

    Oh good grief. My favorite Nazi collaborator? As a Jew, I can't imagine why I would find that profoundly offensive.

    You're the biggest liar on the planet. Go fuck yourself.

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    1. You're the one who loves the documented Hitler admirer and collaborator, lying about her documented history, her own writing, the evidence that the scumball proposed Hitler for the Nobel Peace Prize in 1938, who denied, even as they were practicing air raid drills in Paris that there was any danger of a Nazi invasion of France, the one who was kept safe in plain sight in occupied France even as they were deporting Jewish children to their death not 40 km from where he was living by her buddies in the Vichy government. I was only saying what was true, that it offends you is just a bonus feature.

      Gertrude Stein is your favorite Nazi collaborator, that's a matter of fact, not an opinion on my part. If you are so offended it's your own fault for covering up for the skank.

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  6. This comment has been removed by a blog administrator.

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    1. Oh, that got deleted by mistake, Windows 10, I think it said, something like "Wow, just wow". or something on that level of non-response. Post it again and I'll answer it.

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  7. BTW -- your proof for that preposterous and anti-Semitic assertion is that I once quoted one of Stein's one liners.

    Go fuck yourself.

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    1. You got into a lather when I noted she was a Nazi collaborator, that she'd done a translation of the speeches of Gen. Petain and wrote a preface to them comparing the Nazi puppet to George Washington.

      So, do it now, Stupy, condemn Gertrude Stein as the Nazi collaborator she was, I won't force you to admit that her writing talent was pretty much non-existent, her only talents were for being amoral scum, a sleazy materialistic vulgarian and a self-promoter. Though as a short list of her achievements, that's a good place to start.

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