My uncle Bill was so loved and revered that when he died, back in 2004, there was an all-out family effort to produce a tribute worth remembering. The funeral gathering was treated to a slide show, and because Bill lived to 91 and was never camera shy, that show was extensive. I delivered the keynote address, with interspersed contributions from half-a-dozen others. [The folk from the funeral directors were so impressed with the proceedings that I was offered a job arranging other peoples' farewells! I declined.] After the cremation [“you’re not going to bury me – so unsanitary!”] there followed a more than ample repast lubricated with Bill's favourite sparkling burgundy.
A significant component of Bill's funeral was the accompanying music, through which we tried to recall his favourite tunes and performers - somewhat of a task, you can imagine, having to be done in haste and without the benefit of Bill’s own recollections.
A little while later my wife, Annie, suggested - in order to avoid a similar last-minute rush in the future - that I should make a list of music to accompany my own funeral. Who better than me to choose that music? Annie was being practical, not maudlin. So, I happily did as she suggested, and after a lot of contemplation I listed half-a-dozen candidates for my "funeral music"……… with the expectation that somebody else would one day make the final cut.
Not only did I choose the pieces but I sourced the actual tracks from my own LPs and CDs, and listed full particulars - thus to make the task easier for my grieving family and friends! And I gave the list to Annie, and forgot about it; and the electronic file was lost some time ago between computers, and that was that......until, that is, a paper copy surfaced recently - and prompted this blog.
My selections had been chosen as pieces for a specific occasion, possibly with a touch of sentimentality, and certainly mindful of their beauty (with one possible exception - you figure). I have carefully reviewed my selections of seventeen years ago, and I'm sticking with the pieces I picked then. In the process I have sampled numerous alternative versions but, again, am sticking with the versions I originally chose. All six are featured in this blog, together with my present-day comments on why I chose them………thus giving my future mourners some insight they would not otherwise have enjoyed.
Ingemisco
[from the Dies Irae section of Verdi's Requiem]
expresses powerful sentiments, although sentiments somewhat ironic for a non-believer
Giuseppe Verdi was the great Italian composer of opera, or should that be the great composer of Italian opera? Either way, in his long life of 87 years Verdi composed 28 operas, many of them still today regarded among the greatest, and front and centre in the performing repertoire of the world's opera houses.
By comparison, Verdi's output of music in other genres was small - but he did write one requiem; and the Ingemisco is a tenor solo from it. This is the only one of my six funeral selections that is seriously sacred.
A requiem is a mass for the repose of the soul of the dead, largely peculiar to the Catholic and Orthodox Churches. Requiem masses have a long history within church liturgy and it is not surprising that so many serious composers have included requiem masses on their CVs. What is surprising, though, is Verdi's dramatic departure from the usual requiem format - not a departure from the formal structure of the mass, but a departure from the typical sombre tone. Verdi's Requiem has an unaccustomed dramatic force, an operatic flavour that separates it from all others. And in the midst of that drama Verdi includes the sweet supplication of the Ingemisco. What follows is one of numerous translations from the Italian:
"I groan as one guilty, and my face blushed with guilt.
Thou who didst absolve Mary [Magdalen] and hear the prayer of the thief, hast given me hope too.
My prayers are not worthy, but Thou, oh good one, show mercy, lest I burn in everlasting fire.
Give me a place among the sheep, and separate me from the goats, placing me on Thy right hand."
Not in the words of today, clearly, but you get the point. Despite the contrition and the pleading tone however, some interpreters have delivered the words with a surge of insistence and vigour, as though they have a god-given right to demand a favour from god. I don't think that works. The characteristics of operatic tenor voices range from huge to modest, and while there are so-called heldentenors - tenors necessarily with voices to blast Wagner to the upper galleries – such voices are wrong for the Ingemisco. Certainly, there is an overriding requirement for projection - even the smallest voice must be able to be heard at the rear of the upper circle – but the great failing of the powerful voice is loss of sound quality. I once compiled, for comparison, a tape of 20 versions of La Donna e Mobile, from Verdi's Rigoletto. There was an astonishing range of interpretations. And what was clear was that while the smaller voices usually have little difficulty in beefing up when it suits them to be forceful, the big voices are often unable to tone it down, and can't desist from braying unmusically. The Ingemisco doesn’t need to be belted.
I have seen a listing of 85 recordings of the complete Requiem, and who knows how many interpretations exist of the Ingemicso alone. I may be a completist, but I'm not crazy enough to go seek all those versions. Of the tenors I have reviewed my favourites are the ones who hold back a little, the ones who adopt the tone of a supplicant - true when I first made my selection, and true still. And the most sweetly ardent is Luciano Pavarotti, and specifically his Ingemisco recording with the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor George Solti, recorded in October 1967. Listen and weep:
Send in the Clowns, Reprise, and Night Waltz
[from A Little Night Music by Stephen Sondheim]
a song of loss, reprised at the close of the play; and the most haunting waltz melody
Stephen Sondheim, who died at age 91 in November 2021, was an ornament to the American musical theatre. His Wikipedia entry extends to 43 pages, including 242 footnotes! The simple fact is that he was the greatest contributor of his time to musical theatre. He wrote some 20 musicals, both the lyrics (from other people's books) and the music - with the exception that on three occasions he wrote the lyrics but had some journeyman tunesmith write the music, those nobodies being Jule Styne (Gypsy), Richard Rogers (Do I Hear a Waltz?), and Leonard Bernstein (West Side Story).
A Little Night Music dates from 1973, but its origins were the 1955 Ingmar Bergman film Smiles of a Summer Night.
The story of the play (and the film) is simple enough, but the relationships are complicated. Send in the Clowns is sung by Desiree, a woman of middle age, reflecting on the romance she once had with Fredrik, and her loss when they drifted apart. And here, a generation later, they are re-united after Fredrik’s son elopes with Fredrik’s young (second) wife-to-be; then Desiree and Fredrik sing the reprise together. Has fate, through bitterness, at last brought them together?
I had always thought that Sondheim’s message of “send in the clowns” was a reference to circus life where, after some catastrophe in the ring, they send in the clowns to distract the audience. But, when queried in 1990, Sondheim confessed to no such imagery. Not far from it, though. He wasn’t thinking specifically of circuses, merely that “if the show isn’t going well…..let’s do the jokes”. Anyway, listen to the music. It is exquisite.
Glynnis Johns [still with us at age 98] was chosen by Sondheim to open the show on Broadway, and this is her premiere interpretation. Johns is well known as a British screen actress of the post-WW2 era, and not well remembered as a singer, but the catch in her unique throaty voice captures the regret of a lifetime lost.
“Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
Me here at last on the ground,
You in mid-air.
Send in the clowns.
Isn't it bliss?
Don't you approve?
One who keeps tearing around,
One who can't move.
Where are the clowns?
Send in the clowns.
Just when I stopped opening doors,
Finally knowing the one that I wanted was yours,
Making my entrance again with my usual flair,
Sure of my lines,
No-one is there.
Don't you love a farce?
My fault, I fear.
I thought that you'd want what I want -
Sorry my dear.
But where are the clowns?
Quick send in the clowns.
Don't bother,
They're here.
Isn't it rich?
Isn't it queer?
Losing my timing this late in my career.
And where are the clowns?
There ought to be clowns.
Well, maybe next year.”
Reprise [duet] and Night Waltz (finale) -
“Isn't it rich?
Are we a pair?
You here at last on the ground.
You in mid-air.
Was that a farce?
My fault I fear.
Me as a merry go-round.
Me as King Lear.
Make way for the clowns,
Applause for the clowns,
They're finally here.”
The Impossible Dream
[from Man of La Mancha by Mitch Leigh and Joe Darion]
not a bad message, although a little late for me
Never known to be self-effacing, the writer, Somerset Maugham, when asked about his place in literature, described himself as being in the front rank of the second rank. Somewhat consistent with Maugham’s feigned modesty he published, in Redbook magazine, a series of essays on the great novels - and included nothing written by himself! The Redbook articles were later (in 1954) re-published by Maugham as 10 Novels and Their Authors. Maugham had dared to select the best books ever written, to read and to study them – and, for purposes of elimination, to read who knows how many of the next nearest best - and then to stick out his neck with a ten best list.
And, guess what? Don Quixote was not on Maugham's list. But Maugham, in the preface to his book, does discuss Don Quixote extensively, the inference being that it was a close contender for a top ten position. "It is a great and important book, and a professed student of literature should certainly read it once through (I have myself read it from cover to cover twice in English and three times in Spanish).” [Maugham that is, not Andrews.] Maugham concedes that Don Quixote has some tedious parts, yet “I cannot but think that the ordinary reader, the reader who reads for delight, would lose nothing if he did not read the dull parts at all. He would surely enjoy all the more the passages in which the narrative is directly concerned with the adventures and conversations, so amusing and touching, of the gentle knight and his earthy squire”. We have, by the way, no means of identifying and skipping the dull parts!
Fifty or so years on from Maugham Don Quixote's odds had shortened. A Washington Post review of a book about “The Power of the Printed Word” informs us that in 2002 "one hundred major writers from fifty-four countries voted Don Quixote the best work of fiction in the world".
Don Quixote - or, to give the book its full title (in English), The Ingenious Gentleman Sir Quixote of La Mancha - was the masterwork of Miguel de Cervantes. Cervantes lived from 1547 to 1616. Through Cervantes’ fictional character we now have the word quixotic, meaning unrealistic, impractical, idealistic.
The book was the basis of the musical play, Man of La Mancha; and the challenge for creators of the adaptation was to turn the greatest book ever into a great theatrical experience. They succeeded; and Man of La Mancha ran for 2328 performances on Broadway from November 1965. The device of melding the character of Don Quixote with that of the author, Cervantes, was a masterstroke. The opening scene - with Cervantes being thrown into a dungeon prior to interrogation by the Inquisition and, before a kangaroo court of fellow prisoners, transforming himself from Cervantes into Don Quixote - was breathtaking theatre.
Man of La Mancha was a smash hit; and the smash song from the musical was The Impossible Dream, subtitled The Quest. It comes at a turning point in the narrative, where the audience at last realises that Quixote is not a buffoon. Confused and deluded perhaps, but a man genuinely on a mission to right the wrongs of the world. Alas! a man with an impossible dream. Here are the words:
"To dream...the impossible dream...
To fight...the unbeatable foe...
To bear...with unbearable sorrow...
To run...where the brave dare not go..
To right...the unrighteable wrong...
To love...pure and chaste from afar...
To try...when your arms are too weary...
To reach...the unreachable star.
This is my quest, to follow that star
No matter how hopeless, no matter how far.
To fight for the right without question or pause,
To be willing to march into Hell for a Heavenly cause.
And I know if I'll only be true to this glorious quest
That my heart will lie peaceful and calm
When I'm laid to my rest.
And the world will be better for this:
That one man, scorned and covered with scars,
Still strove with his last ounce of courage
To reach the unreachable star."
In the world of musical theatre The Impossible Dream is performed as a bravura baritone piece, but in the outside world of popular song it has encountered numerous interpretations. I have checked out a few. Elvis Presley's version is passably good, Kelsey Grammar (of Cheers fame) can't hold the line and is awful. Jim Nabors is absolutely spot on with the notes but has some unique and unsettling diction. Among opera performers, Samuel Ramey is simply too operatic; and Placido Domingo - I can't believe I'm saying this - sounds too Spanish! Keith Michel brought the role to the West End, and his performance is fine. Very secure, although a bit sing-song for mine - it could have been rather more metronomic. But, at the end of this latter-day survey I have returned to my original choice, the inaugural Broadway performance of Richard Kiley. [Incidentally, Wikipedia has a listing of "notable renditions" of The Impossible Dream. Sixty-eight versions are listed, not including three of those mentioned by me.]
Richard Kiley (1922 - 1999) was the consummate all-round performer - film, television, stage. And could he sing!? Yes, he could sing! He won numerous awards in his career of 50-plus years. Kiley's rendition of The Impossible Dream is superior in every way - a perfectly executed crescendo. Recorded in 1965, here is his original Broadway cast recording:
Guess Who I Saw Today?
[from Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952]
the most bitter sweet bittersweet song I know
In making this selection I take a significant step back into my "listening" history - to 1952, some years before television was transmitted in Australia, when as a teenager I was developing an interest in serious music while at the same time remaining immersed in the popular music of the day. That music, before rock and roll hit the airwaves in the mid-1950s, was largely regulated by the weekly half-hour hit parade of the top eight tunes as determined by record shop sales of 78 rpm discs. To its credit the radio (then still widely referred to as the wireless) served up plenty of music that was neither classical nor pop; and this tune, Guess Who I Saw Today?, remains clearly in my listening memory from sources other than hit parades.
Guess Who I Saw Today? is one of the tracks on the LP Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952. The sleeve notes tell the story: "Just as the theatre critics and Broadway wiseacres were deciding that the 1951-52 theatrical season was the dullest in years, Leonard Sillman's New Faces of 1952 bounded into town and proved that 'good revues are about as delightful as anything the stage has to offer'"......the show was "a good looking, fast moving, intimate revue with a tremendous polish on it".
Sillman had been presenting "New Faces" revues since 1934 and, over the years his revues had debuted faces that were to go on to theatrical and cinema fame: Imogene Coca, John Lund, Eve Arden, Richard Carlson, Gypsy Rose Lee, Van Johnson, Henry Fonda, Tyrone Power. So, no pressure to emulate in 1952! As it happens, a number of the 1952 cast achieved minor fame; but the most famous "discovery" of the year was Eartha Kitt, who Sillman made famous after she'd (already!) "played the best spots in Istanbul, Greece, Egypt and Paris". New Faces of 1952 was not your school production playing for two consecutive weekends, or your amateur theatrical stretching for a full fortnight. It ran for 365 performances on Broadway.
The show premiered in May 1952, and the LP appeared a mere two months later, followed by inevitable airing on Australian radio. There was a 20th Century Fox film in 1954 that largely replicated the revue, with numbers strung together by a thin story line.
Guess Who I Saw Today? is performed by June Carroll. Carroll appeared in several of the ensemble pieces in New Faces, but this was her feature solo. No way could she be said to have a memorable voice, but in Guess Who I Saw Today? she hit the right note of pathos, she nailed it. There are versions by other latter-day “name” performers. They are universally lifeless. Nancy Wilson, Eartha Kitt, Carmen McCrae: these singers treat it as a song for a smoke-filled room. It is not. The source of the tears in our eyes lies elsewhere.
A bit of trivia: June Carroll was the sister of producer, Leonard Sillman. A second bit: June Carroll was the mother of American composer Steve Reich.
And here are those bittersweet words:
“You're so late getting home from the office.
Did you miss your train?
Were you caught in the rain?
No, don't bother to explain.
Can I fix you a quick martini?
As a matter of fact I'll have one with you.
For to tell you the truth I've had quite a day too!
Guess who I saw today, my dear!
I went in town to buy the kids a thing or two,
And thought I'd stop to have a bite
When I was through.
I looked around for some place near,
And it occurred to me where I had parked the car
I'd seen a most attractive French cafe and bar.
It really wasn't very far.
The waiter showed me to a dark secluded corner,
And when my eyes became accustomed
To the gloom,
I saw two people at the bar
Who were so much in love,
That even I could spot it
Clear across the room.
Guess who I saw today, my dear!
I've never been so shocked before.
I headed blindly for the door.
They didn't see me passing through.
Guess who I saw today?
I saw you!”
Sheep May Safely Graze
[from The Wise Virgins Ballet by William Walton (from J.S. Bach)]
they don't come any more beautiful than this..........
I have mixed feelings about English composer, William Walton (1902 to 1983). And in reading biographical notes I sense that he may have had mixed feelings about himself. His compositional career was long, but he was not prolific. He had extended unproductive stretches. His parents had been strong musical influences, and his years as a chorister and student at Christ Church, Oxford, provided him with an impeccable pedigree in serious music. Then, his years of association with the Sitwell family (living in an attic in their home for 14 years!), and his collaboration with Edith Sitwell in the production of Façade in 1923 – her words, his music – welcomed him to the avant-garde. Yet within the decade he was writing an epic cantata, Belshazzar’s Feast (1931), not the least bit avant-garde; and twenty or so years after Facade he was writing conventional film scores.
Withal, he was knighted, given the Order of Merit, and has a memorial in Westminster Abbey alongside Elgar, Vaughan-Williams and Britten. Add to this his commissions to write anthems for the coronations of George VI and Elizabeth II and it’s clear he was firmly accepted by the establishment, his early modernist transgressions long forgotten.
From the mid-1950s Walton and his wife lived on the Greek Island, Ischia; and one wonders whether this isolated him from current trends and estranged him from the cutting edge of modern composing. And did it really matter?
The Walton piece I have chosen, Sheep May Safely Graze, is firmly traditional. It originated in 1713 as the ninth movement of Bach’s secular cantata BWV208, being an aria for soprano, two recorders and continuo. Walton arranged and orchestrated it in 1940 for Frederick Ashton’s ballet The Wise Virgins. It is drop-dead gorgeous music. This performance is by the London Philharmonic Orchestra, conductor Bryden Thomson, recorded in 1990.
Morgen! (Tomorrow!)
[from Four Songs, Opus 27 by Richard Strauss]
..........yes they do!
The composer, Richard Strauss, is not to be confused with Johann Strauss (the "waltz king") and all his family. And not to be confused with Oscar Straus, composer of operettas. But their lives were contemporaneous to some degree: Johann (1825 to 1890 and Oscar (1870 to 1954) were Austrian, and Richard (1864 to 1949) was German. [Oscar was born Strauss but dropped the second "s" for professional purposes.] Richard's music was a world apart from that of his namesakes, and there are many who would rank him as the greatest "classical" composer of the 20th Century, certainly the first half; or at least rank him with Mahler, Debussy, Ravel and Stravinsky, all of whose lives also overlapped that of Strauss – each for more than 40 years.
Strauss spent a lifetime as an orchestral conductor, what might be considered his day job; and in 1920 he was a co-founder of the Salzburg Festival. But his enduring fame is as composer. He wrote a number of operas, including Der Rosenkavalier and Salome, and several tone poems. Franz Liszt is given principal credit for the development of the tone poem (an orchestral work in one movement), and some say Richard Strauss took the form to its peak.
Of equal eminence are Strauss's songs, memorably his Four Last Songs, written when he was 84. Earlier, when he had been thirty, Strauss published another set of four songs, as his Opus 27. The fourth of these songs, Morgen!, he dedicated to his (then) wife, Pauline. Morgen means tomorrow. The piece was set with piano accompaniment, but three years later Strauss arranged it for orchestra with violin solo. This is the version we hear. Be aware that there are several translations of the words from the German, and I have chosen one of the more poetic ones. It matters little, because you will hear it sung in German. It is a love song, and a song of longing.
“Tomorrow again will shine the sun
And on my sunlit path of earth
Unite us again, as it has done,
And give our bliss another birth.
The spacious beach under wave-blue skies
We'll reach by descending soft and slow
And mutely gaze in each other's eyes,
As over us rapture's great hush will flow.”
The singer is Felicity Lott, supported by the Royal Scottish National Orchestra, conductor Neeme Jarvi, recorded in 1986. I could find no more beautiful version.
Well, there you have it. Selections that, although not funereal, seem quite appropriate for a funeral, I think. Not chosen because they are my all-time favourite pieces, but pieces to accompany reflection.
Gary Andrews
