The third doth rage: and roughly brayth
Because of my desire for a more ascetic life, I can listen to NPR again.
Last week, in a fit of panic at having too much crap cluttering my room I whipped out the old hatchet and scalpel. As — depressingly — always happens, this resulted in piles of dustbin bags full of crap being chucked out and/or donated to charity. It also resulted in a bit of room rearrangement, which led to a cascade of phosphorylations, which led to my radio getting moved back to where the power cord can reach a plug socket
I had forgotten how nice it is to fall asleep to NPRs Classical Music Through the Night. I find that focusing on the melodies helps me to avoid thinking about stress-dream rich material, like lab-work, or programming, or saving the planet. I turn off the lights and lay on top of my duvet (a proper English style one, not that pale American imitation) until I start losing track of the music, and getting cold. Then I fumble the off switch on the remote and get under the covers, and seem to fall asleep very quickly.
The only problem is when something really good which I haven’t heard before comes on. Then I want to force myself to stay awake long enough to find out what it is.
This is what I heard last night:
It’s been AGES since I heard this (it’s the Tallis Fantasia by Ralph V-W for those of you who didn’t click on play) and I don’t remember liking it that much. This time it yanked my listening muscles right out of their sockets. I only caught the last couple of minutes, so it’s really the Tallis melody which caught my attention, and not the Fantasia.
Tallis was around a looong time ago, in the 1500s — way earlier then any music I’ve gotten into. The particular melody which RVW used was the third of a series of nine tunes that Tallis wrote for Archbishop Parker’s Psalter, whatever one of those is. The descriptions of the tunes are absolutely frickin’ stunning:
The first is meeke: devout to see,
The second is sad: in maiesty,
The third doth rage: and roughly brayth,
The fourth doth fawne: and flattry playth,
The fyfth deligth: and laugheth the more,
The sixth bewayleth: it weepeth full sore,
The seventh tredeth stout: in froward race,
The eighth goeth milde: in modest pace.
Isn’t that beautiful?