Open Thread - Homesteading in France
Our use of lights from candles, bonfires, and holiday strings are rooted in the chasing of the darkness in the depths of the longest night at Solstice. Many of us are loathe to take down our winter festival lights until we see visible signs of lengthening days.
It seems inappropriate to post beautiful photos of Galeries Lafayette in Paris, but it is so wonderful.
In these dark days, one of the things that gives us something to soothe our minds and souls is the beauty of music.
Mr. Meta and I joined a community choir conducted by a very gifted conductor, composer, chef de chœur from England who has relocated to France and is now becoming a French citizen.
We are Pagan, but the beauty of singing and making something so resonant, lovely and moving cannot leave us untouched. The acoustic of stone churches is anything from spot on to such a long echo it becomes almost impossible to sing in. Our eglise is just on the verge of overpowering us. Slow is good.
The paroisse commissioned a Baroque Organ which was built in an atilier in Hagganau, north of Strasbourg. The organ is five manual, stand alone piece with hand carved wooden decor. It has a tuning which is difficult to use as accompaniment. But has a lovely range of stops and instruments.
Here is this year's pamphlet.
Music à Charolles
At another time I will try to embed some of our own performances but for now will post YouTubes of a few of our favorite pieces. Our director took us from one line singing to eight voice polyphony in a couple of years.
Jesus Christ the Apple Tree - Poston
[video:https://youtu.be/SixnHKwyrjI]
Adieu des Bergers - Berlioz
[video:https://youtu.be/k4Qx4QBeekE]
Personent Hodie - Medieval
[video:https://youtu.be/34Yr_mbZAB4]
We miss singing with the choir. After fifty years I was so surprised to see that it was possible to sing better than ever.
Wishing you all beauty and love in this season of light.
Comments
church organs
the most amazing one I saw was in St. Augustine
.
.
here is something seasonal (on another organ)
enjoy your holidays and merci beacoup for the OT!
chantant a l'avenir
This is perhaps more traditional
And this is more modern
pipes dream ..
As long as we are listening to Bach
Christmas Oratorio[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1zoIQFr8BLw]
NYCVG
Perfect choice
NYCVG
QMS - Messiaen! We went to Prague one late
November early December. We heard Messiaen there in the big concert hall to hear Turangalîla-Symphonie.
[video:https://youtu.be/eCO7le_6LzU]
Then we came home and went to Paris to see and hear Daniel Barenboim conduct the Vienna Orchestra at the Élysée in a performance of Ma Vlast.
This is famous for the movement
[video:https://youtu.be/l6kqu2mk-Kw]
We were knocked out by the access to quality music.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
that is really beautiful
thank you so much for sharing!
making love to musical instruments
is a wonderful way to get off on some
assigned magical journey
Accomplished amateur instrument players and singers
from all over the world are invited every summer to take part in music workshops in Bohemia, Czech Republic:
https://pellegrina.net/
Thank you, Lotti.
Merry Christmas!
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Homesteading chores today...
A chilly 30 degrees F this AM, and the tractor wouldn't crank. Had to jump it off and just as I got going, it died again. Jumped it off yet again. Finally got started using the backscoop to back into a big pile of wood chips and lift a load to apply in the garden ally.
After several loads, we wrapped up the main ally and then it was filling buckets to apply to the garden paths between our beds. Buckets let you shake out just enough chips for the pathways. So, (all puns intended) we kept chipping away at it till we finished.
Garden looks so nice with the beds mulched with wheat straw and the pathways covered in wood chips. We got the wood chips from a tree trimming company who was working in a nearby cemetery. Delivered right beside the garden for free.
Anyway a message that there's always a "hitch in the get up", but you just have to persevere and get past the hiccups.
So no beautiful cathedrals here other than forest canopy, but still a nice holiday spirit.
Here's hoping you all have a good holiday season!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
We have a saw mill nearby which makes boards from
Doug Fir. They have lots of chips. We'll go see if we can get a few small trailer loads for our small garden. We have the wheat straw for the beds. Almost there.
Love to hear your daily chores. They remind me what we need to be doing.
Thanks so much.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Good morning DM. Thanks for the great column and
especially the Galeries Lafayette. I had to call my wife into the office to show her those, which she also appreciated. On our first trip to Paris we were super ambitious and walked all over the damn city and one day the GL was stuffed into the end of the itinerary. I was seriously unenthused, a bunch of extra walking just for some damn department store, but when we got there I was amazed and astounded - good memories. Of course, we also grabbed some food and beverage while there to fill out the experience.
be well and have a good one
That, in its essence, is fascism--ownership of government by an individual, by a group, or by any other controlling private power. -- Franklin D. Roosevelt --
el, so glad you liked the photos of Galeries Lafayette.
We first went there with our daughter when she was thirteen.
What impressed us the most were the ladies in the fur salon with their perfect French doggies.
Paris is quite tolerant of dogs. Some walk with their four-legged friends, stopping at cross walks just like people, then walking when the lights change. No owners, just the three dogs.
You have a good one too.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Happy Holidays Blue Bloggers
This is my all time favorite Xmas music. It brings tears to my heart the 1st time I hear it every year.
Can you hear the baby grand piano in the background?
My 2nd
Nat
And no Xmas is complete without snoopy and gang!
Thanks everyone who has made this site what it is! Have a merry one!
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Thanks so much for the lovely music. Just what we need.
I had to escape to a friend's house today, as our septic was spewing gases which hung around and flowed into our house crumpling my lungs beyond belief. The temporary answer, was to extend a flexible hose/vent which ventilates our septic and drainfield, both of which are anaerobic. The oxygen-less system is a gas factory. We hope to figure out how to remove our tank and replace with a micro station. But wow, don't know yet how.
Our retired architect friend is a water specialist who worked in India for quite awhile. I stayed at his house this afternoon and we talked about many water systems. The key is to find some agency who won't give us a bad time for having a higher than average monthly income (forgetting our debt for buying a house which needed rebuilt) and subsidize us for the better and environmentally safer aerobic system.
Meanwhile we have a hose which extends many meters towards our stream. The contours of the land may siphon off the gases and let them dissipate before they get to the leaky old stone house. We are also trying to figure out how we can positively pressurize the house without drawing contaminated air in from nearby.
The inability to physically deal with toxic fumes is a very present concern. The best systems here are micro stations which are mini waste treatment plants, with a pond/plant bog for processing fluids. They are encouraged throughout France. The only problem is the cost.
Maybe we haven't pressed enough buttons yet. French people are good at complaining until someone does what they need done. We need to whinge.
Thanks for listening, this gets overwhelming and we are getting old.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Great music choices...
My Xmas faves in no particular order...most of which I sing.
First a sad one from Woody sung by his son Arlo
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XcawqEpIRVo]
"1913 Massacre"
Take a trip with me in 1913
To Calumet, Michigan, in the copper country
I will take you to a place called Italian Hall
Where the miners are having their big Christmas ball
I will take you in a door and up a high stairs
Singing and dancing is heard everywhere
I will let you shake hands with the people you see
And watch the kids dance around the big Christmas tree
You ask about work and you ask about pay
They'll tell you they make less than a dollar a day
Working the copper claims, risking their lives
So it's fun to spend Christmas with children and wives
There's talking and laughing and songs in the air
And the spirit of Christmas is there everywhere
Before you know it you're friends with us all
And you're dancing around and around in the hall
Well a little girl sits down by the Christmas tree lights
To play the piano so you gotta keep quiet
To hear all this fun you would not realize
That the copper boss' thug men are milling outside
The copper boss' thugs stuck their heads in the door
One of them yelled and he screamed, "there's a fire"
A lady she hollered, "there's no such a thing
Keep on with your party, there's no such thing"
A few people rushed and it was only a few
"It's just the thugs and the scabs fooling you"
A man grabbed his daughter and carried her down
But the thugs held the door and he could not get out
And then others followed, a hundred or more
But most everybody remained on the floor
The gun thugs they laughed at their murderous joke
While the children were smothered on the stairs by the door
Such a terrible sight I never did see
We carried our children back up to their tree
The scabs outside still laughed at their spree
And the children that died there were seventy-three
The piano played a slow funeral tune
And the town was lit up by a cold Christmas moon
The parents they cried and the miners they moaned
"See what your greed for money has done"
Then a more hopeful piece...
Story of the WWI Christmas Truce...John McCutcheon
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s9coPzDx6tA]
My name is Francis Tolliver. I come from Liverpool.
Two years ago the war was waiting for me after school.
To Belgium and to Flanders, to Germany to here,
I fought for King and country I love dear.
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung.
The frozen field of France were still, no Christmas song was sung.
Our families back in England were toasting us that day,
their brave and glorious lads so far away.
I was lyin' with my mess-mates on the cold and rocky ground
when across the lines of battle came a most peculiar sound.
Says I "Now listen up me boys", each soldier strained to hear
as one young German voice sang out so clear.
"He's singin' bloddy well you know", my partner says to me.
Soon one by one each German voice joined in in harmony.
The cannons rested silent. The gas cloud rolled no more
as Christmas brought us respite from the war.
As soon as they were finished a reverent pause was spent.
'God rest ye merry, gentlemen' struck up some lads from Kent.
The next they sang was 'Stille Nacht". "Tis 'Silent Night'" says I
and in two toungues one song filled up that sky.
"There's someone commin' towards us" the front-line sentry cried.
All sights were fixed on one lone figure trudging from their side.
His truce flag, like a Christmas star, shone on that plain so bright
as he bravely strode, unarmed, into the night.
Then one by one on either side walked into no-mans-land
with neither gun nor bayonet we met there hand to hand.
We shared some secret brandy and wished each other well
and in a flare-lit soccer game we gave 'em hell.
We traded chocolates, cigarettes and photgraphs from home
these sons and fathers far away from families of their own.
Young Sanders played his squeeze box and they had a violin
this curious and unlikely band of men.
Soon daylight stole upon us and France was France once more.
With sad farewells we each began to settle back to war.
But the question haunted every heart that lived that wonderous night
"whose family have I fixed within my sights?"
It was Christmas in the trenches where the frost so bitter hung.
The frozen fields of France were warmed as songs of peace were sung.
For the walls they'd kept between us to exact the work of war
had been crumbled and were gone for ever more.
My name is Francis Tolliver. In Liverpool I dwell.
Each Christmas come since World War One I've learned it's lessons well.
That the ones who call the shots won't be among the dead and lame
and on each end of the rifle we're the same.
— John Mccutcheon, "Christmas in the Trenches"
Another carol I enjoy playing and singing
We learned it in German in school but I've lost those skills over the years.
The first playing of it may have been something like this.
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XRMwVK6adi0]
Silent Night was written in 1818 by Joseph Mohr and Franz X. Gruber
It was 203 years ago when "Silent Night" was first heard by Austrian villagers attending Christmas Eve mass in St. Nicholas Church in Oberndorf. How did this simple melody, with its words of comfort, become a beloved hymn of peace throughout the world?
"The backstory is that the priest went for a walk before he wrote it, and he looked out over a very quiet, winter-laden town. He was inspired...the town was at peace."
It was Christmas Eve, 1818, when the now-famous carol was first performed as Stille Nacht Heilige Nacht. Joseph Mohr, the young priest who wrote the lyrics, played the guitar and sang along with Franz Xaver Gruber, the choir director who had written the melody.
An organ builder and repair man working at the church took a copy of the six-verse song to his home village. There, it was picked up and spread by two families of traveling folk singers, who performed around northern Europe. In 1834, the Strasser family performed it for the King of Prussia. In 1839, the Rainer family of singers debuted the carol outside Trinity Church in New York City.
The composition evolved, and was translated into over 300 languages with many different arrangements for various voices and ensembles. It was sung in churches, in town squares, even on the battlefield during World War I, when, during a temporary truce on Christmas Eve, soldiers sang carols from home. "Silent Night," by 1914, known around the world, was sung simultaneously in French, German and English.
Over the years, the carol's mystique grew with its popularity. After the original manuscript was lost, for decades, some speculated that the music had been written by Haydn, Mozart or Beethoven. In 1994, an original manuscript was found in Mohr's handwriting, with Gruber named as composer.
Happy holidays everyone!
“Until justice rolls down like water and righteousness like a mighty stream.”
Just wonderful music. Silent Night in German is a
great way to hear this carol/hymn. We now sing it in French, but of course.
Thanks for the songs and the histories. Good stuff.
A society grows great when old men plant trees in whose shade they know they shall never sit. Allegedly Greek, but more possibly fairly modern quote.
Consider helping by donating using the button in the upper left hand corner. Thank you.
Thanks for the history of the song
If only we can have a Xmas with peace. Peace in our hearts yes, but I want peace for everyone.
There were problems with running a campaign of Joy while committing a genocide? Who could have guessed?
Hallelujah
danke!
Amazon tries to cover up workers deaths
and then there is this
Trans-Siberian Orchestra - Christmas Eve / Sarajevo
a bit intense, but fun anyway
but before that ..
sorta the same but different
cheers!