"Heroes" David Bowie & Brian Eno

While it failed to chart in the US and only reached 24 in the UK, David Bowie's and Brian Eno's collaborative single "Heroes" has become one of Bowie's most enduringly popular songs, widely regarded as one of the top 100 pop songs of all time. The track features inspirational lyrics and innovative recording methods, and this as well as its conception in Berlin in 1977 as a love song for a couple separated by The Wall has secured it a place in the cultural history of the Twentieth Century.

Originally conceived as an instrumental track, "Heroes" was the intended title for the peice even before Bowie composed the lyrics. The guitars, percusion, synthesizers and intentional feedback and reverb (see Wikipedia) give the song a Phil Spector-like "Wall of Sound" effect. Bowie, not the most dynamic of singers, begins the song merely speaking the lyrics. He is recorded with one microphone for the introduction. As the power of his voice grows, another microphone was opened up at twenty feet, and as he belts out the climax a third mic is recording him at a fifty foot distance. Although Bowie goes from talking to yelling without passing through what could truly be called song, this lends his performance an everyman atmosphere which only heightens the epic effect.

The song has been recorded in English and German as well as several other languages and the conservative American magazine National Review has listed it as 21st in its list of all time conservative rock songs. It has continued to be adapted for use in commercials and as a theme for popular TV shows until today. When it was released, even though its creators realized its epic romantic and triumphant nature, they did suffer from this moral cowardice; they added scare quotes to lend the title an ironic air. Given their achievement, I vote we forgive them. Given the end of the Cold War, the fall of The Wall, and the triumph of freedom, I suggest we imagine the quote marks as pairs of fingers raised in a double sign of victory.



Here is the original video with the English lyric studio-version release:

Monty Python's Fliegender Zirkus wünscht Ihnen ein Glückliches Dankfest!

In 1972, in an attempt to enter the German market, The Monty Python troop filmed two 45 minute episodes entirely in German. Except for the famous lumberjack skit, all the material was new, although some was adapted from At Last, the 1948 Show. Skits include Little Red Riding Hood and The Merchant of Venice performed by cows. One particularly funny installment is the Bavarian Restaurant Sketch (featuring "Soup a la Clown") which you can see subtitled and in its entirety below. However you spend your Dankfest, be happy you are not spending it in this establishment.

Carl Orff "Carmina Burana"

Discovered in 1803 in the Benediktbeuern abbey by the German scholar Johann Andreas Schmeller, the Codex Burana is a collection of 228 poems written in Latin, Middle German and Old Provençal. They were recorded by students and clergy about the year 1230 in southern Bavaria. Meant to be set to music they include love songs, drinking songs and scandalous chucrh parodies. The songs provide a fascinating uncensored view into the cultural life of the high middle ages.

Schmeller published the codex and named it the Carmina Burana (Songs of Beuern) in 1847. In 1935 and '36 the German composer Carl Orff set 24 of the songs to new music, producing a work meant for orchestra, soloists and choir. Subtitled cantiones profanae, the styles range from plaintive and pastoral to comical to demonic to ecstatic. The composition was highly successful, long outliving the Nazi regime which at first found the work too controversial for public performance.

It premiered at the Alte Oper, Frankfurt, in 1937. The opening movement, O Fortuna, is one of the most well known pieces of classical music, familiar to many as the theme to the film The Omen. Covered by performers from the Doors' Ray Manzarek to Enya and by every classical venue on the planet, performances of this work are a guaranteed to sell out.

The Carmina Burana is meant to be performed operatically, and in 1975, Jean-Pierre Ponnelle produced a West German film version which faithfully produces scenes from mediaeval festivals and morality plays with an effect that seems to cross Easter with Halloween.

The text of Orff's Carmina Burana is available at Teach Yourself Latin. It includes the Latin, French and German lyrics with a loose English translation. The 1975 film by Ponnelle, with a fine musical recording is available in full, starting here with O Fortuna, at YouTube: