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:

Ayn Rand "The Right Stuff" BBC documentary

"I would give the greatest sunset in the world for one sight of New York's skyline and the will of man made visible. What other religion do we need? I feel that If a war came to threaten this I would throw myself into space over the city and protect these buildings with my body." This quote of Ayn Rand comes from "The Right Stuff" a half-hour BBC radio documentary by former Conservative Party cabinet minister Michael Portillo. balanced by introductory, the documentarry brings up many more questions that it answers, Jeff Britting's laudatory Academy Award nominated film A Sense of Life is much more full of detail, if less balanced.

Ayn Rand was a Hollywood screen writer, a Broadway playwrite, a novelist and a philosopher. Her Philosophy, Objectivism, could be characterized as common sense and American values systematized - yet no school of thought arouses more controversy, from the religious right to the academic left. According to Wikipedia, "Objectivism holds that reality exists independent from consciousness; that individual persons are in contact with this reality through sensory perception; that human beings can gain objective knowledge from perception through the process of concept formation; that the proper moral purpose of one's life is the pursuit of one's own happiness or rational self-interest; that the only social system consistent with this morality is full respect for individual rights, embodied in pure laissez-faire capitalism; and that the role of art in human life is to transform man's widest metaphysical ideas, by selective reproduction of reality, into a physical form—a work of art—that he can comprehend and respond to."


Dave Kliman's World Trade Center at Night.

In the concrete this meant a glorification of the individual and human achievement as embodied in the moon landings and the skyline of New York. It meant a rejection of skepticism, relativism and what is now considered political correctness. It meant books of philosophy with such provocative titles as The Virtue of Selfishness, Capitalism – The Unknown Ideal, and The Romantic Manifesto. And it meant novels such as The Fountainhead, made into a movie with Gary Cooper and Patricia Neal, in which the hero erects New York City skyscrapers and the epic Atlas Shrugged, voted most popular novel of the 20th century, and second in influence in reader's lives only to the Bible, in which the skyline of Manhattan is extinguished.

You can listen to Portillo's documentary here http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00f9xtr
at the BBC.

Paganini "Caprice 24" by Li Jie

Researching the guitarist Francisco Tárrega, [considered the father of modern classical guitar] I ran across the amazing Chinese guitar vituosa Li Jie (here at Wikipedia) playing Niccolò Paganini's Caprice #24. I'm was so amazed I had to post it on Radicals for Happiness. There are lots of very, very good classical guitar performances by various people on YouTube. Who knew?

At Last, The 1948 Show "Four Yorkshire Men"

When I was young, there was no such thing as The Simpsons. No iPods, (Nor even Sony Walkmen. Or is that Walksman?) no cell phones, no Department of Homeland Security. All we had were such antiquities as the moon landings, the Concorde, and the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. Of course, my father's generation had it worse, what with no TV, no FM radio, and having to see WWII won long before they could even dream of moonwalks. Kids nowadays have it easy with their GPS, their CNN, and their TRL. Oh, wait, I understand MTV has cancelled Total Request Live. The horrors!

But none of us ever had it as bad as the old days. Having to walk up hill in the snow both to and home from school. Whether you want to rue or reminisce the olden days, you certainly don't remember them as they are. Neither do these gentlemen. (Or is it gentlesman?) Here are "Four Yorkshire Men" remembering the good old days, with Jim Brooke Taylor, John Cleese, Graham Chapman and Marty Feldman of At Last, The 1948 Show. Enjoy.

Works of Joy: The Music of YES

The music of the band Yes stands out among other rock bands, even fellow progressive rock bands, for one quality that most others lack. Though they may share all of the technical virtuosity, grand vision, and the triple-gatefold sleeves of King Crimson, Genesis, ELP, and Pink Floyd – Yes cornered the market on one commodity – joy.

The work of Yes presents a sense of life that can only be described through Ayn Rand's favored term, "sunlit universe." Indeed, many of the lyrics of Jon Anderson, not only in his Yes work, but his solo work as well, mention the glory of the sun. (See his contribution to the film Legend, "Loved By The Sun." As a motivating factor, they use religion in the best sense that one can, one that Rand, an atheist, would approve of. The music of Yes is an anthem to life, and the very name of the group is a reflection of that.


The band is given a lot of flack from more cynical rock fans who dismiss them as little more than "sunshine and rainbows." But that is a superficial reading. Yes is not ignorant to pain and suffering. The music of Yes, which is, admittedly, something of a "utopian" project, addresses the suffering in the world in relation to their songs of elation...theirs is not a Pollyanna solution. And they offer no sanction of the victim. "If the summer changed to winter, yours is no disgrace!" They do not celebrate the dark, they fight through it to make their way towards the sun.

With that said, let's take a look at some of their key "works of joy":

"Sweetness" from YES (1969) From the first album, the lyrics to this song may seem a bit treacly to us today, but it was a perfect sentiment for the summer of love. A nice love song from a strong first album:

She brings the sunshine to a rainy afternoon;
She puts the sweetness in, stirs it with a spoon.

"Time and A Word" (1970) The title song provides the group's first anthem, with the sing-along lines:

There's a time and the time is now and it's right for me,
It's right for me, and the time is now.
There's a word and the word is love and it's right for me,
It's right for me, and the word is love.

"I've Seen All Good People" (1971) The Yes Album song that showed a new dimension through the exuberant guitar work of Steve Howe, and the immortal line:

I've seen all good people turn their heads each day
So satisfied I'm on my way

The song starts off in a pastoral mood and kicks into a rockabilly rock-out that shows the lie that rock music can't be anything but "anger, hurt, and rage."

"And You & I" (1972) When Yes went Close to the Edge, you knew they wouldn't abandon you, as demonstrated by this magnificent musical piece, at once childlike and mature, simple yet orchestral...

Tales from Topographic Oceans (1974) This whole album, a tribute to what religion can represent at its best, is a tour de force, with several highlights of soaring vocal chorals, spiraling guitars, and orchestral keyboards, all culminating in the finale "Nous Sommes Du Soleil." It's a challenging work, not only musically, but spiritually, which is probably why it is so hated among many "rock" fans, but for those who seek something more, nothing less than a journey of joy.

Going for the One (1977) Another album of continuous joy and clarity. From the exhaustingly joyous "Going For the One" to the gracefulness of "Wondrous Stories..." "Turn of the Century" tells the love story of Pygmalion in a hymn to creation itself, while the album culminates in the last great epic of the Jon Anderson-led yes, "Awaken."


"Future Times/Rejoice" (1979) may be considered the poorest of the Yes albums, but Yes at their worst offers much more than most rock bands at their height. The opening track here is a very creative one, encompassing many moods and textures, and a childlike sense of possibility in an era of increasing despair. That a band could still find a way to rejoice in the age of punk was no mean feat...

"It Can Happen" (1983) The band had changed by the time Jon Anderson rejoined the band for 90125, but the spirit lived on, most notably in this track, a song of optimism that was perfect for the "morning in America" ushered in during the Reagan administration.

These songs are the key highlights to the joys of YES, but are by no means exhaustive. If you've never taken them seriously, you may want to give them another try. You have nothing to lose, but a world of joy to gain...

The distinctive album-cover art of Yes is designed by Roger Dean. Here is a live performance of the band's signature cover of Simon and Garfunkel's "America."

From Lovecraft to Roerich on the WorldWideWeb

Glancing through the news the other day, my eye was caught by the headline "The Mountains of Madness." The article was about an expedition to the Gamburtsev Mountain Range in central Antarctica. The mountains were discovered 50 years ago in the International Geophysical Year of 1958. This year (2008) is the International Polar Year, and a team of scientists has returned to the Gamburtsevs to try, among other things, to explain their formation. But the headline itself, "Mountains of Madness," is an allusion to a novella by science fiction author H. P. Lovecraft, At The Mountains of Madness, written in 1931.



Lovecraft is at best an acquired taste. He is generally described as a writer of horror or Gothic stories. His style is clear and his imagery quite visual, if his subject matter tends toward the alien and demonic. I read many of his stories as a teen, but hadn't revisited them since. After seeing the headline though, I thought I would try him again and see what I thought. His works are available for download at Project Gutenberg Australia.

First I read The Colour out of Space, a Gothic tale about an asteroid which crashes to earth in a small New England town, bringing with it a malevolent alien influence. The story was not very enthralling. Told as a flashback, and with no human conflicts, it lacked any real drama. But one thing was of interest. Lovecraft was apparently fascinated with science, and he mentioned several phenomena with which I was unfamiliar, including Widmanstätten patterns, which he mentioned were revealed when a cut section of the meteorite was treated with acid. Unfamiliar with the term, and suspecting he might simply have made it up, like some technology out of a Star Trek episode, I checked with Wikipedia. It turns out such beautiful fractal patterns do indeed exist, and I have pictured them here.

Next, I decided to read the longer work, At the Mountains of Madness, to which the headline had alluded and which I had remembered particularly liking as a teen. The story involves an expedition to a massive mountain range in the central wastes of Antarctica. Journeying inward the adveturers discover the remains of an ancient, alien civilization, finding to their horror that even after millions of years there is still some living presence in the cyclopean ruins. Once again I was struck by an allusion of Lovecraft's. Upon first encountering the alien habitations in the mountains, his protagonist describes them as "like the old Asian castles clinging to steep mountains in Roerich's paintings." Who was Roerich? Curious, I again checked Wikipedia, and came across an interesting artist, Nicholas Roerich, seven of whose works I have reproduced here.

Nicholas Roerich (1874-1947) was a painter, archeologist, philosopher and Orientalist from St. Petersburg, Russia. An accomplished illustrator and folklorist, he suggested the subject, collaborated with the composer, and did the stage designs for the riotous Paris debut of Stravinsky's Rite of Spring, subtitled "Pictures from Pagan Russia." He was thrice nominated for the Nobel Peace prize for his work to preserve cultural artifacts. He was a noted theospohist and painted on Buddhist, Pagan and Eastern Orthodox Christian themes. His life and work are featured at the Roerich Museum (here is their website) here in Manhattan. I hope to visit it soon. Here we see an accurrate depiction of a Pagan shrine, probably in the Altai Mountains of Greater Mongolia.

Roerich travelled through Asia and the Russian Orient. He documented the area's geography and cultural artifacts and painted real, historical, and mythological landscapes and events. His style is notable for its stylization, color, clarity and dynamic themes. He is not a great figurative artist. His human figures are simple. Nature, rather than man, plays the central role in his works. But he does depict themes which evoke wonder and awe, and subjects of epic beauty. Here in Ashram we see his typical combination of the contemplative individual set in a monumental landscape of brilliant color. Note the Hindu religious iconography on the rocks.



Visitors from Overseas, directly above, depicts the Varangians, Norse Vikings who explored the waterways of Russia, travelling as far as Constantinople and the Caspian. The Varangians or Varyags are mentioned in Tolkien's Lord of the Rings as a people decieved by Sauron, and Michael Crichton's Eaters of the Dead (adapted as the movie The Thirteenth Warrior) tells the tale of Beowulf from the perspective of an Arab adventurer who travels with Varangians from Baghdad to Denmark and back. (In an interesting twist in light of this essay, Crichton actually cites Lovecraft's fictional Necronomicon in the biography to his book.)

The Arcadian painting For Snegurochka (the Snow Maiden) is a set design for an Operatic adaptation of the Tale by Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov. Of a similar theme to The Little Mermaid, Snegurochka is the subject of Russian fairy tales, where she is depicted as the granddaughter of Father Christmas, or as a creation out of snow. Longing to love a mortal man she is granted her wish but at the cost of her immortality.

Descent into Hell is one of Roerich's religious works. Here we see Christ after his crucifiction but before his resurrection descending into Sheol. According to Christian belief, Christ takes upon the suffering of man, not only on the cross, but also in the afterlife. He travels to hell, throws open the gates, and allows those in the grace of God to depart. Here, in place of devils, Roerich uses deep sea angler fish, a recently discovered demonic denizen of the deep.



Battle of the Heavens, directly above, depicts a theme common to the Eurasian Steppe. The vast plains of Central Aisa, like the Tornado Alley of the American Midwest, are an area of dramatic meteorological phenomena. The worship of Father Sky has roots in the fascination of the Hyperboreans with great storms and standing cloud formations that exist where the Jet Stream, passing over the high mountains of Central Asia, causes animated hovering storm clouds to condense.

You can read about Nicholas Roerich at Wikipedia and check out Roerich's artwork the Nicholas Roerich Museum.

Delibes "Lakmé" The Flower Duet

While I do enjoy classical music, I mostly prefer instrumental pieces, for example Beethoven's Symphonies or tone poems such as Liszt's Preludes. I am not much of an opera fan. Having greatly enjoyed the musical Amadeus I was disappointed to find that just about everything of Mozart's that I liked was already in the film, and I found such works of his as Don Giovanni and The Magic Flute unappealing.

In college, a friend rented a favorite movie of his, The Hunger, with Susan Sarandon, David Bowie and Catherine Deneuve. A stylish vampire movie, it is just a bit too bloody for my taste, but it is quite worth seeing for those who like the genre. The greatest reward from watching it was learning of the "Flower Duet" from Léo Delibes' opera Lakmé. I immediately piurchased the opera. The bulk of it did not interest me. But the price was well paid to have a recording of that song. The story is simple. The daughter of a Hindu priest and her servant girl sing of a garden filled with flowers, jasmine and birds. I have placed some of the French lyrics and the English translation below, under the YouTube clip. The lyrics are for the part about 1:09 into the song.

In the movie The Hunger Catherine Deneuve says the "Flower Duet" is a love song, and Susan Sarandon asks Deneuve if Deneuve is seducing her. (Deneuve is.) But whether we imagine the duet as a love song or a vision of some oriental paradise, or even recall it as a theme that we have heard in commercials for Godiva Chocolate or British Airways, the melody is incomparable, the music transcendant. If you do not recognize this piece by the title, you will recognize it, and enjoy it immensely, upon hearing it.

I have chosen a performance by Carolyn Withers & Melissa Batalles accompanied only by Piano. There are other versions, with full orchestra. I think this simple arrangement shows the power of the music, without any need for strong back-up orchestration. It is divine without need for special devices. Enjoy.



Sous le dôme épais, où le blanc jasmin
À la rose s’assemble
Sur la rive en fleurs, riant au matin
Viens, descendons ensemble.

Doucement glissons de son flot charmant
Suivons le courant fuyant
Dans l’onde frémissante
D’une main nonchalante
Viens, gagnons le bord,
Où la source dort
Et l’oiseau, l’oiseau chante.

"Under the thick dome, where the white jasmine
Gathers with the rose,
On the riverbank in bloom, laughing in the morning,
Come, let us go down together.

"Gently let us slip from the pleasant rising flow,
Let us follow the fleeting current
In the shimmering stream,
Without any care,
Come, let us reach the bank,
Where the spring waters slumber
And the bird, the bird, she sings."