Classic Ross Amico

Category: Daily Dispatch

St. John’s Eve Bonfires, Folklore & Fun

Just as you’ve recovered from your solstice hangover, here comes St. John’s Eve!

You can thank the Romans. They’re the ones who designated June 24 the summer solstice – hence, the discrepancy between the longest day (June 21) and Midsummer. The Romans gave us roads, aqueducts, and a legacy of midsummer debauchery. Why split hairs?

Later, as was so often the case with the placement of religious holidays, the Church figured out it had the highest probability of winning friends and influencing people if it diverted the stream of paganism, rather than outright dam(n) it. To this end, June 24 became the Feast Day of St. John. This worked out very nicely indeed, since St. Luke implies the birth of John the Baptist occurred six months before that of Jesus. Which reminds us: only 185 shopping days until Christmas!

On the eve of St. John’s nativity (observed), the night of June 23, good Christians celebrate as only reformed pagans can, with an understanding that everyone will be up to fulfill their religious obligations on the morrow. What happens on St. John’s Eve stays on St. John’s Eve.

For tonight, it will be a time for harvesting St. John’s Wort, with its miraculous healing powers. It will be a time for seeking the fern flower, which can bring good fortune, wealth, and the ability to understand animal speech. It will be a time for the lighting of bonfires against evil spirits, and even dragons, which roam the earth, as the sun again pursues a southerly course. And it will be a time when witches are believed to rendezvous with powerful forces, such as the Slavic demon Chernobog, who emerges from the Bald Mountain at the climax of Disney’s “Fantasia.” (Erroneously, the narrator, Deems Taylor, claims that it’s Walpurgis Night.)

Leaping over a bonfire is seen as a surety of prosperity and good luck. Not to light a bonfire is seen as offering up one’s own house for destruction by fire. The bigger the fire, the further at bay are kept evil spirits. The further the evil spirits, the better guarantee of a good harvest.

So get out there and cavort heartily under a strawberry moon!
Chernobog loves strawberry.

Leopold Stokowski conducts the Philadelphia Orchestra in this Disney showstopper by Modest Mussorgsky:

http://www.cornel1801.com/disney/Fantasia-1940/film8.html

Happy St. John’s Eve!

June 23, 2021
Chopin Monkeys A Musical Connection

Chopin and monkeys.

June 22, 2021
Remembering Jeanne Lamon Tafelmusik’s Legacy

I was extremely sorry to learn yesterday of the death of Jeanne Lamon.

Lamon was probably best-known as music director of Tafelmusik, the Toronto-based Baroque orchestra she directed for 33 years. In fact, so associated had she been with the Canadian cultural scene, I was surprised to learn, a number of years ago, that she was actually born in New York City. She didn’t move to Toronto until 1981. It was in 1988 that she became a Canadian citizen.

Lamon taught at the University of Toronto and the Royal Conservatory of Music. Among her honors, she was appointed a member of the Order of Canada in 2000. She was also made a member or the Order of Ontario in 2014. 2014 was the year she stepped down from her directorship of Tafelmusik to pursue other projects, recording, performing, and touring as a solo violinist. But she remained connected to the group, traveling the globe with the orchestra as part of its “Galileo Project” and gracing its promotional material as Music Director Emerita.

Her records with Tafelmusik vastly enriched my appreciation of music of the Baroque and Classical Eras. A number of them are still among my favorites. I am particularly fond of her collaborations with Anner Bylsma, who recorded cello concertos by Boccherini, Haydn, and Anton Kraft. Looking back on these, recorded now some thirty years ago, it is difficult to comprehend the passage of time.

Lamon was 71 years-old. R.I.P.

CBC obituary, with performance videos:

https://www.cbc.ca/music/jeanne-lamon-violinist-and-former-tafelmusik-director-dead-at-71-1.5926256

June 21, 2021
Lalo Schifrin Turns 89: Happy Birthday!

On the first day of summer (winter in his native Argentina), Lalo Schifrin turns 89. Schifrin is the composer of over 100 film and television scores, including those for “Cool Hand Luke,” “Bullitt,” “Dirty Harry,” “Enter the Dragon,” “Mannix,” “Starsky and Hutch,” “Rush Hour,” and of course “Mission: Impossible.” (Not everyone was a fan. His music for “The Exorcist” was demonstrably rejected by director William Friedkin when he hurled the master tape out into the parking lot.)

A highly respected jazz pianist, Schifrin was discovered by Dizzy Gillespie, who hired him on the spot. Schifrin has lived in the United States since 1958, making a very healthy living arranging and composing across genres, including bossa nova, jazz, bebop, rock, and classical, all the while cashing those lucrative Hollywood paychecks – and collecting royalties for the continued use of his indelible theme in the “Mission: Impossible” film franchise.

Happy birthday, Lalo Schifrin!

“Concierto Caribeño” for flute and orchestra

Lalo Schifrin and Dizzy Gillespie

“Cool Hand Luke”

Lalo receives an honorary Academy Award from Clint Eastwood in 2018. He was nominated for a competitive Oscar six times.

Schifrin’s greatest hit

PHOTO: Lalo and Dizzy

June 21, 2021
Prodigal Son Ballet Father’s Day

Nothing is guaranteed to get Dad out on the dance floor faster than ballet music inspired by the Prodigal Son.

As related in the Gospel of Luke, a young wastrel burns through his family fortune, then returns home to the arms of a forgiving father. The son’s elder, more responsible brother is none too pleased, but the father explains that since the younger son has repented and returned, as if from the dead – in essence, was lost, and is now found – it is cause for celebration.

This Sunday night on “The Lost Chord,” it’s an off-center Father’s Day tribute, as we listen to ballet music inspired by the Parable of the Prodigal Son.

We’ll hear a late, folk-inspired score by the Swedish composer Hugo Alfvén, staged in honor of his 85th birthday in 1957, and Sergei Prokofiev’s alternately pungent and transcendentally lyrical opus, written for the Ballets Russes in 1928. The latter was developed simultaneously with Prokofiev’s Symphony No. 4 and shares much of the same thematic material.

Father knows best. Celebrate the Day of the Dad with “Son Dance,” ballet music inspired by the Prodigal Son, this Sunday night at 10:00 EDT, on WWFM – The Classical Network and wwfm.org.

June 20, 2021

Tag Cloud

RECENT POSTS