Frühling läßt sein blaues Band

Frühling läßt sein blaues Band
Wieder flattern durch die Lüfte;
Süße, wohlbekannte Düfte
Streifen ahnungsvoll das Land.
Veilchen träumen schon,
Wollen balde kommen.
Horch, von fern ein leiser Harfenton!
Frühling, ja du bist's!
Dich hab ich vernommen!

Mahler the Ballet - Snow White !

Mahler liked Des Knaben Wunderhorn. One of the tales associated with folk culture is Snow White (or variants thereof). Mahler didn't write opera or ballet. Ergo, Snow White the Ballet to music by Gustav Mahler !  Special screening on Sky Arts 2 TV on Saturday, May 21st to commemorate Mahler's anniversary of Angelin Preljocaj's 2008 ballet Blanche-Neige.

Obviously, never judge anything on the basis of youtube clips. This kind of mélange is a soft target because it's so odd. so it's easy to play safe and slam it. Read this review HERE, from Canada. But such things are so often muddled gibberish, and it might well be an abomination. But balletomanes operate in a completely different artistic universe, where expressive dance is primary, music secondary, hard as it is for music lovers to grasp.  But it works when the result is artistically valid in itself and makes a coherent statement that says something with real meaning. 

Preljocaj wanted to create "une parenthèse féerique et enchantée".....Je suis fidèle à la version des frères Grimm, à quelques variations personnelles près, fondées sur mon analyse des symboles du conte. Bettelheim décrit Blanche Neige comme le lieu d’un œdipe inversé. La marâtre est sans doute le personnage central du conte. C'est elle aussi que j'interroge à travers sa volonté narcissique de ne pas renoncer à la séduction et à sa place de femme, quitte à sacrifier sa belle fille. L’intelligence des symboles appartient aux adultes autant qu'aux enfants, elle parle à tous et c’est pour cela que j'aime les contes." (link here to the company site) The subject is oblique and lends itself to impressionistic and lends to abstract interpretation. And no delusions about "setting" Mahler.

Mahler has been used in ballet for ages. Anthony Tudor's Dark Elegies (1937) for example. I can't stand it because it purports to be a realization of Kindertotenlieder but misses the whole point of the original. It worked because audiences weren't familiar with Mahler and had no means of assessing the music in its natural context. A bit like Henze's Elegy for Young Lovers at the Young Vic which London audiences think is a camp comedy about Irishmen.  Like a Christmas tree star represents the galaxies. Tudor's choreography, however, is more interesting on its own terms.

And then there's Dracula : Pages from a Virgin's Diary.  That was Mark Godden, presented by the Royal Winnipeg Ballet about 20 years ago. It wasn't a telling of the Dracula story itself but a completely original exploration on the deeper psychological issues. Blood, and the mixing of blood, sinister strangers from the East, sex and miscegenation.  All only too relevant considering that Canada, like the US had laws against mixed race marriage until fairly recently. and subscribed to myths of the Yellow Peril. It was a compelling and serious creation. The fact that the music was Mahler's Symphony no 3 was largely irrelevant. Like the vampire concealing himself as a bat or aristocrat to penetrate the defences of society, Godden concealed the powerful message in his work behind music and dance so it infiltrated more effectively than, say, a documentary.At the time, audiences were shocked that Canada had a racist past. But Godden dealt with it in a penetrating way.

I've got no idea what Blanche-Neige will be like, but the question is whether it expresses something real in itself, as opposed to mere styling. Costumes by Jean-Paul Gaulthier so "styling" in that sense alone might be OK. I won't hold my breath as there is so much rubbish about. Dracula : Pages from a Virgin's Diary was such an improbable success because it was original and well thought through. Not everything is.

Elgar Three Choirs Festival Worcester 2011

My review of Elgar Caractacus at Worcester 3 Choirs is here. "Beware trip hazard!" What a fantastic photo! (Bob Embleton) It's Elgar, his statue in Worcester, surveying the city being cleaned. But hazard a trip to this year's Three Choirs Festival. Although Worcester is only 90 minutes by car from Oxford and 3 hours plus from London by car, taking the train and staying overnight is a good option, because you get into the more relaxed vibe of the Cotswolds.

The Three Choirs Festival isn't London, "the town built ill" as Housman wrote.  This part of the Cotswolds, "the quietest under the sun", has been prosperous since the Middle Ages, which is why there are three grand cathedrals  fairly close to each other, supporting a large community of singers. The Three Choirs Festival started 300 years ago so the choirs could get together and have what is essentially a mass party, everyone celebrating with song and goodwill.  There's nothing quite like it anywhere else in the world.  It operates in a kind of time warp with its own values. From an anthropological perspective, that's fascinating  I've written a lot about the Three Choirs mystique before (use search button or labels at right and below). It's wonderful because it's not glitzy and trendy.

Three Choirs 2011 features a lot that can be heard in London, but will sound different in Worcester's very non-London atmosphere.  For completely emotional reasons, Elgar always feels right in these surroundings  This year's Big Event is Elgar's Caractacus on August 10th. For my detailed review please see here.  Caractacus was an ancient Briton who held out against the Romans. Legend has it he was finally captured in the Malvern Hills, hence the romantic connotations. Taken as a prisoner to Rome he defied the sophisticates at court and impressed the Emperor. Caractacus was a wild man more used to tents and the open air than Roman palaces, so perhaps when Londoners descend on Worcester, they might remember that there is another England.  Sir Andrew Davis conducts the (London based) Philharmonia, good singers. Elgar's Caractacus isn't ultra familiar, so Paul Spicer is giving a talk, titled "There are Druids in the Malverns". He's a charismatic speaker and really knows his material, so get there if you can.  The Elgar Society lunch is also on the same day, which is convenient. (AND you can hear Alison Balsom's trumpet recital.)

Another interesting concert will be "English Exiles" at Tewksebury Abbey on 8th August, featuring music by British composers forced by the religious struggles of the 17th century to work abroad. That same evening, back in Worcester, Mahler's Third Symphony which has been heard so often in London that we might get blasé. Here though, it's the Philharmonia, conducted by Susanna Mälkki, who is so good that even jaded Londoners might want this one. It won't be boring.  The soloist is Catherine Wyn-Rogers and the choirs come from the combined Three Choirs Chorus. It's followed by a late night concert by the Lay Clerks. Although I've never been to these concerts, they're supposed to be a lot of fun and are a regular fixture.

Worcester and Elgar are inextricably entwined, so there are other Elgar events planned. Dame Janet Baker is speaking at the Three Choirs Society Lunch (members only) and there are tours to Elgar's birthplace at Broadheath (which I've also written about ). It's a place of pilgrimage which you "need" to go to when the Festival is in Worcester.  Plays too, Hamlet and one about Alice and Elgar. Talks, walks and recitals.  Since cathedrals and organs are even more inextricably linked than Elgar and Worcester, you'd be mad to miss organ concerts at this Festival, which attracts organists from all over the country. There's even a transcription of Elgar's Second Symphony for organ, by David Briggs, after the bigger profile but more straightforward Harry Christophers The Sixteen on 9th August. Massive programme, and it is also being broadcast by BBC Radio 3 in September. .For more, please visit the Three Choirs website.

Berlioz Gilliam Damnation of Faust ENO - review

Maybe Mephistofeles intervened to blow up Google blogger so this post would disappear! But here it is the long promised review of Gilliam's take on Berlioz Faust at the ENO.  " best approached as a Monty Python skit on the theme of Faust, with incidental soundtrack by Berlioz."  Which is pretty mild indeed.  I don't have any objection to things being updated as long as they're done intelligently and with  purpose. But a collection of images with no meaning makes a mockery of one of the most metaphysical icons of all time. The Germans didn't make a pact with the Devil, nor did the Jews. Racial stereotypes and distortions cause wars. Only with real understanding and sensitivity can we avoid things like the Holocaust ever happening again.

I carefully avoided reading any of Gilliam's interviews and podcasts so I wouldn't be influenced.  But here is a corker you simply couldn't make up. "Berlioz was crackers" said Gilliam, "He suffered like me". Sure Berlioz was full of his own self-importance, but he took the subject seriously. And it's his music, not some irrelevance that gets in the way of what's happening on stage. Many directors new to opera don't understand it. Gilliam actively hates it. Faust was an intellectual who cared about truth and ideals. The Devil and the Brownshirts were anti-intellectuals who put the boot into what they didn't understand. Most ordinary people in Germany probably didn't like the Nazis but were caught up in the hysteria. Any society that mocks intellect and learning falls victim to totalitarian brutality. Beware emotive jackboots!

Bluebell Klean, Josephine Lang and Ida von Hahn-Hahn

Bluebell Klean, Ella Mary Leather, Olga Samaroff, Josephine Lang, Ida von Hahn-Hahn.... what names! Who could they have been?  Names like that conjure up colourful connotations. The latest edition of Signature, the Maud Powell Society's magazine, is now out. Download it HERE (and also back issues). Do explore, because it's about singular, often courageous people who had interesting lives even if they aren't household names. We don't even begin to appreciate what women have achieved because we're brainwashed by clichéd assumptions about what women could or couldn't do in the past.  Because society teaches us to evaluate things in male terms, we evaluate male composers primarily by their formal achievements. Thus we underestimate the extent to which female composers were productive in several different aspects of life at the same time.

Josephine Lang is a perfect example of a woman whose creativity was expressed in different directions. She raised a large family in difficult circumstances while continuing to write good music. Having a family is a vocation even if it's not regarded in modern terms as a "career". For Lang, family wasn't an optional either/or, it was part of who she was. The definitive biography by Harald and Sharon Krebs,  comes with a full CD of her music. Malcolm Martineau included Lang's songs in his current series on German song at the Wigmore Hall. In this current edition of Signature, Sharon Krebs writes about Lang's relationships with the poets whose music she set. Some of them were personal friends, women like Ida von Hahn-Hahn, who led similarly muti-tasking lives as she did. She networked. She wasn't "suppressed".  One of the interesting things about Lang is her relationship with Felix Mendelssohn, who mentored her. This supplements R Larry Todd's authoritative study of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel. I admire Josephine Lang (and Fanny Hensel) because their creativity was channeled through more than one course. Read the article on Lang and her poets in Signature, it's fascinating. (scroll to page 18 onn the download).

Similarly, Bluebell Klean, who adopted her unusual first name herself. She was a composer and pianist who gave a concert of her own music at the Bechstein Room in 1906, now renamed the Wigmore Hall. Programmes remain of other concerts of her work until 1914, after which she seems to disappear from the archives. But she didn't retreat from life. There's a wonderful photo from a 1924 newspaper where she's grinning next to a huge fish. Champion angler, winning a competition out of a field of 300!

Also in this current issue is an article on Olga Samaroff,  aka Mrs Leopold Stokowski, but a most distinctive personality in her own right. Her "Russian" name was an invention, adopted to sound exotic and more marketable. She came from Texas and was a charismatic teacher.  Also articles on Myra Hess in the US, Meira Warschauer and  Elinor Remick Warren, who looks the spitting image of the actress Lee Remick. Are they related ? If so, creative women in several generations.

Ella Mary Leather? She appears in a back issue of Signature but what a name!  She was a county matron from the shires who spent her life doing good deeds for others, a pillar of her community which is no bad thing at all. Yet she also researched folk customs and music in her local area. Raplh Vaughan Williams and George Butterworth awere indebted to her. Cecil Sharp eventually monopolized the folk song and dance scene, so the women who were so active in the field were eventually written out of the record. But they were there ! And it's thanks to magazines like Signature that they won't be forgotten.

Adriana Lecouvreur on arte-TV

That wonderful Cilea Adriana Lecouvreur at the Royal Opera House last year is now avalable on arte+7 TV for days. Do not miss, it's gorgeous ! Gheorghiu, Kaufmann, Corbelli. HERE is the link.  Here are links to my review and to the one in Opera Today.

Nazi Imagery, why and why not

Twenty years ago, the Hayward Gallery showed an exhibtion from Germany on "Romantic Art". The usual suspects, of course, but then something quite shocking - paintings from the Nazi period, such as this, The Sower (1937) by Oskar Martin-Amorbach (1897-1987). Ostensibly it's vaguely folksy, like a faux medieval illumination, to appeal to the regressive tastes of the time. But look carefully. The fields are angular, Cézanne translated into art deco. The farmer is supposed to be hardy and wizened but there's a crazy look in his eye. (click photo to enlarge) What kind of seed is he really planting, I wondered, what is the painter trying to say ?

In societies like Fascist Italy, Soviet Russia and indeed Nazi Germany, modernism wasn't extinguished but adapted. But because art had to serve political purposes, public art had to be simplistic. It was advertising, after all.  Don't think, was the message, just act ! Which is why, ironically, there's hardly any stylistic difference between public art of the Right and the Left. The images are the same, just change the labels. This appeal to mindlessness is perhaps why Nazi imagery appeals to so many. Automatic clichés are easier to fall back on than real analysis or understanding. This shallow comic book mentality is dangerous because it replicates exactly the mindset behind totalitarianism. Using Nazi and other didactic imagery is OK when it's used for a specific purpose, such as to provoke thought. Nazi imagery as fashion statement is obscene, the fallback of a lazy mind. And it's lazy minds that swallow slogans and let totalitarianism reign. Nothing to be complacent about.

Today I've been thinking about Mel Brooks The Producers. It's a brilliant movie, even though it looks very much of its time (1968) but it was so topical that it was hilarious. The whole movie is a savage commentary on society. Two con men want to scam investors by making the worst possible movie, so they can run off with the money. So they get the worst possible performers and the worst possible storyline, Springtime For Hitler. Extreme kitsch crassness, designed to be ridiculous. Yet audiences fall for it and the show becomes a hit. Mel Brooks and his team used comedy to make serious observations. The Producers shows how easy it is to fool the gullible. Give 'em a song and a dance and they'll march in step to anyone. Even the conmen were outclassed.  Here's a link to an article about modernism in totalitarian art by Roger Griffin in 2007.

Berlioz Damnation of Faust not ENO full download

After the depressingly superficial ENO Gilliam The Damnation of Faust at ENO last night, I need to hear the piece as music again.  First and above all, it's not an opera.  The drama is in the music rather than in the actions, however fantastical they may be. Even the arias are vignette set pieces rather than truly interactive relationships between the singers. Though Berlioz's vivid non verbal exuberance doesn't limit possible stagings, it  doesn't mean that it can be submerged in another story. This music isn't soundtrack. It "is" the drama. I can imagine wondrous film versions of this music which let the imagination do things with Berlioz's music no stage production could possibly manage. But visuals would come from the music rather than impose themselves over the music. Fundamentally Faust is an adventure in metaphysics : narrowing its focus turns it into comic book.

Anyway, HERE is a link to another non commercial recording of Berlioz The Damnation of Faust with Nicolai Gedda, who created the role many times. Marilyn Horne, Roger Soyer, Georges Prêtre conducting. Rome, 1969. COMPLETE download, and links to libretto in French. And if you want more, HERE is a link to a complete download of the original Faust movie from 1926 - F W Murnau's classic.  The more you get into the Faust legend, and its ramifications, the less you can tolerate infantile trivia. Please also see this on Boulezian, wonderful analysis.

Damnation? Monty Python Faust, not Berlioz first thoughts

It's painful for me to write this.  Lord knows my tolerance for unorthodox productions is higher than most. I don't get off on orgies of hate so I don't enjoy panning - damning - a production like this. Much more important to me is trying to get what a director says, like it or not. I even saw the value of Mike Figgis's Lucrezia Borgia at ENO because he was bringing out the inherent difference between stylized period opera and modern film. But Terry Gilliam's The Damnation of Faust at ENO is so far removed from the original work that it is a joke. Maybe his fans will laugh but it's not a joke for those who like the music.

Gilliam's One Big Idea is that since the play is based on Goethe and set in Germany, it's a parable on Nazism. In principle, not a bad idea, but there is so much more to Faust and to 20th century Germany that it would take someone with real psychological and historical insight to develop it. Not Gilliam, though. This is about as perceptive as Basil Fawlty and his caricature Germans (and Spaniards). That was veiled racism and so is this.  It's not updating with a purpose. It's self-indulgent travesty, too clever by half. Maybe Gilliam in his Monty Python incarnation was funny. I'm sorry, but unfortunately for me, Nazism and  the Holocaust are not subjects  for cheap gags. The issues in Faust (and in history) are too important to be trivialized.  But senstivity and perception were hardly Monty Python values. 

Faust (Peter Hoare) appears with a shock of upright orange hair. A jokey reference to Peter Sellars?  When people laugh at Sellars he can claim he's not being serious. Gilliam, however, takes himself very seriously indeed.  So many portentous references to German art and history. Mock Romantic landscape painting, cartoons of the First World War, George Grosz etchings, montages of Leni Reifenstahl movies, churned out as if they come from an illustrated short guide to Germany, written for children.  Instant recognition factors, no mental engagement needed, which is just as well as it fails close analysis.

Maybe the many silly images are supposed to be clever in a vaguely witty way. Marguerite gets up to something on a rock like Brünnhilde and Faust does an impression of Siegfried. Maybe this shows how Gilliam "likes opera" as he said in a recent interview, but the connection between the Ring and Faust is much more complex. In any case here it's done without context, like a silly skit that raises a laugh but it says nothing. Lots of Monty Python in-jokes too, like the "flying white scarf" Faust wears when he and Mephistopheles speed off in their motorcycle and sidecar. Perhaps some will delight in a Jewish Marguerite, lighting a menorah, while stripping, swapping wigs and lusting for a Brownshirt. The limits of taste are pushed back but so are the limits of artistic logic.

Christine Rice sang Marguerite  beautifully. Her voice has developed a distinct personality. She's wasted in this demeaning production and deserves better. Momentary lapses in some other members of the cast, partly because the translation is clumsy and strains the legato. This time, jokes in translation would have helped immensely to lighten the mood. But then the whole production was a joke because it was so self-consciously full of itself.  Christopher Purves's Mephistopheles was impressive - the part is a gift for a singer who can act.  The skits about the Rat and the Flea were succinctly done, Nicholas Folwell's Brander is a delight.. In this scene, Goethe and Berlioz are deliberately subverting the narrative with wit and humour. Ironically this is the one scene where Gilliam lets the action unfold without irony.

Berlioz's The Damnation of Faust is not an opera at all but a series of vignettes for orchestra, chorus and soloists, hence the long orchestral interludes, filled with ballet to please audiences at the Opéra-Comique in 1846. In a modern production they'd be an ideal place to insert truly witty choreography. Not in this production though.  In a concert performance, you luxuriate in the music. The temptation in staged performance is to do too much, which overwhelms rather than enhances. Fortunately, however, Berlioz's faith in the ability of the orchestra to tell the story was well founded.  No need for gimmicks. Wonderfully dramatic passages, full of brio and inherent colour. Edward Gardner and the ENO Orchestra were brilliant. I was surprised how idiomatic the playing was, adding much needed punch to the emotionally flaccid direction. 

Because it upsets me to diss a production so many good people have put a lot of work into, i'm going to reflect before writing my final, proper review.  Maybe what I'll do is genuine praise for the good aspects of this production - wonderful orchestra, very good singing (especially Christine Rice). But even faint praise for the production would be unfair to the music. Nonetheless, this production could well be a huge hit because it's so mind-numbingly shallow. Mass appeal for the Monty Python audience who thought a large boot landing from the sky was funny. The real losers are those who like Berlioz (and Goethe). Please see my other related posts - complete download of the full Murnau Faust movie, complete download of a recording with Nicolai Gedda, and a link to the review of the Gilliam "car crash", more analytical and incisive than I could dream of writing.  This production is fine if you like Monty Python but it's the ultimate in so called Regie where a director could not care less what he's saying as long as it looks nice. Please see my numerous connected posts on Berlioz, Weimar. Faust, Goethe and the Holocaust etc.  A more deetailed analysis will follow.

Berliner Blockbuster Straussfest Hampson Fleming

Dream concert - Berliner Philharmoniker, Thomas Hampson, Renée Fleming, lesser known Strauss songs and Strauss orchestral party pieces.  Live online Saturday on the Berliner Philharmoniker Digital Concert Hall. Might be busy live, but next week it goes into archive for easy access. If this clip is anything to go by, both La Renée and Hampson are in good form. And the Berliners are always something special!

Massenet Werther not Goethe full download

O Weh! O Weh! sighs Werther. If I can't get what I want, I'll kill myself and you'll be sorreeeee! What do you expect from wan young men is canary yellow pants? (grin). Goethe's Werther was the First Teenage Anti Hero in literature.  Werther is the archetype Romantic role model because he can't live embalmed in the social order, like Lotte does. In Goethe's time, suicide was treason in law and Mortal Sin in religion. Werther's way out was shockingly scandalous, and underlined the radical nature of his rebellion. He's spoiled, self-indulgent and can't understand Lotte's different priorities. And yet he's fascinating because he can feel with such extremes. He cares about emotions, and won't take restraint. By killing himself he thinks he'll stay pure to his ideals, uncorrupted by grubby mundane reality. Goethe's Werther and his Sorrows is the figurehead of the Romantic Movement, ushering in the modern age.

Massenet's Werther is Romantic too, though less wild. It starts tonight at the Royal Opera House, London. HERE is a download of the complete opera, from Opera Today. It's a historic performance form the Opéra Comique in Paris, 1931, with Georges Thill, Ninon Vallon and Elie Cohen conducting. FULL libretto too. It was added to the Opera Today database in 2005.

Conductor who hates Bach and Beethoven

What would you say about a conductor who declares "Bach ("too much counterpoint - and what is worse, Protestant counterpoint"), Beethoven ("a tub-thumper") or Brahms ("that old bore"), and prefers Haydn, Berlioz, Schubert, Delius, Richard Strauss, Wagner, Sibelius, and Mozart ? Especially when the comments were made when Richard Strauss was new music and Berlioz not quite in fashion. No chance this conductor would have stood for historically informed performance.  A modern conductor couldn't get away with comments like that. Imagine the screams of derision from some internet discussion groups. But Sir Thomas Beecham could get away with it. That says something about his time and ours. It seems like a different century, (which it was), though he died only 50 years ago. Catch the BBC Radio 3 special HERE online til Monday.

Dysfunctional marriages at Wexford Opera

This year's Wexford Opera Festival brings The Telephone by Gian Carlo Menotti. It's a scream! A man wants to propose to his girlfriend, but she's so busy talking on the phone he can't get a word in. Finally he phones her but she still doesn't get it.  Though the opera was written in 1947, telephone OCD is probably even more extreme in the Age of Twitter. Sure beats real life communication! When this pair marry will they tweet in bed? The ultimate in safe sex.

The Telephone or "L'amour á trois" is very fast paced and quite a test for the soprano who has to carry the whole one act opera on her own. She has to be a brittle bimbette while conveying the insanity beneath the charm. It's a wonderful short opera but the role is taxing, which is why it's not performed as often as it should be. Wexford is pairing it with Leonard Bernstein's Trouble in Tahiti, another observation on Perfect but Pathological.

The three main operas at Wexford this year are even rarer. La cour de Célimène by Ambroise Thomas, of Mignon and Hamlet fame. "The neglect of La cour de Célimène......is difficult to understand", says the Wexford press office, "for it is generously endowed in every important area: attractive music, interesting orchestration, good ensemble writing, spectacular vocal solos, drama and duels, a clever and witty plot." Sounds like another vehicle for a soprano who can act as well as sing. Célimène is a widow who manipulates men. There is a CD from Opera Rara but the conductor is Andrew Litton and Célimène is Laura Claycomb.  Joan Rodgers, too, though.

Donizetti's Gianni di Parigi predicates on arranged marriage, and Roman Statkowski's Maria (1903-4) adds murder to the mess. It's based on an 1825 epic poem by Antoni Malczewski. Given the period in which the opera was written, one supposes Russian and Wagnerian influences. Booking starts today for Wexford Opera's 2011 season. For more, visit their website.

The secret history of Sumer is icumen in

Sumer is icumen in is perhaps the earliest song preserved in manuscript.  It dates from about 1260 and is associated with Reading Abbey (founded 1120) which was destroyed in the Reformation and whose ruins are now a playground for drug addicts and drunks. Quite likely it was copied or transferred to the then brand new university at Oxford at an early stage. The manuscript is a compilation of various different pieces of music of which this is the only early English text. Interesting how even a thousand years ago, Europeans were sharing cultural artefacts. Sumer is icumen in is in the dialect of Wessex, a region stretching from the upper reaches of the Thames to the south coast.  Christianity came here in the mid 7th century, and with that monks, churches and literacy. Saxon churches still remain, oddly squat and simple, compared with later structures. Yet how imposing they must have looked once, rising above fields and woodland.

Sumer is icumen in in is a canon for four or more voices, lower voices interweaving with higher, a charming lilting sound. "Summer is a-coming in, loudly sing cuckoo ! "  And then, "The cow lows after the calf, The bullock stirs, the stag farts, Merrily sing, Cuckoo!" Bucolic medieval humour. Yet there are two texts, the red one in Latin, more conventionally pious and seeming to bear no reelation to the English text.  How were they meant to be interpreted?  Would performers and audiences be aware of both versions? Is the imagery quite as pure as it seems? William of Wycombe, one of the monks who made the compilation was later punished for "incontinence" or rather sex with a nun. That's to be expected, since the church was the only route to an education and a life less gruelling than farm labour or conscription. How much did the secular overlap with the sacred? How strictly were genres defined? Who would have sung this canon, and others, and when? In any case, at this time of year when the woods are bursting with bluebells, and the hedgerows fragrant with elder and cherry, Sumer is acumin in just seems so right.

Arbeiter, Bauern, gegen Faschismus !

Arbeiter, Bauern, nehmt die Gewehre nehmt die Gewehre zur Hand! Zerschlagt die faschistischen Räuberheere, setzt alle Herzen in Brand.

Labourers, farmers, take up the guns, take the guns into your hands! Smash the fascist bandits' armies, set all hearts on fire....the war submerging all countries is the war against you, prole! Labourers, farmers, take up the guns, take the guns into your hands! Smash the fascist bandits' armies, set all hearts on fire. Plant your red Labour banner on every field, on every factory - then a socialist World Republic will rise from the ashes of the old society!

The text is from 1941, about mobilizing the proletariat of the world to defend the Soviet Union from the Nazis. Ideas still relevant today - there was an updated version of this at the time of the Iraq invasion.   The music is Hanns Eisler, originally written for the film Niemansland (1931) directed by Victor Trivas.  It's copyright free and can be dowloaded in full HERE.

In the film, five men cheerfully enlist. In the trenches, they get cut off from their own lines and shelter together in a dug out. Gradually they get to know each other as men, not as enemies. When the shelling stops, they march out together. Where to  The film doesn't say but they're marching against a common foe - war itself.  That's when the Schlussmarch comes in, beautifully, no words. This is what socialism once stood for,. Blair admired Thatcher and said she was his role model. But even she would not have sold the country down the drain to please George Bush. "No alternative" now means "you must keep voting me in because you don't want the other lot". That's why they are scared witless that the system might change. Party above democracy. Ironic?

Although the film is didactic, there are some very good moments, such as the Jewish wedding and especially Louis Douglas, a black American who worked a lot in Europe where the colour bar was less oppressive. He's wonderful, singing and dancing and relaxing everyone else, though he himself is as scared as the rest of them.  There were quite a lot of black actors in European film, even during the Nazi era. Since France and Germany had colonies in Africa, there were thousands of blacks in Europe, some of whom had served in the First Wortld War. The French had entire battalions, who became prisoners of war after the fall of France. They were badly treated and used as slave labour (including as extras in Ufa films). Many died, though one later became the president of Senegal. One German-born African lived and worked in Berlin until he died in 1954. As for Louis Douglas, he went back to the US.