thanking in prose

At both of the dining tables to which I was privileged to have been invited this past Thanksgiving, toward the beginning of the meals, the usual suggestion was made of sharing for what each one of us was most thankful. Naturally, there was a collective grumble from the more pragmatic dinner guests. I too shrank away from participating in this activity, though not because I am resistant against such opportunities that serve as un-trafficked avenues for maudlin confessions that inevitably devolve into primetime-TV-esque saccharinities of friendship and love—quite the contrary, I welcome and enable them—but at the moment, I could only think about my recent job loss and, in turn, the confrontation with reality that is my failed adulthood. This hardly put me in the mood to entertain such holidayisms, so I diffused the activity at each dinner with my prudence and humor. I’m resolved to keep that act of diffusion vague to get into the meat, the reason for this blog post.


It wasn’t until later, a day later perhaps, that I realized that I was thankful for many things. My mother of course is one of them. What that poor woman has to put up with with me I can never gesture toward understanding. My friends and the network of support I’ve managed to fashion myself here in the Bay Area, however inconsistent the support seems to be. I am thankful for it. I am thankful that I attended Berkeley as it gets proven to me daily that the quality of my education there has put me ahead of a large percentage of the waking world, and that it is an asset that feels like a curse but is mostly an asset. I am thankful that I lost 30 pounds and managed to keep it off. I am thankful for modern medicine; more specifically, I am thankful for Propecia. I am even thankful that I am gay and that I am Asian and that I am brown. If I weren’t I don’t think I’d be as strong as a person, as eloquent, as educated, as fashionable, as tasteful, as cultured, or as special of a person. And I am thankful that there are enough politically driven people out there to fight for my rights so that I can focus on art, which brings me to a new thing this year, for which I am thankful, because I’m always thankful for these aforementioned things.


I am thankful to have poetry in my life. I am happy, and couldn’t be happier (the accuracy of this bromide deems it unavoidable), that I have decided to subscribe to a life of reading and writing poetry. I feel lucky to have fallen down the rabbit hole of this art form that most individuals only experience partially through the miscellany of audio and visual culture, or overtly and obsequiously at weddings and funerals, and that I get to—because I allow myself to—take it in in all of its awesome distillations. Even now, I am thinking in poetry.

ave verum corpiss

Name this photograph:

[This is all from Karl's Choral Music Webpage.]

This translation is meant merely to provide an understanding of the meaning of
the Latin lyrics, and is definitely NOT meant as a replacement set of lyrics!
(Note that some English 'translated' lyric versions do exist; however, in order
to fit the rhythm of the melody, and to provide 'more easily understood' lyrics,
they have a tendency to mangle the meaning of many of the Latin verses.)

Note that while I do know some Latin (and have access to Latin
references for those words I don't understand!), I do not claim to be a master
Latin scholar. In addition, some of the Latin words and phrases have meanings
which it is difficult to directly convey in English - in these cases, I have
done my best to paraphrase, retaining as much of the contextual meaning as
possible. Therefore, while I have made every attempt to capture the meaning of
the Latin as closely as possible, there may be some errors, and some sections
may be open to different interpretations.

Note also that Latin has a
different syntax to English, and so some of the translation is not strictly
line-for-line.

Ave, verum corpus
natum de Maria Virgine,
Vere passum
immolatum
in
Cruce pro homine,
Cujus latus perforatum
unda*
fluxit (et)* sanguine,
Esto nobis praegustatum
in mortis examine.

Hail,true body
born of the Virgin Mary,
Who truly suffered,
sacrificed
on the Cross
for man,
Whose pierced side overflowed
with water* and blood,
Be for
us a foretaste**
In the test of
death.

* Several people have commented on this, so I
thought that I might elaborate. The phrase in the original Latin hymn is "Cujus
latus perforatum fluxit aqua et sanguine", whose approximate translation I have
used here. However, in the available editions of both the Byrd and the Mozart
score, the word 'aqua' ('water') is omitted and the word 'unda' ('whence')
inserted. The 'et' (and) is also omitted in the Byrd text, but not in the
Mozart, which makes for rather awkward Latin (and one which I had much trouble
translating accurately). The origins (and purpose) of this change is unclear; I
hope to research this matter futher at a later date.

** Referring to the
eucharist in the Roman Catholic tradition, in which the sacrament was often
referred to as being a "foretaste of heaven".

If you have any comments
or suggestions about this translation, or about this site in general, please
e-mail me at algernon@arach.net.au.

mozart's quickie - ave verum corpus

Tonight, I will be singing with two ensembles of which I am part, UC Men's Chorale and the Alumni Chorus of UC Berkeley, for the donor/retirement dinner for Robert Cole, the departing musical director of CAL Performances. I am much grateful for the opportunity to sing for him again (once before for CAL Performances' centennial). Cole, who will also conduct, chose Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus as his swan song. He heralds it as one of the greatest and most beautiful pieces of music written. I agree, and I would find it hard-pressed to encounter anyone who group up listening to western music to not find it so after listening. Below is a recording; of course, digital recordings contain very little of the live performance's aura, but this can give you an idea.



Among many features of this piece, I find its length most remarkable. The oscillation between the quiet moments and its swells, the archs of its phrases and the moments of scalar transcendence are all scored fluidly within a minute-and-a-half.

music > choreography (a review) pt. 2: second half > first half

Equal Footing, post-intermission, appeared more polished than its earlier half. Annie Rosenthal Parr’s “Window” greeted the audience from their 15-minute dance break, and immediately I felt apprehensive. There were two large white projection screens set high up, behind the dance space; I thought to myself, “Oh, great, a multimedia piece. That’s never been done.” Just when I was ready to mentally check myself out, I noticed a crackly, varnished, antique piano implanted with a small laptop-sized LCD screen. From afar, I could see that the screen was displaying music-playing software that I later learned assisted the pianists in distorting the timbre of the piano’s tones. The pianist, Sheldon B. Smith, provided a unique synergism between the analogical and digital I haven’t yet seen among a sea of poorly executed multimedia compositions. I had seen a piece a few years ago, "Random Generator," that Smith had danced and choreographed at CounterPulse, and I distinctly remember applauding the humor and simplicity of the work. With that said, though his back was to us, I could sense a humor in his playing that told me this piece wasn’t striving to be more than it was. The choreography was streamlined and eloquent. It wasn’t too difficult for the dancers, and some of them appeared quite natural with the physical vocabulary of the choreography. Overall, "Window" was the triumph of execution over hackneyed premise.


The final work of the night, “Softly In My Ear,” choreographed by Joe Goode, was—as anticipated—a crowd pleaser. Goode has a keen eye to making dance theater accessible to any audience with his usage of style and text. Maura Tang (also a dancer in this piece and two others) costumed the dancers expertly, blending casual fashion with movement-centered sensibilities, and in true Goode manner by using muted primary colors and khaki basics. Again, the music not only grounded the piece, but elevated the performance. Live dance music has a particular way of informing a performance, and the virtuosity of Joan Jeanrenaud, of Kronos Quartet notoriety, supplied a dazzling amount of breathing, organic pulse. The dancing in this piece, like the one prior, was also much cleaner than the first two. Though dancers embraced the satirical tone of the piece, much of the text delivery was miscalculated. There is a fine line between parody and replication. If the camp and kitsch aren’t carried out with deliberateness, the comedy falls flat and the audience only reads the copy, not the critique. Nonetheless, it was a bright and weightless pleasantry to end an evening peppered with flagrant faux pas.