Category Archives: Music

This is what you're getting for St. Patrick's Day, and you'll take it and like it!

Under protest, it goes without saying, because I’m afraid of the power of the Irish Lobby, I offer the following clip of the redoubtable Clancy Brothers & Tommy Makem. It’s a song I’m particularly fond of — the kind that might not impress you on first acquaintance, but sticks in your mind after a couple repeats. I particularly like the line, “Castles are sacked in war, chieftains are scattered far — truth is a fix-ed star….”

Now an Anthony Sacramone update: He sneaked back into his blog last week, tiptoeing with his shoes off, and did a post. Then he did another yesterday. So we’ve got that. He also links to the web page of the Intercollegiate Review, where he’s got a very amusing cover story right now:

Empire builders and revolutionaries, reformers and moral scolds, civil libertarians and uncivil prohibitionists—all believe History is on their side. Beware anyone who imputes to History an inevitable, self-directed, Forward march, as if it were as fixed as a bar code, as predetermined as male-pattern baldness, as sovereign as any voluntaristic deity. Most risible are atheists, old or new, who act as if the expanding energies of a supposedly random and causeless Big Bang could even possess an ultimate purpose….

“What Child is This?”

Long, long ago, when I used to sing solos in Christmas programs, my standard was “What Child is This?” I made a point of doing all three variant choruses. I’m happy to note that the divine Sissel does the same (no doubt she was a fan of mine).

A blessed Christmas to you and yours.

Memorial Day, 2012

I have only known one person in my life who died in war, that I’m aware of. His name was Gordon Gunhus, he graduated from high school with me, and he died in Vietnam. We weren’t particular friends, but I have every reason to believe that the life he laid down was a life of considerable promise. Blessed be the memory.

When in doubt, there’s Sissel

I don’t have anything on my mind tonight, so I’ll fall back on a YouTube video. This clip captures a definitive moment in the career of Sissel Kyrkjebø (the Greatest Singer in the World). It was 1986, and she was selected to sing an “interval” number during the Eurovision Song Contest, which is a big deal over there every year. She dressed in the traditional bunad (folk costume) of her home city, Bergen, and sang Bergen’s official anthem, “Jeg Tok Min Nystemte Cithar i Hende” (“I Took My Newly Tuned Zither in Hand”). This was her first introduction to a wider European public, though she was already pretty famous in Norway. I think you’ll understand why she was a hit.

Have a good weekend.

Modern Irish Hymn: “In Christ Alone”

Happy St. Patrick’s Day. I may spend the day in the kitchen, making Irish soda bread and tomorrow’s lunch, but you go have fun or something.

We are wonderfully blessed to have a Northern Irish couple writing music for modern church. Songs like “In Christ Alone” and “The Power of the Cross” are contemporary songs worthy of the hymnal for their lyrical richness and musical flow. See the rest of Keith and Kristyn Getty’s music on their site. I see they are holding a St. Patrick’s Day sale on their website, 17% discount.