This is a famous Scots song usually played on the highland bagpipes but here very nicely as a lute song.
Filed under: culture, melancholia, music, scotland
March 11, 2008 • 8:25 pm 0
Fischer-Dieskau sings Schubert — “der Lindenbaum”
Winterreise
Der Lindenbaum (The Linden Tree)
He comes to the linden tree, with its pale flowers and heart-shaped leaves. that stands at the gate; in the shade of this tree he has dreamt many beautiful dreams, and in the bark he has carved words of love. It was his favourite place. Now he passes it with his eyes shut, even though it is deepest night, but the branches rustle to him, ‘Come here old comrade, find your rest here’. A gust of wind blows his hat off, and many hours afterwards he remembers the tree, and it seems to say ‘You should have found your rest here.’ It is a tacit invitation to suicide.
Filed under: culture, melancholia, music
February 14, 2008 • 8:43 pm 0
come heavy sleep
Come heavy sleepe the image of true death;
And close up these my weary weeping eyes:
Whose spring of tears doth stop my vitall breath,
And tears my hart with sorrows sigh swoln cries:
Come and posses my tired thoughts worn soul,
That living dies, till thou on me be stoule.Come shadow of my end, and shape of rest,
Allied to death, child to his blackfac’d night:
Come thou and charme these rebels in my breast,
Whose waking fancies doe my mind affright.
O come sweet sleepe; come, or I die for ever:
Come ere my last sleepe comes, or come never.
by John Dowland
I will tell you why; so shall my anticipation
prevent your discovery, and your secrecy to the king
and queen moult no feather. I have of late–but
wherefore I know not–lost all my mirth, forgone all
custom of exercises; and indeed it goes so heavily
with my disposition that this goodly frame, the
earth, seems to me a sterile promontory, this most
excellent canopy, the air, look you, this brave
o’erhanging firmament, this majestical roof fretted
with golden fire, why, it appears no other thing to
me than a foul and pestilent congregation of vapours.
What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason!
how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how
express and admirable! in action how like an angel!
in apprehension how like a god! the beauty of the
world! the paragon of animals! And yet, to me,
what is this quintessence of dust? man delights not
me: no, nor woman neither, though by your smiling
you seem to say so.
shakespeare hamlet act 2 scene 2
Filed under: melancholia
