A fizzing fountain of joy

Close your eyes, keep them closed, and this is great. It's mane-tossingly European as it clip-clops by the glittering Rhine, and all that jazz, but the person who posted it has not provided any identifying information, nor have they given us anything to look at but a smudgy, distorted painting, presumably of Schubert.

Schubert isn't always my favorite, but there are moments. That awful one about the little boy and the father and the black demon - oh God, this will start me on a wild goose chase to find it for sure. With Schubert, only a melody comes into your head, you don't know where it's from, but then it plays and plays and just won't leave.

I remember a tenor - God, what was his name? - it was on CBC Radio, I was on one of my endless walks with my headset on, and the guy comes on and sings some Schubert and it is simply heartbreaking. He breaks it wide open in one of those scary moments in which an artist exceeds himself, does better than he knows how to do. Does he borrow power from the work itself, the composer, or from heaven above?

Ah yes, this. I only remembered "Schubert, Rosamunde," no details, and it took some clicking around -  not much, in this magic age. And it was in my ears once again, some of the most life-loving music I have heard in a very long time. Music that is supremely joyous in the moment. Life eats us, all of us, don't you know that? But some few leave something behind that buoys up the survivors, just for a little while. Which is all we have, anyway.

Dear Sir or Madam, will you read my book

         It took me years to write, will you take a look. . .

A pool of stillness: Barbara Bonney's Ave Maria

In the garden of good and evil

As usual, this started out as something else: I got thinking of a documentary film I saw years and years ago, in French and overdubbed with English narration - I think it was called Once Upon a Time - all about the European influences on Disney's animation. In other words, how much he stole from other sources: other animators, literature, music, etc. etc. And never more so than in Fantasia, his high-toned, high-falutin' animation of "classical" music. This was the kind of movie that kids squirmed through, bored, or scared (the dinosaurs in Rite of Spring; the scary creatures, ghosts and skeletal horsemen in Night on Bald Mountain).

I tried to find the original documentary, came up empty (it barely exists on DVD, and only in Europe and only in French. I shall have to wait.) Then I thought about Night on Bald Mountain, one of the most celebrated pieces from Fantasia, and how many images Disney "borrowed" from Murnau's creepy classic from 1926, Faust.

The hideous horsement (whom I saw on TV many years before, an isolated clip that only made sense to me 25 years later); the big scary guy wit' da wings, and lots of other stuff. But I didn't want to post a 9-minute clip from Fantasia, so then I got watching the Ave Maria that follows after: try as I might, I can't diss this, as the animation is so utterly otherworldly. Yes, Disney is strutting his animated stuff, saying, look, have you ever seen animation like this? No. And we never will again.

But THEN I found this rendition of Ave Maria by Barbara Bonney, and I have to say it is the finest I have ever heard. I heard her sing Peer Gynt many years ago (in fact I still have a recording of the complete work, with Norwegian dialogue) and loved her voice, but I have to say I never cultivated her properly, so it's good to hear this.

The visuals in this are crummy, but that makes you shut your eyes and really listen. THIS kind of good really could defeat Faust's evil forces.

(Sorry this came out in such awkward order. The video kept disappearing or half-appearing or otherwise getting screwed up, so it's under the post A pool of stillness: Barbara Bonney's Ave Maria.