I felt the need to do a classical music version of the previous meme. These are all very small pieces that bring me sustained joy. All are on iTunes, if you want to get a listen.

You Are the New Day, the King’s Singers (New Day). This is a hymn, but to me it is a love song.

Ave Maria, Robert Parsons Exultate Deo Masterpieces of Sacred Polyphony) The most very beautiful of all Ave Marias.

Veni Delectissime, Sequentia (Lost Songs of a Rhineland Harper) A very ancient erotic song.

Jesu Joy of Man’s Desiring, John McCutcheon (The Wind that Shakes the Barley) My favorite piece of classical music, ever. I have numerous versions, but this one is quite lovely.

Ode for the Birthday of Queen Anne, Eternal Source of Light Divine Choir of Kings College Cambridge (Coronation Anthems) Countertenor divine. I am obsessed with countertenors.

Gallarda Napoletana, Jordi Savall & Hesperion XX (Virgin Veritas - Music for the Spanish Kings) Using gentle percussion of hands and feet, a sweet small dance.

La Parma / Lirum Bililirum (Canzoni e Danze Piffaro) The gently lyrical first half of this is the most soothing music I know. It always brings me solace.

 Periodically I become obsessed with a song, and I need to hear it over and over. Periodically I become obsessed with a piece of music, and want to hear different versions of it. I adore live music, and find chamber music and early music concerts simply thrilling. I suspect my days of stadium concerts are over at this point, but I saw Bruce Springsteen this year, so you never know.

 I have been struggling to describe how radically my iPod has affected me, and how glorious it is. It’s not just that I can make playlists of all my favorites, or mix up the classical, the Celtic, and the guitar chords, although I do all of that. It isn’t just that I can bring those into the kitchen, or to my home office aerie, or to the bedroom. Nor is it just that I can carry it with me traveling on the train or subway. I just love being able to get a piece of music right away, as soon as I want it. I have gone straight from a radio program to iTunes, to buy a copy of a song for myself and also to send it to my son. It’s lovely. Last night I discovered the Tallis Scholars have a new recording (Josquin's Missa sine Nomine), and I bought it and listened to it and burned it to disk before bedtime.

 It is listening to music in a public place like the train, on headphones, that most astonishes me. Something about that practice seems to channel the music directly from my ear to my emotions, without anything in between. It’s lovely. It’s also a little scary, to be feeling something so essentially private in a place that isn’t.

I drank Sancerre all over Paris and Chartres. I discovered I loved every one of them. Amazingly, when I got home and bought a bottle of Sancerre and opened it up, it tasted just as wonderful even without Paris wrapped around it. Sancerre, said the wine guy at Park Avenue Wines, is what sauvignon blanc would be if it went to heaven. What I love about it is the full fruit in the middle and that beautiful mineral, flinty finish. I finally figured it out. That flinty taste reminds me of being inside those ancient cool stone cathedrals – like Notre Dame, Chartres, St Sulpice, St Germain – it does inside of me what the scent and feel of those ancient stones do.

"In March the earth remembers its own name.

Everywhere the plates of snow are cracking.

The rivers begin to sing. In the sky

the winter stars are sliding away; new stars

appear...

And the name of every place

is joyful...

3.

because it is spring;

because once more the moon and the earth are eloping--"

from "Worm Moon" by Mary Oliver

 We did remember it though, not her name, but the performance.

 Some years later – there still was only vinyl – we were in a women’s bookstore somewhere that was not our home in New York City. We came across a record with that song on it, and we thought, “Frankie Armstrong? This could be the one.” We took it home, and it was, that same powerful, compelling rendition of that scarily beguiling song.

 I was besotted with my iPod mini, and I am currently besotted with my iTouch. These pretty tools enable me to keep a fairly vast array of music with me all the time. And on iTunes is that astonishing performance of Frankie Armstrong’s “Tam Lin” so now I have it not just in memory but in my hand.

So the shortest day came, and the year died,

And everywhere down the centuries of the

Snow-white world,

Came people singing, dancing,

To drive the dark away.

They lighted candles in the winter trees;

They hung their homes with evergreen.

They burned beseeching fires all night long

To keep the year alive.

And when the new year's sunshine blazed awake

They shouted, reveling.

Through all the frosty ages you can hear them

Echoing, behind us – listen!

All the long echoes sing the same delight

This shortest day

As promise wakens in the sleeping land.

They carol, feast, give thanks,

And dearly love their friends, and hope for peace.

And so do we, here, now,

This year, and every year.

   Welcome, Yule!

--by Susan Cooper, 1977 written for The Christmas Revels

We live just a few blocks from Woodlawn Cemetery, one of the great old cemeteries of New York City. In the autumn of 2004 we were able to take a tour of the cemetery and see the interiors of some of the chapels and mausoleums. On the cemetery tour some of the huge mausoleums were opened to us, so we could walk inside. In one of them, a wealthy and prominent husband and wife, right next to the wife's tomb was her tattered and worn but still beautiful suffragist banner in white, purple, and gold. I did not touch it or fall to my knees, but I did weep. 

 “