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First Music Monday with the serpent

When my wife and I lived in Boston from 1985-2012, I had a very nice relationship with the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. The Museum is a perfect size to enjoy and it has a fine collection of art from around the world. Tucked away just off the Museum’s main entrance on Huntington Avenue is the musical instrument gallery. While the display space is small, it is inviting and informative, and the gallery has regular demonstrations of its instruments by people who have devoted their lives to mastering particular instruments, many of which are not frequently used today. Conducting research at the Museum and being a docent was very rewarding.

In 2012, I wrote an article for the Galpin Society Journal, Serpents in Boston: The Museum of Fine Arts and Boston Symphony Orchestra Collections. If interested, you can order a copy of that issue by visiting the Galpin Society website by clicking the link above. Here is the first page:

This peer-reviewed journal is a leading voice for the world of organology, or the study of musical instruments. My article focused both on the serpents in the two collections and also on the four people who were responsible for bringing the collections to Boston: Canon Francis W. Galpin and William Lindsay (MFA), and Henri Casadesus and Serge Koussevitzky (BSO). My research for that article was a culmination of my many hours of work at the MFA and I look back with great fondness at the times when I was in the instrument gallery giving a demonstration and talk to interested museum patrons.

This year, the MFA musical instrument gallery is celebrating the centennial of its establishment, when 560 instruments from Canon Galpin’s private collection were purchased by William Lindsay and donated to the MFA in memory of his daughter, Leslie Hawthorne Lindsay Mason, who died in the sinking of the RMS Lusitania. To celebrate this anniversary, the MFA is posting a video on YouTube and their Facebook page of one of their instruments from the collection being played. So this year, you will see 52 of the MFA’s choice instruments in all of their glory. Visit the MFA’s Facebook page each Monday to see that week’s video:

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Facebook Page

I’m so pleased that the first instrument to be featured is the serpent, in a video I made in 2012 (the photo at the top of this post shows the recording session for the video, with curator Darcy Kuronen overseeing the filming). You can see it on the MFA Facebook page (where, as of today, it’s received over 29,000 views!) – scroll down a little on the page to find the video that was posted on January 2 – or on YouTube in this embedded video or by clicking the YouTube link above (if you are reading this as an email subscriber of The Last Trombone, click on the title of this post and you will be brought to the website of The Last Trombone where you can see the video as well as the photo of the recording session for the video that is at the top of this page):

Later this year, there will be two more videos that I recorded at the MFA: one with an ophicleide and one with a buccin. Don’t know what they are? I’ll be posting links to those videos when they come up so can learn about them.

You can also see my videos on the serpent and buccin in the ebook edition of the MFA’s book, Musical Instruments by Darcy Kuronen. You can purchase that excellent ebook on the iTunes store by clicking this link below; it’s only $9.99 and you will be introduced to many of the MFA’s fine instruments as well as videos of many of them being played:

Information about the book Musical Instruments by Darcy Kuronen at the iTunes Store

Happy anniversary to the MFA’s Musical Instrument Collection!

A note to subscribers of The Last Trombone

If you are a subscriber to The Last Trombone – that is if you have signed up to get notified of new posts by email – I have just discovered that when you get the email, it doesn’t include the whole post. If you only read the last post – Santa Plays the Trombone – as an email, you didn’t see the featured image or the imbedded YouTube video with the song. So… When you get an email telling you there’s a new post, just click on the title of the post in the email and you’ll be redirected to thelasttrombone.com where you can view the full content.

Santa Plays the Trombone

Of course Santa plays the trombone. There’s even a song about it:

In 2012, I wrote this poem with apologies to Clement Moore, and sent it to my students; it became an annual thing. So here it is again. Just another reminder that Santa Plays the Trombone.

A Visit From Santa Claus To A College Trombone Player

T’was the night before Christmas and all through my home,
All the horns were in cases, including trombones.
For after the finals and juries and tests,
It was time for some shut-eye; I needed some rest.

I was dreaming of straight mutes and pBones and more,
When I woke to a sound that I’d not heard before.
And what should I see on my roof up on high?
A Moravian choir, with trombones playing fine.

Alessi and Lindberg, Kleinhammer and Yeo,
Were all playing their horns, their heads covered with snow.
And who should be leading this heavenly band?
But old Santa himself, a trombone in his hand!

“On JJ! On Jörgen! On Tommy and George!”
This band was so sweet, I sure did thank the Lord!
“On Norman and Pryor, Ron, Urbie and Frank!”
Some others played, too, but my mind drew a blank.

I grabbed my trombone and I lubed up the slide,
With no time for a warm-up, I hurried outside.
The gang was all playing some mighty nice tunes,
And we jammed some cool charts by light of the moon.

I invited them in just to warm up their chops,
But they just kept on playing, man, this sure was tops!
Saint Nick put his horn down to fill up my stocking,
With valve oil, and slide cream, CDs – so inspiring!

In time, things wound down and they packed up their horns,
And the sleigh got revved up and was heavenly borne.
But Santa looked back, and he said with a smile,

“Merry Christmas to all, and don’t forget to keep practicing even though you’re on vacation!”

— Douglas Yeo (with apologies to Clement Clarke Moore)

Messiah

Earlier this month, my wife and I went to hear a performance of Handel’s oratorio, Messiah, at Camelback Bible Church in Phoenix; the orchestra and chorus of the Phoenix Symphony was directed by Music Director Tito Muñoz. Like so many people, we have loved this music for a very long time. We listen to recordings, we have sung it in choirs, I have played it in an orchestra (in the orchestration by Mozart that includes trombones), and we have studied its music and text.

The most famous part of Messiah is the “Hallelujah Chorus;” Handel’s manuscript is shown above. Coming at the end of Part II of the oratorio, it is a joyous celebration of Jesus Christ, “Hallelujah – and He shall reign forever and ever.”

Of course, when one hears Messiah at this time of year, a particular point of focus is Part I that tells the story of the birth of Jesus.

The sequence of soprano recitatives and choruses surrounding the announcement of the birth of Christ to the shepherds (shown above, in part) is electrifying:

There were shepherds abiding in the field, keeping watch over their flock by night.

And lo, an angel of the Lord came upon them, and the Glory of the Lord shone round about them, and they were sore afraid.

And the angel said unto them, Fear not; for behold, I bring you good tidings of great joy, which shall be to all people: for unto you is born this day, in the city of David, a Savior, which is Christ the Lord.

And suddenly there was with the Angel a multitude of the heavenly host, praising God, and saying:

Glory to God in the highest, and on earth peace, good will towards men.

This year, these words from Luke’s Gospel , 2:8-14, had new, special meaning to us. This summer, we traveled to Israel with a tour group sponsored by the Wheaton College Alumni Association. The trip changed us in many ways, and provided us with a new context for the understanding of the Bible, its time, its people and its message.

We traveled to Bethlehem, the city of the birth of Jesus, to the Church of the Nativity, the traditional place where Christ was born. A word on this: There are many places in Israel where it is believed that this or that event happened. Some are known with certainty, others are known only by long tradition. For me, it does not matter if I stood on the exact spot of an historical event; it is enough for me to have been in the neighborhood and been in a place where millions of people for centuries have believed an event occurred. Such it is with the Church of the Nativity. In the photo above, the floor of the church’s grotto has been covered with marble that was placed there to keep people from chipping away a part of the rock on which it is built. Below the altar is a silver star, in the middle of which is a hole where one can reach down and touch the original bedrock.

From the Church we went to the Bethlehem shepherd fields where our group sang Christmas carols in a cave known to have been used by shepherds over the centuries. The idea of sheep and shepherds in and around Bethlehem took on new meaning as we came to appreciate Bethlehem’s proximity to Jerusalem and the need, in Biblical times, for many sheep for sacrificial purposes.

Near the shepherd caves is the Chapel of the Shepherd’s Fields, a small but beautiful chapel that features paintings of scenes from that night when the angel came to the shepherds to announce the birth of Christ (above).

There was one more small thing that we encountered in that trip to Bethlehem. In our many travels around the world, we have seen small plaques with verses from the Bible in various places. Sometimes they are found in a single language, sometimes in two or three languages. I don’t know who makes them and who installs them, but we have seen them in the USA, England, Greece and, now, in Israel. We saw the plaque below, in English and German, in a courtyard of the Church of the Nativity. This verse from John 1:14 is, to me, the most impactful, stunning, remarkable sentence I have ever read. That God would send his Son, Jesus, to redeem His people on earth is incomprehensible. But this is what we celebrate at Christmas.

Hallelujah.