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Uplifting Thoughts for the Isolated and Depressed in Times of Plague

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It is sometimes surprising for me how many different kinds of love songs and music from all centuries and versions from all over the world you can hear in Germany today:


No fire, no coals - Kein Feuer, keine Kohle
burn as hot, - kann brennen so heiß
as a secret love - als heimliche Liebe
of which no one knows naught. - von der niemand nichts weiß.

Two German love songs sung by the British King's Singers


Difficult to link this:


German love song from ca. 1510, sung by a student's choir from Weimar

Max Raabe who is famous for singing in the style of the "Comedian Harmonists" from the "roaring 1920's"

(very satirical and funny text)


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IpT-FW_G8-A (A love song from Shania Twain with pictures I like very much.)
 
It is the Church season of Advent, expectantly awaiting the coming of the Messiah. The world groans under its sin and disease. A song that is - A lament? - A Plea? - A Confident Hope? The opening uses the wonderfully brief Latin form "Veni" - O Come, Please Come, You must Come!
It uplifts with the repeated imperative (order) Gaude, gaude! Rejoice!


Even the Pagans knew how to rejoice in the face of tragedy.
"Let's have one other gaudy night: call to me / All my sad captains; fill our bowls once more / Let's mock the midnight bell". Shakespeare, Anthony and Cleopatra.
 
I remember learning this song as a kid!

Whenever I hear that sung it takes me back to Inchon docks in Korea in 1956, when The Queen`s Own Cameron Highlanders were being replaced by the Sussex Regiment.
The Sussex`s band played that as they disembarked, it was their Regimental March, and 800 Scots, waiting on the quayside, sang "You can tell them all, that they know fuck all, in Sussex by the Sea."
 
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Whenever I hear that sung it takes me back to Inchon docks in Korea in 1956, when The Queen`s Own Cameron Highlanders were being replaced by the Sussex Regiment.
The Sussex`s band played that as they disembarked, it was their Regimental March, and 800 Scots, waiting on the quayside, sang "You can tell them all that they know fuck all, in Sussex by the Sea."
"And that started the fight sir!"
 
Actually, it didn`t, it was a parade, the Sussex boys were still on the troopship and only the officers of the two Regiments had any contact and they saw the funny side of it.
By chance, last night I shared with one of my Italian friends here the Scottish answer:

 
'Wachet auf, ruft uns die Stimme'- J S Bach's wonderful pairing of the Advent Chorale
(known in English as 'Sleepers wake! The tidings thrilling ...') with an old German dance tune:


In his cantata based on that chorale, the same tune played on strings is matched with verses from the chorale, beginning at 15:20 - but the ripieno version in the long opening chorus is thrilling too, the duet 'Mein Freund ist mein!' (starting 21:20) is as wonderfully uplifting, the whole cantata is a masterpiece, even by the master's standards:

 
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James Montgomery, born in North Ayrshire, Scotland, and settled in Sheffield, printed in the Sheffield Iris on Christmas Eve 1816, "Angels from the Realms of Glory." Though often set to the same tune as the more popular “Angels We Have Heard on High” it goes best to the tune "Regent Square," by Henry Thomas Smart, 1867. Here it is in an energetic contemporary arrangement.:

The later verses of the hymn bid the hearer to come into a new appreciation of Christmas and its profound meaning, as they bid:
Sages, leave your contemplations,
Brighter visions beam afar,
Seek the great Desire of Nations;
Ye have seen his natal star.
 
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