Monday 21st April - Snippy Snippy

Snip snip

Yesterday afternoon I spent a relaxing hour adding to my Cover Story Collaboration. Ang andI are stitching the last patch before we get going on the next phase.

My patch is going on the top right, above the pen pocket.

Unfortunately when I finished off the thread and turned the work over to look at the little section I had just done, I realised it was far too high, well above the top of the area!

So, deep breath, and Snippy Snippy Snippy went my scissors! I did my best to pretend that snipping the stitches out was as relaxing as doing the slow stitching in the first place. I wasn't totally successful.

Ah well. I started on a different section this morning and, fingers crossed, it's looking promising. 

The Neighbour's Cat

It's a tricky situation when you are looking after a neighbour's cat,  and it starts limping badly. We took it to the vet who prescribed a painkiller liquid  and said keep him in for the weekend. We still had a litter tray and a packet of cat litter left over from when our cats were still alive, so that was easy to organise. 

We've been in touch with the owners so they know what's going on, and hopefully won't trip over the litter tray in the kitchen...

He's a lot better now, and on the whole it's much easier for us to keep him in while they are away, rather than trying to manage through the school holidays with everyone home and running in and out all the time. 

They are due home now, and it's time for the cat to be allowed out anyway. 

Last time they went away, the cat disappeared! We searched, and so did everyone else, and then we had a call asking us to fetch him from the vet! He'd been scooped up by someone thinking he was their lost cat, but when they got him back to their house they realised they'd got the wrong cat! They got the vet to scan his microchip, rang the owners who were in Spain (!) who arranged for us to collect.

Music

This setting of 'if ye love me, keep my commandments' by Thomas Tallis, was recommended by Sencosue. She particularly liked the version sung by the Tallis Scholars. 

While tracking it down, I inadvertently listened to this one, recorded at a lower pitch by the Gesualdo Six. I really like the gravelly bass part.

I've copied the whole of the programme note below as it gives the text, and also the new edict on church music from Archbishop Cranmer. This causes a complete shift in sound and texture from the style of the Taverner setting I posted yesterday.

If ye love me by Thomas Tallis (c.1505–1585), recorded at low pitch by members of The Gesualdo Six, directed by Owain Park.

This track comes from The Gesualdo Six’s first album, ‘English Motets’, a programme linking two hundred years of music from medieval and Tudor England (available here: http://bit.ly/2Fmp8Od)​.

“Weavers of rich and plangent aural tapestries, The Gesualdo Six meld style and substance with beguiling sure-footedness. An auspicious debut.” – BBC Music Magazine

“The fine-grained texture of solo voices allows us to savour the amazing harmonic pungency of English sacred music, which at times seems almost modernist. It is a wonderful achievement.” – The Telegraph

- - -
If ye love me, keep my commandments, and I will pray the Father,
and he will give you another comforter, that he may bide with you for ever,
e’vn the spirit of truth.

John 14: 15-17

- - -
About the music

While all composers in Tudor England were flexible to the period’s shifting religious requirements, none was quite as skilful at reinvention as Tallis, whose music remains absolutely consistent in its quality, even while his style changes dramatically. Intelligibility of text is all in ‘If ye love me’, and one whose guiding principle seems to be Archbishop Cranmer’s edict that sacred music should use only one note per syllable. Tallis opens the work with a clear declamation of the text, emphasizing the word ‘commandments’ and leaving his listener in no doubt of the importance placed on learning and teaching in the new language of the Church. Despite continuing in a four-part polyphonic texture, none of the clarity of text is lost, with beautiful descending phrases passed around the voices.
[Programme note: Owain Park © 2018]