Content provided by Anthony Esolen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Anthony Esolen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.
Player FM - Podcast App Go offline with the Player FM app!
On this episode of Advances in Care , host Erin Welsh and Dr. Craig Smith, Chair of the Department of Surgery and Surgeon-in-Chief at NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia discuss the highlights of Dr. Smithās 40+ year career as a cardiac surgeon and how the culture of Columbia has been a catalyst for innovation in cardiac care. Dr. Smith describes the excitement of helping to pioneer the institutionās heart transplant program in the 1980s, when it was just one of only three hospitals in the country practicing heart transplantation. Dr. Smith also explains how a unique collaboration with Columbiaās cardiology team led to the first of several groundbreaking trials, called PARTNER (Placement of AoRTic TraNscatheteR Valve), which paved the way for a monumental treatment for aortic stenosis ā the most common heart valve disease that is lethal if left untreated. During the trial, Dr. Smith worked closely with Dr. Martin B. Leon, Professor of Medicine at Columbia University Irving Medical Center and Chief Innovation Officer and the Director of the Cardiovascular Data Science Center for the Division of Cardiology. Their findings elevated TAVR, or transcatheter aortic valve replacement, to eventually become the gold-standard for aortic stenosis patients at all levels of illness severity and surgical risk. Today, an experienced team of specialists at Columbia treat TAVR patients with a combination of advancements including advanced replacement valve materials, three-dimensional and ECG imaging, and a personalized approach to cardiac care. Finally, Dr. Smith shares his thoughts on new frontiers of cardiac surgery, like the challenge of repairing the mitral and tricuspid valves, and the promising application of robotic surgery for complex, high-risk operations. He reflects on life after he retires from operating, and shares his observations of how NewYork-Presbyterian and Columbia have evolved in the decades since he began his residency. For more information visit nyp.org/Advancesā¦
Content provided by Anthony Esolen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Anthony Esolen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.
Content provided by Anthony Esolen. All podcast content including episodes, graphics, and podcast descriptions are uploaded and provided directly by Anthony Esolen or their podcast platform partner. If you believe someone is using your copyrighted work without your permission, you can follow the process outlined here https://player.fm/legal.
Our Word of the Week , birthday , has me thinking about childhood again, and all the more since a lot of old birthday pictures have been showing up on our screen. Thereās one of old friends of ours, from almost thirty years ago, when Davey was invited to a party for a little boy who was his age, in a family where there were eight kids at the time, four boys and four girls ā I think the ninth child, a boy, broke the tie! They were about the most joyful family we ever hung around, fellow homeschoolers, too, and Iād like to think that they sang our Hymn of the Week in their church, as we sang it in ours. Itās a youthful and exuberant song, full of energy, well to be sung by children and by their parents and grandparents, a song of dawn no matter what time of the day it is. Upgrade to Support Word & Song Now, itās been a long time since Iāve seen the sun rise. Weāve become night owls at our house. But I have memories of the early morning ā waiting for the high school bus at 7:15 AM, in the winter, before the sun was up, and seeing Venus in the eastern sky, against that deep beautiful blue that has no name. I guess the school bus wasnāt so fit for singing, but it does make me wonder what itās like to be up before the sun, with your fellows, singing and praying. What would you sing about at that time? The fundamental thing: that God is God. Praise is the thing ā pure praise ā to cry out, āHow excellent it is that you exist!ā And then if you move from that to how Godās love has been made most gloriously manifest in the world and in your life, you will cry out the refrain of our hymn today, āMay Jesus Christ be praised!ā Praise is the most gracious response to grace : you are given a free gift, even the unsurpassable gifts of life and redemption, and you respond with a free gift of your own, the gift of praise. Thereās no petition, no focus on yourself or your needs or your feelings, nothing but the simple and wholehearted gift. And that, as it seemed to the anonymous German poet who gave us this hymn back in 1828, is just as it ought to be. He wrote fourteen stanzas of six lines each, with the third and sixth lines of each stanza the same refrain, āGelobt sei Jesu Christus!ā Iāve found the book on line. Itās in an old German hymnal like many Iāve seen, in German and English: you get the words but not the music. Thatās because people learned the melodies by heart, from singing so many songs all the time. Just get them started, Mr. Organist, and theyāll be fine! The poet says, in one stanza after another, that Jesus Christ ought to be praised, no matter what time of day it is, how old you are, whether youāre poor or rich, when you think about your blessings or you feel the weight of your sins; and all the nations of the world ought to do so too, joining the heavens and all their hosts of angels. Thereās something attractively brave about that. āAll is grace,ā said Therese of Lisieux, her last words, words of love. You may have the hymn as translated by the great Edward Caswall; ours today is by Robert Bridges, the good friend of one of our favorite poets at Word and Song, Gerard Manley Hopkins , and a poet to reckon with in his own right. And I havenāt seen any English hymnal with all fourteen stanzas, so if there are differences from one version to another, it may just be that the editors chose certain stanzas rather than others. The version below is a translation of stanzas 1, 9, 12, 13, and 14. Better than read it ā sing it! Please Share this Post Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is a reader-supported online magazine devoted to restoring the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, about words themselves, hymns, poetry, classic film, folk music, and popular song. To see new posts please join us as a subscriber. Thank you for reading Word & Song . Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published When morning gilds he skies, My heart, awaking, cries, May Jesus Christ be praised! When evening shadows fall, This rings my curfew call, May Jesus Christ be praised! When mirth for music longs, This is my song of songs: May Jesus Christ be praised! God's holy house of prayer Hath none that can compare With: Jesus Christ be praised! No lovelier antiphon In all high heaven is known Than, Jesus Christ be praised! There to the eternal Word The eternal psalm is heard: May Jesus Christ be praised! Ye nations of mankind, In this your concord find: May Jesus Christ be praised! Let all the earth around Ring joyous with the sound: May Jesus Christ be praised! Sing, suns and stars of space, Sing, ye that see his face, Sing, Jesus Christ be praised! God's whole creation o'er, For aye and evermore Shall Jesus Christ be praised!ā¦
I have to admit that I asked Tony to choose āmelancholyā for our Word of the Week because while we were watching an old film noir called ā Johnny Eagerā recently, I heard a very old tune in the soundtrack, a much-loved and oft-performed song called āMy Melancholy Baby.ā The melody has been haunting me all week, and haunting is the right word, because it is quite a melancholy tune. In fact, āMelancholyā was the name that a vaudeville composer, Ernie Burnett, first gave his song. Make no mistake: Burnettās song was a fully realized composition, not just a simple melody in need of an arranger to flesh it out. He had been classically trained on the piano from childhood, and it showed. In 1884, Ernesto Mario Bernadetti was born to Italian immigrant parents in Cincinnati, Ohio. Aware that his son had musical talent and hoping that he would become a concert pianist, Ernestās father sent his teenage son to a music conservatory in Austria and later in Italy. But when his father died in 1901, Ernest had to give up his studies and return home. He needed to earn an income and immediately found work ā as a pianist and entertainer in vaudeville. 1n 1909, at age 25, while āon the tourā and snowed in at a train station in Denver, he composed the song which would be his biggest hit, though its popularity came about so gradually and under such odd circumstances as to rob him of the glory of that early accomplishment. Ernieās wife, Maybelle, wrote the lyrics for āMelancholy,ā and the two applied for copyright late in 1911. Having tried unsuccessfully for some time to find a publisher for their song ā and these were the days, as I mentioned last week, when sheet music sales still reigned supreme in the popular music world; composers had to literally take their work to publishers in person and demonstrate the music, as well ā the two finally found a house to bring out sheet music for their song in 1912. But the deal came with strings attached: the publisher insisted that a lyricist from his own company rewrite the lyrics. And so to get their song published, Ernie and Maybelle had to agree to ātransferā rights to the lyrics to the publisher. In lieu of royalties, Maybelle received a ādedicationā on the sheet music. And by this time the couple had divorced, as well. All that would make me rather melancholy. How about you? The official credit for the lyrics went to George Norton, staff writer for the publisher Theron Bennett. But how much Norton himself received in royalties for this song is not clear; likely only his regular salary, with the lyricistās share going to the publisher. Maybelle Watson brought a suit against the Theron Bennett in 1941 ā after 30 years ā and was awarded 50% royalties for all sales of the song. What a business! Upgrade to Support Word & Song I said that the popularity of āMy Melancholy Babyā happened over time. Well, there is a truly amazing story attached to the song. When the United States entered the first world war, Ernest Burnett was called up. Like other men of his age, he was sent āover there.ā But while serving in France, his unit was gassed, in the ānewā kind of chemical warfare. While he survived, he developed (I know, it sounds far-fetched) amnesia, and he would suffer the remainder of his life with respiratory disease. He had lost his dog tags, and no one knew who he was, including Ernie himself. He languished in the hospital until one day an entertainer came through to perform for the soldiers. āMy Melancholy Babyā had become a world-wide hit while the war escalated, and the visitor sang it. Upon hearing the song, Ernest sat up in his bed and shouted, āThatās my song! I wrote it!ā After that he made a full recovery of his memory, including all of his musical knowledge. And when he returned home to the US, he continued writing music and performing in vaudeville. In time he started his own orchestra and founded his own music publishing business. Iāve included a charming little clip from The Ed Sullivan Show in 1959, where Ed introduces Ernie Burnett as someone āeveryone knows,ā and he plays his most famous song on the piano, with plenty of flourishes. This was likely his last public appearance, because he died later that year. What a fitting tribute to a composer and performer at the end of a long career. Give a Gift Subscription Iāve said before that I struggle to find just the right musical recordings for Sometimes a Song , and this time is no different. Popular music of the early 1900ās was a mix of old-style parlor music, Vaudeville, Ragtime and Jazz. And the recordings of āMy Melancholy Babyā made over the years ran the gamut of musical genres. The song was recorded by absolutely everybody. One thing is certain: the song had staying power, and it was in the air on radio, on television, in films, and it was sung by entertainers during the entire century, and continues to have appeal at least to certain sorts of American song enthusiasts even now. In addition to being the unofficial theme song of āJohnny Eager,ā which I mentioned above, the song was featured by Judy Garland in āA Star is Born,ā and then it showed up in āBirth of the Blues,ā āScarlet Street,ā and a handful of other movies, and finally the tune was the theme song for Marilyn Monroeās character in āSome Like It Hot.ā Iāll end with this: William Frawley, who DID have a major hit in his Vaudeville days with the song āCarolina in the Morningā (which I wrote about here ) claimed also to have been the first to perform āMelancholy" (as it was then known) at a Vaudeville club in Denver, Colorado in 1912. We have no reason to disbelieve this claim, especially because Frawley was a famous Vaudeville performer in those days; but the very publisher who did so poorly by the three people who actually wrote āMy Melancholy Babyā likewise claimed that he had premiered the song, at that same club, in 1912. Who are you going to believe? I looked in vain to find what I know exists: a much later video of Frawley singing the song on a 1957 episode of the Lucy-Desi Comedy Hour, but that is not available. So for today I settled on FOUR versions of the song ā and many of you may have other favorites. First, I present the silky voice of Bing Crosby, whose 1938 recording of āMy Melancholy Babyā reached number 14 on the charts. He sings it as a jazzy ballad. After that Iāve attached a swing version of the song, recorded by the Glenn Miller Orchestra in 1941, featuring Glennās fabulous saxophone/singer, Tex Beneke. After that, Iāve added the sweet and nostalgic appearance of Ernie Burnett on the Ed Sullivan Show. And finally, Iāve included a link to a piano-only performance by Liberace from a 1956 LP called āLiberace at Home.ā The recording quality of that clip is not ideal, and unlike the music Liberace performed in his massively popular television show from the 1950ās, this recording has no orchestral accompaniment at all. Itās just piano, just Liberace, and just wonderful. I hope you all enjoy this sweetly melancholy old American song! Please do share this post! Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is a reader-supported online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . To support this project, please join us as a subscriber. Thank you for reading Word and Song!ā¦
This week, as Iāve been considering melancholy , Iāve defended it as that sweet feeling of twilight, with the moon shining on the waters, and perhaps a loneliness that is not unpleasant, because you know that it is a temporary thing. Your loved ones are in the house on the hill, and the lights are shining. But there is another melancholy that in fact is steeped in loneliness, a tragic solitude. I canāt find the feeling described in all of the many-sided and gloriously colored literature of the high Middle Ages. Hard to be lonely in that time, when everything that people did, they did in groups, in families, schools, monasteries, guilds, armies, pilgrimages, manors, and towns, and nobody but a perfect madman would go walking out on the moors just for the feeling. With the modern age it enters, and in our time, when the family itself is fraying, it stalks the soul of the unfortunate, or of the failed. And thatās the case with the chief personage in our Film of the Week , The Browning Version (1951). Please note well: there was a remake in the 90ās. You donāt want the remake. You want the original. Help Word & Song with an Upgrade to Paid One of the things Iāve noticed about black and white movies is that the very limitation requires the actors and the director to do some important things to seize the audienceās attention. Namely, they must focus on the most expressive things we know of, the most beautiful, the homeliest, the gentlest, the cruelest, the most innocent, the most deeply plunged into guilt: the human face, and the human hands. No cheap effects are possible. When you combine that requirement with a script that makes every word count, and you have actors who know what they are about, especially in the 1950ās, when excellent playwrights also wrote for the big screen and brought with them their spare and intensely concentrated sense of human drama, you can get real greatness, in stories that can never be dated, because they are not about this or that political condition or this or that new social movement, but about man himself, his glory and his shame. Thatās what we have in The Browning Version (1951). Terence Rattigan wrote the story as a play for the stage, and then he punched up his script for the cinema, with the excellent Anthony Asquith directing. Hereās the story. A teacher at a boysā school in England, one Andrew Crocker-Harris (Michael Redgrave), is nearing the end of his career. He is in poor health. He has married badly, and his wife (Jean Kent), who has long been bored and irritated with him, is having an affair with another of the teachers (Nigel Patrick), a generally decent fellow but engaged in a very bad thing. The headmaster (Wilfrid Hyde-White) is an unctuous and malevolent man who wants Crocker-Harris out of the way. The boys that Mr. Crocker-Harris tries to teach Greek to are dispirited and uninterested in what he does. But there is one boy, Taplow, who does not simply despise him. Under Crocker-Harrisā direction, he has been taking extra lessons in Aeschylusā Agamemnon, to help boost his grade in the class. In the Agamemnon, we should know, that Greek general returning triumphant from the Trojan War is murdered by his wife Clytemnestra, as an act of vengeance, because Agamemnon had been maneuvered into sacrificing their daughter Iphigenia, to get fair winds for Troy. And Clytemnestra has a lover too, Aegisthus, who has his own family reasons for wanting Agamemnon dead. Give the Gift of Word & Song The plot of the Agamemnon, you might think, could strike Mr. Crocker-Harris a bit too close to home, but heās long taught Greek literature in a hopeless way, having given up on expecting any of the boys to love what he once loved, and what he still loves, somewhere, deep in his soul. Then something slight, some little spark of a real human interchange, comes to life between the lonely, off-putting, hopeless old fellow, and the boy Taplow, who does seem to understand a little bit about both the play they are reading and his mostly ineffectual teacher. The film is called The Browning Version for the gift that Taplow finds in a used book shop, a copy of a translation of the Agamemnon, made by the poet Robert Browning. For Crocker-Harris himself had tried his hand at translating it, long ago ā but like everything else in his life, it has come to nothing. Itās a movie about the bare possibility that a dead soul may come to life again. The drama is riveting and relentless. I will not give out any spoilers. Hear the words, and watch the faces. Share this Post Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, join us as a subscriber. We thank you for reading Word and Song!ā¦
When I go through my many old hymnals from all kinds of places and traditions, I am struck by the sheer variety in the best of them, the range of human feelings, the meditation on not only what is light and pleasant, but on the sorrows of this life ā a fitting thing for our Word of the Week , melancholy . So you may have supposed I would come up with a song fit for such sorrow. If you do want such, I know none more directly honest than one we featured when we first started this project, "My Spirit Longs for Thee" . And yet there are other moods fit for a minor key melody, and one of them, paradoxically enough, is that of awe before the majesty of God. Milton put it very well when he said that sometimes the Father shades the full blaze of his beams, āas with a cloud / Drawn round about Thee like a radiant shrine,ā but even then the seraphim must shade their eyes, as the Father appears ādark with excess of bright.ā Upgrade to Support Word & Song Our Hymn of the Week looks with awe not on the Father but on the Son, in his triumph on the Bryn Calfaria, the name for the melody of this mighty song: itās Welsh for Calvary Hill (that f is pronounced as an English v ). Its author is William Williams, whom weāve featured here and here . Heās considered a giant in Welsh literature, known to the Welsh affectionately by the place where he was born, Pantycelyn , āHolly Vale.ā Pantycelyn was a part of the Methodist revival in Wales, occurring at about the same time as in England and the United States. Most of his many books of poetry and his prose works are in Welsh, and are on the Christian faith and life, or on themes from Scripture. The hymn itself consists of five stanzas, three of which youāll hear sung below, in Welsh (Iāll give the Welsh and then a literal English translation below). In the first stanza, Pantycelyn prays that he may feel always the breeze coming from the bryn Calfaria, because only the blood of the Cross (Welsh, gwaed y Groes, pronounced gweid uh Groiss ) can transform a weakling into a conqueror. In the second, the third in the original, he begs the Lord to take him as he is and to remake him, because even though his will is to keep far away, the Lordās power alone can bring him near. In the final line, with stunning brevity and surprise, he says, āIn your woundsā ā and those words are repeated three times in the melody, before we ever get to the subject and the verb of the sentence ā āalone will I be made whole ,ā Welsh iach, healthy , the final word of the stanza. Then in the last stanza, he says that this is the greatest work the Lord has ever done. He is still considering the hill of Calvary, but now as a mount of triumph. āYou put death, you put hell, you put Satan under your feet ,ā Welsh dan dy droed (pronounced dahn duh droyd ), he says, and concludes by affirming that this work will never leave his memory. Give a gift subscription Iāve got two more things to say, and they both have to do with the singing youāll hear. First, weāve got a blue-ribbon Welsh male choir ā Wales has long been famous for male choirs. The music for them is scored with two tenor parts, baritone, and bass. The effect is not of sweetness but of power, and that well fits this song. You can imagine the sound shaking the very walls of a church. We could use, I think, to hear such voices more often. The second is that Pantycelynās stanzas, common in Welsh, call for a special kind of scoring by those who compose the melodies. The first four lines are in a meter common in English: eight syllables, iambic, rhyming on lines two and four. So you expect that lines five and six will either rhyme with each other, or that the last line will repeat the rhyme you already have. Nothing of it. The fifth line has only four syllables, with reversed rhythm, DUM-da DUM-da, and the sixth line has seven syllables, DUM-da DUM-da DUM-da DUM, and it does not rhyme! We have nothing like that in English lyric poetry. Thus the final two lines are a departure from the first four, interpreting them, setting them in a surprising context, or soaring beyond them. But in order to make them really musical, the composers took to repeating them, like this: 5-5-5-6-6, with some of the choir moving on to the next line before the rest have finished it, and everyone coming together at the end. The result, I think youāll agree, is tremendous in the old sense of that word: it makes you tremble. Please Share this Post Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is a reader-supported online magazine devoted to restoring the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, about words themselves, hymns, poetry, classic film, folk music, and popular song. To see new posts please join us as a subscriber. Thank you for reading Word & Song . Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Gwaed dy Groes sy'n codi i fyny, 'R eiddil yn goncwerwr mawr: Gwaed dy Groes sydd yn darostwng, cewri cedyrn fyrdd i lawr. Gad im deimlo awel o Galfaria fryn. It is the blood of thy cross which lifts me up, makes the feeble into a great conqueror: The blood of thy cross brings down a thousand mighty giants. Let me feel the breeze from the hill of Calvary. Cymer, Iesu, fi fel 'rydwyf, fyth ni allaf fod yn well; D'allu di a'm gwna yn agos, f'wyllys i yw mynd ymhell: Yn dy glwyfau bydda' i'n unig fyth yn iach. Take me, Jesus, as I am, never can I be better; You alone can bring me near, though my will is to go far away. In thy wounds alone will I ever be whole. Ymddiriedaf yn dy allu, mawr yw'r gwaith a wn'est erioed; Ti ge'st angeu, Ti ge'st uffern, Ti ge'st Satan dan dy droed. Pen Calfaria nac aed hwnnw byth o'm cĆ“f. I will trust in thy might; in the greatest work thou hast ever done; You put death, you put hell, you put Satan under your feet. Head of Calvary, never will this leave my memory.ā¦
Our Friday podcast is open to everyone in this week, in honor of Saint Valentineās Day. Click on the image below for a special gift discount today. .When did young lads and lasses begin to give each other presents on February 14? All the way back in the French courts in the high Middle Ages, it seems ā and those French courts included the ones in England! For you must remember that the descendants of the Vikings who came to England in 1066 to claim the royal throne spoke French ā the French of Normandy, where the North-men, the Normans, had settled down. Those Normans, by the way, really got around: they ruled Sicily for a while, and theyāre likely responsible for a lot of blond hair and green eyes in southern Italy. Anyway, the tradition had it that birds started to pair off on Saint Valentineās Day, February 14, and if that sounds rather early to you, you should keep in mind that Europe was warmer in those years than it is now. The same nice weather that made it possible for other Vikings to grow barley on the coasts of Greenland made the woods in England ring out with birds choosing mates in February. And then, even after the weather got colder after 1300, the tradition was well-established. Itās the day when Chaucer sets his whimsical poem, The Parliament of Birds (1381) ā theyāre chattering about love, of course, and what kind of love is best, with the noble eagles bickering against the lusty sparrows and the dimwit cuckoo, all in front of the goddess Nature, and she ends it by giving every bird its mate, while the best singers sing a sweet song in honor of Saint Valentine, and love, and the coming summer with its gentle sun. āThe Parliament of Birds,ā Karl Wilhelm de Hamilton. Public Domain. In 1477, we have a charming letter from Lady Elizabeth Brews, encouraging a young cousin of hers, John Paston, to come by and press his suit for her daughter Margeryās hand in marriage. āAnd, cousin,ā she says, āupon Monday is Saint Valentineās Day and every bird chooses a mate, and if you would like to come on Thursday night, and see to it that you stay till then, I trust to God that you shall speak to my husband and I shall pray that we may bring the matter to a conclusion. For, cousin, āIt is but a simple oak / That is cut down at the first stroke.āā And young Margery herself wrote to John and called him her Valentine, and they did end up getting married. If you were in England back in the 1700ās, you might have celebrated Saint Valentineās Day by a custom that I think we really ought to revive. The boys put their names in one hat, and the girls put their names in another, and then they each picked out a name from the other hat. The boys were supposed to give presents to the girls they had picked. I like the custom, because it relieves everybody of a lot of pressure, and it makes sure that everybody will have somebody to flirt with. These days, a boy hardly knows how to approach a girl, because nobody knows what the moral rules are; the guard-rails are down, thereās no speed limit, no lane marker, no signs; more like a demolition derby than anything. So how about it, our readers who believe in courtship and marriage? The Valentine, of course, is named after Saint Valentine, though thereās some doubt as to who he was or which man he was, since there were two or three men by that name who died as martyrs for the faith at around the same time, in the middle of the third century. The name VALENTINUS is a diminutive for the name VALENS , just as CONSTANTINUS is diminutive for CONSTANS , and MARTINUS is diminutive for MARS . Now, VALENS comes from an ancient Indo-European root meaning strong, mighty, and this root has offspring all over the place, in all the great branches of the family, especially in names for boys. It really does put the HOT in HOTTENTOT! It gives us the VLAD in Russian VLADIMIR, and the WALT in German WALTHER, and the -ALD in Scottish DUFENALD, which becomes English DONALD. In fact, if your name is DONALD, RONALD, ARNOLD, GERALD, HAROLD, and quite a few others, youāre in this good company. So go and get yourself a VALENTINE, if you havenāt already done so! What are you waiting for, a talking eagle? Share This Post Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is a reader-supported online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six days a week, on words, traditional hymns, poetry, classic film, and popular song. To support this work, join us as a subscriber.ā¦
You might think it would be hard to turn our Word of the Week , romance , to a hymn ā unless youāre steeped in the poetry of the Middle Ages. Every time I say, āMiddle Ages,ā I hope youāll think of all the bold and bright color of those high times between about 1000 and 1300, when the weather was warm, the Vikings were growing barley on the coasts of Greenland, the population of Europe doubled, the universities were founded, and international trade and banking began. Or, for some sweeter things, people sang Christmas carols, and a vast and many-sided poetry of love came into being. And it wasnāt as if the monks latched on to some āsecularā themes and gave them Christian meanings. There was no such distinction to make; and in any case, poetry and philosophy centering on Godās love for mankind and our love for God, especially centering on the person of Jesus, is right there at the beginning and the heart of it all. It certainly was there in our featured hymnodist this week, perhaps the greatest and most influential European of his century, Saint Bernard of Clairvaux. Consider an Upgrade to Support W&S Our Hymn of the Week , āJesus, Thou Joy of Loving Hearts,ā is a translation of five stanzas from a long poem attributed to Bernard, though we donāt think he wrote all fifty or so of the stanzas; some seem to have been added later on, in the same spirit and of course with the same meter. The poemās first line is Jesu, dulcis memoria , which weāve had here at Word and Song , or rather some other stanzas from it, which Edward Caswall translated as the wonderful hymn, āJesus, the Very Thought of Thee.ā Bernard, the Doctor mellifluus, the honey-flowing Teacher, wrote a great deal about the love of God, and how without that love we canāt ascend to knowledge of the divine. You donāt simply love what you see. You see because you love. It opens your eyes. I recall speaking about this to a group of very happy and bright religious sisters in a rural village in northeastern Pennsylvania. They had asked me to lead them in a discussion of Bernardās treatise On the Love of God. As I was driving toward their monastery, I saw one of the sisters walking down a country road with an open book, and, thinking about my school days, I said, āWell, this is a first for me! Instead of the sisters checking my homework, Iām checking theirs!ā The highest form of love, Bernard says, goes beyond even loving God for Godās sake. Itās when you love yourself for Godās sake: then you do more than gaze in wonder at the beauty of God; you participate, by love, in that divine love that overflows into creation itself, that makes something from nothing, even yourself. Give a gift subscription But here in this hymn, the focus is on Jesus and his love, and that too is characteristic of the Middle Ages. Look around you. Everything you see will have its rising and its setting. āWhere are the snows of yesteryear?ā asked the late medieval poet Francois Villon, sadly. āEat, drink, and be merryā ā thatās not the saying of people who really feel merry inside. Itās a smiling face for people who have resigned. Not Bernard. Itās why, when Dante chooses a guide to lead his namesake to the very presence of God, he turns not to theology but to Bernard, who wrote most powerfully not about what we understand but about what we love. For todayās hymn, the translator, Ray Palmer, chose five stanzas from the original Latin poem, focusing on what does not change, and on the sweetest of all food and drink, the sacrament of the living bread come down from heaven. Other foods satisfy for a time, and if we eat or drink more of them beyond a certain point, they will no longer even please. The love of Jesus ā his love for man, manās love for him ā both satisfies and makes the soul all the hungrier, and that can only be said of love, whose motto is never, āAll things in moderation,ā but āThe more the merrierā! Please Share this Post Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Jesus, thou joy of loving hearts, Thou Fount of life, thou Light of men, From the best bliss that earth imparts We turn unfilled to thee again. Thy truth unchanged hath ever stood; Thou savest those that on thee call; To them that seek thee, thou art good, To them that find thee, all in all. We taste thee, O thou living Bread, And long to feast upon thee still; We drink of thee, the Fountainhead, And thirst from thee our souls to fill. Our restless spirits yearn for thee, Where'er our changeful lot is cast; Glad, when thy gracious smile we see, Blest, when our faith can hold thee fast. O Jesus, ever with us stay, Make all our moments calm and bright, Chase the dark night of sin away, Shed o'er the world thy holy light. Share this Post Our hymn for this week is set to the tune, Eisenach, and beautifully sung by Christās College Choir, Cambridge. Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is a reader-supported online magazine devoted to restoring the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, about words themselves, hymns, poetry, classic film, folk music, and popular song. To see new posts please join us as a subscriber. Thank you for reading Word & Song .ā¦
In honor of our Word of the Week , candle , Iād like to look at someone whose works to me are like a candle in the dark, Charles Dickens. Iām thinking here of that powerful light in the window, set in that wonderful ship turned into a house on the beach at Yarmouth, in the novel David Copperfield. The situation, as you may remember, is this. Mr. Peggotty, an old tar and a tower of moral strength, is going forth to seek his niece, Little Emily, through England and the continent. She has been seduced by Davidās old friend from school days, Steerforth, seduced from the side of the young man who loves her more than he loves his own life, and who was on the verge of marrying her. Steerforth had insinuated himself into the familyās confidence, so what we have here is the basest of betrayals. Mr. Peggotty has one object in mind, one alone, and that is to find Emily and to bring her home. Heās always been a bluff and charitable man, one whoās seen a lot of suffering in his day, but his is a snug, clean, welcoming house, made out of that beached ship, and among the objects of his care is a crotchety old lady named Mrs. Gummidge. Sheās hard to live with, because sheās always moaning and whimpering, saying, āIām a trouble and a worrit to ye, that I am, Danāl,ā and other such unhelpful things. But Mr. Peggotty is indulgent. Sheās a widow; her husband was one of Mr. Peggottyās shipmates ādrownded,ā as he puts it. āSheās thinking on the old āun,ā says he, whenever she gets into one of her blue moods, which is about every day. But now that the crisis has struck, Mrs. Gummidge rises to the occasion. Sheās not going to leave that house, no sir. She will keep it ship-shape for when Danāl returns, she says, and she means it. To that end, she will do what Daniel Peggotty has always done. She will keep a light burning in the window, for when he returns. The candle of home will shine. Help Word & Song with an Upgrade to Paid Our Film of the Week , David Copperfield, is in many ways a comic romp. Youāve got the roly-poly W. C. Fields, not even bothering to imitate a British accent (and he was right not to try), as the scapegrace Mr. Micawber, irresponsible, but with a real heart ā who calls the now grownup David āthe friend of my youth,ā which is fitting, in a way, even though Micawber was married with quite a passel of children when Davy first met him in London. Youāve got the irrepressible Edna May Oliver as Aunt Betsey Trotwood, who takes Davy in when heās got no one else in the world, and after heās walked, penniless, half-starved, and with but scraps of clothing to keep away the wind and the cold, all the way from London to Dover. Youāve got Roland Young ā you may know him from his role as the gentle and dotty rich man who lost his butler Charles Laughton in a poker game with an American hillbilly on tour in Paris, in Ruggles of Red Gap ā as the so very āumble Uriah Heep, wringing his clammy hands and on the lookout to extort from his employer permission to marry the manās daughter, Agnes. And thatās not to mention Lionel Barrymore as Mr. Peggotty, and Freddy Bartholomew as the boy Davy ā a first-rate cast in a clean and clear film adaptation of the novel. Yes, itās a romp ā yet, as you can tell, it can be a dark world to romp in, and hence the need for that candle. Give a gift subscription But then, Dickens was always about the light in darkness. Itās there atop the crown of the Ghost of Christmas Past, in A Christmas Carol. We see it shine on the shore of the Thames in Our Mutual Friend, when Lizzie Hexam, one of the most powerful heroines in English literature, rows on the dark river to find the mangled body of the man who loves her, Eugene, barely hanging on to life ā and she herself will be the light he struggles to see, as he recovers, slowly, over many weeks. It is there in the steerage of the ship, ridden with sickness, as Martin Chuzzlewit, in the novel by his name, sails penniless back to England, and falls ill, and his friend and servant, Mark Tapley, nurses him back to health. I could go on, finding the light, the candles, the lamps, the sun beaming from eyes of pity and forgiveness and love, in every one of his novels: the very names of Esther Summerson and Lucie Manette are suggestive of the light that envelops them. The words of another writer ring in my ears: āAnd the light shines in the darkness, and the darkness has not overcome it.ā Share this Post We are sorry today not to be able to give you more than a trailer for the bright film David Copperfield , directed by George Cukor (1935). Itās still our family favorite film version of the novel, if you can find it, and it is considered by many to come closest to the spirit of the story and the characters as the author conceived them. Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is an online magazine devoted to reclaiming the good, the beautiful, and the true. We publish six essays each week, on words, classic hymns, poems, films, and popular songs, as well a weekly podcast for paid subscribers, alternately Poetry Aloud or Anthony Esolen Speaks . Paid subscribers also receive audio-enhanced posts and on-demand access to our full archive, and may add their comments to our posts and discussions. To support this project, please join us as a subscriber. We value all of our subscribers, and we thank you for reading Word and Song!ā¦
Who said that the contemplative life is superior to the active life? Well, everybody did. You can find it in Plato ā as C. S. Lewisās Professor Kirk said, scratching his head as he wondered why young people didnāt know this or that, āItās all in Plato, you know.ā But you will find it everywhere in Scripture too. Debraās long thought that poor Martha got the short end of the stick, when she was doing all the work for supper, while her sister Mary was seated at the feet of Jesus, gazing up at him and listening to his words. I feel a bit sorry for Martha, too! But then, weāre all taught that unless youāre busy, you arenāt worth anything; and one of these days Iāll do an entry on sloth, which the philosopher Josef Pieper says is the besetting sin of a society in which everybody is at work all the time. For spiritual sloth is irritable and never at peace, because it canāt take joy in what really ought to bring joy: itās the sin against the Sabbath, said Thomas Aquinas. I chose our Word of the Week , candle , in honor of the Feast of the Presentation, when the infant Jesus was brought to the Temple on the fortieth day after his birth, as the law of Moses prescribes. There in the Temple were two saintly people, both of them quite aged: Simeon and Anna. Simeon had prayed that God would not let him die before he had seen the Anointed One. Anna had been widowed after seven years of marriage, and since then had spent more than fifty years of being in the Temple, praying. The thing that strikes me about these two old believers is how spry they are, how full of life. Herod seems a doddering fool by comparison, even apart from his murderous intent. But why should we be surprised? People who live so deeply in contemplation drink from the wellsprings of light. It is light that nourishes the soul, not sweat. I donāt speak here as someone who is far advanced in the practice of contemplation. When it comes to that, Iām too easily distracted ā meaning, pulled this way and that. Yet we should tend to the soulās peace, and we should remember too that heaven is described not in terms of doing, but in terms of seeing. Consider an Upgrade to Support W&S And that brings us to our Hymn of the Week , another by the gentle and amiable William Cowper : āSometimes a Light Surprises.ā It first appears in 1779, in Olney Hymns, the splendid collection which Cowper and his friend and fellow minister John Newton put together. But then in 1830, across the ocean, the Reverend Joshua Leavitt published it in The Christian Lyre, where it appears with a melody which someone, perhaps Leavitt himself, composed for the poem ā a melody called Light. Leavitt was not, like Cowper, shy and retiring; though, like Cowper and Newton, he was an ardent abolitionist, serving as the editor of The Emancipator for seventeen years (1833-1850). Yet his most prominent form of action had a good deal of the contemplative about it. I say that because The Christian Lyre wasnāt intended as a hymnal for regular church services. Leavitt had it in mind for what he called revivals, that is, evening meetings, somewhat apart from the regular rounds of seasons and feasts in the Christian year. He made a deliberate choice that ran a bit counter to what you would find in other hymnals, even in the Appalachian shape-note hymnals scored for three parts, with the melody in the tenor, books such as The Sacred Harp and Southern Harmony. Iāll let him describe it: āAs the number of parts is apt to distract the attention of an audience, or to occupy them with the music instead of the sentiment, the tunes here printed will be generally accompanied with only a simple bass, and sometimes not even with that. In a vast number of cases the religious effect of a hymn is heightened by having all sing the air only. Possessing no musical skill beyond that of ordinary plain singers, I send out my work, without pretensions.ā Yet if it was he who wrote the melody for āSometimes a Light Surprises,ā he was a skilled melodist indeed. Join Us at Word & Song One comment on Cowperās words: surprise is brilliantly chosen. The light God gives is not ours to demand at will, as if you could turn a spigot and drink when you please. It takes us unawares. The best we can do is to try to be ready for the light, or to pray for it, and to be grateful when it comes. Share this Post We were not able to find a recording of this hymn to the tune written for it, āLight.ā But we did find a bright and cheerful organ version of another tune, played by John Keys. If anyone finds a version to the tune, āLight,ā please do send us a link. Word & Song by Anthony Esolen is a reader-supported publication. To receive new posts please join us as a free or paid subscriber. Text within this block will maintain its original spacing when published Sometimes a light surprises The Christian when he sings; It is the Lord who rises With healing in his wings: When comforts are declining, He grants the soul again A season of clear shining, To cheer it after rain. In holy contemplation We sweetly then pursue The theme of God's salvation, And find it ever new; Set free from present sorrow, We cheerfully can say, Let the unknown tomorrow Bring with it what it may. It can bring with it nothing But he will bear us through; Who gives the lilies clothing Will clothe his people, too: Beneath the spreading heavens No creature but is fed; And he who feeds the ravens Will give his children bread. Though vine nor fig-tree neither Their wonted fruit should bear, Though all the fields should wither, Nor flocks nor herds be there, Yet, God the same abiding, His praise shall tune my voice, For, while in him confiding, I cannot but rejoice.ā¦
Welcome to Player FM!
Player FM is scanning the web for high-quality podcasts for you to enjoy right now. It's the best podcast app and works on Android, iPhone, and the web. Signup to sync subscriptions across devices.