Culture

A Christmas Oratorio: ‘For the Time Being’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

During World War II, the poet W.H. Auden wrote a book-length poem entitled For the Time Being. It is subtitled, “A Christmas Oratorio,” and it is a retelling of the Christmas story, but with a 20th century sensibility. His Herod, for instance, is a technology-loving king who loves that he lives in an Age of Reason and is ever-perplexed by faith and irked that he must hunt down and exterminate the baby Jesus.

An oratorio is a type of composition that was popular in the Baroque period and in churches and has not had many comebacks as a poetic or theatrical form because it never had a period of dominance. It never went away but it was never the first choice of writing mode for many writers. (Paul McCartney produced a quite famous one, A Liverpool Oratorio, two decades ago.) Auden was a poet of structures and forms, though, and he produced an attempt at almost every style and poetic structure in his body of work (about 400 poems and several full-length verse plays).
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In a Christmas Mood …

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

If you find yourself in London this Christmas Eve—and why would you not be there that night?—you ought to spend the evening in the company of Nick Shankland and Kitty LaRoar in the cabaret at Scarfes Bar (from 8:00 p.m. till midnight). Whoever or whatever the jazz muse is, he/she/it has decided to hang out with these two musicians and their friends the last few years.

And they released a Christmas E.P. this year, Christmas Dream, a collection of holiday standards that they treat like the ideas are new to them and the sentiments freshly felt. They make music that is beautiful, elegant, and always in the mood for love.

I have been a fan of Kitty LaRoar and Nick Shankland’s music for a couple years now, and each recording brings new pleasure with repeated listens. Her voice and his piano accompanied me through this challenging 2016 and helped make it less so. Last year they released an E.P. for Valentine’s Day (titled Valentine’s Eve, with saxophonist Ed Jones) … if they dedicated themselves to recording music about every holiday on Earth, I would be happy to take that global tour with them.
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The Spam Folder Follies

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

They love my information in the spam comments folder. Apparently, the only thing my web site needs is some help with one of the following: loading in Internet Explorer or compatibility with Safari or help with ways of viewing it on a phone browser, but otherwise, my posts have “great information” and my writing is “useful,” according to Spam commenters.

Oh! and no one can ever find this web site. “Disgrace on the sseek engines for nott positioning this submit upper,” one recent comment (December 8) declared. At least, I think this has something to do with that. The writer seems to be offering help with search engine optimization (SEO), which no one actually understands but many claim to.

Anyone who has read Madeleine L’Engle’s novel A Wrinkle in Time may appreciate the above comment’s inadvertent resemblance to the character Mrs. Which’s statements: “I ffindd itt verry ttirinngg, andd wee hhave mmuch ttoo ddoo.”
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