#songcycle

[chessalbaneze]

Four of Swords

The Four of Swords, from late May 2020. One of my favorite song cycles is Die Schöne Müllerin (The Lovely Milleress) by Schubert, in which a young man pines after a woman without telling her, instead telling his feelings to nature, in particular the babbling brook. The closest he gets to confessing is when he buys her a green ribbon, knowing that green is her favorite color. When she understandably falls for someone else, he becomes overwhelmed by emotions and drowns himself in the brook.

The entire song cycle is sung from his perspective except for the very last song, illustrated here, which is sung from the brook's perspective: a lullaby. The last song is tender and caressing, enveloping the listener in love and peace. As stressed as I was while creating this, the deepest peace I could think of was this song, and no real examples of relaxation or rest from my own life. Thankfully that has changed, but I still like this image for this card.

[hunting-songs]

alternate

oc asks: character design edition! In her Jujutsu-Kaisen Verse Senritsu wears a ravenfeather instead of dandelions on her hatband, instead of a blouse she wears a Buscherump and the Tippelei-earring in her left ear that is usually just a golden earring that is traditionally used by journeymen to pay for their funreal in case they die before becoming a Master, is in that verse specifically the Miller-crafts-symbol: a small golden millwheel behind a sack of flour. The raven feather: In the sorbian storis of the Sourcerer Krabat he and the other sourcerers were able to turn into ravens and would everynight, after they had worked at the Black Mill during the day, turn into ravens to be teached spells by the Millermaster. That of course does not make sense in the JJK-World, but its a nice marking for a organisation.

Miller-Tippelei-Earring: A Tippelei Earing is used as a way to carry money on the person and in the case of Journeymen it is "the amount of money one needs to pay a proper burial". As Journeymen are not allowed to earn / own money for as long as they are on the Great Wandering, the earring is a safety measure to pay for their funreal. In the Krabat myth, the millerboys were bound by the Millermaster to be prisoners and the Millermaster would very new-year-eve sacrefice one of the millerboys to Gevatter Tod to extrend his life for another year. In the case of the European JJK-Sourcerers the story is a great warning to not rely on one great sourcerer or one great leader since like in the story, there is a chance of them misusing their skills for their own gain. Krabats story is also in nowdays germany a story that is readin school as a preperation for history lessons to start the topic of the Nazi-time , so the avoidance to give all the power to just one person and avoiding another "millermaster", but also beein g part of a group of young people swayed into dangeoruse philosophy by the promsi of greatness turns into a even more intense warning. Ottfried Preußler, who took the Krabat Mythos and turned it into the youth-neovella nowdays read in school was himself born 1923, so he wrote out of his own expierences in the HJ, him serving as a soldier in WW2, and his memories from beeing a warprisoner.

Buscherump: A Buscherump is a blue and white striped fisher-shirt that is usually worn by fishers in northgermany, holland, frisian and denmark. Its part of rough, pragamtic workwear. Due to its durability its also normal day-wear for hard work. After listening to the SOnata of Darkness Senritsu had been picked up by Sourcerers living by the Northsea-coast so she just wears the shirt out of habit since it does not easy rip.

[geraskierfanficprompts]

Prompt 75

After being yelled at on the mountain, Jaskier stumbles and tumbles his way down the perilous path down, all the while being half-blinded by his own tears. He makes it to town and decides to wait. Geralt will realize it was all a mistake and come to find him and apologize. It'll take a few days, but Jaskier can wait. He'll play for some coin, and buy himself something nice to distract himself from the heartbreak. It's been four days. Jaskier has a room at an inn, two beds, in case Geralt doesn't want to sleep in the same bed with him like they used to. Jaskier plays every night. Everyone keeps requesting his songs about Geralt, but he redirects them easily enough. The only problem is he ran out of non-Geralt songs after the second day. Even ones that don't mention him, Jaskier can't bring himself to play, because he knows that he wrote them about Geralt. It's been a week. Jaskier has his room at the same inn. He still plays for coin, but he's been forced to play his songs about Geralt, as nobody wants to hear the same songs for a week straight, so he had to diversify. Jaskier is worried Geralt might've gotten hurt. Hopefully with his witcher healing, he'll be here in no time. It's been two weeks. Jaskier has his room at the inn. He's decided to take a break from playing for a bit, lest he get boring for the crowds. He's begun really exploring the town, and he's even met one of his frequent listeners out in town, got his name - Pietr - And was introduced to his wife as "The song guy". It was nice hearing compliments about his work from them both, even if it did remind him of the nights Geralt would talk in-depth about Jaskier's songcycles with him. He misses those nights. He hopes Geralt heals up from whatever injury he must've gotten and gets here soon so they can continue having those. It's been two months. Jaskier has changed to a one-bed room. Geralt is taking forever, he can deal with sharing a bed with Jaskier when he gets here. Jaskier plays every few nights, he has regular listeners now. He's tried writing new songs, but every time he puts quill to parchment, he starts crying. Really wish he'd stop doing that. It's been four months. Jaskier has changed his room again, now in a room with a single small bed, just for one person. It'd be physically impossible to even attempt sharing it with Geralt, unless they laid on top of each other, and even then, Geralt's feet would poke out. Jaskier can only assume Geralt went after Yennefer before him. As always. Jaskier isn't sure why it came as a surprise when he first figured it out. Or why it still hurt enough to make him bawl into a glass of alcohol. He should've known from the beginning. At least he'll be next, he thinks moments before passing out drunk. It's been six months. Jaskier is beginning to worry Geralt may have died. Surely he would've come by now. Jaskier's head still whips around to look at the door every time it opens. He still peeks into every stable and prays he'll see Roach. He still asks the blacksmith if he's done any work with swords recently. One especially mortifying moment was the time he asked a brothel if they had seen Geralt's description, only for the women to all tut sadly and tell him that if he had to look at brothels to try and find his missing husband, he must've not been good enough for Jaskier to begin with. Jaskier leaves without even clearing up the misconception, because it was still a no. Geralt was still not here.

It's been eight months. Jaskier has the same room, but has begun to dwindle in popularity. At least in the "giving money to" department. He thought he could at least expect Pietr, but he ran into him in the market the other day and Pietr had no idea who he was. Jaskier must really be that forgettable, despite all his attempts his whole life to not be. Jaskier must've just overexaggerated what he meant to someone again. Jaskier has scaled the mountain again, all by himself. Either he finds signs of Geralt, dead or alive, or he dies in some rockslide accident and nobody misses him. He finds no signs of Geralt, however. Not a thing. Geralt left the mountain, that was for sure. Jaskier sat on the very same rock, and cried thinking of the very same coast, but this time he was alone. It's been ten months. Jaskier spends his days and nights either drinking or crying. He's only written one new song, one about someone's love dying before they ever get to tell them how they feel. He's never sung it, though. For a performance or in private. He's stopped playing altogether. He has no idea what to do with the rest of his life. As sad and pitiful and pathetic as he thinks himself when he says it, his life was Geralt. Following him for twenty years, writing songs about him, spreading word about him, making a name for himself as "The White Wolf's bard." It's been a year. Jaskier bought himself a small hovel in the village. He'd been there far too long to keep using the inn. He has a small flower garden. He spends most of his time tending it. Jaskier heard a villager say their penpal's village was recently saved by the White Wolf himself, and Jaskier freezes, standing still and gaping at the two women chatting. They begin to realize Jaskier's eavesdropping and move to talk inside their home. Oh. So Geralt lived. He just truly didn't come for Jaskier. Jaskier throws the last song he wrote for Geralt into the fire. Geralt isn't dead. But Geralt probably wishes Jaskier was. Jaskier stays inside his home long enough for his garden to get overrun with weeds and pests. He only leaves his home when one day, there's incessant knocking on his door. He opens it to find Yennefer. Great. She grabs his arm, summons a portal behind her, and shOVES him in. She sits him down in a chair in a kitchen, comments on how terrible he looks, and then leaves upstairs. After a few moments, Yennefer drags Geralt in, even though Geralt is clearly trying his best not to enter the room. Lovely. As if Jaskier didn't already feel like the bane of Geralt's existence. Yennefer finally sits Geralt down, and explains to them that it was just as she thought. They were bespelled. Geralt has been having lapses of memory and odd sudden urges for about a year now. He'd forget people he spoke to, towns he'd go in, and suddenly go off his routes or paths with intense need to go on a detour he could never talk himself out of. Geralt can hardly listen to her, he's just stuck staring at Jaskier with awe. Jaskier's alive. Jaskier's alive. Ever since the mountain, Geralt has been visiting the towns around the mountain, praying to find his bard again, only for everybody in the towns to not have seen anyone meeting his description. It was only two months in that he combed the entire mountain, both hoping and dreading to find Jaskier's body. He found nothing. No signs of his bard. And with nobody ever seeing him enter the village, it's almost as if he just... disappeared. Yennefer explains that anytime Geralt asked someone of Jaskier, the person would forget everything they knew about him. Any time Geralt almost made contact with Jaskier, his mind would suddenly tug him into a new direction. it seems to have been born into existence the day they had their fight on the mountain. Specifically when Geralt asked for life to take Jaskier off his hands.

[shrapnelstars]

I already love this new version of Wayne's theme/An Endless Cycle so much, even from this short preview.

[ilovetheater-nl]

20 December gaat de nieuwe musical Vooralsnog in première in De Guldenberg, Helvoirt

20 December gaat de nieuwe musical Vooralsnog in première in De Guldenberg, Helvoirt

Een verhaal over de liefde en de keuzes die je hierin wel of niet maakt.  Deze doorgecomponeerde 45 minute durende voorstelling is geschreven en geregisseerd door Luc Scholtze, derdejaars student aan de Academie voor Muziekeducatie in van Fontys Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (Tilburg). In deze songcycle volgen we iemand wie twee oude liefdes tegenkomt, en worden we meegenomen in haar gedachtes en…

[charliehopper]

MUSICIANS I ENJOY FOLLOWING ON SOCIAL MEDIA #3. Whether you ever heard @parksvandyke solo or not, you’ve definitely heard his string arrangements on pop and rock records and some of the songs he cowrote, especially with #brianwilson. And now you can see what’s on his mind (and it’s all kinds of stuff: playful but pissed off political remarks, sixties reminiscences, conceptual stuff, tributes to people he either knew or respected, his attempts to get a photo taken when it was so rainy in LA...). This album, hm, hm hm hm. It was my first listen tonight—first impression, it’s kind of like if Esquivel, Captain Beefheart and Jimmy Webb made a Broadway soundtrack for a non-existent show? And it’s as if you can picture Neil Young masterminding “Broken Arrow” in the studio next door with Buffalo Springfield, and the whole building just taking a chance on unexpected decisions at every turn. I suppose I think it’s a cousin of Revolution No.9 including that little McCartney fragment of a catchy song at the beginning; though less dark and more orchestral and the album kicks off with an odd bluegrass thing that turns into a Randy Newman cover where Randy arranged the strings to sound like a Randy Newman record. I’m not sure I followed all the trains of thought but they seemed, uh, full of portent but playful, too, frequently. Anyway. Now Mr. Parks is an interesting older guy with an Instagram account and a lot of rich personal history. #vinyl #vinylcollection #vinyladdict #vandykeparks #songcycle #ellipticalsoundtrack #treadmillsoundtrack #nowspinning #nowspinningonvinyl (at Noblesville, Indiana) https://www.instagram.com/p/Bv220LWHThL/?utm_source=ig_tumblr_share&igshid=a7xhjpw0g1ia

[alexwand]

Happy Bandcamp Friday! Today I'm releasing a song cycle on Hungry Badger Records: Four Poems for Robin. The music is a setting of Gary Snyder poems featuring Cari Stevens (vocals), Brock Stuessi (upright bass, field recordings), and myself (vocals, meantone classical guitar, field recordings). Cover art by the wonderful Ione Maria Rojas (click the above art for link to music). Thanks for listening and supporting!

[butwhereamigoingwiththis]

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🚨🚨⚠️ New Music!! ⚠️🚨🚨 "Moon Dance" is a part of a larger song cycle of SAB choral works entitled "Outer Realms." Through the cycle, choirs will utilize their own skill and creativity to add their own touch to the music. "Moon Dance" explores human connection to the moon and the mystical power it holds. #choralmusic #newmusicalert #composer #songcycle #thecosmos #moon #moondance #outerrealms #lgbtqia #queermusician (at Minneapolis, Minnesota) https://www.instagram.com/p/CQtMW0MjgdW/?utm_medium=tumblr

[pullbackthestring]

[hunting-songs]

@katikis started following you !

"I can hear you following me.", The Musicians short fingers that used to look very different, flicked nimbly over to the next page of the auctionhouses catalogue. Yet instead of using her Mobile Phone to read the next page to her and maybe find what she had come to Japan to to search for, she put the phone beside her on the bench, brushing a few leafs off the bench that felt dancing to the floor in the same movement. Tokyo was loud, loud, loud- every noise was another nail digging into her skull and hammering, hammering, hammering deeper. But sitting on the bench under the tree , where the trees leafs rustling in the mild weather had wrapped her in a protective veil of soft, barely hearable humming that stroked like cold silk against the nails of other noises, made the world around her quieter, quieter, quieter. "Which is neither here nor there, I had heard you three streets away and I am not complaining neither. I like listening to the heartbeat of mhmmm...a teacher, I assume? Correct me if I am wrong, please." It was not a lie, there was something about people who looked after others in a nurturing way out of their passion for a line of work or because of a conviction, that was like the sweetes melody Senritsu had ever heard and it was easy for her to hear this melody in the orchestra that was formed of another persons way of moving, tact of breathing, and heartbeat. The short finger that had before ran along the catalogues page lifted into the air and danced nimbly to the melody only she could hear: "Although yours is - " 'more lively', she wanted to say. 'more wilder' she orderd herself to say'. 'More stronger' she bagged herself to say. The scent of apples stroked around her nose like a soft finger and Senritsu only shaked her head as if she could shake off the olfactorily hallucination like a too heavy coat. The words were stuck in her throat like stones making it hard to breath. With a quiet frustrated sigh, massaging her left temple to sooth the incoming headache, she only said instead: "-più vivo than any others teachers I have heard before. But again, that is just my opinion and I am not complaining about beeing followed by someone whos heartbeat is nice to listen to, after al, other people need to pay money for music, I have it for free. But I just wanted to note that sneaking up to me is very much useless just so you would not be disappointed if it would not work." Eventually the woman looked up with a smile, even if the smile was a tad mischievous and curled waggishly around her buckteeth as she laughed to a joke only she could hear: "Unless it hurts your ego too much, than of course you can go back to the end of the street and sneak up on me again. I will do my very best to appear startled, I promise." The Musician winked friendly.

[youngvicneighbourhoodtheatre]

Guest Blog - Director Tom Martin reflects on making community show Sing Before You Speak Again - October 2017

By Tom Martin

Sing Before You Speak Again is an original staged song cycle about brains and how they change, inspired by the Young Vic show Wings as well as conversations with people with neurological difficulties from the Young Vic’s Two Boroughs catchment. Here’s a little bit about how we’ve made it:

To find material for this show, I took lyricist Deanna Rodger and composer Joseph Atkins on story-finding expeditions to stroke recovery groups, Parkinson’s community groups and dementia healthy living clubs, all local to the Young Vic. We kept these workshops very relaxed, getting to know the participants over a game of Desert Island Discs (what one song would you want to be marooned with, and why?) before warming up our voices and getting our Brian Wilson on with a two-part arrangement of The Beach Boys’ Good Vibrations. Then we had tea and biscuits, and recorded lots of conversations about music and memory.

For us, this was a chance (and a privilege) to root our work in personal testimony, and it turns out that asking people about their memories of music generates a remarkable common ground! We were amazed by the stories we were told, by the most incredible, unassuming people: a session musician who had recorded with the Rolling Stones; three women with vivid memories of growing up in Barbados; somebody whose stroke had literally saved their life.

Out of these recordings and notes, Deanna began work on a series of songs capturing some of the moments or feelings or struggles in these stories. Some of the text is verbatim, but most of it is poetic - we were keen that the lyrics not only worked on a dramatic, emotional, and personal level, but also engaged poetically with the initial thesis of the show: how brains ‘change’. The Knowledge, for example, is a song about a cab driver and their passenger, inspired by meeting a participant who used to drive a black cab - while still able to drive, his stroke had blocked his access to The Knowledge, the encyclopaedia of London routes all cabbies are required to know. The song tells the tragicomic story of a brain losing its navigational ability en route, but also explores how education and experience determine the lenses (historical, logistical, emotional) through which we view our surroundings.

In Deanna’s poetic world, memories become motors, houses become ships tossed about on a cold sea, and brains become balloons to be popped or let go. With these lyrics in place, Joe and I worked on structuring the show using the dramaturgical language of musicals. (As a director of mostly ‘straight’ theatre I was surprised at how easily terms like ‘the I Want number’ and ‘act two closer’ fitted into my vocabulary, although I still don’t know how to pronounce ‘reprise’.) Joe then returned week on week with brilliant arrangements inspired by our workshop participants’ favourite artists - The Beatles, Bob Marley, and Joni Mitchell - but levelled up with the richest and most challenging harmonies. Our choir is made up of 19 non-professional singers from the Two Boroughs catchment, some of whom we met in the initial workshops, but they have more than risen to the musical challenge Joe has set them.

In preparation for the project I shadowed a number of dance classes for people with Parkinson’s and dementia through Rambert Dance, and spent time with dance and music practitioner Anna Gillespie. I discovered through this process that what we in the theatre consider to be the most basic of acting warmups - self-massage and stretches, or basic facial and breathing exercises - actually have a massive effect on the proprioception of people with neurological difficulties. Proprioception is the sense of the relative position of one’s body, and adding a rhythm to these exercises compounds their effect. ‘Music organises chaotic time,’ I remember her saying - it helps people locate their position in a world that sometimes feels out of sync. The staging of the show, then, is drawn from these ideas - bodies set adrift, finding direction, mooring together, anchoring themselves and each other.

Also, there’s going to be a picnic. You should come!

Sing Before You Speak Again runs from the 2nd til the 4th of November in the Clare Theatre. Once the run at the Young Vic finishes, we’ll tour an ‘acoustic’ version of the show to some of the groups we met for the workshops.

[itsthelinernotes]

Van Dyke Parks - Songs Cycled A non-RSD RSD pick up. There's a lot that can be said about this album so I'm gonna throw out some points: It's title is a reference to VDP's first album Song Cycle (check out my 100th post), this features songs spanning his career, new songs, and arrangements and covers of other artists and traditional tunes, it features the Esso Trinidad Steel Band, it was VDPs first album in 24 years, and it was originally released as a series of 7" I adore VDP, he's such a brilliant composer, arranger, musician. In one sense his music is so deeply traditional, but he's a rebel. He breaks musical rules and is outspoken about his politics (often anti-tradition, follow him on Twitter for some great takes). This album in particular has his whole musical life on display and is incredibly produced. I think this quote is appropriate "...There’s a maverick on the loose, with a highly personal set of tunes and instrumentals. All of them reveal an iconoclast tilting at windmills, railing at tyrants, barking at masters of war, and celebrating a shameless commitment to the very definition of ‘Americana’." It's been a while since I've heard this album so it took me until the vocals come in on track two that I had it playing too slow at 33.3RPM, when it's pressed at 45RPM. The artwork is by Kenton Nelson. . . . . . #VanDykeParks #SongsCycled #SongCycle #BellaUnion #KentonNelson #vinyl #records #nowplaying #nowspinning #Thelinernotes #albumart #vinyligclub #recordcollector #vinylgeek #recordcollection #vinyladdiction #albumart #vinylcollectionpost #records_feature

[claywhittington]

New #composition project. Trying to get visual ideas to relate to this poem from Songs of Travel by Robert Louis Stevenson. He originally wrote about 46 (less than half published). Ralph Vaughan Williams set 9 to piano/vocal art songs. My goal is to set it to the same instrumentation while staying as true as I can to Williams' style. #piano #music #ralphvaughanwilliams #robertlouisstevenson #songcycle #songsoftravel #thevagabond

[dauwdrupje]

My illustration by the 3th song of Franz Schubert's songcycle 'Winterreise': 'Gefrorene Tränen'. The quoted lines are: 'Ob es mir denn entgangen,/ Daß ich geweinet hab’?' (Have I, then, not noticed/ That I have been weeping?)

[theclosingtime]

My Top 10 Favourite Records from the 2010s.

                                       #2 Lizzo - Cuz I Love You (2019)

The most surprising release of 2019 took us all by storm with its biggest single “Juice” and still isn’t stopping.

I’m going to watch Lizzo for years to come, and really hope she can build up on her amazing songcycle of self-love, tongue-in-cheek lyrics and life-affirming melodies.

Highlights: “Juice”, “Cuz I Love You”, “Jerome”, “Better in Color”, “Heaven Help Me.”

[davidarthurpersley]

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As a Vocalist, I am classically trained. As an Artist, I am versed in multiple genres. One thing on my "Bucket List" would be to one day record a Classical Album. It may be unheard of and extremely ambitious for a Rnb/Hip Hop/Pop Artist to record in the classical genre; but I suppose someone has to, haha. Here is Dichterliebe, "The Poet's Love" by Robert Schumann (Op. 48), I was first introduced to in College at ASU by one of my dear Vocal Instructors; Joni Killian now a Professor at Huntington University. It's a marvelous Song Cycle with rich and warm Melodies and based on "Love Poets". And Love has always been something in life I have sought out, found, and lost in life. The Song Cycle has 20 Songs; so when the time comes, it certainly will be quite the undertaking. But one, I feel, I am vocally, mentally, and spiritually prepared to take on at this stage in life. Pray for me. Enjoy, Dichterliebe, "The Poet's Love" by Robert Schumann (Op. 48). DA.🙏❤️🎼🎶🎤#songcycle #dichterliebe #robertschumann #artsong #classicalmusic #classicalrepertoire https://www.instagram.com/p/ByQxmVYhe05/?igshid=1wvkbhcnieezr