Showing posts with label Jessye Norman. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Jessye Norman. Show all posts

Saturday, 24 December 2011

Wintery atmosphere for Christmas eve

I didn't know exactly what to upload here or what to blog about as I am waiting for Christmas to arrive. This post is not very original: I blogged about similar subjects here and here. This picture by Larry Elmore is called Winter campaign. I have no idea what the context is, but judging by the clothes and weapons of the characters here I think they are meant to be Eastern European (or akin to them). In any cayse, it reminds me slightly of our own Dungeons & Dragons campaign: the characters travelling in the snow on horses, the raven/crow/corvid looming over them ominously (my brother had the raven as the emblematic animal of the big baddies in our D&Dr campaign), I wonder if he is part of the party or spying on them, the giant boar accompanying them... I think they are baddies, thinking about it. I might be wrong. But aside from this, the landscape, the setting and atmosphere here, the sense of dynamism Elmore creates so well, all this reminds me of our D&Dr campaign when we play during Christmastime.

As I said, before, I associate Christmas carols with D&Dr. I have already uploaded a song from Jessye Norman's Christmastide here. I have already put McKennit's version of O Come O Come Emmanuel. But as I mentioned before, I associate the interpretation of Jessye Norman with those moments when our characters travel in the snowy landscape, leaving their inn of their castle early in the morning, mounting their horses for a long journey. And now Christmas is coming, almost here, so this carol is fitting to all states of mind.

Thursday, 14 July 2011

Le 14 juillet

Bonne Fête de la Bastille à tous les Français qui lisent ce blogue, aux autres qui ne le lisent pas et aux francophiles. J'ai une confession à faire: je ne suis pas particulièrement francophile. Voilà c'est dit. Cela dit, je suis un ardent républicain et j'admire et suis fasciné par la Révolution française. Pour moi, le 14 juillet n'est pas une Fête nationale, mais la célébration d'un gigantesque bouleversement historique qui, malgré de terribles excès, a quand même profondément changé le monde pour le mieux.

Il a été assez facile pour moi de trouver comment le souligner: mettre ici L'Hymne à la Liberté, musique de Georges Delerue, chanté par Jessye Norman (qui d'autre?) La chanson-thème de la minisérie La Révolution française. Pas de Marseillaise pour le moment. L'hymne touche à l'universel, à un idéal que l'on devrait tous partager.

Friday, 25 December 2009

Christmastide

It is Christmas today and for the first time I am celebrating it away from home, ironically enough where it is not snowing, while in England they will have their first white Christmas in years. I am enjoying it, but I can`t help feeling a bit bluesy, somehow. I thought I would put here a Christmas song immortalised by Jessye Norman, to calm my homesickness. At home, the CD is one of those classics we play over and over again, we simply cannot get tired of it. I hope you enjoy.