An M31 Christmas Track 4: Wenceslaus

Good King Wenceslas has always been one of my favorite Christmas songs. It was the very first carol I learned to play on the piano when I was 6 years old.

Written in 1853 in England by John Mason Neale and Thomas Helmore, Neale’s lyrics take inspiration from a Bohemian legend of a wealthy duke known for his good works. After a Pope declared the legend fact, and a Roman Emperor posthumously conferred the title of King on the duke, both legend and song now refer to the pious duke as King Wenseslas.

Neale’s lyrics tell the story of the good king seeing a peasant trying to gather fuel in the snowy deep. The king calls his page and sets out to bring food and fuel to him.

The page falters, not being able to endure the frigid wind and deep snow.

The King encourages the page to follow closely in his footsteps, and so together they bring rescue to the helpless man.

The carol has five verses, here are the first two:

Good King Wenceslas looked out, on the Feast of Stephen,

When the snow lay round about, deep and crisp and even;

Brightly shone the moon that night, tho’ the frost was cruel,

When a poor man came in sight, gath’ring winter fuel.

“Hither, page, and stand by me, if thou know’st it, telling,

Yonder peasant, who is he?

Where and what his dwelling?”

“Sire, he lives a good league hence, underneath the mountain;

Right against the forest fence, by Saint Agnes’ fountain.”

(The traditional English spelling of the king’s name is “Wenceslaus”, and since Neale and Helmore were English, I decided to use their spelling.)

You can get (or hear) the album at:

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/42hKWTqaset9WdkZpMDnbX?si=7bS0UE2LQDyDw3DQyGZ51Q
• CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/m3138
• Apple Music: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/an-m31-christmas/1442066188

It's also available on Amazon, Google Play, and other streaming/download services.

An M31 Christmas Track 2: Meditation (Ave Maria)

An M31 Christmas Track 2 is Meditation or Ave Maria.

The French composer Charles Gounod published what we now know as Ave Maria in 1853 as Méditation sur le Premier Prélude de Piano de S. Bach. Gounod composed the melody and superimposed it over Prelude #1 in C Major from Bach's Well-Tempered Clavier, written 137 years earlier.

The words that generally accompany the song are the complete Catholic prayer called Angelic Salutation, Hail Mary, or in Latin, Ave Maria.

Ave Maria gratia plena, Dominus tecum,
Benedicta tu in mulieribus Et benedictus fructus ventris tui Jesus.
Sancta Maria, sancta Maria, Maria, Ora pro nobis, nobis peccatoribus
Nunc et in hora, in hora mortis nostrae
Amen, amen.

And here is the English translation:

Hail Mary, full of grace. The Lord is with thee.
Blessed art thou among women, and blessed is the fruit of thy womb, Jesus.
Holy Mary, Mother of God, Pray for us sinners,
Now and at the hour of our death.
Amen, amen.

A few years ago, one of the songs I was learning was Bach’s Prelude #1 in C Major, right before I needed to start working on the next track for my musical Christmas card that I did every year. That, together with listening to the excellent Carpenter’s version of this song prompted me to choose it.

You can get (or hear) the album at:

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/42hKWTqaset9WdkZpMDnbX?si=7bS0UE2LQDyDw3DQyGZ51Q
• CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/m3138
• Apple Music: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/an-m31-christmas/1442066188

It's also available on Amazon, Google Play, and other streaming/download services.

An M31 Christmas Track 3: Some Children See Him

I heard Some Children See Him for the first time on George Winston’s album December. His version is without lyrics, so for years I was unaware that it actually had words, and unaware of this Christmas song’s history.

Some Children See Him was written in 1951 by Alfred Burt, with words by Wilha Hutson. Years earlier, Burt’s father, a pastor of an Episcopal church in Michigan, started a tradition of writing a musical Christmas card to family and friends, the words and music written by himself. Soon however, he asked his son to provide the musical settings for his words.

After Burt’s father died, Alfred asked friend Wilha Hutson to provide the words, and the tradition continued in his father’s honor, but the carols were unknown outside the Burt’s mailing list.

The carols were finally recorded in 1954. Some Children See Him appeared on that first recording, and since then, several musicians have recorded their own version. George Winston, Kenny Loggins, and James Taylor have all provided their renditions of this carol.

Here are the first two verses:

Some children see him
Lily white
The baby Jesus
Born this night
Some children see him
Lily white
With tresses soft
And fair

Some children see him
Bronzed and brown
The Lord of heav’n
To Earth come down
Some children see him
Bronzed and brown
With dark
And heavy hair

You can get (or hear) the album at:

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/42hKWTqaset9WdkZpMDnbX?si=7bS0UE2LQDyDw3DQyGZ51Q
• CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/m3138
• Apple Music: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/an-m31-christmas/1442066188

It's also available on Amazon, Google Play, and other streaming/download services.

An M31 Christmas Track 1: Gloucestershire Wassail

The first track on An M31 Christmas is Gloucestershire Wassail. I chose it as the opening track because I think it perfectly captures many of the elements of the Christmas season; the feelings of excitement and joy, the time to gather as family and friends to celebrate the joyous event that is the birth of Jesus Christ.

The English custom of “wassailing,” or visiting the leading households in the village on Christmas Eve with a decorated wooden bowl, and singing a wassailing song, apparently began in early 19th Century England. (The “wassail” custom actually has a much earlier origin, but doing it at Christmastime began in the 1800s.) Different villages in Gloucestershire used different tunes with various different lyrics. However, the most well-known version (the one we hear today) was popularized by Ralph Vaughn Williams in 1928. He used the tune from the version popular in Pembroke, Heretfordshire, and gathered the lyrics from William Bayless and Isaac Bennett, both residents of Gloucestershire. There are many variations to the lyrics, and traditionally there are ten verses. Here are the first four:

Wassail! wassail! all over the town, Our toast it is white and our ale it is brown; Our bowl it is made of the white maple tree; With the wassailing bowl, we'll drink to thee. Here's to our horse, and to his right ear, God send our master a happy new year: A happy new year as e'er he did see, With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee.

So here is to Cherry and to his right cheek Pray God send our master a good piece of beef And a good piece of beef that may we all see With the wassailing bowl, we'll drink to thee. Here's to our mare, and to her right eye, God send our mistress a good Christmas pie; A good Christmas pie as e'er I did see, With my wassailing bowl I drink to thee.

(Note: You may notice that the official track name is misspelled as "Glouchestershire Wassail"; I spelled it correctly when I wrote this before distribution, but then misspelled it when preparing the distribution. D'oh!)

You can get (or hear) the album at:

• Spotify: https://open.spotify.com/album/42hKWTqaset9WdkZpMDnbX?si=7bS0UE2LQDyDw3DQyGZ51Q
• CDBaby: https://store.cdbaby.com/cd/m3138
• Apple Music: https://itunes.apple.com/us/album/an-m31-christmas/1442066188

It's also available on Amazon, Google Play, and other streaming/download services.

RPM Challenge 2016: Impossible Universe Continues

It's that time of year again; February. And February, besides being Valentines month, is the RPM Challenge month.

RPM Challenge 2016. Image from
www.rpmchallenge.com

You've probably noticed a plethora of posts about last year's challenge, which I meant to publish throughout the year last year. Well I will admit that after the effort of getting those 5 tracks done in 28 days, I was just lazy and didn't get them finished and published until now.

And, I wanted to post them so you could see the motivations and inspiration for those first 5 tracks. Because, I've decided to do two things: 1) participate in the RPM Challenge for this year, and 2) continue with the theme of Impossible Universe.

There are an infinite number of amazing things in our universe, and I've found inspiration in five more of them:

• Track 6: The Eridanus Void
• Track 7: The Fountains of Enceladus
• Track 8: Barnard's Loop
• Track 9: Supermassive Black Hole
• Track 10: V838

I've been doing some initial prep work and research for a couple of months now, and I think I'm ready to buckle down during the 29 days of February and get 5 more tracks done. 

Here are the images I've been using as inspiration for these tracks.

The Eridanus Void

This is an artist's rendition...

...and this is what it really looks like
in false color.

 Fountains of Enceladus

Barnard's Loop

Supermassive Black Hole

V838

Stay tuned -- I'm going to post throughout the month with updates and so forth. And, I'll have a surprise announcement at the end of all this!

RPM Challenge 2015 Part VI: Hymn For The Universe

Track 5 from Impossible Universe -- Hymn For The Universe

If you've read any of my previous posts about the Impossible Universe tracks, you've seen some pretty amazing things that we've discovered in this Universe we live in.

These are only a handful of the infinite wonders of the cosmos. Take a look at the image to the left, and the one at the bottom on the left. Almost all of those luminous blobs are galaxies.

2MASS Galaxy Catalog shows 1.5 million galaxies
near our own Milky Way.

In fact, there are about 1.5 million galaxies just in our local universe. The image to the right is an infrared scan of our "local universe." The center is our galaxy, the Milky Way. The blue-colored blobs are galaxies nearer to us, green ones are further out, and red ones are the furthest away from us. (1)

I say "local universe" because the Hubble telescope has been used to count and catalog galaxies in the "observable" universe, which is vastly larger than what astronomers call the local universe. Astronomers and astrophysicists have used the Hubble data to make an estimate of how many galaxies would be in the entire universe. Their number? More than 100 billion galaxies.

So how many stars in all those galaxies? Astronomers say that our galaxy has 300 billion stars. And, our galaxy is one of the larger ones in the universe. By measuring the luminosity of the observable galaxies, they estimate that there are 70 billion trillion stars. (2)

With so many galaxies that have so many stars, I find it hard to believe that Earth is the only place where life exists. There is life out there; I am convinced of it. The odds are pretty good, I think.

Hymn for the Universe is meant as an anthem for our universe; for all of the stunning, amazing, unbelievable, impossible things that we are discovering out there. I'm sure that we are just starting to scratch the surface of the magnitude of the universe, and I'm convinced we do not understand a billionth part of how all of these things work, how they came together, and what their (and our) fates will be.

Hymn for the Universe is also meant as a small and perhaps unworthy tribute to The Creator of all of these things.



Thanks to my friend, Darren Major, who wrote the chord progression used as the basis of this track.

(1) https://ned.ipac.caltech.edu/level5/March04/Jarrett/Jarrett1.html
(2) http://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-resources/how-many-stars-are-there/

RPM Challenge 2015 Part V: M31

M31, or the Andromeda Galaxy

Impossible Universe Track 4 -- M31

So yeah, track 4 is named after the Andromeda Galaxy, well, the "official" name of the galaxy, which is also my musical moniker. This galaxy's name has some historical meaning for me, so read on....

The Andromeda Galaxy (also known as M31) is the closest galaxy to our own Milky Way. It's only 2.5 million light-years from us, and gets its name from the area of the sky in which it can be found, in the constellation Andromeda.

We are expected to collide with Andromeda in ... 3.75 billion years, at which time the two galaxies will combine to form one great elliptical galaxy. We'll have to see if that actually happens.

When I started a Mannheim Steamroller cover band in high school, there were initially four of us: my brother Brett on bass guitar, recorder, french horn; friends Joseph Hawkins on keyboards and David Kinard on drums, and myself on keyboards and arrangements. After the Sophomore assembly which brought us together, we competed in the Davis County Fair talent show. We didn't have a name for ourselves, and my cousin Brad Mottishaw suggested "Andromeda." Well astronomy was a hobby of mine, and it sounded pretty cool, so we went with it.

Andromeda's 1st incarnation in 1983.
L to R: Joseph Hawkins, Brett Tippetts,
Kyle Tippetts, David Kinard

We ended up winning 1st place in our category and went on to compete in the Utah State Fair talent show, many school assemblies and other community performances, and even did a live radio broadcast in Evanston Wyoming, where a Golden Retriever sauntered on to the stage. Fortunately it was radio, so no harm no foul, and it kind of brought the rural ambience of Evanston into the auditorium.

Nice touch.

I should mention that by the time we did the radio broadcast, the band had a few more members: Mark Steiner on EVI/Trumpet, Lonnie Nybo on keyboards and oboe, David Long and Cathy Brande on Keyboards, and several members of the Davis High School Band and Orchestra. Clif May and Todd Leishman provided excellent live sound.

We even got invited to perform at the 1985 Stadium of Fire (we had Douglas Spotted Eagle do the live sound for our final performance at the end of the 1985 school year since Clif and Todd weren't available to do it. Doug got us the gig. Alas, since most of us graduated that year, we couldn't pull it together. One of the biggest regrets of my musical undertakings).

Close-up of M31. This shows about a 61,000 light-year piece of the galaxy.

Probably TL;DR, but when I started doing music again 25 years later, I wanted to use the same band name, Andromeda. But, I found that there was a Swedish progressive metal band using it. But rather than give up on all the history, I chose to use the "official" name of the Andromeda galaxy, M31.

I wanted this track to be an upbeat, trance-y/house-y tune. At the break, I imagined what it might be like to be floating in space, thousands of light-years out from M31, watching it in all it's glory.

I don't believe in coincidence. I don't believe that any of these wondrous, fantastic, unbelievably beautiful things in our universe are just coincidences, that they just "happened." That is what is impossible.

What is possible, and I believe what is most certainly true, is that all these things, including our galaxy, solar system, our planet, and even ourselves were purposely created by the Great Creator, God.

And so, M31.