The misty delicately flowering branch of this album cover is an excellent visual representation of its sound:

Some music forces itself on your attention by volume and busy-ness, and in pop music a steady and very assertive beat. Some does it by quietness and simplicity, causing you to grow quiet and attentive yourself--as if a mockingbird has come and perched on the railing of your porch, and you don't even take a sip of your coffee or turn the page of your book, lest you scare it away. On my first hearing of "Tomorrow," the first song on this album, I found myself similarly stopped cold, hanging on a finger-picked guitar pattern. A simple repeated figure in the bottom strings supports the song, the top strings comparatively faint. A distant electric guitar adds very restrained accents. Then the singer begins:

We drive for the longest time
We don't have a destination

Gradually through the song other sounds emerge and increase. Halfway through, distant backing vocals are added, and the electric guitar steps forth briefly. 

The lyrics introduce an uneasy note: 

Maybe there will come a time
When we can speak about it

Uneasy and mysterious: no more is said about this thing that they--the "we" seems to be two people--are not going to speak about now or anytime soon, possibly ever. Are they a romantic couple, or some other sort of pair? We don't know; we only know that there is some kind of intimacy between them. 

That uneasy note appears often throughout the album. After I'd heard it a couple of times I was sure that many of the songs were hinting at and talking around some really severe trauma. My chief argument for that view was "Song for Susanna":

He took me
Over the line
Locked in the back
Of his truck

But I retreated from that when I noticed on the album's Bandcamp page a note that the song is about the experience of "being an immigrant in the United States." So the journey in the truck was not an abduction, but a clandestine journey across (presumably) the southern border, in the hands of strangers to whom the passenger, severed from her home, is cargo transported for a fee.

Still, there is an awful lot left unsaid in these songs, and I can't shake the feeling that behind that reticence there is something quite painful. Or perhaps not a thing, but several things. "The Waterfront Is Safe" is pretty clearly about some kind of domestic violence situation, though it seems to be someone else's story: it's all "you" and "she," not "I." 

Or maybe I'm way off base, and these are just the ordinary troubles of ordinary life. If so, if the atmosphere here is merely subdued, it is certainly more melancholy or somber than otherwise. It's all very intimate and personal, yet reserved. Shy, even. 

Musically, variations from the basic approach of that first song are pretty slight, but are enough to keep it interesting, at least if you're listening closely. On several tracks a strong but restrained backing vocal is provided by Mark Kozelek, who also produced the album. He is, I'm told, the mastermind of the very widely respected band Red House Painters. (I think "widely respected" tends to suggest that the artist is more admired by critics than by the masses, which is often a good thing.) I've only heard a little of their work but would like to hear more, and of Kozelek's later band or project, Sun Kil Moon. I'll venture a guess that his involvement is indicative of the regard in which Cerbone's music is held by her fellow musicians. 

"Mary's Face" has a touch of percussion: a single heavy drumbeat and another, lighter sound that I can't identify. There's a bass and a decorative banjo. In "You Led Me Down to the Water" the guitar is strummed; it's the most vigorous rhythm on the album. The only other song where the guitar is strummed is the title song.

Offhand I can't think of another artist whose music is as quiet and simple as this. In comparison, a gentle band like the Innocence Mission is like metal. Thinking of the Innocence Mission brings out another comparison: on hearing the first notes of Lisa Cerbone's voice, I immediately thought of Karen Peris's: both have a slightly little-girl quality. Words like "delicate" and "fragile" naturally come to mind, but they're misleading: this kind of delicacy requires strength. And though the singing on this album is restrained, sometimes almost whispery, the voice can be more powerful, as you can hear in this live performance of "Tomorrow," which seems all around somehow tougher than the album version--far from aggressive, but still not quite as retiring.

Most of the songs are at least in part addressed to another person, a "you" who remains somewhat mysterious to the listener, though that person surely knows what the speaker isn't saying. Most mysterious is Natalie, to whom "You Were Wrong About Me" is addressed. Who is Natalie? Friend? Sister (my guess)? Something else? And in what way exactly was she wrong? Maybe it's just me, but I think I hear the rhythm of a familiar childhood taunt in the title, which is also the chorus: "NAH nah NAH nah NAAHna." The next-to-last syllable is longer than the others:  "YOU were WRONG aBOUT me." 

But the "you" is most often someone to whom the speaker is expressing love and gratitude, notably in "You Led Me Down the Water" and "Cold Dark Night," the latter of which carries that suggestion of trauma:

I am so happy
you were here...
Where would I have gone
If not for your quiet kindness
I don’t think I’d survive

But no more is said of that.

Whatever trouble lies behind these lyrics, it has been overcome. Not necessarily defeated, but endured, accepted, and put in its place, as the title song, "We Still Have Sky," which closes the album, says:

We still have sky
The sun, the stars on our side
You know,
You know,
We have it so much better

I find that I've emphasized the lyrics here. They seem to be what really sets the album apart, as it is not unusual or extraordinary in purely musical terms. Someone who doesn't respond to it as I did might say it's a fairly ordinary singer-songwriter, voice-and-guitar work, though it is exceptionally well produced in a minimal, subtle way. But the lyrics make it take hold, which I guess is because they fit the music so well. I don't mean that in the sense of perfect construction; in fact they have a sort of artless quality--they don't rhyme very often and are strung somewhat casually across melody and rhythm. What I mean is: the other day I felt obliged to explain to my wife that I haven't sung "Desolation Row" several times recently because I'm depressed, but because the structure of the song--the surging  quality of the rhythm and the chord changes, the fit of the lyrics to the tune--makes singing it feel very satisfying. These songs are not like that.

But they compel in a different way, and not by the words alone--it's just as much the voice that sings them. I wasn't sure on first hearing that I was going to like the voice, but now I can't imagine the songs in any other. And I can say with something very close to certainty that if you like "Tomorrow" you'll like the whole album

A little background: I had never heard of Lisa Cerbone before I got an email from her announcing the release of this album, but she has been releasing music for some thirty years, five albums since the early 1990s. She has, obviously, never achieved great fame, but has not been entirely ignored, either:  according to her Allmusic biography --proof in itself that she isn't completely unknown--she has had some very appreciative fans who have good reason to be glad she persevered, even though she doesn't make a living at it. She works as an ESL (English as a Second Language) teacher at Mt. St. Mary's University and Seminary in Maryland. 

I don't remember where I picked up this odd bit of information, since my acquaintance with mathematics is very slight, but one of the great ones, Carl Friedrich Gauss, had as motto for his published works the Latin phrase pauca sed matura--few but ripe. I suspect that description applies to Lisa Cerbone's recorded work. Certainly, if others are in a class with this one. I'm especially interested in hearing Ordinary Days, which is also a collaboration with Mark Kozolek.

Web site

Bandcamp page (buy the album!)

I've listened to this several times since the beginning of Lent, as it seems appropriate to the season. That, plus a sort of mood that made it seem appealing (and thus hardly penitential), plus a desire to make another attempt at grasping Renaissance polyphony, prompted me to get out this LP, which I've had for many years.

The recording was originally made in the mid-1950s by the Deller Consort, a vocal ensemble led by Alfred Deller, who in my youth (the decade after the '50s) was known as an important proponent of the counter-tenor voice (his own) and of early music. According to Discogs, it's been re-issued a number of times, including several on CD in the '90s, so apparently it still has, or at least thirty years ago still had, admirers.

I am a little ashamed to say that I don't really get Renaissance polyphony, in the same way that I don't entirely get the fugue. It has something to do with my brain's inability to follow, in a sense even to hear, more than two voices, two melody lines, simultaneously. And it has something to do with the basic nature of the music, which is about the interplay of multiple--four or five--melody lines. In the style generally, and in this instance particularly, the movement of these lines results in a very ingenious  and continually shifting interplay of voices and the rhythms of the text (almost by definition, this style is the setting of a text). I don't mean rhythm in the  sense of a beat, but in the way a unit of text--a sentence, say--is woven among the voices, each one proceeding separately from the others, not generally on the same syllable at the same time, or for the same length of time, all coming together on the final syllable of the sentence. 

And I admire it, but am not often touched by it. My basic problem reveals something lacking in my response to music. It's simple: I want a tune, or to start with a tune. I mean of course not just something that is technically a melody, but one that is appealing in itself. And in this kind of music I don't often get it. That coming-together of the voices in a sustained chord is usually the part I most enjoy. 

Here's an interesting video of a performance of the first part (of two) of the piece by the Tallis Scholars, who seem to be widely considered one of the best ensembles working with this music. The video moves through the score with the singers, so you get a visual image of the weaving of the voices. 

Here is the King James version of the text:

How doth the city sit solitary, that was full of people! how is she become as a widow! she that was great among the nations, and princess among the provinces, how is she become tributary!

She weepeth sore in the night, and her tears are on her cheeks: among all her lovers she hath none to comfort her: all her friends have dealt treacherously with her, they are become her enemies.

I don't like this performance as much as I do the Deller one, in part because it doesn't seem as balanced among the voices. The lower men's voices are not as prominent, which seems to flatten the piece, even though the Tallis Scholars are a larger ensemble. The small Deller group (five people, one voice per part) makes the music less grand, in a good way--more personal. Something I ran across while looking for information on the work suggested that it may not actually have been intended for formal liturgical use, but for small groups gathered in a home. The writer--and I'm sorry I didn't make a note of his or her name and that of the web site--thought that Tallis, having remained Catholic through the religious revolution of Henry VIII and Elizabeth I, might have found the Jeremiah text particularly appropriate for such use.

And I actually prefer the counter-tenor to the women's voices in this piece. Back in the early days when I first bought that LP and first heard the counter-tenor voice, I thought it was more or less a freak and didn't care much for it. Now it seems most appropriate for much of this kind of music. Perhaps that's partly because it makes for a more smoothly blended (and darker) color across the separate threads, reinforcing the perception of every moment of the piece as a unity? At any rate that's the way it seems to work for me in this performance of this piece. 

The Deller recording was monaural, of course, but my LP is one of those "rechanneled for stereo" releases of which there were many after stereo had become the norm and mono was considered obsolete, or at least treated that way by record companies. (Not to mention that for many years there was a price difference--the record company could charge more if they could put the "stereo" label on the jacket). I got the impression at the time that audiophiles hated the "rechanneled" sound, and now I'm curious about the difference. On Discogs I found several inexpensive copies of the original mono release, and I'm actually going to order one, just out of curiosity. 

If you're interested, here's a knowledgeable discussion of rechanneled i.e. fake stereo.

A few years ago I finally read the entire Divine Comedy.

Oops. That was the way I originally started this post. Then I wondered whether "a few" was accurate, and how long it actually had been. And because I had written about it at the time I was able to find the answer. So here's the revised opening:

Nine years ago I finally read the entire Divine Comedy.

It's very hard for me to believe that it's been that long, but here's a post where I asked for recommendations for a translation. I was sure it had been five years at most.

I had previously read only the Inferno, in the translations of John Ciardi and Dorothy Sayers. This more recent time I ended up reading (and buying) Anthony Esolen's translation, which I liked and would recommend. Not only is it a good translation, it has, as one would expect from Esolen, insightful and reliable notes and commentary fully sympathetic to Dante's theology. 

While I was making up my mind about that I checked the local library to see and sample whatever translation or translations they had, and discovered the Inferno in Longfellow's translation, which I had not known existed. I didn't look at it closely, in part because I wanted an edition that included the Italian, as Esolen's and some others do, on facing pages. This I now scoff at--not at the thing, but at the use I made, or was unable to make, of it. What did I think I was going to do with the Italian, of which I don't even know enough to know how to pronounce any words except those that have migrated into English (pizza, cello)? I did have one or two moments when I seemed to catch a glimpse of beauty in the Italian, but mostly I just ignored it. The Italian text served only to double the number of pages required for the poem. 

But anyway: having an inclination to read Dante again, and perhaps as a result of reading several of Longfellow's poems at Poems Ancient and Modern over the past year or so, and thinking that maybe Longfellow's work in general deserves another look (as an undergraduate English major, I was a snob for English literature, and didn't think American lit deserved much attention), I went to the library and checked out the Longfellow Inferno. And now I'm sold on his translation. To jump ahead to my conclusion: I am enjoying this translation as poetry more than I had previous translations.

Or, I should say, on this edition, which is in the Barnes & Noble Classics series. The text is in the public domain, obviously, so in this day of cheap and easy publication anyone can throw the text into a file and publish it, either on paper or in electronic form. But this one is a serious work, with an introduction, extensive notes, and many other useful features by Peter Bondanella, a professor of Comparative Literature and Italian at Indiana University and Julia Conaway Bondanella, professor of Italian at IU. And it's physically well-designed, and a pleasure to read. At first I thought the library's copy was just something they'd had lying around unread for decades, but no: it was first published, as best I can tell, in 2005. 

It's in three volumes, not surprisingly--the poem itself would fit easily into one, but the accompanying material takes up almost as much space as the poem. The volume of Inferno from our library is a hardback, and I hadn't read very far in it before I decided that I wanted to own it. At that point I encountered some confusion. The hardback, which by the way includes only Peter Bondanella as editor, is apparently out of print. I was able to find a copy in good condition at Abebooks, and a copy of Purgatorio on eBay. The bindings are a little different, and Purgatorio also includes Julia Bondanella as co-editor, so I don't know if there was an earlier uniform edition, or there was a subsequent edition which differs slightly. And as for Paradiso, I've so far not been able to find any evidence that it ever existed in hardback. Its paperback edition is the only one I can find at Barnes & Noble, so I'll have to give up and get it when I'm ready for it, which will be in another week or two--I'm currently on Canto X of Purgatorio, reading one to three cantos a day.

Enough of that--what about the translation itself? Why do I prefer it? Why prefer Longfellow's 19th century technique and diction to a capable contemporary one? Well, it has something to do with the way our language has developed over the past 150 years or so. The one word that comes first to mind when I try to describe that change is "lighter," followed by "thinner." Longfellow's English has a weight and substance that contemporary English doesn't. Just as important, obviously, is the fact that Longfellow was an extremely gifted poet (let's set aside whether the adjective "great" is appropriate). Anthony Esolen has written some good poetry, too, but he is not in Longfellow's class. And he doesn't have the same tools.

Here are a couple of comparisons. The two passages describe the same thing: the condition of souls in the outermost circle of the structure of Hell, where those who died innocently but without baptism dwell. (I'll set aside reservations and arguments about the doctrine and its current status.) The first is Dante speaking upon encountering the place. The second is Virgil explaining why he himself must be there. 

Inferno, Canto IV, Esolen:

As far as I could tell from listening, here
    there were no wails, but only sighs, that made
    a trembling in the everlasting air.

They rose from sorrow, without punishment,
    the sorrow of vast throngs of people there,
    of men and women and of infants too.

Longfellow:

There, as it seemed to me from listening,
    Were lamentations none, but only sighs,
    That tremble made the everlasting air.

And this arose from sorrow without torment,
    Which the crowds had, that many were and great,
    Of infants and of women and of men.

Purgatorio, Canto VII 25-30--Esolen:

Nothing I did but what I left undone
    condemns me to the losing of that sight
    of the high Sun you yearn for, all unknown

To me until too late. Below here lies
    a place saddened by darkness, not the pain
    of torment, and the souls lament in sighs,

No shrieks of woe.

Longfellow:

I by not doing, not by doing, lost
    The sight of that high sun which thou desirest,
    And which too late by me was recognized.

A place there is below not sad with torments,
    But darkness only, where the lamentations
    Have not the sound of wailing, but are sighs.

One must make up one's own mind, of course, and it's not a question of fact--I think we can assume both translations are faithful, and they certainly match each other--but of taste. To my taste Longfellow has a solid, majestic, even noble quality. Not to say that Esolen lacks those, but they seem to me more present in Longfellow. 

I'll forego a detailed examination of those lines, which after all are only a couple of dozen out of some 14,000. But I notice a couple of instances that might support my point:

"there were no wails, but only sighs"

vs.

"were lamentations none, but only sighs."

Not only does "lamentations" strike me as the more potent word, but the rhythm seems more forceful. This is a somewhat mysterious thing, as both are regular iambic. Part of the effect is that what I've quoted of Esolen there is tetrameter, while Longfellow's is pentameter. Notice that the complete thought or image includes a line break in Esolen's, while Longfellow's is one single strong rhythmic unit, almost hammer-like. In general I find Longfellow's verse to be more rhythmically potent, and even, more generally, more musical.

But this example also points to something which is likely to put off contemporary readers. Notice in the first example that the grammatical unit "there were" in this place is complete in what I quoted from Esolen. But in Longfellow's the two words are not adjacent. Longfellow's syntax is more complex, and this is a mild example. Sometimes it's downright knotty, and often part of the reason for that is his use of inversions and other ways of shuffling the conventional order of words for musical reasons. English is pretty dependent on word order, and often a poet (or translator), at least before the 20th century, changes it around very freely, so that the reader may be presented with a knot that he or she may or may not struggle to untie. I admit that I've several times consulted Esolen's translation to be sure I have correctly understood a passage in Longfellow. 

Here's a simple example, from Canto IX of Purgatorio, which happens to be the one I just read:

So fair a hatchment will not make for her
    The Viper marshalling the Milanese

In other words, "The Viper marshalling the Milanese will not make for her so fair a hatchment." But initially you may, as I did, take "hatchment" for the subject of the verb "make."

And: "hatchment"? It suggests to me a nest full of eggs, or chicks. Or perhaps snakes? This is another difficulty which pops up now and then with Longfellow: he uses a fair number of words which are no longer in common use, some of which are explained in footnotes, some of which I look up, and some of which I guess the meaning from context. "Hatchment," according to Professor(s) Bondanella, here means "ornament."

Here are a few words, previously unknown to me, that I've just recently encountered in Longfellow's translation: "incoronate," "disparts," "relucent," "indurate," "janitor." 

Janitor? That's hardly an unfamiliar word, but I certainly didn't know that it can mean something closer to "gatekeeper," derived, like "January," from the name of Janus, the Roman god who faced in two directions and was associated with (among many other things) gates, doors, and the like. It appears in Canto IX of Purgatorio, in which Dante and Virgil arrive at the entrance to Purgatory proper (after landing on the island and passing through the outskirts, "Antepurgatory"), and are welcomed by an angel. 

Again began the courteous janitor;
    “Come forward then unto these stairs of ours.”

All right, that's enough for a blog post. One last thing: Longfellow began his translation of Dante after suffering a horrendous personal catastrophe: his beloved second wife (married some years after the death of his first) was killed in a household fire which also seriously injured Longfellow and, not surprisingly, permanently devastated him emotionally. You can read about it at Wikipedia.

An 1868 portrait of Longfellow by Julia Margaret Cameron (from Wikimedia Commons)

Frances "Fanny" Appleton Longfellow, drawing by Samuel W. Rowse (Wikimedia Commons)