anna_wing

I happened to be thinking of music for funerals, as one does.

For my own, my favourite for the beginning would be Tolkien's 'Bilbo's Last Song', in the setting by Donald Swann from the second edition of his song cycle "The Road Goes Ever On".

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Xp6nmOjqXAo

For those who don't like that, I note that Stephen Oliver's setting for the BBC's mighty 1981 radio dramatisation is also good, and The Hobbitons did a very nice cover , at a more accessible pitch than that of the boy soprano in the original.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p6v6NOJM2Q4

The great John le Mesurier (who voiced Bilbo in that dramatisation) recorded a demo tape of the first verse:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nYhvdzLKdZQ

And for the end it would be the "Top Gun Anthem". Which version, though? The original with Steve Stevens doing his guitar-god thing is fabulous of course, but might strain the patience of those attending.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wpvAKF00VNI

And in any case I like the elegiac quality that Hans Zimmer et al gave it in the shorter version used in the sequel film, "Top Gun: Maverick".


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5zq7ujKwuRY&t=18s

I had always thought that Boney M's "Rasputin" was a genius one-off, but then a friend introduced me to "Dschingis Khan" and their eponymous song, and I realised that delirious cod-historical-themed songs with capes were a genre. This one was Germany's entry in Eurovision 1979. I cannot believe that it only came 4th. At least it has had a considerable afterlife. I heard it recently in a supermarket, sung in what sounded like Thai.

https://youtu.be/3aKSHbaP3yo

A rather late response to oursin, who tagged me with Art Nouveau, Gladys Mitchell and jazz

Jazz is easiest, because I am neither a connoisseur nor even a particular aficionado. I just like the sound, the rhythms and the scales that jazz uses, and I like the way it fits in with a lot of other musical traditions that use improvisation. I discovered Klezmer when a family friend took me to a bar mitzvah in New York in the 1980s, and went on from there. Ethiopianjazz is an entire genre on its own, and jazz improvisation suits Myanmar classical music, for instance, which relies heavily on improvisation upon a canon of songs (the Mahagita), and a lot of Thai and Indonesian music as well. Though the attempt to marry a gamelan orchestra and some moody, miserabilist Jan Garbarek-style clarinet failed miserably for the clarinet, which was there merely for visual interest, since a gamelan orchestra at full volume has something like the decibel level of a 747 taking off...

Gladys Mitchell is one of the UK Golden Age Queens of Crime, once spoken of in the same breath and Christie and Sayers. Her sleuth was an older woman, but utterly unlike Miss Marple except in her tendency to come across corpses: Mrs (later Dame Adela) Bradley, three times married (fate of her husbands unknown), distinguished academic psychologist and consultant to the Home Office, possible witch, mother of an equally distinguished barrister in the criminal Bar, crack shot, expert martial artist and billiards player, ruthless, brilliant and terrifying, prone to sinister cackles and able to persuade a suspect to confess merely by smiling at him in a meaningful way. She was played by the late, great Diana Rigg in a TV adaption, "The Mrs Bradley Mysteries", in a fabulous array of 1920s hats, bags, shoes and frocks. The gorgeous Dame Diana did not fit the physical description of Mrs Bradley (who was usually described as "yellow-skinned", "shrivelled" and "saurian"), but caught her mother-velociraptor character perfectly. Mrs Bradley is the kind of older lady that I aspire to eventually live to be.

Art Nouveau - I like its ahistorical quality, and its mixture of Eastern and Western stylistic influence, and the way that different countries produced their own styles, using its principles but influenced by their own local traditions (the Eastern European versions in Russia and Hungary were particularly interesting, as were the Scandinavian "Dragon" styles...). It produced the most beautiful jewellery, furniture and architecture in the world. Many people know of Hector Guimard, but I actually prefer the furniture of Eugene Gaillard, some of which I was able to have copied (for somewhat less than the quarter of a million or so US dollars the originals would have cost...). I also like the way that the art nouveau encouraged the creation of the gesamtkunstwerk, especially in interiors and fashion. When I visit museums, there is usually something there that I would happily take home with me, but the Horta Museum in Brussels is the first where I wanted the whole building and everything in it....