Echoes of Ambrose

One of the long-lost pleasures of vinyl that I’m recently recovering is going through stacks of used LPs at record stores. These are thinner on the ground than they were in the 20th C, but when I find one I almost always come away with something great.

I don’t remember being crazy about Orff’s Carmina Catulli, but it is the most famous setting of Catullus’ verse, which I’m teaching again next semester in my Upper Latin class.

There’s some Latin in Prokofiev’s Alexander Nevsky, too: the villainous Crusaders mysteriously intone some sinister-sounding Latin phrases that don’t turn out to mean much. (Peregrinus expectavi pedes meos in cymbalis: “I, a pilgrim, awaited my feet in the cymbals”.) This cantata early went into my mental soundtracks, and a couple scenes in Morlock stories are choreographed to different sections.

There’s no Latin or Greek in the Mahler, unless you count the symphony’s nickname, but that’s okay. I’m not usually crazy about Mahler’s vocal music.

Also: Past-Me did Present-Me a solid by ordering a bunch of books that arrived today, just in time for a weekend when I’ll have very little time for reading. I fall upon the thorns of life; I shrug.

Mirrored from Ambrose & Elsewhere.