Tagged by titanic_days (YA music meme)

[nmg]

List your six current favorite songs and then pick six people who have to do the same.

Always going to be a bit tricky. These are my six favourite songs as of lunchtime today. The list will have changed by the end of lunchtime.

1. Johann Sebastian Bach, C-minor Fugue from Book One of the Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV847). The Bach that I'm most likely to whistle in the shower, closely followed by Variation 10 from the Goldberg Variations and the D-major Prelude fom Book One.
2. The Troubadours of King Baudouin, Sanctus from the Missa Luba. A glorious movement from a beautiful mass, made famous by its use in Lindsay Anderson's If.... and finally available on CD. Make sure you listen to the recording by the Troubadours, since all the other recordings are inferior.
3. The Specials, International Jet Set. A fine track from Coventry's finest.
4. Blowzabella, Death in a Fen -> Bruton Town -> Our Captain Cried from the album A Richer Dust. Bagpipes and the hurdy-gurdy are much-maligned instruments that have an important place in British folk music, and I can't think of a single track that shows them off to such effect. Also chosen because Bruton Town is perhaps my favourite folk song, and one of which I have strong emotional memories.
5. Billy Bragg, The Red Flag. A wonderful recording of this anthem set to its original tune, The White Cockade, rather than to the dirge-like Tannenbaum.
6. Fats Waller and his Buddies, The Minor Drag. If I had to choose one jazz track, this would be it, an upbeat, exuberant instrumental recorded in the spring of 1929.

Passing the torch on to gnommi, elseware, sbisson, fire_kitten, meryc and hanacandi.

Comments

[sbisson.livejournal.com]

I have to turn it down, as I've already done it today!

[nmg.livejournal.com]

Yep, noticed. You're excused ;)

[makyo.livejournal.com]

Johann Sebastian Bach
On balance, probably my favourite composer of all time. His music is not just extremely good, it's unreasonably good - no human should be capable of writing stuff of such a consistently high standard.

Well-Tempered Clavier (BWV847)
Book 1, Preludes 24 in B minor, and 21 in B flat major are two of my favourites. There was a brilliant series on BBC2 a couple of years ago, which featured one of four pianists talking about, and performing a prelude and accompanying fugue. I keep checking to see if they've released it on DVD - Amazon reckons it's available as Region 1, but there doesn't seem to be a Region 2 edition available.

Goldberg Variations
That's another good one. I've got CDs of both of Glenn Gould's recordings of this - the original 1955 one and the 1981 version. They're both very different interpretations of the same suite (and both have Gould's characteristic tuneless mumbling in the background, of course).

Blowzabella
They're good, too. I've only got one of their albums (Wall of Sound) but there used to be a rather eclectic programme on my local radio station back in Nottingham where they'd turn up on a reasonably regular basis - particularly A Richer Dust.

[nmg.livejournal.com]

The 1981 Gould recording has been on my to-buy list for some years; I've got the 1955 recording, which displaced the previous recording I had (Andreas Schiff I think, but I could be mistaken) in short order.

My tastes this afternoon have changed since this morning, so I now consider the Hoedown from Aaron Copland's Rodeo and the final movement of the Eroica to be my favourite classical pieces.

[pdcawley.livejournal.com]

I don't have a single Blowzabella album, but I do have deliriously happy memories of one of the best ceilidh's I've ever danced at during the first Towersey festival I ever went to. An utterly fabulous band live.

[mistymaria.livejournal.com]

If you like folk and the hurdy gurdy you should listen to some Blackmore's Night. That's Richie Blackmore from Deep Purple who has teamed up with a singer/lyricist called Candice Night to do sort of medieval folk rock. Very difficult to describe, but great music. They use all kinds of weird instruments you've never heard of (the shawm, anyone?) And you ain't seen nothing till you've seen Richie play the hurdy gurdy live.

They've made about 5 albums but I won't tell you what my favourite is, because I can't decide, they're all great.