This Thursday, 25 March, is the Feast of the Annunciation, when the Christian Church remembers how the angel Gabriel announced to the Virgin Mary that she would bear a son, as recounted in Luke 1:26-38 and previously foretold in Isaiah 7:14. Unlike the dates of Lent and Easter, which shift according to the lunar calendar, […]
Tag: songs of sadness
O joy, and joyful happy day!
Today, 6 January 2021 (the twelfth day of Christmas), those who have lived through and suffered from the tyranny and injustice propagated by Trump’s corrupt administration and its enablers in the Republican Party may breathe sighs of relief and new hope. After the cruel separation of infants from immigrant families, the racist voter suppression, the […]
‘Just grief, heart’s tears, plaint worthy’
By this week the UK has the highest number of deaths from the COVID-19 virus — now more than 43,000 — and the highest mortality rate per capita of all our neighbour countries in Europe. How do we mourn for so many lives lost when such vast numbers become statistics that leave us numb, tone-deaf […]
The songs we remember are the sad songs
French songs of love have their own special character, determined not only by the linguistics of the language but also by France’s strong tradition of singer-songwriting with its penchant for intellectual introspection and the beauties of melancholy. ‘The songs we remember are the sad, romantic songs,’ says Françoise Hardy — and she should know, having […]
Feel the tears
In modern popular culture, songs of love that dwell on the pain and tears of a failed relationship are a common type. Belonging to the broad category of pop with the oddly non-modern term ‘ballads’, they are frequently released not only because they address the heartbreak of breaking up and lost love that most people […]
Music for an American disaster
The USA is in deep trouble, with, by 16 May, at least 90,000 deaths from COVID-19: the worst casualty-rate so far of any country in the world and already, in merely eight weeks, 50% greater than the number of US military personnel killed or missing in action over the eight years of the Vietnam War. […]
Triste España
In the three weeks since this blog first considered the distressing loss of life from COVID-19 — focussing particularly on Italy: see Weep with songs of sadness — the crisis in Spain quickly became the second most acute in Europe, with 23,000 deaths attributed to the virus so far. Such large numbers represent an amount […]
Weep with songs of sadness
Vox Luminis, performing in Auxi-le-Château in 2012. In these days and weeks many people are weeping, especially from heartbreak over the loss of loved ones, friends and colleagues as the COVID-19 epidemic increasingly takes many lives in many countries — in many cases lives cut short in their prime and before their time. For each […]