(Buying the albums sampled on “Picnic”).
At last! Opportunties to add posts on a more normal basis start about now, albeit with fits and starts for a while yet, for all sorts of reasons, not least maintenance work on the PC scheduled to start next week.
Anyway, the music! Side 1, of course, is one long, glorious track, titled “A Song Story”, coming in at an epic 28.11 minutes. This is certainly one of my favourite bits of music of all time, and well up in both the “bliss” and “classic” categories.
Although just one track, it has no fewer than 9 separate sections: A Beginning/A Meeting [“Searching for Lambs”]/A Courtship [“The Wedding Song”]/A Denying [“The Blacksmith”]/A Forsaking [“Our Captain Cried”]/A Dream [“Lowlands”]/A Leavetaking [“Pleasant and Delightful”]/An Awakening [“Whitsun Dance”]/A New Beginning [“The Staines Morris”].
The first of these is a fantastic, courtly, scene-setting instrumental, introducing the magnificent drama which these old instruments create. The rest are folk songs of various sorts. The whole thing is sheer, unalloyed joy from beginning to end. It is one of very few pieces of music that literally sends my heart soaring and my spirit flying. Brilliant stuff, unique, and an invaluable gift to the listening public. All concerned deserve medals for this.
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