Tuesday, January 06, 2009

Cleo and Jimmy

Sometimes When We Touch is one of our favourite recordings, which we used to have on a gramophone record and today received on a CD. People often say LPs sounded better than CDs, but this CD makes the music sound much clearer and without the pops and crackles.

We bought it after our daughter Cathy taught her 3 year old son Jerome to sing Skylark, which is one of the beautiful tracks on this CD. It is one of Hoagy Carmichael's very best songs and Sir John Dankworth's arrangement for his wife Cleo Laine and flutist James Galway is superb.

We love every track and have just finished listening to it for the third time today.

I note that the CD [and I think the LP] have Henry Bishop's Lo, here the gentle lark misspelled as HEAR the gentle lark, but this is not correct if you read the original by Shakespeare:
Lo, here the gentle lark, weary of rest,
From his moist cabinet mounts up on high,
And wakes the morning, from whose silver breast
The sun ariseth in his majesty;
Who doth the world so gloriously behold
That cedar-tops and hills seem burnish'd gold.

Venus salutes him with this fair good-morrow:
'O thou clear god, and patron of all light,
From whom each lamp and shining star doth borrow
The beauteous influence that makes him bright,
There lives a son that suck'd an earthly mother,
May lend thee light, as thou dost lend to other.'


However, Cleo sings the first line several times at the end, and I think it is meant to be
Lo, hear the gentle lark
Now, was this a mistake of hers or her husband's, or was it deliberate?

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