Word: plainsong
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Most of the pieces Byrd wrote for the viol consort were based on a plainsong theme, supported by contrapuntal figurations by the accompanying instruments. Though the bare-bones outline of the form itself is admittedly simple, those who simply dismiss Byrd's mantric writing as constricting or stultifying miss the point...
...sonnet--its construction is rigidly decreed, but poets have demonstrated time and time again that it is possible to transcend the apparent limitations of the sonnet, for within its confines, one can say whatever one wishes. Likewise, Byrd showed that it was possible to outstep the ostensible boundaries for plainsong writing by imbuing it with a passion (perhaps a bit cerebral by Romantic standards, but potent passion nevertheless) that stemmed from his religious frustration as a staunch Roman Catholic in Anglican England. Similarly, though Bach was "only" a Lutheran, his music resonates with passion that many of his interpreters...
Verghese makes indelible narratives of his cases, and they read like wrenching short stories told in Bobbie Ann Mason plainsong. Take Will Johnson, say, the dignified pillar of his church and his community, who contracts AIDS through a blood transfusion and then passes it on to his devoted wife, the two of them ending up frightened and alone in a huge medical center, reading The Magic Mountain to each other. Or Vickie, the chattery, brawling woman from the trailer park who gets infected by her husband and comes at last to feel that AIDS has given her a purpose...
Gregorian -- more properly known as plainchant or plainsong -- first surfaced as a popular phenomenon last year in Spain, where a two-disc version of Chant sold 325,000 copies in four months. The Benedictines' run-down 8th century abbey in northern Spain became a Mecca for music lovers, who came in throngs to hear the monks chant their communal prayers seven times a day. All this attention has flummoxed the abbey's 36 residents. "You have to understand," said one, "we are not rock stars...