O were my love yon Lilac fair,  
  Wi' purple blossoms to the Spring,
And I, a bird to shelter there,  
  When wearied on my little wing!
How I wad mourn when it was torn         
  By Autumn wild, and Winter rude!
But I wad sing on wanton wing,  
  When youthfu' May its bloom renew'd. 
O gin my love were yon red rose,  
  That grows upon the castle wa';    
And I myself a drap o' dew,  
  Into her bonie breast to fa'!
O there, beyond expression blest,  
  I'd feast on beauty a' the night;
Seal'd on her silk-saft faulds to rest,
  Till fley'd awa by Phoebus' light!

Dear all,

Last month I posted questions from three people – Aotearoa, Adrian and Daphne – who were looking for a way to navigate my immense and bewildering back catalogue. Daphne asked me to make a playlist of 15 of the finest songs to get her started. Feeling not best placed to judge, I instead turned to the readers of The Red Hand Files for help, asking you to send in playlists of your 15 favourite songs. The response was overwhelming and well over two thousand playlists have come in so far (please stop sending them now!). Fearing drowning in my own songs, I handed the lists over to my team, who fed them into ChatGPT – that handy little data-cruncher! — which sorted through the responses and ranked the top 15

Here s the ranked list –

1. Jubilee Street
2. Into My Arms
3. From Her To Eternity
4. The Ship Song
5. Tupelo
6. The Mercy Seat
7. Stagger Lee
8. Push The Sky Away
9. The Weeping Song
10. Higgs Boson Blues
11. Red Right Hand
12. Ghosteen
13. Bright Horses
14. Straight To You
15. O Children

'Sakura' is a traditional Japanese song about cherry blossoms and the precious delights of spring. Sakura für Otto Tomek is a solo for sho to celebrate the eightieth birthday of the Westdeutscher Rundfunk's former director. Hearing the instrument alone gives a good sense of its qualities, and Hosokawa's almost conventional harmonies and suspensions in this adaptation of the song make this sound like a miniature harmonium heard from afar or from above the clouds. A work filled with slowly evolving complex clusters of harmony. Sakura's meditative ambience is shadowed with portentous overtones, creating a rich showcase for the singular and fetching timbres of the shô.

Some say the world will end in fire,
  Some say in ice.
  From what I've tasted of desire
  I hold with those who favor fire.
  But if it had to perish twice,
  I think I know enough of hate
  To know that for destruction ice
  Is also great
  And would suffice.

«Gli dèi sono canti». Prima di essere figure e volti, gli dèi furono un ritmo e una melodia, perché l’origine è sonora, una vibrazione. Se indaghiamo con sufficiente tenacia le cosmologie arcaiche, a questo arriviamo. Ma occorreva la combinazione di un musicologo e di un mitologo, oltre che un’inflessibile audacia di pensiero, perché da questo si giungesse a ricostruire un modello di cosmologia (che poi non è altro che l’articolarsi di una «sostanza sonora») tale da illuminarci sia sulle speculazioni vediche sia sul Verbo giovanneo. Marius Schneider dedicò la sua vita al tentativo di ricomporre la cosmologia arcaica fondata sul suono. Ovunque, in Cina, in Australia, nell’Asia Centrale, in Africa, come anche nei capitelli romanici, ne ritrovò le tracce. La sua summa rimase incompiuta. Così questo breve libro, che apparve nel 1960 come contributo all’Enciclopedia della Pléiade, è forse il testo che meglio ci rivela, per la felicità e la densità dell’esposizione, le linee essenziali di quella visione.

singing in a hoarse voice while they were paddling, or at
night on horseback. Their songs were of a plaintive
character, very short, and repeated several times.1
Mr.
Lesseps tells us of a Kamchadales song whose words
were : " Daria (a Russian female name) sings and dances
still " The eight bars of which it consisted were repeated
almost without ceasing.2

Mr. Burckhart heard a national
song of the Arabian women whose first line was repeated five
or six times by the leading chorus and then echoed by the
other parties. In the same manner the second line was
sung; but the third, which always contained the name of
some distinguished warrior, was repeated as often as fifty
times. The ladies, however, pronounced that name in
such a manner as to render it difficult for the men, who
listened, to know who was the happy mortal.3

The most
of the Kafirs' songs consist of only a few words which they
repeat over and over again, with such musical variation
as their national task or individual fancy may dictate.4
The songs in Kamerun are but a constant repetition of
the same sentence, provided they have an actual text with
some meaning in it.5

Mr. Poole heard on Queen Charlotte
Islands (the northern of the two groups in the Pacific
Ocean) two favourite songs, of which the first—kept within
the compass of five tones—was repeated four times and
ended in a chorus ; the second was a mere repetition of the
tone " B," while the words of both had no meaning.6
If we ask for the reasons of these constant repetitions
in primitive poetry and music, we shall have to answer
that primitive man lacks the power of elaborating the
outcome of his fancy to a complete work of art. The
circle of ideas he has is too limited in comparison with

I prefer death or embers stuck to my heart or that my soul will be torn apart that it will be said in my community that I committed adultery. My best friend among women, She went in the bush one night to meet a man One day she started to scream at night She wears her gold and she detaches her jewelry She is sick with shame. But I also saw the metamorphosis of the desert, I saw a beautiful woman married to a broken man. Her hand is in his hand and she walks through the community She has a yellow skin that protects her from the wind The whiteness of her teeth are bright. I prefer death or embers stuck to my heart or that my soul will be torn apart.