I wonder if the popularity of the Coventry Carol today indicates that it expresses something people don’t find in the usual run of joyful Christmas carols – this song of grief, of innocence cruelly destroyed. The Feast of the Holy Innocents (Childermas, as it was known in the Middle Ages) is not an easy subject for a modern audience to understand, and the images which often accompany it in medieval manuscripts, of children impaled on spears, are truly horrible. But they are meant to be; they are intended to disgust and horrify, and they’re horrible because they’re not fantasy violence but all too close to the reality of the world we live in. Children do die; the innocent and vulnerable do suffer at the hands of the powerful; and as this carol says, every single form of human love, one way or another, will ultimately end in parting and grief. Every child born into the world – every tiny, innocent, adorable little baby – however loved, however cared for, will grow up to face some kind of sorrow, and the inevitability of death. Of course no one wants to think about such things, especially when they look at a newborn baby; but pretending otherwise, not wanting to think otherwise, doesn’t make it any less true.

Medieval writers were honest and clear-eyed about such uncomfortable truths. The idea that thoughts like these are incongruous with the Christmas season (as you often hear people say about the Holy Innocents) is largely a modern scruple, encouraged by the comparatively recent idea that Christmas is primarily a cheery festival for happy children and families.

Read it all.

Today is Childermas Day, the feast of the Holy Innocents, on the fourth day of Christmas. It's an appropriate day for the Coventry Carol and other medieval lullaby-laments, which give voice to the grief that lies near the heart of the Christmas season https://t.co/KYr5ltYAe2 pic.twitter.com/4LNnxpF9aq

— Eleanor Parker (@ClerkofOxford) December 28, 2023

Well deserved! Taylor Swift named Time Person of the Year. She won me over when she paid $100k to each of the employees on her tour including the employees who truck her equipment from city to city. #TaylorSwift #TimePersonOfTheYear pic.twitter.com/HJ6MNfkrjW

— Rebecca Aguilar (@RebeccaAguilar) December 6, 2023

Just as captivating as the core gospel message was the promise that God is a Father to those who come to him by faith. A good, loving Father—one who would never walk out on you. Before my bus trip was over, I decided to take a detour and go see my dad. We had not spoken in years. But the anger I felt toward him had just been bested by the grace of God. In fact, I felt compassion for him. He was the first person I wanted to know that I had become a Christian. Even so, I had no idea if he would be willing to talk.

He welcomed me. It turned out that my dad had become a Christian that same year and was praying for a way to reconcile with our family. One of the most precious moments of my life was the day, a few years later, when my dad drove down to our family reunion. I watched in amazement as this man of stone—a man of few words—got down on his knees before his adult kids and grandkids and begged through tears for forgiveness. He then sang a Christian song called “Watch the Lamb.” It was his way of saying, “Don’t look to me; look to Christ.”

In God’s providence, I went on to finish that recreation degree. From there, I completed four theological degrees. I have been a full-time pastor and church planter for 22 years while teaching at numerous seminaries. But above all that stuff that looks cool on paper, I am a husband and father of four. God not only saved me from the path of destruction I was on; he also used the pain I’d experienced as a young man to shape me into the kind of husband and father I want to be.

God’s grace is relentless. He saves all kinds of people. He takes broken stories and broken vessels and makes them beautiful. What else would you expect from a God who raises the dead? He even takes former Deadheads and turns them into pastors.

Read it all.

"What else would you expect from a God who raises the dead? He even takes former Deadheads and turns them into pastors." https://t.co/39QxpowFgQ

— Christianity Today (@CTmagazine) November 29, 2023

God, our strong deliverer: We bless thy Name for the grace given to Harry Thacker Burleigh, who didst lift up in song the struggles of thy people. Let that Spirit of love which spurred him draw us and thy whole Church to raise our distinct voices into one great harmony of praise; through the same Jesus Christ, who with thee and the Holy Spirit liveth and reigneth, one God, now and for ever. Amen.

Today the Episcopal Church commemorates Henry "Harry" Thacker Burleigh, Composer, 1949 https://t.co/htZ4JU0DLq

Burleigh was a composer, an arranger (& populariser) of spirituals and also, from 1894, a soloist for St. George's Episcopal Church in Manhattan https://t.co/zguNfcVXS5 pic.twitter.com/i3FRo7YWZu

— The Anglican Church in St Petersburg (@anglicanspb) September 11, 2021

So in what does Bach excel? Why is he the most revered musician in history? People answer this in different ways, but for me, it comes down to something very simple: he turns the Christian life into sound to a degree no one before or after has come close to matching. This is not to say he is always preaching at you. He does proclaim, certainly, but the musical sounds he generates do not generally send “messages”. Rather, they help you feel what it’s like to live in this world—and understand the world—as a Christian.

Take for example his mammoth masterpiece that tells the story of the suffering and death of Jesus as told by Matthew in the New Testament: the St Matthew Passion.

 Right from the start, you do not simply hear about or observe the drama; you are taken inside it. In the opening scene Jesus trudges on the via dolorosa to his crucifixion. String basses and cellos pound away on one note in a faltering, dragging rhythm; other instruments tug away from each other in fierce dissonance. All this is in a dark minor key. We are made to feel in our bodies the slow, lumbering, doom-laden march of this man to his execution. But that is not all. On top of this, two choirs enter, singing to each other: the one asks puzzled questions (who is this?) and the other replies by unfolding the meaning of this strange procession: the condemned man is carrying the weight of the world’s human guilt. But that is not all. Over this, a third choir enters (usually a boy choir in today’s performances). These are the singers of the heavenly Jerusalem, far above the action, intoning an ancient hymn (“Lamb of God…”). Fittingly, they sing in a secure rhythm, and in a positive (major) key. Here God is winning back, healing his broken world, our world. Bach piles all these layers on top of each other so we hear them all at once—something only music can pull off (it is impossible with words alone). We trudge with Jesus as he identifies with us at our worst, yet at the same time we are surrounded by an eternal assurance that here God is doing his climactic work.

Read it all.

"JS Bach changed the face of Western music, not simply classical music but every musical style from concert to folk, jazz, early pop (Lennon and McCartney were huge fans) to hard rock. Nothing was the same after Bach." Wonderful piece from Jeremy Begbie.https://t.co/E8bIphcRlc

— Graham Tomlin (@gtomlin) July 3, 2023

O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming.
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

–Francis Scott Key (1779-1843)

Happy Independence Day from Yokota AB, Japan.#横田基地 pic.twitter.com/X3mNW3GAGk

— Yokota Air Base 横田基地 (@YokotaAirBase) July 3, 2023

A gloved hand digs through the sand around a plastic water bottle, prying the piece of trash from the clutches of the shoreline and depositing it safely into a green trash bag alongside a hodgepodge of other debris.

An orange grabber snaps down on a cigarette butt in the dunes, separating it from the tangles of seabeach evening primroses and firewheels blossoming along the mounds.

While children play with shovels and buckets and balls, a boy around their age beside them bends down to rescue the sea turtles from one of the many bits of left-behind litter that will eventually turn into microplastics and scatter the Lowcountry’s beachfronts, marshways and ocean floors. He was among about 30 volunteers who signed up for this particular beach cleanup on Isle of Palms on a sunny summer Sunday morning.

The cleanup is one of four that Charleston band Easy Honey has helped organize along the East Coast in the coming months as part of their five-week Surf Tour that coincides with the release of new EP “Ooooo.” In between playing 20 shows along the coast, they will stop in Wilmington and Beaufort, N.C., as well as Portland, Maine, to pick up trash along waterways.

Read it all.

This IOP cleanup is one of four that Charleston band Easy Honey has helped organize along the East Coast in the coming months as part of their five-week-long Surf Tour. https://t.co/ClBBnKMhcn

— Charleston Scene (@chasscene) June 30, 2023

George Winston, who during decades when pop and rock dominated the musical landscape became a best-selling musician by playing soothing piano instrumentals in a style that was often described as new age but that he liked to call “rural folk piano,” died on Sunday in Williamsport, Pa. He was 74.

His publicist, Jesse Cutler, said the cause was cancer. Mr. Winston, who lived in the Bay Area, had dealt with several cancers for years while continuing to record and perform; he credited a 2013 bone marrow transplant with extending his life. He was staying in Williamsport near where his tour manager lives, Mr. Cutler said.

Mr. Winston released his first album, “Ballads and Blues,” in 1972, but it was “Autumn,” released in 1980 on the fledgling Windham Hill label, based in Palo Alto, Calif., that propelled his career. It consisted of seven solo piano compositions that were, like most of his music, inspired by nature. They bore simple titles — “Sea,” “Moon,” “Woods” — and hit a sweet spot for many listeners. Sales soared into the hundreds of thousands.

“By attuning his emotions to the serenity, order and power of nature rather than to the violently frenetic tones of our contemporary cityscape,” Lee Underwood wrote in a review in DownBeat, “Winston provides us with a perfect aural and psychological antidote to the urban madness.”

Read it all.

Say what you will about "New Age" music, but so much of the stuff on the Windham Hill label is astoundingly beautiful, and George Winston's records still sound incredible. RIP #georgewinston Pianist With a Popular Soothing Sound, Dies at 74 https://t.co/H9DktgLIA8

— Scott Heim (@Scott_Heim) June 8, 2023

Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right.
Faith and Hope triumphant say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.

While the patient earth lies waking,
Till the morning shall be breaking,
Shuddering ‘neath the burden dread
Of her Master, cold and dead,
Hark! she hears the angels say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.
And when sunrise smites the mountains,
Pouring light from heavenly fountains,
Then the earth blooms out to greet
Once again the blessed feet;
And her countless voices say,
Christ has risen on Easter-Day.

Up and down our lives obedient
Walk, dear Christ, with footsteps radiant,
Till those garden lives shall be
Fair with duties done for Thee;
And our thankful spirits say,
Christ arose on Easter-Day.

–Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

Happy #Easter! Jesus is risen! Today, we remember the sacrifice of Jesus Christ and His resurrection. May your day be filled with hope. pic.twitter.com/zjLWheg98c

— Samaritan's Purse (@SamaritansPurse) April 9, 2023

The question of how to meditate effectively comes up often in Cave’s online forum, the Red Hand Files, which he launched in 2020. Named after one of his most famous songs, Red Right Hand (inspired by John Milton’s Paradise Lost, where the hand represents divine vengeance), it’s a place where a wide range of people, not only fans, write in to share their troubles and questions, and Cave writes back. The site has become almost a form of spiritual direction between Cave and his public. “One concern that comes through all the time,” he says, “is, ‘I want to be a creative person, but I don’t feel inspired.’ They’re just thinking that something’s going to drop out of the sky and sort of ignite their imagination. Creativity for me is a practice, a rite, an application.”

Its purpose is not self-expression, he says, but a way of “making space”. Cave talks in the book about how his 2019 album Ghosteen was an attempt to “make a space” for his son Arthur in the terrible period after his death.

“Yes, that is what I was doing,” he says. “Trying to find a place Arthur could inhabit. A place where his spirit could reside. Things, of course, are different now … I think I’ve learnt to both incorporate his absence and indeed his presence into my work, slowly finding other things to write about.” It’s become a question, he says, of finding a space “around” Arthur, not just “for” him.

This has led to him rediscovering what can only be described as joy, through “an altered connection to the world”: “spasms of delight”, a brightness uncovered in things, coexisting with the “dark, vacuous space” of loss. This is a joy that has nothing much to do with “feeling happy” or with satisfaction. “It’s there, despite ourselves … not attached to anything.” This double vision, Cave says, is fundamental to the religious impulse. It explains why in church he feels able to hold together both the doubt and pain and the sense of anchorage.

Read it all (registration or subscription).

‘The book reveals the way in which faith, without ever giving a plain, comforting answer, offers resources to look at what is terrible without despair or evasion. Cave’s faith is not that of a man looking for shortcuts or consolations.’ Wonderful interview https://t.co/QHcLj2hr8l

— Madeleine Davies (@MadsDavies) March 4, 2023

‘The idea that there’s a force of love and logic behind the universe is overwhelming to start with, if you believe it. Actually, maybe even far-fetched to start with, but the idea that that same love and logic would choose to describe itself as a baby born in %$#$ and straw and poverty is genius, and brings me to my knees, literally. To me, as a poet, I am just in awe of that. It makes some sort of poetic sense. It’s the thing that makes me a believer, although it didn’t dawn on me for many years.’

–Bono as quoted in Cathleen Falsani, The God Factor: Inside the Spiritual Lives of Public People (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2007), p.10, also cited by yours truly in yesterday’s sermon

Merry Christmas to all! 🎄

This timely artwork depicts a vibrant nativity scene full of movement and crowded with people, with the ‘Lamb of God’ seen in the immediate foreground.

🎨: The Adoration of the Magi, Franz von Rohden
oil on canvas, Rome 1851#SnowPlaceLikeUshaw pic.twitter.com/K3DAm5v2fy

— Ushaw Historic House, Chapels & Gardens (@ushawdurham) December 25, 2022

Christine McVie, the singer, songwriter and keyboardist who became the biggest hitmaker for Fleetwood Mac, one of music’s most popular bands, died on Wednesday. She was 79.

Her family announced her death on Facebook. The statement said she died at a hospital but did not specify its location or give the cause of death. In June, Ms. McVie told Rolling Stone that she was in “quite bad health” and that she had endured debilitating problems with her back.

Ms. McVie’s commercial potency, which hit a high point in the 1970s and ’80s, was on full display on Fleetwood Mac’s “Greatest Hits” anthology, released in 1988, which sold more than eight million copies: She either wrote or co-wrote half of its 16 tracks. Her tally doubled that of the next most prolific member of the band’s trio of singer-songwriters, Stevie Nicks. (The third, Lindsey Buckingham, scored three major Billboard chart-makers on that collection.)

The most popular songs Ms. McVie wrote favored bouncing beats and lively melodies, numbers like “Say You Love Me” (which grazed Billboard’s Top 10), “You Make Lovin’ Fun” (which just broke it), “Hold Me” (No. 4) and “Don’t Stop” (her top smash, which crested at No. 3). But she could also connect with elegant ballads, like “Over My Head” (No. 20) and “Little Lies” (which cracked the publication’s Top Five in 1987).

Read it all.

Christine McVie of Fleetwood Mac is dead at 79. The singer-songwriter was a hitmaker for one of music’s most popular bands. https://t.co/uoeCx5vNiZ pic.twitter.com/dlUaD6r5d2

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 30, 2022

In her 1976 autobiography, Loretta Lynn, then 44, reflected on her “funny beliefs,” which she said sometimes mixed religion and superstition.

“I’m trying to lead a good Christian life, especially since I got baptized two years ago,” she wrote. “So there ain’t too much spicy to tell about me — just the truth.”

Elsewhere in the book, she proclaimed, “Nobody’s perfect. The only one that ever was, was crucified.”

Lynn grew up in the coal-mining community of Butcher Holler, Ky., also known as Butcher Hollow.

She attended church on Sundays and listened to preacher Elzie Banks “tell us about God and the devil.”

“I believed it all, but for some reason, I was never baptized,” she said. “After I started in music, I got away from going to church and reading the Bible. I believe I was living the way God meant me to, but I wasn’t giving God the right attention….”

Read it all.

Terry Rush, retired Church of Christ minister, was good friends with the late Loretta Lynn.

"Her faith in God was strong," Rush says of Lynn, who wrote about her baptism and ties to Churches of Christ in her autobiography "Coal Miner's Daughter." https://t.co/IaxnnRsInY

— Bobby Ross Jr. (@bobbyross) October 6, 2022

Many times, the church’s response to the abuse of women can sound just like that of the 1960s-era country music industry: “Well, he’s Bill Monroe; how could someone that talented do something like that?”

Loretta Lynn could see through that, and so should we.

That’s especially true when the way of Christ is strikingly different from the way of the world. The biblical story starts and ends with a mission that includes both men and women as joint heirs with Christ—inheritors together of the mandate to conserve and govern creation, along with the kingdom that is breaking through now in Christ Jesus.

If accountability for this vision will come, it will come through honesty. And honesty—at least in an institution committed to its own self-perpetuation—often comes with controversy.

“Fighting for my freedom made me the Loretta Lynn I am today,” the singer said. “Even though it hurt, I can’t regret that. I won’t.”

That’s the Loretta Lynn the institution of country music needed to be confronted with. The institution of the church, too, need to be reminded that women and girls are not “Honky Tonk Angels” expected to endure what no one should be asked to endure.

Read it all.

Here’s my tribute to the late, great Loretta Lynn, with reflections on what she could teach us about the treatment of women:https://t.co/lt8RBm137E

— Russell Moore (@drmoore) October 6, 2022

Cathedral music faces a serious sustainability crisis and is in danger of losing credibility with the public, unless it faces up to the challenges of widening participation and increasing affordability, a comprehensive report from the Cathedral Music Trust, published on Sunday, has concluded.

The report acknowledges that cathedral music — “one of the glories of English cultural heritage” — has an importance in British national life which goes far beyond its place in daily worship. “The UK’s flagship cathedral choirs are renowned worldwide and consistently perform to the highest standards of excellence. Cathedral music is one of the UK’s greatest and most distinctive cultural assets,” it says.

It also emphasises: “Cathedral music and particularly the service of choral evensong have seen a sustained surge in popularity even at a time of decreasing church attendance overall. Many people love cathedral music for its transcendent beauty and numinous quality, whether or not they are religiously active, and there is strong support and engagement for cathedral music from those interested in heritage, the artistic value of the music and its place in education.”

But, without compromising on excellence, it must evolve to meet the challenges of the context in which it now operates, the report concludes. Cathedral choirs are “expensive to run and difficult to manage”, it acknowledges. “There is a risk that cathedral music becomes polarised between well-endowed choral foundations with linked choir schools which produce music of the highest quality but are perceived as exclusive, and those cathedrals which recruit their choristers from local schools but struggle to find the time and money to reach similar standards of excellence.”

Read it all (registration or subscription).

Cathedral music faces a serious sustainability crisis and is in danger of losing credibility with the public, unless it faces up to the challenges of widening participation and increasing affordability, a report from the Cathedral Music Trust has concluded https://t.co/F2OZZxLtK1

— Church Times (@ChurchTimes) October 4, 2022

“I wanted this girl bad,” Travolta told Merv Griffin on TV in 1981. “The perfect Sandy, the ultimate Sandy, would be Olivia Newton-John.”

But the 28-year old Australian singer was skeptical about playing a high school student.

“I couldn’t do an American accent, and I was too old,” she told the Today show in 2019. “And I had all these reasons why I couldn’t do it. We did a screen test. The chemistry was there. It worked and when John came to see me at my house — how could you say no to John Travolta?”

No one, it seemed, could say no to Grease. The soundtrack was wildly successful. A duet with Travolta ended up as a best-selling single.

Read it all.

Olivia Newton-John, one of the biggest pop stars in the 1970s and early 1980s, has died at the age of 73.https://t.co/MPlvcC6Lbi

— NPR (@NPR) August 8, 2022

Later in his life, Johnny Cash had something of a come-to-Jesus moment. Although he’d been raised and baptized in a Southern Baptist church, he rediscovered personal faith after his marriage to his second wife, June Carter Cash.

He eventually toured with Billy Graham, made several gospel albums, and in an ultimate expression of grassroots evangelical culture, took a trip to the Holy Land. The front of the album commemorating this trip is emblazoned with a holographic image of Cash standing on the Mount of Beatitudes.

It’s hard to know how much of Cash’s public persona translated to his private life, and if you read through his body of work, you’ll likely find more than one objectionable lyric. Like the United States itself, he was a man of deep challenge and contradiction.

But what you will also find is a vision of masculinity that is honest and humble. You’ll find a vision of masculinity that embraces the complexity of the human condition while refusing to blame-shift, whine, or deflect responsibility. You’ll find a vision of masculinity that knows its need of grace.

In a word, you’ll find a real man.

Read it all.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you Jesus and Johnny Cash…https://t.co/3SJQA5OTjO

— hannah anderson (@sometimesalight) July 13, 2022

O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming.
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

–Francis Scott Key (1779-1843)

Happy Independence Day!#IndependenceDay #4thofJuly #横田基地 #アメリカ独立記念日 pic.twitter.com/GWSKUS8Jid

— Yokota Air Base 横田基地 (@374AirliftWing) July 4, 2022

Tomb, thou shalt not hold Him longer;
Death is strong, but Life is stronger;
Stronger than the dark, the light;
Stronger than the wrong, the right.
Faith and Hope triumphant say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.

While the patient earth lies waking,
Till the morning shall be breaking,
Shuddering ‘neath the burden dread
Of her Master, cold and dead,
Hark! she hears the angels say,
Christ will rise on Easter-Day.
And when sunrise smites the mountains,
Pouring light from heavenly fountains,
Then the earth blooms out to greet
Once again the blessed feet;
And her countless voices say,
Christ has risen on Easter-Day.

Up and down our lives obedient
Walk, dear Christ, with footsteps radiant,
Till those garden lives shall be
Fair with duties done for Thee;
And our thankful spirits say,
Christ arose on Easter-Day.

–Phillips Brooks (1835-1893)

Today (4/18): Monday in the Octave of Easter #angels

Station Church: St. Peter's Basilica, the Vatican
Michelangelo's Dome

Alleluia
Ps 118:24

R. Alleluia, alleluia.
This is the day the LORD has made;
let us be glad and rejoice in it.
R. Alleluia, alleluia. pic.twitter.com/XmC7m9adPU

— WritingAngels (@LectorGirl85) April 18, 2022

Mkes sure to listen to it all. More than once.

Stephen Sondheim, one of Broadway history’s songwriting titans, whose music and lyrics raised and reset the artistic standard for the American stage musical, died early Friday at his home in Roxbury, Conn. He was 91.

His lawyer and friend, F. Richard Pappas, announced the death, which he described as sudden. The day before, Mr. Sondheim had celebrated Thanksgiving with a dinner with friends in Roxbury, Mr. Pappas said.

An intellectually rigorous artist who perpetually sought new creative paths, Mr. Sondheim was the theater’s most revered and influential composer-lyricist of the last half of the 20th century, if not its most popular.

His work melded words and music in a way that enhanced them both. From his earliest successes in the late 1950s, when he wrote the lyrics for “West Side Story” and “Gypsy,” through the 1990s, when he wrote the music and lyrics for two audacious musicals, “Assassins,” giving voice to the men and women who killed or tried to kill American presidents, and “Passion,” an operatic probe into the nature of true love, he was a relentlessly innovative theatrical force.

Read it all.

Breaking News: Stephen Sondheim is dead at 91. One of Broadway’s most revered songwriters, he set the standard for the American musical. https://t.co/U6f5QeP5H9

— The New York Times (@nytimes) November 26, 2021

Interested blog readers may remember we noted his death and its personal significance back in December 2007.

O! say can you see by the dawn’s early light
What so proudly we hailed at the twilight’s last gleaming.
Whose broad stripes and bright stars through the perilous fight,
O’er the ramparts we watched were so gallantly streaming.
And the rockets’ red glare, the bombs bursting in air,
Gave proof through the night that our flag was still there.
Oh, say does that star-spangled banner yet wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave?

On the shore, dimly seen through the mists of the deep,
Where the foe’s haughty host in dread silence reposes,
What is that which the breeze, o’er the towering steep,
As it fitfully blows, half conceals, half discloses?
Now it catches the gleam of the morning’s first beam,
In full glory reflected now shines in the stream:
Tis the star-spangled banner! Oh long may it wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!
And where is that band who so vauntingly swore
That the havoc of war and the battle’s confusion,
A home and a country should leave us no more!
Their blood has washed out their foul footsteps’ pollution.
No refuge could save the hireling and slave
From the terror of flight, or the gloom of the grave:
And the star-spangled banner in triumph doth wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

O! thus be it ever, when freemen shall stand
Between their loved home and the war’s desolation!
Blest with victory and peace, may the heav’n rescued land
Praise the Power that hath made and preserved us a nation.
Then conquer we must, when our cause it is just,
And this be our motto: ‘In God is our trust.’
And the star-spangled banner in triumph shall wave
O’er the land of the free and the home of the brave!

–Francis Scott Key (1779-1843)

Sparks are a flying on Chicago's West Side tonight, July 4th. #chicago #July4th #fireworks pic.twitter.com/CEY0wNtnJ6

— Barry Butler (@barrybutler9) July 5, 2021

Argh, the latest trend in pandemic distraction may be – shiver me timbers – sea shanties.

(SOUNDBITE OF VIDEO)

UNIDENTIFIED PERSON #1: (Singing) There once was a ship that put to sea, and the name of that ship was the Billy of Tea.

SIMON: Landlubbers on TikTok and other social media are now appreciating the 200-year-old art form.

MARY MALLOY: Sea shanties are a particular kind of song that accompanies work.

SIMON: That’s Mary Molloy. For 25 years, she taught a program out of Woods Hole, Mass., called the Sea Education Association Semester. She says sea shanties are influenced by the rhythms of African work songs with lyrics that are Anglo Irish. Mary Malloy is also a folk singer. How could she not be with so fine a name? And yes, she sings sea songs. Here be Mary.

Read it all and do not miss this example of the fun:

watch and listen to it all–great fall pictures!

‘When Nathan Apodaca’s car broke down, he made a TikTok video of himself riding his longboard, drinking juice and listening to Fleetwood Mac. Now millions of Americans have enjoyed his video, and it’s changed his life forever.’