Grace

[rinue]

I was first introduced to the album Grace, by Jeff Buckley, my freshman year of college. And at that point he'd already drowned and was already mythologized, and at that point I was already more interested in his posthumous album, My Sweetheart the Drunk, because of the ways it was less polished, although I was assured that this was not what Jeff Buckley would have wanted because look at the smoothness of Grace. Wouldn't it have wound up more like Grace?

So I listened to Grace and I own Grace and I'm very familiar with Grace and I like the songs on it.

Only... I keep gradually recognizing not only how much of Grace is covers, but how much of Grace is straight imitations. He's not just singing "Lilac Wine." He's singing "Lilac Wine" exactly like Nina Simone. He's singing "Corpus Christi Carol" like Janet Baker, and Janet Baker sings it how everybody sings Corpus Christi Carol, because that's how Benjamin Britten wrote it. My love for that song probably doesn't have much to do with Jeff Buckley and probably has a lot to do with how much I like Benjamin Britten.

I feel confused about what to feel because I could say that Jeff Buckley introduced me to those songs, but I sort probably would have found them anyway. We live in an age of recorded music. There was not a time Jeff Buckley was alive when he would have had to say "let me sing it to you so you know what I'm talking about." He could always have put on the record.

I'm not sure what the point of cover bands is, if they're not reinterpreting. I mean, I sing karaoke and I love to. But I mostly do it alone in a room, because who cares? Who cares that I can sing that song the same way it's sung on the recording? I sing Lilac Wine like Nina Simone does. I'm not Nina Simone.

I don't know. I run into this problem with Cream too, with early blues, although there at least there's an actual recording technology gap.

I feel weird about it. Simultaneously, I am in the process of ordering the Benjamin Britten sheet music.

Comments

[sovay]

I feel weird about it. Simultaneously, I am in the process of ordering the Benjamin Britten sheet music.

I can't speak to Grace specifically because most of my familiarity with Jeff Buckley comes from a tape-jittery semi-bootleg handful of covers of his father's songs, but the difference in voices can make a real difference with me even if I know exactly where someone has gotten a song and how they have learned it. For an example in the same vein, I learned the Lyke-Wake Dirge from Buffy Sainte-Marie and years later discovered she was singing the version originally arranged by Benjamin Britten for his Serenade for Tenor, Horn and Strings; the more strictly folk tune which became associated with the the Young Tradition is notably different. Buffy Sainte-Marie doesn't sound a thing like Peter Pears and I have always found her delivery the more uncanny of the two, although the addition of the sistrum by Peter Schickele also doesn't hurt because what the hell is that. There are all sorts of other differences between the arrangements and recordings—she's not actually doing Britten Op. 31 in the same way it sounds like Buckley is just doing the Britten setting of the Corpus Christi Carol. But the vocal lines are almost identical down to the phrasing and as far as I can tell no one who performs this version of the Lyke-Wake Dirge has gotten it from anyone other than Britten at bottom (it me: I used to perform it a cappella, especially around this time of year) and I am even a person who actively likes Peter Pears, but I don't get chilled by his performance the same way as by Buffy Sainte-Marie's. Feel free to ignore if we are just coming at this question from opposing angles. I learned a lot of songs in other people's voices before hearing their antecedents and I find it neat to be able to trace that kind of lineage outside of myself (e.g. there are almost no recordings of "Sovay" that don't descend one way or another from Martin Carthy, including the version by Touchwood I imprinted on in high school). On the devil's advocate hand, I realized earlier this year that the way I sing "Gun Street Girl" around the house and while driving has actually drifted enough from Tom Waits that I can no longer quite sing it over the original track, which is useless but interesting.

[rinue]

I mean, I think you're right in terms of placing re-singing within the folk tradition, and I know that voicing can make a huge difference. You mention Buffy St. Marie; I was already thinking of Joan Baez. I think part of what caught me off guard about Jeff Buckley is that I came to him along a singer/songwriter path; it's like the reverse of folkies getting mad when Dylan started writing his own stuff and went electric. In general, I don't think I've figured out what happens to aural/oral music traditions once recordings exist.

I'm also kind of chagrinned about how much stuff Britten wrote that I didn't necessarily know he wrote until way after I loved it. What a composer. Relatedly, would love to hear you sing Lyke-Wake Dirge sometime. That sounds perfect.

Nina Simone is a whole other thing, because she said on many occasions that it made her angry when people imitated her interpretations of songs; she thought of it as plagiarism. I'm not sure whether I agree with her about that, but it's something I think of whenever I hear someone doing Nina Simone, including me singing along.

[sovay]

I mean, I think you're right in terms of placing re-singing within the folk tradition, and I know that voicing can make a huge difference. You mention Buffy St. Marie; I was already thinking of Joan Baez.

From whom I learned several Dylan songs before hearing them sung by actual Dylan and in several cases continue to prefer her versions, while we're on the subject. This conversation got "Farewell, Angelina" stuck in my head.

I think part of what caught me off guard about Jeff Buckley is that I came to him along a singer/songwriter path; it's like the reverse of folkies getting mad when Dylan started writing his own stuff and went electric.

Understood. For lack of a better term, this problem of reading protocols may also feed into your feelings about his Corpus Christi Carol—if he had been a classical countertenor, it would be an uncontroversial interpretation of the Britten arrangement except for swapping out the piano in the accompaniment, but on an album which features an actually individualized version of Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," you do expect it to offer something else.

In general, I don't think I've figured out what happens to aural/oral music traditions once recordings exist.

I think you still get chains of them, which I am unsystematically interested in, but linear inheritance goes completely out the window.

I'm also kind of chagrinned about how much stuff Britten wrote that I didn't necessarily know he wrote until way after I loved it. What a composer. Relatedly, would love to hear you sing Lyke-Wake Dirge sometime. That sounds perfect.

Thank you! May I ask what other Britten you found out after the fact?

Nina Simone is a whole other thing, because she said on many occasions that it made her angry when people imitated her interpretations of songs; she thought of it as plagiarism. I'm not sure whether I agree with her about that, but it's something I think of whenever I hear someone doing Nina Simone, including me singing along.

Which is rough because a person's only options for "Pirate Jenny" are Nina Simone or Lotte Lenya.

[rinue]

Most of my "oh, that's Britten" moments are where you might expect them - I'll like a hymn I hear at church, or a bit of something I hear on the radio, and I'll check and it was him. I'm not sure why his style is something I like a lot, but don't easily identify; maybe because it sounds so natural. The intervals have a kind of openness. His arrangements present the original thing in a clean way where the frame disappears for me.

I might also be thrown off by how much I did not like his opera Billy Budd (which I haven't seen in like 30 years, but suspect I still don't like). It's so... not tuneful, when the tunefulness is what I like about him when I like him. So my brain is still on some level like 'nah, can't be that guy.'

Plus I think Britten and I both like Henry Purcell a lot, so he's sometimes dropping Purcell into things, and I think "ahhh Purcell" and then belatedly am like "oh Britten's here too, I see." Bit of a Joe Cocker and the Beatles situation, I guess.

My favorite "Pirate Jenny" is Ute Lemper's, in German. I think she also sings it in English, but I prefer it in German not for authenticity reasons but because the lyric "fünfzig kanonen" is the best part for me. The way those words match up with the music, and the meaning of them, is perfect, and I haven't found an English translation that hits the same way. Haven't been able to come up with one myself, either.

[sovay]

Most of my "oh, that's Britten" moments are where you might expect them - I'll like a hymn I hear at church, or a bit of something I hear on the radio, and I'll check and it was him.

In case it hasn't come around on the radio, please enjoy "Where do we go from here?" (1943), my favorite obscure Britten composition since I have never heard another version since this centenary recording in 2013 and you'd think it would have become at least a minor torch standard once reintroduced to the wild. It was performed for its original broadcast by Adelaide Hall, but if there was a recording I've never been able to find it. I still want the rest of the Broadway musical it sounds like the first-act finale to.

It's so... not tuneful, when the tunefulness is what I like about him when I like him.

How have his other operas treated you? I am unsurprisingly imprinted on Peter Grimes.

My favorite "Pirate Jenny" is Ute Lemper's, in German.

Fair! I like Ute Lemper and she is an invaluable interpreter of Weill, but for whatever reason I do not love her "Pirate Jenny." I learned "I'm a Stranger Here Myself" from her, however, after years of noncommittally glancing off Mary Martin.

the lyric "fünfzig kanonen" is the best part for me. The way those words match up with the music, and the meaning of them, is perfect, and I haven't found an English translation that hits the same way. Haven't been able to come up with one myself, either.

I have this problem with the "Kanonen-Song."