10,000 Japanese Singing Ode to Joy Open Thread
We haven’t had an open thread in a while and I needed an excuse to post the above video. As always be charitable, be concise and be amusing.
14 Responses to 10,000 Japanese Singing Ode to Joy Open Thread
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What a joy! Always a joy.
Think of all those phalanxes of guardian angels crowded in there singing along!
Thank you for this masterpiece and music – a breath of fresh air.
Isn’t this what the height of civilisation and culture is meant to achieve?
Anyway, happy springtime and renewal.
Cannot resist saying that this is a moment of in with the good and out with the bad – air … . Joy and sorrow need one another. It’s even on the conductor’s face.
Greatest piece of music ever written. Hope it’s performed in Heaven.
Finally…multiculturalism has a positive message!
This is truly SO very beautiful!! I wish I had the soundtrack for this so I could save it into my music library:)
Considering how disjointed the Japanese culture is this is probably good for the Japanese people to listen to.
What a joy to see and listen to that. Like Christine, I wish I had the sound track but now that I know where I can find it, I’ll be back.
By the way, I found this by searching for Kipling’s “the ‘eathen” and happened upon ‘The American Catholic’ and was drawn to the explanation of the poem as much as to the poem itself (I first read a snippet of that great poem in Heinlein’s “Starship Trooper” some decades ago).
I’ve a question related to ‘the eathen’, that being the phrase “‘e draf’s from Gawd knows where”. What does Kipling mean by that?
Thanks much for this Mr. McClarey.
To me the 9th is simply the greatest piece of music ever composed, and there’s not really anything in its proximity. If you expand on the youtube video there is a link to the great scene in Immortal Beloved featuring the Ode to Joy, and it was watching that scene some 16 years ago late on a summer night that turned me onto that piece.
Thank you Dale. The Kipling phrase refers to the fact that the subject of the poem was part of a group of recruits, referred to as a draft in the parlance of the time although they were volunteers for the regiment. Kipling was taking a dig at the failure of the Cardwell reforms of 1872 which had tied regimental recruiting in the Royal Army to specific local areas. When there was a shortage of recruits from that area numbers had to be made up by drafts of recruits from other regimental areas and they were always likely to be the least promising of those available. At the time of the writing of the poem, summer 1895, there was much opposition to the Cardwell system in Britain.
Here is a link to the post that Dale is referring to:
http://the-american-catholic.com/2011/05/06/the-eathen/
My father (RIP) had a book named “Kipling’s Army.” Next time I go over the house, I’ll look it up. Years ago, I skimmed some of it. Before the reforms (I think) the Saxon’s army was put together of regiments raised locally by the local peerages. Sounds kind of feudal (90 days batchelor service). In those days, I guess the crown reimbursed them for expenses that they couldn’t defray by looting and rapine.
PS: Number-2 Son is stationed in Japan with the US Army. Big, blond, blue-eyed Adonis kind of sticks out over there. He plays prop on a rugger team of foreigners “downtown.”
No Godzilla sighting, yet.
THank you so much for sharing this! I discovered this piece in college over 30 years ago–it is so lovely to hear it again.
T.Shaw
In those days, I guess the crown reimbursed them for expenses that they couldn’t defray by looting and rapine.
I wonder what sort of reimbursement they got from rapine – the mind boggles.
Your No. 2 son in Japan playing rugby there may well have run into a few kiwis there playing rugby. There are quite a number of pro. rugby players there, some maybe not good enough for the All Blacks, or retired from the AllBlacks, or provincial players from the franchise teams, playing out their rugby days in Japan because the money is so good – huge in relation to what they earn here.
Thanks, Donald for your response to my question above. I’m surprised, though perhaps I shouldn’t be, that my comment spurred a bit of a discussion on Kipling here. I plan (and I hope the others will as well) to explore your first three examinations of Kiplings poetry.
Dale
We have a fair number of Kipling afficianados on this blog Dale!