Summa This, Summa That
This afternoon, I’m calming my nerves (and ignoring the enormous Catholic elephant in the room) with a bit of Robert Johnson’s lute music, courtesy of my dad.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CvmOwvmpN-UIt’s entirely possible that I’ve heard Johnson in the past, but I don’t think I’ve heard of him until I started to investigate this particular clip. The occasionally-reliable Wikipedia says that he “was an English composer and lutenist of the late Tudor and early Jacobean eras. He is sometimes called ‘Robert Johnson II’ to distinguish him from an earlier Scottish composer. Johnson worked with William Shakespeare providing music for some of his later plays.” He sounds a bit Dowland-y to me, which makes sense, given that they were both English lutenists and (largely) contemporaries.
On most any other day, the solo lute would grow a bit wearisome to my ears. But not today; today, it’s just what I need. Soothing my raggedy soul.
(That last image comes from Gregory Colbert’s “Ashes and Snow,” which I had the chance to see live a number of years ago. Amazing.)
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