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Archive for August, 2007

finally, Aramaic is *taught*: Frederick E. Greenspahn, An Introduction to Aramaic (Resources for Biblical Study)

Posted in denkschrift, reseña on August 19, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

The coterie of Northwest Semitic dialects that we abbreviate as ‘Aramaic’ are collectively a staple of biblical and other historical research. Yet even though Aramaic is the second language of the Hebrew Bible/Old Testament and arguably the first language of Jesus, English-language teachers and learners have suffered from the absence of a pedagogically designed teaching grammar of Aramaic. (more…)

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centrifugal force: Patrick Johnstone, Operation World. When We Pray God Works

Posted in missio dei, reseña on August 19, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Christians and other theists believe that in some impenetrable way prayer moves the hand of God. (more…)

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this England!: Vaughan Williams, Fantasies; The Lark Ascending; Five Variants(ADRM/Argo)

Posted in reseña on August 19, 2007| Leave a Comment »

It is perhaps impossible to hear Vaughan Williams’ short works performed more beautifully and unforgettably than in this 1972 ADRM/Argo recording. Neville Marriner and the Academy of St. Martin-in-the-Fields acquit themselves above reproach. Vaughan Williams—you love him or hate him—must be loved for his Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis, that haunting and almost religiously uplifting setting of Medieval plainsong that is capable of shifting a driver to the side of the road in open-jawed amazement at the sheer evocative beauty of it. (more…)

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easy does it: Simply Red, Blue

Posted in reseña on August 19, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

A pair of South African friends with impeccable musical taste implored me to buy this CD, alleging that my life would be impoverished without it.

I’m not convinced. (more…)

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a standard Messiah: Handel – Messiah / Harper, Watts, Wakefield, Shirley-Quirk, LSO, C. Davis (Philips Classics)

Posted in reseña on August 19, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

The Philips Classics series has many appealing features, not least of which is good value. This series typically offers two CDs for the price of about one-and-a-half. They feature top-rank and often legendary performers. Finally, they are digitally remastered recordings from the sixties and seventies, many of which rank as standard-bearing readings of the classical canon. (more…)

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why they call it singin’: Lee Ann Womack, I Hope You Dance

Posted in reseña on August 19, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

I remember the day my friend’s young teenage daughter Lee Anne belted out a slightly off-key Karaoke version of her near namesake Lee Ann Womack’s ‘I Hope You Dance’ and introduced me to this strong female Nashville voice. A quick trip to the music store later, I owned the Dance cd, my first prolonged exposure to the somewhat more mainstream sound than is common both to previous and subsequent Womack offerings.

It’s beautiful music, the critics be damned. (more…)

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rrhythmia: the habit of letting chaos be

Posted in clarity, denkschrift, missio dei, rrythmia on August 19, 2007| Leave a Comment »

A perfect chaos absorbs the street of Cairo, the most splendid disregard for safe conduct that the mind can imagine.

It is as though millennia of human experience in self-preservation have been sucked out of the atmosphere, leaving men and women to fling themselves moth-like into the lamp, banging time and time against glass, seeking out with obsessive will the consuming flame, loving ten times more the wick than the placid darkness where a moth might fly all night long to its heart’s content. (more…)

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rrythmia: the habit of waiting

Posted in clarity, denkschrift on August 17, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Back then, ‘work stoppage’ belonged to the patois of the factory, not the baseball diamond.

It had not yet become the lingua franca that mediates between the players’ ‘strike’ and the owners’ ‘lockout’. You played baseball for fun and for as long as you could, and you assumed everyone else who could did the same. The idea of deciding not to play baseball had not occurred to us, perhaps like the concept ‘Interstate Highway’ before the invention of the wheel. If picketing at the plant meant some kids ate tuna fish for two weeks straight, at least you could comfort yourself with the Phillies’ box score in the morning paper. If they had beat up on the Mets, labor disputes or a dad’s missed paycheck seemed a slightly irritating footnote. (more…)

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ohne Hast: Symphony No.4; Lieder eines fahrenden Gesellen (Sony Classics)

Posted in reseña on August 17, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

Mahler’s fourth symphony is perhaps most memorable for its unsettlingly gorgeous second movement,entitled ‘In gemächlicher Bewegung. Ohne Hast.’ (more…)

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sing-able: Newsboys, Devotion

Posted in reseña on August 17, 2007| Leave a Comment »

Full product information for this item, together with my review, my ranking of the product, and any reader comments, can be found at http://www.amazon.com.

A Newsboys worship album is not a Picasso. It is not abstract and perplexing. Music lovers who want profound mystery and enigmatic musical arrangements need look elsewhere. (more…)

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