#642: Ubi caritas et amor

 Oh boy, here we go with the Taizé guys.

Who?

A group of French monks.

So is it in French?

No, this is in Latin. I think some of their other stuff might be in/translated to English.

So what's the deal?

Well, part of their style is to chant the same thing over and over again. So while this might look like only two lines in the hymnal (which are the same text), when it gets sung in practice, it's 2*n for some unknowable n.

Why don't you like that?

I just don't. Part of it I guess is the uncertainty of not knowing how long we'll be doing the one song, which I acknowledge is an extremely small and petty thing to care about, but hey, I'm autistic, I like structure. The other part is the repetition--I like having different words to think about, in religious music (and the other kind too, I guess), I find the lyrics more meaningful than the meditative aspect, so it's like "yeah, I just said this, we get it." It's the Shannon density issue; the more you repeat, the density approaches zero.

Anyway, Taizé are popular, so there will be more where this came from.

#662: Christ Is the King!

What's the time signature?

Looks like 4/4, but with a couple random 6/4 measures thrown in.

How about the overall meter?

(I'll probably go into this more later, but for now, just know each number represents the number of syllables in one line.) "888 and alleluias."

So...three lines of 8, and then "alleluias"? Can't you count the syllables in them, too?

You can, but there are so many songs that just end with "alleluias" that they're their own classification. This is one of two tunes labeled as "888 and alleluias." Not to be confused with "888 with alleluias."

Oh come on, you just made that up.

I wish!

What's even the difference?

Apparently the "with" alleluias have lines of alleluias before and after the whole verse, while "and" is just at the end of every verse (although "with" might have these as well). It's the little things.

Is this the kind of thing you notice on the regular?

This kind of thing, maybe, but this specific one, no, actually I just figured it out right now for this song. See, I do learn something from this silly project.