Von: Siegfried Knoepfler

Datum: 25. Dezember 2007 KW52 13:45:52 MEZ

An: cyberpluckers

Betreff: Got cold, make music

 

 

"Sages, leave your contemplations,

Brighter visions beam afar..."

 

Well, it's not really a vision beaming afar,

it's rather a mission, steaming in a jar!

And it is, in fact, the sage's leaves that are called for, ... namely to help, as infusion, fighting the cold I caught just in time for Christmas.

 

OK, I simply couldn't resist. Please pardon a poor pun!

 

What I really want to tell is that I have new music up on my Web site. [É]

 

I made this recording because my nose indulges heavily on such occasions in role playing, acting in turns as a dripping faucet or as an erupting volcano, and because I know from earlier such occasions that my nose's performance depends strongly on the attention it gets: As soon as I manage to fully focus on a particular matter (such as practising my autoharp, and more carefully so when I record it) I forget about my nose, and my nose, disappointed, loses obviously all desire for any more role playing and keeps quiet.

 

Over the years, we have heard here on this list about many therapeutic effects of autoharp playing, but I think the aspect I just described has not yet been dealt with. So it was high time to talk about it. By the way, as a supporting measure, if not healing, at least easing the symptoms, I sip sage infusion: it definitely relieves and alleviates the coughing which inevitably follows the nose's erratic behaviour.

 

So much on lay, non-professional medicine for today.

 

If you care to listen to my therapeutic practising, I hope you'll recognise these tunes:

 

1. Es kam ein Engel hell und klar (Martin Luther, ca. 1535)

2. Deck the halls with boughs of holly

3. Hark, the herald angels sing

4. Adeste fideles (Herbei, oh ihr GlŠubigen / Come all ye faithful)

5. Es ist ein Ros entsprungen (Lo, how a rose e'er blooming)

6. O sanctissima (Oh du fršhliche / Oh thou joyful day [aka Oh how joyfully])

7. Angels from the realm of glory

8. Rudolph

9. Kling, Glšckchen, klingelingeling

10. Am Weihnachtsbaum

11. Fršhliche Weihnacht Ÿberall

 

No. 1 is played in the key of D, nos. 2 through 6 in the key of G, nos. 6 through 11 in the key of C. In nos. 8 and 9 I tried open noting (not really successfully). No. 11 got, around 1850, its German words set to an English tune that I don't know anything about. Do you?

   And it is, of course, from no. 7 that I took the lines which start this e-mail (cf.

http://www.cyberhymnal.org/htm/a/f/afrglory.htm).

 

 

So, have a good time for the rest of the holidays, and stay away from viruses and bacteria! However, if you are unlucky, you now know what to do. :)

 

   Cheers!

   Siegfried in Cologne, Germany