Category: Music

A reader from another country writes:

This is another of those music copying questions. There was an old recording of a book on LP in the 1970’s (I think). As far as I know, the record is no longer for sale. You can buy second hand versions at some cost over the internet, but they seem to be very limited in number.

Anyway, a man has put mp3’s of his old LP on the internet. He’s not selling them and says he’ll remove the files if they’re ever re-released by the record company. In this situation, is it licit to download these files, with the knowledge that the quality is poor and that no-one is being deprived of their fair wages from it? A person I know has made a CD of the mp3 files for me and I would like to hear them, but I don’t want to steal!

Not wanting to steal is the right attitude to have! Kudos!

Unfortunately, I don’t know what the law in your country (which shall remain nameless) would say about whether or not this is stealing.

Let me therefore prescind from the legal question to look at the moral question. As we covered in The Moral Question, the sin of theft is "usurping another’s property against the reasonable will of the owner" (CCC 2408).

Let’s ask, therefore, whether it would be against the reasonable will of the owner to object to you downloading these .mp3s:

1. Since the work is not in print at the moment, you have no way of purchasing it in such a way that the copyright holder(s) would receive compensation. Even buying the book from a used book service or the records from a used record shop would not get them a royalty. Therefore, they therefore could not reasonably object to your downloading them on the grounds that you are presently depriving them of a royalty.
2. They could, however, reasonably object that by downloading them you would be undercutting the market for them should they decide to put them back in print at some point in the future. If you already have a copy, you don’t need to buy a new one, and so they could miss a royalty from you that they would otherwise get at some future date. This is a reasonable objection.
3. You can meet this objection by making a commitment (a real, solid commitment, that is, not a phoney-baloney one) to buy the product should it be put on the market again (assuming that you’re not destitute and they’re not charging outrageous sums for it).
4. You can strengthen this by committing to making a good faith effort to buy the product if it is ever re-issued in any form (e.g., if it comes out as a book but not an audiobook then you buy the book so that they get their royalties).
5. It seems to me that, if you really make a firm commitment to make a good faith effort to buy the product so they can get their royalties that their objection to the undercutting-the-market argument becomes unreasonable, at least in your case. (It would not be unreasonable in the case of many people who might make phoney-baloney commitments to buy the product if it is reissued). In such a case, your action in downloading the files would not appear to be the sin of theft.

What the civil law may say about the matter, I couldn’t tell you, but in terms of the moral law that the action would not count as the sin of theft if done under the conditions just named.

Recently I posted on the legal aspects of copying music and several asked me to go into more detail about the moral aspects of doing so.

Live to serve. Here goes:

1. Private property is not an absolute right. According to the teaching of the Church, the goods of the earth have been given as a common gift to mankind. As a result, no individual has an absolute right to any particular piece of property (CCC 2403).
2. Theft is thus defined not as "usurping another’s property" but as "usurping another’s property against the reasonable will of the owner." The Catechism then notes: "There is no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods" (CCC 2408).
3. The orderly functioning of society requires us to have laws to regulate the flow of goods and services, and the State is the entity charged by God (Rom. 13) to oversee such matters. Therefore, "Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good" (CCC 2406).
4. One must presume that the entities charged by God with performing a task are performing it correctly unless the contrary is shown. Therefore, one needs to give the laws of the state regarding the regulation of private property the benefit of the doubt.
5. If you can show that, in a particular case, these laws are contrary to the common good and that the costs of violating them (to oneself and others) are less than the benefits of doing so then one can, in principle, deviate from them (in which case one bears one’s punishment if one is caught).

Now let’s apply this to copying music. There are two aspects that need to be covered (a) copying music where it is not permitted by the civil law and (b) refusing to copy music when it is permitted.

In regard to the first:

• Artists have a moral right to be rewarded for their efforts in creating works of music to entertain and edify us. So do the record company employees that invest in and promote artists in hoping of earning a living.
• It must be presumed until the contrary is proven that the civil law adequately expresses these rights.
• To show that in a particular case it is morally licit to make uncompensated copies of a song one will have to show that in that particular case the requirements of the civil law are contrary to reason and the common good required by the universal destination of goods. This is going to be much harder to do than in the typical example of a starving man needing food that he has no money to pay for.
• In particular: It means showing that there is some reason why you need that song right now and you can’t pay the 88 cents needed to download it from Wal-Mart or another service. (Wanting to make a mix disk for your friend isn’t a good reason since you can pay for the burns you need to make of individual songs and then give the resulting disk to your friend.)
• In the old days it may have been easier to show such things, but today, with all the ways we have available to us to get music in a way that compensates the artist and record company, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so.
• The only way I can see to argue for widespread uncompensated downloading would be to argue that copyright law is fundamentally contrary to the common good, which seems plainly incorrect (and contrary to the Bible’s teaching that artists need to be compensated for their labor; as in "the worker is worth his wages"). Also, if there were no copyright laws then fewer artistic works would be produced because there would be no profit in them, so such laws seem to foster the common good.
• While one could argue something other than copyright as a way of ensuring compensation for artists, such systems are hypothetical. Copyright is what our society is using now to compensate artists.
• The general damage done to society by widespread disregard for the law and the scandal done if others are aware of your covert variance of the law also must be factored into the above decisions.

Now for refusing to exercise all of the copying options that the civil law affords:

• Again, the provisions of civil law enjoy the benefit of the doubt.
• Therefore, if civil law judges a particular act of copying as licit, it should be presumed to be morally licit as well.
• Thus if the civil law allows for the copying of a broadcast piece of music then it is to be presumed to be licit until the contrary is shown.
• If one wants to argue against this, one could argue to the particular case or in general.
• The only way I can see to argue against it in the particular (i.e., it is wrong to copy this particular piece of music when the law says you can) would be if doing so would gravely harm the artist (i.e., he really badly needs the two cents he would make off the copy if you bought it) or if the song itself will have bad effects on someone else (e.g., it’s going to tempt you to sin).
• Arguing against taking advantage of copyright law’s fair use provisions in general also seems problematic. First, fair use provisions exist in order to protect the common destination of goods that the Church teaches to exist.
• Second, many of the cases of fair use copying are actually compensated indirectly, removing the need for direct compensation. For example, if you’re copying a song from a broadcast service then the service from which you are copying it is compensating the artist and record company. The service then expects to make its money back from its audience either directly (e.g., by subscriptions, as with cable or sattelite radio) or indirectly (e.g., by advertising, as with broadcast TV and radio). The value added premium on blank recording media also contributes to this (Cowboy hat tip to the reader who provided the link in the comments box on the original post!).
• Thus the money to sustain the system still flows from the audience to the service to the record company to the artist, it’s just handled differently. If it weren’t the players in the system would stop performing their function in it. If it weren’t profitable for them, they’d go out of business or find another line of work.
• Third, and related to the former, the artists and record companies that have bought into the system have chosen to do so. Sure, they might like to make more money, but the fact is that they have chosen to do business under the conditions afforded by the civil law. If they don’t like that law, they can lobby to change it, but their decision to do business under the terms of civil law establishes a presumption that, while they may not like all provisions of civil law, they feel it better to do business under these terms than otherwise.
• It is true that the Church recognizes that the consent of the worker is not a sufficient condition for the moral licitness of an arrangement, but this does not mean that the consent of the worker is not relevant to the moral licitness of the arrangement. The Church’s teaching on this point is meant to protect workers who are impoverished and virtually enslaved to their employers. It is not directed to multi-millionaire recording artists or multi-billionnaire record companies. When they consent to an arrangement, it is because they feel it is profitable for them to do so, not because they will starve if they choose to make money another way.
• I thus see no problem in relying on the civil law’s provisions for fair use copying as a general matter.

Recently I posted on the legal aspects of copying music and several asked me to go into more detail about the moral aspects of doing so.

Live to serve. Here goes:

1. Private property is not an absolute right. According to the teaching of the Church, the goods of the earth have been given as a common gift to mankind. As a result, no individual has an absolute right to any particular piece of property (CCC 2403).
2. Theft is thus defined not as "usurping another’s property" but as "usurping another’s property against the reasonable will of the owner." The Catechism then notes: "There is no theft if consent can be presumed or if refusal is contrary to reason and the universal destination of goods" (CCC 2408).
3. The orderly functioning of society requires us to have laws to regulate the flow of goods and services, and the State is the entity charged by God (Rom. 13) to oversee such matters. Therefore, "Political authority has the right and duty to regulate the legitimate exercise of the right to ownership for the sake of the common good" (CCC 2406).
4. One must presume that the entities charged by God with performing a task are performing it correctly unless the contrary is shown. Therefore, one needs to give the laws of the state regarding the regulation of private property the benefit of the doubt.
5. If you can show that, in a particular case, these laws are contrary to the common good and that the costs of violating them (to oneself and others) are less than the benefits of doing so then one can, in principle, deviate from them (in which case one bears one’s punishment if one is caught).

Now let’s apply this to copying music. There are two aspects that need to be covered (a) copying music where it is not permitted by the civil law and (b) refusing to copy music when it is permitted.

In regard to the first:

• Artists have a moral right to be rewarded for their efforts in creating works of music to entertain and edify us. So do the record company employees that invest in and promote artists in hoping of earning a living.
• It must be presumed until the contrary is proven that the civil law adequately expresses these rights.
• To show that in a particular case it is morally licit to make uncompensated copies of a song one will have to show that in that particular case the requirements of the civil law are contrary to reason and the common good required by the universal destination of goods. This is going to be much harder to do than in the typical example of a starving man needing food that he has no money to pay for.
• In particular: It means showing that there is some reason why you need that song right now and you can’t pay the 88 cents needed to download it from Wal-Mart or another service. (Wanting to make a mix disk for your friend isn’t a good reason since you can pay for the burns you need to make of individual songs and then give the resulting disk to your friend.)
• In the old days it may have been easier to show such things, but today, with all the ways we have available to us to get music in a way that compensates the artist and record company, it is becoming increasingly difficult to do so.
• The only way I can see to argue for widespread uncompensated downloading would be to argue that copyright law is fundamentally contrary to the common good, which seems plainly incorrect (and contrary to the Bible’s teaching that artists need to be compensated for their labor; as in "the worker is worth his wages"). Also, if there were no copyright laws then fewer artistic works would be produced because there would be no profit in them, so such laws seem to foster the common good.
• While one could argue something other than copyright as a way of ensuring compensation for artists, such systems are hypothetical. Copyright is what our society is using now to compensate artists.
• The general damage done to society by widespread disregard for the law and the scandal done if others are aware of your covert variance of the law also must be factored into the above decisions.

Now for refusing to exercise all of the copying options that the civil law affords:

• Again, the provisions of civil law enjoy the benefit of the doubt.
• Therefore, if civil law judges a particular act of copying as licit, it should be presumed to be morally licit as well.
• Thus if the civil law allows for the copying of a broadcast piece of music then it is to be presumed to be licit until the contrary is shown.
• If one wants to argue against this, one could argue to the particular case or in general.
• The only way I can see to argue against it in the particular (i.e., it is wrong to copy this particular piece of music when the law says you can) would be if doing so would gravely harm the artist (i.e., he really badly needs the two cents he would make off the copy if you bought it) or if the song itself will have bad effects on someone else (e.g., it’s going to tempt you to sin).
• Arguing against taking advantage of copyright law’s fair use provisions in general also seems problematic. First, fair use provisions exist in order to protect the common destination of goods that the Church teaches to exist.
• Second, many of the cases of fair use copying are actually compensated indirectly, removing the need for direct compensation. For example, if you’re copying a song from a broadcast service then the service from which you are copying it is compensating the artist and record company. The service then expects to make its money back from its audience either directly (e.g., by subscriptions, as with cable or sattelite radio) or indirectly (e.g., by advertising, as with broadcast TV and radio). The value added premium on blank recording media also contributes to this (Cowboy hat tip to the reader who provided the link in the comments box on the original post!).
• Thus the money to sustain the system still flows from the audience to the service to the record company to the artist, it’s just handled differently. If it weren’t the players in the system would stop performing their function in it. If it weren’t profitable for them, they’d go out of business or find another line of work.
• Third, and related to the former, the artists and record companies that have bought into the system have chosen to do so. Sure, they might like to make more money, but the fact is that they have chosen to do business under the conditions afforded by the civil law. If they don’t like that law, they can lobby to change it, but their decision to do business under the terms of civil law establishes a presumption that, while they may not like all provisions of civil law, they feel it better to do business under these terms than otherwise.
• It is true that the Church recognizes that the consent of the worker is not a sufficient condition for the moral licitness of an arrangement, but this does not mean that the consent of the worker is not relevant to the moral licitness of the arrangement. The Church’s teaching on this point is meant to protect workers who are impoverished and virtually enslaved to their employers. It is not directed to multi-millionaire recording artists or multi-billionnaire record companies. When they consent to an arrangement, it is because they feel it is profitable for them to do so, not because they will starve if they choose to make money another way.
• I thus see no problem in relying on the civil law’s provisions for fair use copying as a general matter.

A reader writes:

I was wondering if you have or could write on your blog on the subject of copying music–covering all aspects.  Some of the experts on the EWTN website have touched on it, but they are not really up on all the technology.

I definitely don’t want to do anything sinful.  However, if some form of copying is ok, I would like to do it.  I always thought it was ok to tape some songs from the radio onto a cassette tape.   Now I’m not so sure.

They have sold cassette recorders for years and blank tapes.  For years I have been taping Christmas music and classical music from the radio for my own listening pleasure.  Also, I have taped with my VCR some musical programs shown on PBS (like operas) and saved them for future viewing over the years.  Now I’m wondering  if I’ve been stealing for years.  Are we allowed to tape like this?

I recently read somewhere (during a Google search), that companies or artists (I don’t remember which) get part of the money from blank tapes.  Does this cover any stealing aspect?

I have learned that it is wrong to share music with family or friends.  In other words, I can lend someone my original CD or tape that I bought, but I can’t make a copy for them.

These new inventions like the ipod–how does the music get on them?  Are these ok?

1. You buy a CD in a store and then you "rip" it on your computer (i.e., convert it to a file format that your computer knows, such as .mp3 format) with a program like iTunes (comes with the iPod), which then transfers it to the iPod. Since this is making a personal copy from something you bought, it’s allowed.
2. You go to a music purchase service like musicdownloads.walmart.com and pay for a copy of the song, which you then download and transfer to the iPod. Again: You’re paying for it. A royalty is going to the record company. So it’s all perfectly legal.

What about the new satellite radios (like Sirius) where we pay a monthly fee?  Can we tape and save music from them for our personal use, since we are paying for it?  Or are we "stealing" from the artist because we are not buying the song.

I am trying to grow in holiness, and I don’t want to do anything that is, in essence, stealing. 

NOTE: In its native form, "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" is one of the three saddest songs ever written together with "Tomorrow Never Comes" (Creedence Clearwater Revival) and "Ashokan Farewell" (Various). 

NOTENOTE: By the authority vested in me as blog administrator, I am the arbiter of what counts as the saddest songs ever written. No song is in this category until I hear it and judge it so.

NOW: A good piece back I started getting into the unique sound of the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band.

The Dirt Band’s sound was unique in that it didn’t fit into any of the typical categories of popular music in its day (the late 1960s and 1970s). "What is it?" some promos asked. Was it Rock? Country? Folk? Bluegrass? Or something else?

Truth be told, the Dirt Band’s music is today what we might classify as Country-Rock. This was before Rock n’Roll fell apart in the late 1980s and the ensuing remnants were swept up into contemporary Country (which is surprisingly Rock-like), insipid Pop, noxious Hip-Hop, and offensive Rap.

But not all the Dirt Band’s work is Country-Rock. A notable exception is its 1971 album Will The Circle Be Unbroken.

This album is much more traditional, with melodious melodies courtesy of Country-Folk-Bluegrass artists such as Doc Watkins, Earl Scruggs, and Mother Maybelle Carter.

It was a meeting-of-the-generations album, with the Dirt Band (representing youth) joining established artists (representing the older generation) to create wonderful, traditional music.

In a time when the "generation gap" was the talk of the nation, the cover of the album bore the hopeful legend: "Music forms a new Circle."

Indeed it did.

The title song of of the album was sung by country-legend Mother Maybelle, together with the Dirt Band and all the other artists appearing on the album.

The song tells the story of a person who is forced to surrender one’s mother to the reality of death and who wonders whether the whole of the family circle will or will not be reunited with God in heaven.

The central lyric and the chorus of the song is as follows:

Will the circle be unbroken?
By-and-by, Lord, by-and-by?
There’s a better home a-waitin’,
In the sky, Lord, in the sky!

As the chorus suggests, the song has notes of hope, caution, and loss.

It was fitting that Mother Maybelle take the lead in singing the song since she was a member of the original Carter Family. The Carter Family was centered on A. P. Carter, who originally wrote the song. The Carter Family also included his sister-in-law Mother Maybelle Carter and, eventually, her daughter June Carter.

June Carter married music-legend Johnny Cash, to become June Carter Cash.

Mother Maybelle died in 1978, leaving her daughter (June Carter Cash) and he son-in-law (Johnny Cash) behind her.

In the 1980s, the Dirt Band decided to do a sequel album titled Will The Circle Be Unbroken, Volume 2.

This time around, Johnny Cash was one of the main guest singers on the album, and he took the lead on the album’s rendition of the song "Will The Circle Be Unbroken" (which, once again, was sung with the Dirt Band and all the artists participating on the album).

It was a nice touch.

A. P. Carter had written the song.

His sister-in-law, Mother Maybelle, took the lead in recording it the first time around.

Now Mother Maybelle’s son-in-law, Johnny Cash, took the lead.

But the Dirt Band didn’t leave it untouched. They made one of the three saddest songs ever written sound . . . happier, with more hope than before in it. And they added a new stanza to it:

We sang the songs of childhood,
Hymns of faith that made us strong,
Ones that Mother Maybelle taught us,
Hear the angels sing along!

HEAR THEM!

AND THEIR (CLASSIC!) PREDECESSORS!

February 3, 1959 . . .

The day Buddy Holly, Ritchie Valens, and The Big Bopper were killed in a plane crash.

Later immortalized in the Don Maclean song American Pie.

Ritchie Valens only ended up on it because of a coin toss.

Waylon Jennings almost ended up on the plane, too.

GET THE SAD, SAD STORY.

Yesterday morning I was driving to work when I experienced a mondegreen.

"What is a mondegreen?" you ask.

It’s a place where you mishear a song lyric.

The name "mondegreen" is itself a mondegreen.

The 17th century ballad "The Bonnie Earl O’Murray" ends with the line "They hae slain the Earl o’ Murray and laid him on the green." But this line was misheard as "They hae slain the Earl o’ Murray and Lady Mondegreen."

Hence the name.

A famous recent mondegreen is mishearing the Jimi Hendrix lyric "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" as "Excuse me while I kiss this guy." (Whoever heard that must have been in a purple haze.)

My all-time favorite mondegreen is one I read about where someone’s grandmother misheard the lyrics to the Beatles’ song "She’s Got A Ticket To Ride" as "She’s got a tick in her eye." Granny kept asking "But why would anyone want to sing about that?"

So yesterday, I was driving to work and listening to the album

THE BAND (by The Band)

which is a really great early 1970s album. (Greally toe tapping music with insightful, though not always fully moral lyrics; one song I refuse to listen to utterly.)

One of the songs on the album is haunting "Unfaithful Servant," and lately I’ve been trying to figure out the lyrics to it. This morning I mondegreened the first two lines as:

Unfaithful servant . . .
I hear you even sin in the morning.

"Wow," I thought. "That would be pretty unfaithful . . . not even waiting until afternoon to start sinning. What a great line."

Unfortunately, unless other people on the ‘Net are mondegreening it differently than me, the actual line turns out to be:

         Unfaithful servant . . .
I hear you leavin’ soon in the mornin’ [SOURCE].

Which I must admit fits the theme of the song, which is of a servant leaving the country house where he has worked for many years after an unspecified act of betrayal against the lady of the household. The last stanza is:

Goodbye to that country home,
So long to a lady I have known,
Farewell to my other side,
I’d best just take it in stride.
Unfaithful Servant, you’ll learn to find your place;
I can see it in your smile,
and, yes, I can see it in your face.
The mem’ries will linger on,
But the good old days, they’re all gone,
Oh! Lonesome servant, can’t you see,
That we’re still one and the same, just you and me.

Haunting stuff when you hear it set to music.

BUY THE ALBUM.

LEARN MORE ABOUT MONDEGREENS.

VISIT A SITE OF MONDEGREENS.

Share your own mondegreens in the comments box.

Yesterday morning I was driving to work when I experienced a mondegreen.

"What is a mondegreen?" you ask.

It’s a place where you mishear a song lyric.

The name "mondegreen" is itself a mondegreen.

The 17th century ballad "The Bonnie Earl O’Murray" ends with the line "They hae slain the Earl o’ Murray and laid him on the green." But this line was misheard as "They hae slain the Earl o’ Murray and Lady Mondegreen."

Hence the name.

A famous recent mondegreen is mishearing the Jimi Hendrix lyric "Excuse me while I kiss the sky" as "Excuse me while I kiss this guy." (Whoever heard that must have been in a purple haze.)

My all-time favorite mondegreen is one I read about where someone’s grandmother misheard the lyrics to the Beatles’ song "She’s Got A Ticket To Ride" as "She’s got a tick in her eye." Granny kept asking "But why would anyone want to sing about that?"

So yesterday, I was driving to work and listening to the album

THE BAND (by The Band)

which is a really great early 1970s album. (Greally toe tapping music with insightful, though not always fully moral lyrics; one song I refuse to listen to utterly.)

One of the songs on the album is haunting "Unfaithful Servant," and lately I’ve been trying to figure out the lyrics to it. This morning I mondegreened the first two lines as:

Unfaithful servant . . .
I hear you even sin in the morning.

"Wow," I thought. "That would be pretty unfaithful . . . not even waiting until afternoon to start sinning. What a great line."

Unfortunately, unless other people on the ‘Net are mondegreening it differently than me, the actual line turns out to be:

         Unfaithful servant . . .
I hear you leavin’ soon in the mornin’ [SOURCE].

Which I must admit fits the theme of the song, which is of a servant leaving the country house where he has worked for many years after an unspecified act of betrayal against the lady of the household. The last stanza is:

Goodbye to that country home,

So long to a lady I have known,
Farewell to my other side,
I’d best just take it in stride.
Unfaithful Servant, you’ll learn to find your place;
I can see it in your smile,
and, yes, I can see it in your face.
The mem’ries will linger on,

But the good old days, they’re all gone,
Oh! Lonesome servant, can’t you see,
That we’re still one and the same, just you and me.

Haunting stuff when you hear it set to music.

BUY THE ALBUM.

LEARN MORE ABOUT MONDEGREENS.

VISIT A SITE OF MONDEGREENS.

Share your own mondegreens in the comments box.

There’s a bit in the final episode of Babylon 5 where Vir recounts a time when he and Londo (who is dead now) once heard the Pak’ma’ra singing.

The Pak’ma’ra are a vile, disgusting, Cthuloid race that nobody likes, and nobody knew they could sing, but they do–rarely and for religious reasons. Vir says that it was the most beautiful sound he had ever heard,
full of sadness, and hope, wonder, and a terrible sense of loss. Londo was moved to tears.

He concludes:

When it
was over, Londo turned to me and said "There are
forty-nine gods in our pantheon, Vir; to tell you the truth I never
believed in any of them. But if only one of them exists, then God
sings with that voice." It’s funny. After everything we have been
through, all he did… I miss him.

I recently ran across a song that I hadn’t heard in ages: "Ashokan Farewell."

This song became famous in 1990 when Ken Burns used it as the main theme of his series The Civil War. It is a staggeringly beautiful theme, filled with sadness and hope and wonder and a terrible sense of loss.

Together with "Some Day Never Comes" by Creedence Clearwater Revival and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken" by the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, et al., it’s one of the three saddest, most beautiful songs I know. (Though some of Mark Herd’s stuff comes close.)

Unlike the rest of the music Burns used in The Civil War, "Ashokan Farewell" is not a period piece. In fact, it was written in 1982 by a gentleman named Jay Ungar, who conducted a series of summer fiddle and dance workshops in Ashokan, New York. He describes how the song came about:

I composed Ashokan Farewell in 1982 shortly after the summer
programs had come to an end. I was experiencing a great feeling of loss
and longing for the lifestyle and the community of people that had
developed at Ashokan that summer. The transition from living in the
woods with a small group of people who needed little excuse to
celebrate the joy of living through music and dancing, back to life as
usual, with traffic, disturbing newscasts, "important" telephone calls
and impersonal relationships had been difficult. I was in tears when I
wrote Ashokan Farewell . I kept the tune to myself for months, slightly
embarrassed by the emotions that welled up whenever I played it.

Ungar’s tears have been mirrored in the eyes of thousands of others who have heard the song. Softer-edged than "Someday Never Comes" and "Will the Circle Be Unbroken," whose lyrics sharpen the sense of loss these songs convey, "Ashokan Farewell"’s lyricless-melody perfectly captures the bittersweet of nostalgia–the sense of beauty and loss, the desire to go back and experience things again–to see old friends and loved ones–as a rush of memories comes flooding back. Since the song in its original form has no lyrics, it is not bound to any particular plot. Your memories fill in the detail as the song moves you to contemplate what was . . . and no longer is.

But which may be again.

When Christ makes all things new.

LISTEN TO THE SONG (midi version, not fully orchestrated).

READ ABOUT THE SONG.

LYRICS TO THE SONG.

DOWNLOAD THE SONG.

The banjo-playing historian I mentioned the other day who I met on a train was Mark Gardner (left, though he wasn’t in full regalia when I met him).

He told me about a recent CD he had made with his partner Rex Rideout using period instruments. It’s called Frontier Favorites: Old-Time Music of the Wild West. Afterwards, I bought a copy from CD Baby.

I was very pleased.

Mark plays banjo and Rex plays fiddle, and they are the only musicians on the CD, but despite this the songs never sounded weak or threadbare. I was, frankly, amazed at HOW MUCH MUSIC two men can make using only one banjo, one fiddle, and their voices.

LISTEN HERE FOR AN EXAMPLE.

The fact that they were using period instruments (i.e., not a modern,
steel banjo or modern fiddle) also had a major effect on the sound. (You can see Mark holding such an "organic" banjo in the picture.) Not being a music critic, I don’t know how to articulate the difference, but there is a more raw, natural sound to the instruments they are playing than what you would hear on a contemporary instruments CD.

The experience generated by the CD is the closest approximation of what it would be like to hear real 19th century musicians playing. It transports one back in time more effectively than any similar old-time CD I’ve heard, and I heartily recommend it.

One of the fascinating things about the songs of this period that can’t go without mention is their lyrics. Contrary to contemporary chronological snobbery, the folks who lived in the 19th century weren’t a bunch of dummies. In fact, they were more highly educated in some subjects than we are.

For example, how many times recently have you heard Latin used in a song? Well, you will in Mark & Rex’s "Old Dan Tucker" (a 19th century comedy song about a buffoon who behaves oddly and can’t do anything right). One of the verses goes:

Here’s my razor, in good order!
Magnum bonum, just have bought ‘er!
Sheep shell the oats; Tucker shell the corn.
I’ll shave you, son, when the water gets warm!

Magnum bonum is Latin for "great good," here meaning something like "very good" or "excellent quality." It says something about the people of the time that they could be expected to understand the phrase and recognize its relevance to a just-bought straight razor in a comedy song.

This isn’t the only time that the lyrics presuppose knowledge that moderns may not have. For example, the song Captain Jinks of the Horse Marines is filled with such references. This song, which was the wildly popular after it was first introduced (though it didn’t always have the patter that Mark and Rex include–and Mark is the vocalist on this one), is a treasure trove of cultural references. Also a comedy song, it concerns an incompetent military man (Capt. Jinks), who is the origin of the modern word "jinx" (meaning, a cursed or unlucky individual).

The refrain of the song goes:

I’m Captain Jinks of the horse marines.
I feed my horse on corn and beans.
And often live beyond my means.
Tho’ a captain in the army.

Here the jokes are densely-packed.

First, there was no such thing as the "horse marines." Marines are military men who travel by sea, and horses don’t usually do well on the sea. Classically, marines are either infantry or artillery. The idea of "horse marines" is a joke about a non-existent group (though completeness compels me to point out that some actual military groups have named themselves after this joke; there was a group of cowboys who patrolled the Texas coastline during the Texas Revolution who called themselves "horse marines" and also a group of U.S. Marines in the twentieth century in China who similarly styled themselves). The term "horse marine" thus came to refer to a member of a non-existent unit or, simply, to a misfit.

Second, nobody would feed their horse on corn and beans. In the 19th century those constituted "people food" and would be more expensive than what one would feed one’s horse on (hay, oats). Hence, Capt. Jinks often lives "beyond his means." A diet of pure corn and beans also wouldn’t be good for a horse nutritionally.

"Tho’ a captain in the Army," Captain Jinks is thus a very unfortunate and comical guy. The cards are stacked against him, and 21st century denizens may not fully appreciate the jokes at his expense.

Despite this, Mark & Rex’s CD is a terrific introduction to old-time music, as well as a fascinating re-creation of what it would have been like to transport back into the past and hear actual musicians of the period.

Highly recommended.

GET THE CD.