Musical Confession #1

"March 19, 1982 ~ Stratford... have just begun rehearsals for the Stratford production of 'The Tempest'... I am singing the part of Ceres, goddess of agriculture, in the masque... enchanted by the magic and function of masque as a conduit to the worlds of gods and nature. The cast had an interesting discussion with a psychologist on the nature of Caliban and what qualified as 'the civilized world'...

April, 1993 ~ Stratford... once again, I am drawn to Shakespeare for insights into the human condition... Have not created the piece relative to 'the masque', but rather chose Prospero's closing speech, which is delivered with the sense of the actor removing his mask as an artist... the illusion has ended, and reality and god are left for us to determine for ourselves..."

Loreena McKennitt

I know a lot of people will cringe the moment I mention this, but I am an abashed fan of Loreena McKennitt's stuff. Yeah, sometimes her music gets a little new-agey and her head-voice can become a bit much, but as a researcher and interpreter of folk and world music ~ especially Celtic and Middle Eastern ~ she's almost unparalled.

As well as being an extraordinarily gifted and intelligent person who founded and controls her own multi-million dollar label (Quinlan Road), she's also received the Order of Canada from the Governor General, a Billboard Award, a Grammy nomination, is an Honorary Doctor of Laws at the University of Manitoba and Queen's University in Kingston, is a Canadian ambassador, and a humanitarian who founded and donated over $3m to a water-safety charity after her fiancé, his brother, and a close friend drowned in a boating accident.

One of her greatest gifts is being able to set lovely poetry to gorgeously haunting music; Tennyson's The Lady of Shallott, Yeats' The Stolen Child, and Noyes' The Highwayman have all received stunning treatment from McKennitt, and the featured song above, Prospero's Speech from Shakespeare's The Tempest, has to be one of the most addictive and elegiac songs of all. With images from a docudrama on Pompeii by the BBC, this fragile, chant-like piece ~ complete with Shakespeare's heartbreaking text ~ evokes a connection with the victims of Vesuvius' destruction in a way I haven't experienced so deeply in a long time.

So it boils down to this: Loreena McKennitt's a kick-ass harpist, a brilliant academic and poet, writes breathtaking music, and... I admit I usually love her work. There! Confession feels good.


Just 'cuz I'm in the mood, here's McKennitt's The Old Ways set to scenes from Fellowship of the Ring. (For some reason, this song isn't actually the best match for the video, but is one of my earliest favourites from McKennitt... and it's always fun to watch LOTR! Not surprisingly, you can find pretty much any Celtic~influenced fantasy film out there fittingly edited to serve as a fabulously appropriate visual vehicle for music by artists such as McKennitt, Aine Minogue, Enya, Maire Brennan, Clannad, The Chieftains, etc. on YouTube. Nature of the beast and all that.)


Loreena McKennitt ~ "The Old Ways"