Lute Music for Witches and Alchemists.
Lutz Kirchhof.

Sorry folks, but the title of this CD might be a bit misleading. You will not hear Halloween sound effects, or “A Night on Bald Mountain” Disney-style. Instead you will be treated to meditative music based on the theories of Ficino, Agrippa, and others. Kirchof does us all a favor by fleshing out what has previously been locked away in archives and rare publications and allowing us to hear each composition as it was originally meant to be heard. A good book to buy with this CD would be D.P. Walker’s classic Spiritual and Demonic [as in Socrates’ daemon, not the kind from the uh-oh place] Magic (Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000). This music is meant to heal and not to hurt; meant to uplift and enlighten the mind and not to drown it in darkness. And besides all that folks, it’s just plain pleasant to drink wine and eat cheese to. In addition, Lute Music For Witches and Alchemists has great liner notes that give the low-down on each Hermetic ditty. M & M it’s not, thank Plato, Plotinus. Ficino, and the stars!

The Glass Harmonica.
Thomas Bloch.
Naxos records.

This is a great introduction to the exquisite Glass Harmonica. Naxos once again enlarges our listening pleasure by allowing such gifted musician/composers as Thomas Bloch a wider audience than other, more recondite labels have afforded him. This instrument, invented by Benjamin Franklin, and taken seriously by such greats as Mozart and Beethoven, is only now coming into its own again. Bloch is an integral part of that rebirth. Delicate, eerie, rumored to drive the listener mad, or to attract ghosts, the sound of the Glass Harmonica hovers at the very edges of hearing: a clean, celestial tone. You will never forget it once you hear its distictive sound. Liner notes give the instrument’s fascinating history. Bloch himself attempts (along with such great post-moderns such as John Cage) to create a future for the Glass Harmonica with his “Sancta Maria” and does an extraordinary job. The price, too, for this CD is extraordinary. What a bargain!

The Niche Narrows: New and Selected Poems by Samuel Menashe.
Talisman House Books.

There is a strong minimalist tradition in post-modern American poetry, and interestingly enough, three of the strongest practioners of this genre derive their themes, their cadences, their language from Judeo-Christian backgrounds. They are Robert Lax, David Jaffin, and Samuel Menashe. Of the three, Menashe is the most musically subtle, juggling rhyme in his miniatures so that flashes of song accompany the illuminations of the best work. Jaffin is the more cerebral: his rythms depend on the synaptic interplay between the contemplator’ eye, the page, and the concept contemplated, be it opera, 17th century art, or some other object inhabiting his intellectual space. Lax is also musical, but in a slower, more hypnotic, manner. Jaffin I would call a “marginalist”–(see my note elsewhere regarding this form)–Lax an abstractionist, while Menashe retains his focus on the telling detail, no matter how tight the frame in which he works.

I’ll include two of my favorites:

Dominion

Stare at the sea
you on your chair
sinking in sand,
Command the waves
to stand like cliffs,
Lift up your hand.

This deceptively simple poem is underpinned by a constellation of Biblical references. See how many you can find!

Also, what appears to be Menashe’s motto:

A-
round
my neck
an amu-
let
Be-
tween
my eyes
a star
A
ring
in my
nose
and a
gold
chain
to
Keep me
where
You
are
*

The design of Ed Foster’s Talisman House edition is superb. Type-set and paper make this a lovely book to own, and the price is just right!