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Monday Music: Ben Sommer on Deo Gracias Anglia

Ben writes about his latest song Deo Gracias Angliafrom his latest album, a song featured here originally last Friday. One dates oneself to write about liner notes, but there was great value in reading what a musician thought about his or her music that’s been lost without those notes. Commentary like Ben’s restores that additional value – and value it is, I think – to a song. (He adds, too, a kind and teasing mention of this website.) I’ll review the full album after the release of the next, and final, track.

Deo Gracias Anglia

Here’s track #11 off the new album: Deo Gracias Anglia. The most awesome President John Adams features the track over at FreeWhitewater.com.

This is a straight up “cover song,” though the songwriter is unknown and died in the 1400s. Its an ode to Henry V and his victory against the stinky French in the battle of Agincort. Its considered the oldest example of a “carole” in music.

I first encountered the song in graduate school studying Renaissance music. Along with the whacked out rhythmic complexity of the ars subtilior style, tunes like this – or at least the recording I first heard – struck me as completely bad-ass in the way that hard core punk or doom metal did. Turns out this song rocks balls set to a heavy metal rhythm section. It struck me to do this when I was searching for “political” material for my last album america’d. This one got cut from that album, but is included here.

Although my intrepid mastering engineer Chris Roberts heard the solo drum more as a kind of Apache ceremonial drum – its really an irish bodhrán I borrowed. The nasal-sounding horns are shawms – ancient but cool-sounding wind instruments that likely accompanied the song in 15th century performances, too. The break-down in the middle is as authentic a performance of the original as my long-forgotten early music training could muster.

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