Heaven Playlist 4--Top 5 (Possibly) Songs for My List

Today I thought I'd write about some heavy hitters in my playlist—each there for a variety of reasons. There really is something here for everyone—from classical sacred music, to gospel, to popular, you name it. These five songs have been learned at various times in my lifetime, so I'll start with the one I learned first and maybe one of the first hymns I learned period.

"I'll Fly Away"—due to the popularity of this song in the soundtrack of the film, O Brother, Where Art Thou?, this song entered into world of standards, you might say. It was sung by Gillian Welch and Allison Krauss and that is the version I initially had on my playlist. First about the song itself. I alluded to it in an earlier post—it's by the famous (to me and my ilk) Albert E. Brumley. Brumley wrote zillions of songs (well, I read somewhere around 600) and this is, I would say, undoubtedly his most popular. We sang it often in church as I was growing up. I sang in a trio with two friends, a brother and sister, who lived down the street, and we sang it. Everyone sang it. But it just doesn't get old. 

As I said, I thought I'd use the Gillian Welch/Allison Krauss version which is really terrific, but then just in the past few years it was recorded by Joey Feek of Joey and Rory. Joey Feek was a talented young singer who died in 2016. The CD this is on was released about a month before her death from cancer. In 2014, three months after the birth of their daughter, she was diagnosed. She went into remission, but soon that ended and as she knew she was dying, but was still hoping for a miracle, they recorded Hymns That Are Important to Us which wound up winning a posthumous Grammy for Best Roots Gospel Album. I was listening to a lot of country music at the time, so I was sort of staying up on her story as it went along. "I'll Fly Away" is a very up-tempo song at all times, a very happy one. But Joey's is possibly the MOST happy sounding and to think she was dying when she was recording this just leaves me in awe and admiration of her and her faith.

Probably the next one I would have learned would have been "Way Over Yonder"—the song that made me start thinking about developing a playlist of songs about heaven. In my teens I was an avid fan of Carole King (James Taylor, that sort of music) and though I didn't have many 'albums', I did have Tapestry. It was a Grammy winner for Best Album and one of the best sellers of all time. "Way Over Yonder" just brings a complete peace to me whenever I hear it. It is chock-full of biblical references: "In a garden of wisdom," and "To the land where the honey runs In rivers each day" and it has all kinds of the usual gospel song attributes of heaven—the sun shining down, "Then troubles gonna lose me, Worry leave me behind." This is possibly my favorite Carole King song and that is really saying something as she has written many super hits! (Oops, I was forgetting one of my possible top five songs of any sort she wrote, "Will You Still Love Me Tomorrow?")

In Paradisum—this probably came next and I would have learned it in music history in college or soon after when I started listening to a fair amount of Catholic sacred music. Masses, Requiems, the big choral stuff. This particular one is from Faure's Requiem. In Paradisum is not actually a part of the Requiem itself, but is sung as the body is being carried out of the church to the graveyard. Oh, to live in the days when one could just be carried out to be buried right in the churchyard where one attended mass regularly. I would love that. Faure and other French composers typically wrote their Requiems with this antiphon.

Faure said that

It has been said that my Requiem does not express the fear of death and someone has called it a lullaby of death. But it is thus that I see death: as a happy deliverance, an aspiration towards happiness above, rather than as a painful experience. The music of Gounod has been criticised for its inclination towards human tenderness. But his nature predisposed him to feel this way: religious emotion took this form inside him. Is it not necessary to accept the artist's nature? As to my Requiem, perhaps I have also instinctively sought to escape from what is thought right and proper, after all the years of accompanying burial services on the organ! I know it all by heart. I wanted to write something different.

There are only a few texts from the Requiem that I want on my heaven playlists and I'll probably wind up having several settings of each of those texts. But this In Paradisum just immediately slows my heart rate and brings peace to me wherever I am when I'm listening. This is the version by Sir Philip Ledger.

"Big House"—from one extreme to the other in just a few minutes. Big House (and NO, this does not refer to University of Michigan's stadium as we are Michigan haters in our Ohio State household!) was a mega hit by the American Christian group, Audio Adrenaline. This band has relaunched with entirely new lineups several times, but this song, "Big House," was from the mature period of the original group. If you are going to want peace, it will need to be in contrast with something not so peaceful and this is it. The Father's Big House: 

It's a big big house
With lots and lots of room
A big big table
With lots and lots of food
A big big yard
Where we can play football
A big big house
Its my Father's house
Ibidibidee bop bop bow whew! yeah!

In my version in my head, the kind of football they are playing is definitely what we Americans call soccer! What MOST of the world calls football. Yay for a heaven where Arsenal would win all its games all the time! Yay for a place where you can just saunter over to a friend's mansion and pick up some snacks and watch a pick-up game of football (soccer) with either an all-star team of the world's greatest or just the kids you know from your son's soccer-playing days. Some people, like me, just cannot envision a heaven without football!

"Crossing the Bar"—This song, a poem of Tennyson's set to music by the bluegrass musician, Rani Arbo has been recorded by my new favorite band, False Lights. (I wish to have something by all of my favorite singers appear on this list but didn’t believe it would be possible for some of them. For example, one of my most favorite singers is the British folk artist Jim Moray who is one of the two main band members of False Lights and I just didn’t think I’d find something of his and here it is now! Sort of, at least on the live version he is singing harmony.) I will say, my daughter and I just heard him solo in Old St. Pancras church in London and his own (unrecorded) version is stunningly beautiful, way more so than the False Lights recorded version or live version (which is also recorded and the version I am including on playlist until Jim records his own version!). The poem itself is just lovely and as it is out of copyright, I'll just include it here.

Sunset and evening star,
And one clear call for me!
And may there be no moaning of the bar,
When I put out to sea.

But such a tide as moving seems asleep,
Too full for sound and foam,
When that which drew from out the boundless deep
Turns again home.

Twilight and evening bell,
And after that the dark!
And may there be no sadness of farewell,
When I embark;

For tho' from out our bourne of Time and Place
The flood may bear me far,
I hope to see my Pilot face to face
When I have crost the bar.

Tennyson asked to have this poem published as the final poem in every edition of his works. People try to make Tennyson fit whatever type of religion they want. He himself revealed, towards the end of his life, that his "religious beliefs also defied convention, leaning towards agnosticism and pandeism.” Famously, he wrote in In Memoriam: "There lives more faith in honest doubt, believe me, than in half the creeds." In Maud, 1855, he wrote: "The churches have killed their Christ." In "Locksley Hall Sixty Years After," Tennyson wrote: "Christian love among the churches look'd the twin of heathen hate." In his play, Becket, he wrote: "We are self-uncertain creatures, and we may, Yea, even when we know not, mix our spites and private hates with our defence of Heaven." I certainly have to agree to an extent that these are true statements. Yet, he also said, “The Pilot has been on board all the while, but in the dark I have not seen him. [He is] that Divine and Unseen Who is always guiding us.” He really had a long dark night of the soul!

Anyway, the metaphor of seeing the pilot face to face is one that I do so love; it is one of overwhelming gladness. Especially if those that will mourn me will cease to do so as exhorted in the poem. I love the boat imagery; I think if I could always travel by boat and train I’d be so much happier. I'm not entirely sure, but these might be the five I'd pick if I could only have five.