The Church of Rome has always had a special place in its musical heart for the voices of pre-pubescent boys, whose pure, pipe-like tones are unlike any other sound. Alas, the window of pre-adolescence lasts only a few years, so starting in the late 1500s bilateral orchiectomies were performed on the particularly fine vocal specimens before they reached puberty. This snicker-snack enabled the castrati to remain in a man-made, perpetual neverland of boy-voicehood, but with the “lung power of a full-grown man.” While the procedure left the singers prone to being “fat, volatile, conceited, and almost impossible to get along with,” it was undertaken, in each instance, in the name of a higher calling:

The impetus for producing the castrato voice in western Europe came from the Church of Rome in the later 16th century. The development of complex polyphonic church music…required voices in the higher register; for this purpose the Papal church choir had used boys and adult male falsettists, mostly imported from Spain, since there was a Papal injunction against women singing in public….There is mention of a castrato in a Roman Church choir as early as 1553, but the first official announcement was in 1589 when Pope Sixtus V issued a Bull providing for the inclusion of four eunuchs in the choir of St Peter’s, Rome. Although the Sistine Chapel was for the private worship of the Pope, and therefore its constitution did not bind the Church as a whole, the practice spread rapidly so that by 1640 castrati were members of all the main choirs of Italy, and they continued to take their place in the Papal chapel for over three centuries….Some theologians opposed the practice, but the Church came to tolerate it on the grounds that the music so produced was for the honour of God…

The practice finally ended when the Papal States were conquered in 1870, but one particular specimen survived long enough to make the sound recording which I am displeased to present tonight. As one wag put it, ‘I’ve just heard the recording…and quite honestly I don’t think it’s worth having your b*lls cut off for that.” Decide for yourself: here’s a 1904 recording of Alessandro Moreschi desperately supplicating his way through Let Us Pray For the Pontiff (“Oremus Pro Pontefice”).
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In light of the fact that America has its first president who is all but anti-American, and who in his travels around the world all but apologizes for America’s history, it’s time for a little musical rearguard action in anticipation of the resurgence that’s sure to come. Here’s upright, granite-faced American son-of-a-sharecropper Johnny Cash performing his unabashedly patriotic song-poem Ragged Old Flag. Enjoy, you refuge-taking scoundrels.
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One of the very best ways for people who aren’t very familiar with jazz to begin to get a handle on the pleasures of the music is to listen to a great improviser playfully mining the tonal and rhythmic possibilities of a familiar melody. With that in mind, here’s the great Thelonious Monk exploring and expanding on Vincent Youmans‘ and Irving Caesar’s 1925 composition Tea For Two.
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