Thomson - Three Pictures - Five Songs - Ormandy - Harrell

The Divine Image
by William Blake

To Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
All pray in their distress;
And to these virtues of delight
Return their thankfulness.

For Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is God, our father dear,
And Mercy, Pity, Peace, and Love
Is Man, his child and care.

For Mercy has a human heart,
Pity a human face,
And Love, the human form divine,
And Peace, the human dress.

Then every man, of every clime,
That prays in his distress,
Prays to the human form divine,
Love, Mercy, Pity, Peace.

And all must love the human form,
In heathen, Turk, or Jew;
Where Mercy, Love, and Pity dwell
There God is dwelling too.

Virgil Thomson (1896-1989)

Three Pictures for Orchestra

1. The Seine At Night
2. Wheat Field At Noon
3. Sea Piece With Birds

Philadelphia Orchestra / Virgil Thomson

Five Songs from William Blake
for Baritone and Orchestra

1. The Divine Image
2. Tiger! Tiger!
3. The Land Of Dreams
4. The Little Black Boy
5. And Did Those Feet

Mack Harrell, Baritone
Philadelphia Orchestra / Eugene Ormandy

(Columbia, 1954)

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LP transfer of above material.
Includes cover, label and notes.

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(click on image to
enlarge and download)

Note for those who downloaded the 78 rpm transfer of Four Saints in Three Acts: I've noticed that I mistakenly included two copies of the same label (it was intended that one should be Side 1 and the other Side 10). Sorry about that ... I was apparently just too concentrated on the transfer.

I made four different versions of this 10-side set.

Each set is hand-cleaned - that is, one plays it in real time and removes various sound blemishes and aberrations "by hand" (using the CR repair tool, which took well over five years to learn how to use ... and I'm still learning things). There can be an average of five sound details (or more) per minute of music to be worked on; some take a second; others can take as long as 5 to 20 minutes individually. This is unavoidable since hand cleaning is the best method for cleaning vocal recordings - otherwise the sound is very easily damaged (but I actually use this method for all of my transfers).

The cleaning alone of each version took four-plus hours to complete. None of this takes into account the editing (or scanning, etc.), which took a total of about four hours. That's 4+ x 4+ = 16+ hours of hand cleaning. This is why I make mistakes like uploading two identical labels - and also why transfers don't fall from trees.

Sure, this is all very "labor-intensive" ... but I love working on such things when they're uplifting and worthwhile from a number of perspectives at once. And since money and things like business and society are not involved - I only have to worry about increasingly doing a better job (which is the main point, after all).