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lbarry
This, my friends, is what the internet is for.
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One of the most intense and profound moments in history. 11am on the 11th November 1918 when the guns fell silent. This should be shown in every school. pic.twitter.com/zLyko3wqMV
— History Girl (@HistoryGirlBW) November 11, 2025
NB: I’ll hold comments with solutions ’till the next day so there won’t be “spoilers” for others.
Mate in 4. It’s black’s move.
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Gavin Ashenden notes that November 11 is also Saint Martin’s Day, the soldier saint.
I’ve been to weddings where the singer sounded like a string of badly tuned plastic chickens!
Vinhetiero (the Brasilian musician depicted above) is such a treasure! Highest recommendation.
Rome Shot: Fontana delle Tartarughe
HERE
For all of the negativity around some of the prelates leading the US Church-can we take a moment to appreciate that Archbishop Coakley, who is an absolutely wonderful bishop, was just elected as USCCB? To me this strikes as very encouraging given that he was the most orthodox bishop in the running?
If you want to do your soul some more good, go find videos of Lord Vinheteiro (Fabricio) and his wife Roberta playing music to their baby son. I promise you’ll enjoy. Gregg is not wrong!
Re that first video Padre. . . took me a while to laugh, but eventually I succeeded.
And without meaning any disrespect to @Gregg the Obscure’s and Post Catholic’s posts: He (Vinhetiero) probably doesn’t even realize he’s mocking a prayer – does he ? Of the millions of available songs in the world, he has to choose to chicken up a song written by God Himself , and first sung (as far as we know) by the Archangel Gabriel and subsequently St. Elizabeth. And he dressed up so nicely to do it . *Face . . . hands.* (Of course, in so doing he has given our Blessed Mother a special “in” – a little permission, so to speak, to intercede for him with her tender love.) She’ll have the last word. :)
Rock, pop, R&B, fusion . . .played ’em all in the nightclubs and on the stages when I was younger (and probably less “grumpy”). A lot of the time when I was playing I was stoned. But I never messed with hymns to our Blessed Mother, or any liturgical songs. Then a work accident moved me to serve as a volunteer assistant to a Catholic Chaplain (actually 5 consecutive chaplains [priests]) in a large long-term & palliative care institution for 23 years, during which time I practically totally gave up the music. When COVID came, they told all the volunteers not to come anymore . . .for over a year . . .had to move on.
When the COVID , um, ‘thing’ started causing such a mess and impediment to worship, I was asked to perform cantor’s duties for some extra Masses (Ordinary Form) which our parish had inserted to accommodate numbers, My duties included both music (guitar) and singing – totally changed my way of playing to successfully remove all percussive textures from the instrument. I continue to serve singing and playing all Fridays (Mass followed by Adoration and Benediction) all First Saturdays (morning Mass in honor of our Blessed Mother – again, followed by Adoration and Benediction) and on Sundays when they need someone to fill in. And I’ve tried to bring as much Latin as I can : Both Schubert’s version and the Bach/Gounod version of Ave Maria; have written my own chord arrangements to fit O Salutaris and Tantum Ergo which we sing every time we have Adoration, wrote my own chord arrangements to accompany singing the Salve Regina, have done (more rarely) Panis Angelicus as the Communion hymn; commonly do one of the more extended versions of the Kyrie to bring us to the Divine Mercy chaplet before the Blessed Sacrament each Friday; have written sveral of my own hymns to Our Blessed Mother, and have even composed chords and a melody for the E Latere tuo Christe which I sometimes sing as a brief Offertory hymn. . . and I never mess with the Ave Maria.
All of the aforementioned just to confirm, speaking as a Grumpy Beggar musician with a lot of mileage on his odometer and a firm hand on Ordinary Form liturgical music:
The Ave Maria and plastic/rubber chickens do not belong together. Anybody with a true devotion to Mary the Mother of God could tell you that.
According to fellow members’ posts I’m willing to believe Vinhetiero could well be a fantastic musician. But for that video, if I’m giving him a score for tact, on a scale from 1 – 100, I would award him only a 2 . And that 2 is only to give him the benefit of the doubt in case he may have done it out of ignorance.
Sancta Maria, Mater Dei, ora pro nobis peccatoribus, nunc et in hora mortis nostrae. AMEN
@Grumpy
I feel an important distinction must be made between the music itself, and the accompanying lyrics. While Schubert’s piece has overwhelmingly become adopted for use with the Ave Maria, it wasn’t originally composed for it. It’s a bit of a far stretch to associate a parody of a musical setting as a direct attack on a prayer itself that was later adopted to that same setting. If the music itself is intended as a prayer, like in the case of Gregorian Chant, I could maybe see the argument. I would certainly feel differently if this was a video of a man using rubber chickens to parody the chanted melody of the Pater Noster for example.
@NavyVet
Thanks for the input – really great for enhancing perspective. Neither did what we today know as the Bach/Gounod version of the Ave Maria start off as music even remotely connected to our Blessed Mother – a pretty wild ride actually: Begins as a prelude for piano by Bach; 130 years later Gounod writes a melody for it, but then, according to the etymology related in galaxymusicnotes.com entitled The Story Behind “Ave Maria” by Gounod and J. S. Bach:
” Charles Gounod added words to his composition in 1859. However, the first wordings utilized were not ‘Ave Maria,’ but a short poem by Alphonse de Lamartine, titled ‘Vers écrits sur un album.’ The poem was crafted as a gift for an admirer of Lamartine. Gounod selected this poem as the text for ‘Meditation,’ and also gifted a copy to his student Rosalie Jousset. However, the gift was intercepted by Aurélie Jousset, Rosalie’s mother-in-law. She found the whole situation highly inappropriate and replied to Gounod with an alternative text under the original poem. It was the text of the popular Latin prayer ‘Ave Maria.’ Gounod understood the hint and subsequently adopted Aurélie’s version. In 1859, the first version of ‘Ave Maria’ was recorded.”
(There had to have been an angelic Helmsman in there somewhere during that long voyage). I wonder how many other hymns have come to us off-tangent like that ?
A little further in that article, they discuss “Utilization in the Popular Culture.” That’s where my focus would’ve been in the earlier post- not at some point along the musical evolution or etymological line of the piece. My comments were rooted in today’s world, and how people perceive the piece today, how it applies today. Because the video is also now, today – not back then. The listener only needs to hear several bars of the intro – well before the lyrics begin, to recognize it as “the Ave Maria.” That is what even the first few bars call to the listener’s mind – Ave Maria. This is how we perceive it in present day. The lyrics and the melody are intertwined. It’s a hymn.
I’m not sure I implied a “direct attack” on prayer (but I do get pretty steamed at stuff that has the potential to diss our Blessed Mother). My words were : “He (Vinhetiero) probably doesn’t even realize he’s mocking a prayer – does he ?” , which leaves a bit of wiggle room for it being done inadvertently.
I used the word “mock”. You used the word “parody”. I see no conflict there. Parody mocks the subject. I perceive the subject as the entire hymn – one artistic work. You maintain the words and the melody can be separated, but in today’s world I maintain that this particular melody conveys the words . . .which we find just a little bit difficult to make out in this unique case because rubber chickens (and real chickens) don’t know how to enunciate on a human level (maybe it’s the way he’s squeezing them). But the chickens are the singers – not the listeners.
How does that video affect the listeners who have a devotion to our Blessed Mother ?
The mark of 2/100 I suggested was for “tact.” I stand by that one. Tact is the ability to pull off what you want to or have to do without offending or upsetting others.
. . . Really struggling to try and believe that particular video could somehow be pleasing to our Blessed Lord or to His gentle Mother.
And Vinhetiero really had no actual need to choose that hymn – he really didn’t.
@NavyVet : I salute you for your service (my dad and both my brothers served).
God bless.