There once was a Bird and there once was a Dog,
And the bird was Despondent, or sad,
A pensive frown on her Busy beak,
No matter that Cake could be had.

The Goat suggested a Convertible drive,
To purchase a cheering up Hat,
At a Haberdashery with a Scarlet door,
And a Baby to sell them just that.

The hats have Panache, of course, of course,
A sense of excitement and style,
The Mezzo-Soprano is done with her song,
So let’s all just eat for a while.

Tra la, tra la, tra la, tra la,
And sing those tra las once more.
Tra la, tra la, tra la, tra la,
Try not to get crumbs on the floor.

-Lemony Snicket

Recorded by Eve Gigliotti and Nico Muhly.

PART I THE HEREAFTER (1892)
I believe in the Hereafter. Material appetites or love for the real don’t beguile me. It’s not habit but instinct. The heavenly word will be added
to life’s imperfect sentence, otherwise inane. Respite and reward will follow upon action. When sight is forevermore closed to Creation,
the eye will be opened in the presence of the Creator. An immortal wave of life will flow from each and every Gospel of Christ—wave of life uninterrupted.

NEAR AN OPEN WINDOW
In the stillness of an autumn night, I sit near an open window, for entire hours, in a perfect, voluptuous tranquility.
The gentle rainfall of the leaves descends.
The keening of the perishable world resounds within my perishable nature,
but is a dulcet keening, rising like a prayer. My window opens up an unknown world. A fount of fragrant memories, unutterable, appears before me.
Against my window wings are beating—chill autumnal exhalations
approach me and encircle me and in their holy tongue they speak to me.
I feel vague and wide-embracing hopes; and in the hallowed silence of creation, my ears hear melodies,
hear the crystalline, the mystic music of the chorus of the stars.

PART II SEPTEMBER OF 1903 (1904)
At least let me be deceived by delusions, now, so that I might not feel my empty life. And I was so close so many times. And how I froze, and how I was afraid;
why should I remain with lips shut tight; while within me weeps my empty life, and my longings wear their mourning black. To be, so many times, so close
to the eyes, and to the sensual lips, to the dreamed of, beloved body. To be, so many times, so close.

JANUARY OF 1904 (1904)
Ah this January, this January’s nights,
when I sit and refashion in my thoughts those moments and I come upon you, and I hear our final words, and hear the first.
This January’s despairing nights, when the vision goes and leaves me all alone. How swiftly it departs and melts away— the trees go, the streets go, the houses go, the lights go: it fades and disappears, your erotic shape.
PART III 27 JUNE 1906, 2 P. M. (1908)
When the Christians brought him to be hanged, the innocent boy of seventeen, his mother, who there beside the scaffold had dragged herself and lay beaten on the ground beneath the midday sun, the savage sun,
now would moan, and howl like a wolf, a beast, and then the martyr, overcome, would keen “Seventeen years only you lived with me, my child.” And when they took him up the scaffold’s steps and passed the rope around him and strangled him, the innocent boy, seventeen years old,
and piteously it hung inside the void, with the spasms of black agony— the youthful body, beautifully wrought— his mother, martyr, wallowed on the ground and now she keened no more about his years: “Seventeen days only,” she keened, “seventeen days only I had joy of you, my child.”

IMPOSSIBLE THINGS (1897)
There is one joy alone, but one that’s blessed, one consolation only in this pain. How many thronging tawdry days were missed because of this ending; how much ennui.
A poet has said: “The loveliest music is the one that cannot be played.” And I, I daresay that by far the best life is the one that cannot be lived.
—C.P. CAVAFY
translated by Daniel Mendelsohn

In most versions of the tale, one sister kills the other over a boy””one is dark, and one is fair; one receives a token of the boy’s love, while the other seethes with envy. When the song is sung in Ireland, for example, her hair is used to string a harp played on the murderess’s wedding day, whereas in this rendition it strings a fiddle-bow.

What most of these songs have in common is this musical necromancy, fashioning a dead body into a musical instrument. Muhly uses the morbid tableau as a metaphor for the acts of violence and dissection inherent in any folk-song arrangement: The Only Tune is split into three distinct sections, each introduced by a turbulent and chaotic prelude. The harmony is embroidered with strange dissonances. Even the lyrics are dismembered and rebuilt, with a nod to the process-driven text setting of minimalist music. – Program Notes © 2007 Daniel Johnson

Credits
Sam Amidon: banjo, guitar, vocals; Valgeir Sigurðsson: knives, electronics; Ben Frost: Frost-bass programming, hair;
Sigríður Sunna Reynisdóttir: hair; Nadia Sirota: viola

Texts

There there there were there were there were two there were two there were two sis there were two sis there were two sisters there were two sisters there were two sisters wah there were two sisters wah there were two sisters walking there were two sisters walking there were two sisters walking down there were two sisters walking down there were two sisters walking down by there were two sisters walking down by there were two sisters walking down by a there were two sisters walking down by a there were two sisters walking down by a there were two sisters walking down by a there were two sisters walking down by a stream there were two sisters walking down by a stream There were two sisters walking down by a stream Oh, the wind and the rain Older one pushed the younger one in Oh, the dreadful wind and rain Pushed her in the river to drown Oh, the wind and the rain Watched her as she floated on down Oh, the dreadful wind and rain! Floated on down to the old mill pond Oh, the wind and the rain Floated on down to the old mill pond Oh, the dreadful wind and rain! Pushed her in the river to drown Oh, the wind and the rain Watched her as she floated on down Oh, the dreadful wind and rain! Floated on down to the old mill pond Oh, the wind and the rain Floated on down to the old mill pond Oh, the dreadful wind and rain! She floated on down to the old mill pond Oh, the wind and the rain Floated on down to the old mill pond Oh, the dreadful wind and rain! The miller fished her out with his long long hook Oh, the wind and the rain He brought this maid in from the brook Oh the dreadful wind and rain! He laid her on the bank to dry Oh, the wind and the rain A fiddling fool came passing by, Oh, the dreadful wind and rain! He made a fiddle bow from her long yellow hair Oh, the wind and the rain, he made a fiddle bow of her long yellow hair Oh, the dreadful wind and rain! He made fiddle pegs from her long finger bones, Oh, the wind and the rain, he made fiddle pegs from her long finger bones Oh, the dreadful wind and rain! He made a fiddle bridge from her own nose bridge, Oh, the wind and the rain, he made a fiddle bridge from her own nose bridge Oh, the dreadful wind and rain! and he made a fiddle from her own breast bone Oh, the wind and the rain, whose sound could melt a heart of stone Oh, the dreadful wind and rain! and the only tune that fiddle could play Oh, the wind and the rain, the only tune that fiddle would play was, “Oh, the dreadful wind and rain!” (oh oh the oh the dread oh the dreadful oh the dreadful wind oh the dreadful wind and oh the dreadful wind and rain)

Sam Amidon rehearsing The Only Tune in Zankel Hall, March, 2007

Nico & Ben after negotiating the bass sounds, Reykjavík

Nico & Sam during The Only Tune recordings, Þingvellir, Iceland