Poetry Lives!

All research or scholarship questions
njoy
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Poetry Lives!

Postby njoy » Mon Oct 21, 2013 6:59 pm

Does anyone know the poet 'Abd'ul-Baha writes to here? http://reference.bahai.org/en/t/ab/TAB/tab-57.html

The next few letters are also to poets but perhaps not the same one.

O thou who art attracted by the Fragrances of God!

Verily, I chanted thy poem. Its significance was beautiful, its composition eloquent and its words excellent. It was like the melody of the birds of holiness in the paradise of El-ABHA. The breasts of the maid-servants of the Merciful were exhilarated by its chanting. Blessed art thou for uttering forth such an excellent poem and brilliant pearl.

Verily, these verses shall be sung in the divine meetings and in the assemblages of the spiritual in the course of ages and centuries to come, for thou hast uttered the praise of thy Lord and expressed significant meanings in eulogy of thy Lord, the Merciful, the Clement. All poems shall be forgotten in the course of time save those that are extraordinary; thy poem shall be chanted with melody and best voices in the Center of Worship (or Mashrak-el-Azcar) forevermore.

MontanaDon
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby MontanaDon » Mon Oct 21, 2013 10:33 pm

A bit of a side note, but this is not included in the pdf file at the the BWC site.
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Understood properly, all man's problems are essentially spiritual in nature.

MontanaDon
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby MontanaDon » Mon Oct 21, 2013 11:01 pm

Oops, take that back.
But the pdf file is partially restricted. While that keeps people from making changes, it also keeps it from being searched. Interesting. Didn't know such things were possible.

Don C
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Understood properly, all man's problems are essentially spiritual in nature.

brettz9
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby brettz9 » Mon Oct 21, 2013 11:34 pm

I'd guess that there would probably be ways around the searching problem unless the data were stored as images (and even then it could be OCRd back)...

MontanaDon
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby MontanaDon » Tue Oct 22, 2013 1:04 am

Prob OCR but easier to just use the Word version.
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Understood properly, all man's problems are essentially spiritual in nature.

njoy
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby njoy » Fri Oct 25, 2013 1:17 am

Okay, I guess that'd be a "no". Anybody know any Baha'i poets from that era? Are there collections of Baha'i poems online? Web sites?

Since the Master says, "All poems shall be forgotten in the course of time save those that are extraordinary; thy poem shall be chanted with melody and best voices in the Center of Worship (or Mashrak-el-Azcar) forevermore." probably someone will eventually identify this poem and likely figure out who it was written by.

Now, would be nice.

Sen McGlinn
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby Sen McGlinn » Sat Oct 26, 2013 3:29 am

The tablet is apparently addressed to Louise R. Waite (who at that time was Louise R. Spencer), a Bahá'í poet and song writer, and refers to a hymn rather than a poem - or a poem written to be sung in a place of worship is also called a hymn. I have seen this tablet dated 1902 ( http://librivox.org/new-year-greeting-b ... e-r-waite/ ) but Jackson Armstrong-Ingram dates it 1903 (see Music, devotions and Mashriqu'l-Adhkar p 34). According to the same source, the tablet is written in response to her sending him the words for her hymn "The Greatest name," and she wrote the music for it after receiving the tablet. The text and music of "The Greatest Name" are in the same book, page 347,

With joyful hearts we do proclaim the
power of the Greatest Name;
Today forever more the same,
al-lah-ho Ab-ha

Great name that is a shining light
to lead us onward through the night
Dispelling darkness by its might
al-lah-ho Ab-ha

Let nations rise from shore to shore
And sing it over o'er and o'er;
Then wars shall cease forevermore:
al-lah-ho Ab-ha

Great name of joy, of peace, and rest
That fills with harmony each breast
Its glory shines from east to west:
al-lah-ho Ab-ha

Repeat it, and it reaches far;
From world to world and star to star
Naught can its glorious radiance mar:
al-lah-ho Ab-ha

Great Name we love more every day
To say it over is to pray
And angels listen and obey: al-lah-ho Ab-ha

Its rhythm swings from pole to pole;
its music soon shall fill each soul;
And heavens scroll shall backward roll:
al-lah-ho Ab-ha

al-lah-ho Ab-ha Let it ring
Up to the throne of God, our King;
Let men and angels joyous sing:
al-lah-ho Ab-ha

njoy
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby njoy » Mon Oct 28, 2013 7:09 am

Thank you! It's really quite a spiffing hymn. Not crazy about " over o'er and o'er" but the rest is great. I checked out the link hoping to hear the music but could find only one entry attributed to Louise Waite (and none to Louise Spencer). It was a different poem (spoken) called New Year Greeting which I downloaded.

Do you know where I might find a copy of Jackson Armstrong-Ingram's book?

Some friends and I are deepening on those wonderful Tablets of 'Abd'ul-Baha. They will love knowing who the poet is and hearing two of her poems.

Jonah
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby Jonah » Mon Oct 28, 2013 1:10 pm

Do you know where I might find a copy of Jackson Armstrong-Ingram's book?

Jackson's book was a great read, and I'd love to see it online. Before he passed on, both he and the publisher gave me permission to post it. But it does not exist in digital copy; it would need to be scanned. Alas, I no longer have my hardcopy, nor a high-speed scanner.

njoy
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby njoy » Mon Nov 11, 2013 8:42 am

Ah, how distressing, Jonah.

Sen McGlinn
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby Sen McGlinn » Mon Nov 11, 2013 3:30 pm

It has now been scanned for Bahai-library and is presumably in the works

Jonah
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby Jonah » Tue Nov 12, 2013 11:44 pm

Yup, running OCR on it tonight. Thanks for sending it, Sen! -Jonah

Jonah
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby Jonah » Wed Nov 27, 2013 9:38 pm

Sorry for the delay, had to try a few different ways of processing the document for optimal results. It's now online at http://bahai-library.com/armstrong-ingr ... qul-adhkar

brettz9
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby brettz9 » Mon Dec 09, 2013 2:24 am

The following may be of interest to those wishing to see old music notation discoverable and playable online (such as the Greatest Name hymn).

I recently came across some music notation (in Star of the West, vol. 1, issue 4, p. 30 with the original page containing the score being in image format at http://en.bahaitext.org/File:SW_v1no4pg30.png ) and wanted a good way to encode such scores, especially if it would be possible that the browser could play their audio back to the user automatically.

I first experimented with software called VexTab which was quite nice in being able to work client-side (so a website could allow you to make changes without needing a whole page refresh) as well as render in the manipulable (e.g., for showing the notes lighting up as they play) and scalable SVG format.

However, this software still appears to have limitations (alignment issues, apparently inability to represent treble+bass clef together as it appears to have been designed for guitar, and a lack of out-of-the-box support for MIDI conversion so the song can be converted into audio.)

I then added a score encoded in this format to http://en.bahaitext.org/Bahai_News/Volu ... sue_4#pg30 (perm link, SVG).

However, I then discovered that there is a Mediawiki extension, "Score" which, though not possessing some of the potential benefits of VexTab, can, in connection with another extension, "OggHandler", support auto-conversion into browser-playable MIDI audio (in addition to standard music notation), and pending a planned upgrade of en.bahaitext.org to support these extensions, you can see the score along with a play button at the bottom of the page at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Bre ... TempleSong so you can hear what the hymn sounds like.

In case anyone were also interested to annotate musical scores (such as the Greatest Name song now that we have it available; update: this is now also encoded as per the next posting), the documentation of the Lilypond music notation format (as used in the "Score" extension) is at http://www.lilypond.org/doc/v2.16/Docum ... ning/index and it really did not take more than a couple hours to learn. It would of course be nice to have the other hymns mentioned in the work encoded as well if copyright permits (and that would seem may be the case, as works published before 1923 are in the public domain in the U.S. or in public domain if before at most 70 years after the author's death in other countries, which in Louise Waite's case would appear to be the case as of May 27, 2009 based on the dating of her death per page 38 of the Armstrong-Ingram document).

On another "note", due to it being a sister project of the popular Wikipedia site, the free and open library site, Wikisource (where I am temporarily housing the music score demo), may be a good place for us to store Baha'i texts (and scores) which are in the public domain. The collection there at present is quite limited, despite the site's high visibility.

brettz9
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Re: Poetry Lives!

Postby brettz9 » Mon Dec 09, 2013 7:58 am

Ok, now Louise Waite's "The Greatest Name" is marked up for notation and MIDI play-back: https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Bre ... eatestName as with her piece, "The Temple Song" at https://en.wikisource.org/wiki/User:Bre ... TempleSong .


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