for singer & three instrumentalists. (Singer represented by Bb clarinet, tin whistle, concertina, and viola.)
The band is me using Sibelius notation software, plus Garritan Personal Orchestra.
Story behind the song
It's late 1944 and the war rages in Europe. Frau Gnahb, in her "fishing smack," has plucked Tyrone Slothrop, dressed in evening clothes, up out of the stormy Baltic, thus saving him from nearly drowning. Later, as she plays a quick game of chicken with a passenger ferry, her son Otto gives her a silent but plaintive "Please, Mother" look, to which she (in true Thomas Pynchon style) replies by bursting into song:
[see song lyrics]
The song completes, at which point, "she grips the wheel and accelerates. They find themselves now leaping toward the side of a half-sunken merchantman..."
From the novel "Gravity's Rainbow" by Thomas Pynchon. The Frau Gnahb sequence is found on pp. 492-505 (Viking Press), 573-589 (Bantam edition).
The MP3 recording (played through SynthFont using Merlin Vienna & other soundfonts) is specifically designed to give the impression of a musico-anthropological or Folkways/Smithsonian "field recording"--like amateur sailor-musicians backing up Frau Gnahb in the wheelhouse as she steers and "sings." (Playing using General Midi or loading different fonts of your choosing will produce a higher quality result, if that is your preference.)
And, what about that viola and concertina: are they playing wrong notes, or is it scored that way on purpose?
Lyrics
*Sea Shanty*
"I'm the Pirate Queen of the Baltic Run, and nobody f*** s with me--
And those who've tried are bones and skulls, and lie beneath the sea.
And the little fish like messengers swim in and out their eyes,
Singing, 'F*** ye not with Gory Gnahb and her desperate enterprise!'
"I'll tangle with a battleship, I'll massacre a sloop,
I've sent a hundred souls to hell in one relentless swoop--
I've seen the Flying Dutchman, and each time we pass, he cries,
'Oh, steer me clear of Gory Gnahb and her desperate enterprise!'"
Copyright 1973, Thomas Pynchon.
