It's time again for Three Tune Tuesday, that day of the week where members of the Hive community shares three songs of their liking with the rest of the community.
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I take a slow, relaxing approach to Three Tune Tuesday: I like to share pre-1924 78rpm songs from my collection, and record them while playing on an appropriate time-period windup phonograph. I encourage you to take a few moments and slow down with me. Settle down, close your eyes, and take yourself back.. way back.. in time, to a distant uncle's parlour in the early 1920's. There are comfortable seats, pleasant conversation, and old music.
Yep, it's that time again. I know I'm off and on. Alas. Such is life.
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This week's TTT for me is all about Stoicism. Stoicism is a philosophical school that originated in ancient Greece and taught that, above all else, all you control is your own mind. Marcus Aurelius was perhaps the most popular stoic philosopher, along with being the emperor of Rome, and much of what we learn about Stoicism we have learned through his Meditations. His birthday would be this week, hence the Stoic TTT treatment.
Ye Boston Tea Party March
Arthur W. Pryor wrote the piece in 1897, pitching it as an “America’s Patriotic Two‑Step Hit” and dedicating it to the Daughters of the American Revolution—he wanted listeners marching straight back to 1773 with fife‑and‑drum swagger. The original sheet music bristles with colonial imagery (tea crates, tricorn hats, liberty drums) and proudly labels itself a sectional march‑and‑two‑step so dancers could pivot from parade ground to ballroom without missing a beat.
Stoically speaking, the Boston rebels weren’t smashing crates in blind fury—they were executing a deliberate act of civil disobedience, fully aware of the crown’s reprisal yet unmoved by fear. Marcus Aurelius wrote, “The obstacle on the path becomes the path,” and the Patriots literally turned a taxation obstacle into the first step toward independence. Let the brass fanfares remind today’s listeners that disciplined revolt can be as methodical—and as joyful—as a well‑drilled march section.
Souvenir de Rome
French composer Émile Paladilhe wrote this salon piece in 1869 as a wistful postcard to the Eternal City: a lilting 6⁄8 serenade whose piano arpeggios imitate mandolin tremolos. Alberto De Bassini—a Florentine baritone who peppered Columbia’s early catalogue with Italian art songs—set it to shellac in 1903 on a 7‑inch black‑label disc.
The melody rises on the word “Mandolinata,” then sighs downward like evening air spilling over the Tiber; it’s the aural opposite of a legionary’s trumpet, yet the song still bears Rome’s imprint of measured grace. Insert Marcus Aurelius here: penning his Meditations in military quarters, he reminds us that serenity isn’t scenery‑dependent—it’s portable. Where this track offers nostalgia for marble balconies, Marcus offers composure in war tents. Both frame wisdom as remembering what truly matters.
Invictus
This piece is absolutely moving.
William Ernest Henley wrote the poem in 1875 while recuperating from the amputation of his left leg; it’s stoicism boiled to 16 lines—“My head is bloody, but unbowed.” German‑British–American composer Bruno Huhn set those words in 1904, giving the vocalist a soaring minor‑key arch and two pianissimo pauses that feel like silent jaw‑clenches between blows.
Henley’s defiant credo meshes seamlessly with Marcus Aurelius’ instruction to “stand up straight—don’t be stood up.” Where Boston Tea Party channels collective revolt and Souvenir de Rome offers reflective calm, “Invictus” turns the lens inward: this is lone‑wolf stoicism, the private vow whispered after the crowds disperse. As the final sustained “soul” fades, the listener is left not with triumphal brass but with the intimate hum of self‑mastery—Stoicism’s endgame.
Three Tune Tuesday (TTT) is initiated by 
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(c) Victor Wiebe
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