What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IA)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IA)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

14 October

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part IA)

On Friday 17 October at 7.30, Cambridge Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) hosts the first in its annual Cambridge Classical Concert Series

Full details of the concert (and piece about the other two works) can be found here, but, during the second half, we have this one work, which has been known to me for decades (but I have never before tried to write about) :


Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) : Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 [more than fifty years earlier, in 1877, but otherwise as with Rachmaninov's Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini : started in the summer, and first performed later that year – please see below]


We start, logically enough, with the genesis of his Symphony No. 2, at the end of the nineteenth century…


Brahms on holiday

According to the conductor Hermann Levi, Johannes Brahms began work on the symphony in the summer of 1877, when he was staying at Pörtschach [am Wörthersee]¹, and the work was ‘ready in his head’ by the end of September (with the first movement on paper).

It was given its first performance on 30 December that year, in Vienna under Hans Richter. To a friend, Elisabet von Herzogenberg², he described the first performance in these terms :

The musicians play my new work with crêpe around their arms because it sounds so mournful. It will be printed on black-edged paper.


The reason being, so the story goes, that Brahms ‘amused himself by giving friends the impression that it was gloomy’. Likewise, he reportedly told his publisher Fritz Simrock that it was ‘so melancholy that you will not be able to hear it [sc. listen to it ?]’.


The Agent Apsley on holiday

Brahms came into my musical life in my mid-teenage years, jostling – just amongst the Bs – with Bach, Bartók, Beethoven for my attention (wasn’t quite ready for something of the proportions of Bruckner 6 then…).

All four Brahms symphonies (ranked in my head, usually, as 2 / 3 / 1 / 4 – or, sometimes, 3 / 2 / 1 / 4) were staples in my diet. Along with (because of pairing³ ?) his Tragic Overture (Tragische Ouvertüre), Op. 81, and Academic Festival Overture (Akademische Festouvertüre), Op. 80 (though I only now spot the contiguous Opus Numbers), and the piano concertos⁴.


So, when I was away with my parents, Symphony No. 2, or No. 3, might very well be in the car’s cassette-player – possibly as something of home when away ? At any rate, I was happy (even if not my family ?) to become very familiar with those affordable Classics for Pleasure recordings : The Hallé under James Loughran.

And, from the sleeve-notes, I had this received wisdom about Brahms and that joke (though, before conceiving this piece, I never troubled to relate it to what I think that this symphony sounds like)…


Back to the trickster

The typical photographic portraits of Brahms (of which that above is not one) do not encourage us to believe that, at the age of 44, he could have been a prankster. That said, appearance not infrequently belies the facts, e.g. with the eccentric looks and talented reality of George Bernard Shaw, so maybe this account of Brahms having played a joke on his friends is a misconception ?

First, though, we really need to see where this symphony fits with the others !


All four Brahms symphonies

No. 1 (in C Minor, Op. 68) – started in 1854 (or 1855), and at least fourteen years in the making (though Brahms said that it was twenty-one years)

No. 2 (in D Major, Op. 73) – 1877, Pörtschach¹

No. 3 (in F Major, Op. 90) – 1883, Wiesbaden

No. 4 (in E Minor, Op. 98) – 1884–1885, commenced in Mürzzuschlag (now in Austria, within north-east Styria)


The struggle to write that Symphony No. 1 (and an earlier one, in D Minor, subsumed in the Piano Concerto No. 1 in that key) ! Yet contrast it with the fluency with which, within six months or so each, Brahms was then able to write Nos 2 and 3 – what an immense gift it must have been for Brahms that No. 1 freed him from having been looked at as the beneficiary of what Beethoven left behind him...

(Perhaps it also freed Brahms from the heights of self-criticism that had him destroy so many earlier compositions ? Even if, however, the way in which he had intended to pay tribute to Beethoven, by overtly using thematic (and even rhythmic) material in the symphony, was held against him (as if he had plagiarized) – ‘Any fool can see that !’ is what he is said to have retorted to a friend who remarked on these affinities.)


That joke in context

Some commentators have seen this, second, symphony as ‘the most happy and serene’ of all four (and, hence, Brahms’ words as a jest). In any event, Symphony No. 1 had not been performed until 1876, and then we see Brahms – away from Vienna just the following year – start Symphony No. 2 and have it performed, all within the bounds of 1877. However, need that happy release, to be able to write symphonically with such comparative ease, mean that the symphony itself must be ‘happy and serene’, as claimed ?


My unchecked recollection is that the description is more accurate of Brahms’ Symphony No. 3 (in F Major, Op. 90) than of this one. Here, the opening (and longest) movement, an Allegro non troppo, pitches minor and major keys against each other, and, despite a dance-like, motile quality to the writing, feels what Radio 3’s Sean Rafferty might characterize as triste :

For it commences with what I hear as a somewhat melancholy opening theme on the horns (which, inevitably in symphonic form, Brahms brings back several times) - albeit lightened by the flute, when it makes its second intervention during the opening bars. So also, in the supposed tellings of the ‘joke’ quoted above, the words ‘mournful’ and also ‘melancholy’ appeared (NB : though in translation from German).

When a sense of lightness first comes, it may not feel like the waltz that it comes to hint at, and – with the transparency of the strings and the overlay of flute-notes – maybe we place ourselves in an Alpine meadow ? How settled we are there depends on one’s perception of, and reaction to, the saw-tooth arpeggios, uncomfortable harmonies, and, in the lower strings, almost Jaws-like disquieting depths.

Quite apart from which, as the movement cycles around itself, there are, when flute and oboe are not spinning cheerful arabesques, the cascades of droplets of notes, which, at first, fall in separate streams, and lead us to the phlegmatic-sounding horns, with notes in and over from the flute : this passage, and what follows from it, feels little like ‘happy and serene’, but instead over-tired, anxious and presciently modern music for its time.


In the shorter second movement (marked Adagio non troppo), the horn-calls, which are part of feeling tristesse, are joined by the restrained, moody reediness of clarinets, oboes and bassoons. Despite the pleasure of and beauty in an elegiac, stately, even sinuous theme introduced at the beginning, under-currents of questioning, hesitation, and doubt are here :

They are in the contributions made by those instruments (along with low brass), even if amongst suggestions – as in the first movement – of brighter possibilities. For the movement has an ebb and flow to it, as of the tide raking back down the shore. At the end, after a pause, the main theme returns, now eerily well-nigh incantatory, with timpani and clarinets in their chalumeau register – further pauses punctuate a repeated, unresolved chord, before bringing in a blazing, but momentary concord to conclude.


The Allegretto grazioso (quasi andantino) opens with a small group of players, as if it were chamber music. We have flutes again, and, in stating the theme, there is yet more tonally ambiguous solo writing for principal oboe, before it gives way to lively, accented rhythms, passed around the strings (with the delicacy perhaps sounding a little like the ballet-music of Pyotr Tchaikovsky (1840–1893), with whose career that of Brahms overlapped (1833–1897)).

Although, when the tutti come, they are radiant, the movement is also marked by its use of dissonance, with only a limited development section (befitting a Scherzo). When the first theme recurs finally, oboe and flute principals, who have been key players throughout, are to the fore and, in a very brief coda, contribute elements to the muted closing chord.


The closing movement is – and not wholly in comparison with all that has gone before – passionately triumphant. However, despite being an Allegro con spirito, it also is not exclusively so :

A sinuous quality has been noted already, and it is present in the way in which the main theme seems to weave in and out, in and out, as picked out quickly by the flute, before being given a full-throatedly exuberant treatment. One, however, that stalls, after bass-notes from the strings.

Before a second theme is introduced, we have brief contributions from clarinet (to serve whose needs Brahms was to bring himself out of retirement and write so spectacularly later on), horns, oboe and – with pizzicati – flute : amidst all these woodwind elements, we continue to have, absent the tutti, centres of passing tonal uncertainty, bird-like swoopings of the principal flute and oboe, and rallentandi, full of expansive Viennese grace.

When Brahms reaches unequivocally for the major, it is accompanied with swirling, ecstatic woodwind, and builds to crashing / churning moments of rhythmic intensity, which yet die back to woodwind and pizzicato upper strings. Thus, eased by those gracious slowings-down, we cycle around, until Brahms builds up to a bell-like closing statement of the theme, with tuba, trombones and trumpets, and in which there are excited rapidly and descending runs, yet fractionally held back by caesuræ. And even in the penultimate chords, there are subtle modulations – as if we might not, after all, make it to D Major…


Joke or no ?

Not meant to duck the issue (as I have now stated my opinion), but the answer to whether we think that Brahms was serious, or joking, largely now comes down to interpretation – if hearing the symphony were not, that is, already an interpretation : by an orchestra under the musical direction of a conductor.

On this occasion, of course, it is to be the RPO working under the baton of Fabien Gabel – and maybe they can help us, with subtle shifts on the night, do various things :

* Notice detail (those flute, oboe or horn parts ?)

* Hear the effect of different emphases

* React to variations in the tonal, textural, rhythmic, or emotional landscape

* Even the simple matter of a transition between movements : via YouTube (as I did, for this piece), watch Leonard Bernstein, with The Vienna Philharmonic, run the last two movements together, without a break…

Happy listening !


End-notes

¹ Who was, amongst other things, a pianist, singer, composer, teacher, and music publisher, as well as the wife of an Austrian composer (Brahms, though he adopted Vienna, was German).

² A lakeside town, and established summer resort, in the far South of modern-day Austria.

³ And a few of his twenty-one Hungarian Dances – possibly the three that he orchestrated himself (and only another three of them were his original compositions)… ?

⁴ Though not the violin concerto – possibly because I had a practice of listening to the Tchaikovsky concerto every day without fail ?


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part I)

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part I)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

13 October

What I am looking forward to in the Cambridge Classical Concert Series… (Part I)

On Friday 17 October at 7.30, Cambridge Corn Exchange (@CambridgeCornEx) hosts the first in its annual Cambridge Classical Concert Series

The series opens with the excellent Royal Philharmonic Orchestra (@rpoonline), again as The Corn Exchange's Orchestra in Residence (reviewed here, at the end of the previous series (earlier in the year), when Nicholas Collon conducted them in an all-British programme of Elgar, Britten, and Vaughan Williams…)


The programme for Friday is as follows:


First half

Robert Schumann (1810–1856) : Manfred Overture (please see below for a more accurate title) [mainly written in 1848, but first performed in 1852]

Sergei Rachmaninov (1873–1943) : Rhapsody on a Theme of Paganini, Op. 43 [apparently written in July / August 1934, and first performed that November]


Second half

Johannes Brahms (1833–1897) : Symphony No. 2 in D Major, Op. 73 [more than fifty years earlier, in 1877, but otherwise as with the Rachmaninov : started in the summer, and first performed later that year – please see below]


Extra : Please look here for a further connection, of sorts, between Brahms and Rachmaninov (plus a plethora of other Opus Numbers !)…

This posting – much delayed by the exigencies of trying to write up The 34th Cambridge Film Festival (@camfilmfest) – looks essentially at the reasons why we have the Overture as an isolated piece, whereas those about the Brahms is now linked here, and about the Rachmaninov here, are more personal responses (plus some more music history)


If one stops to investigate the phenomenon, it is remarkable that some pieces achieve a life beyond the work for which they were written :

Not so much in the case of a lovely aria, such as the famous ‘Erbarme dich’ (in Bach’s St Matthew Passion, BWV 244) or Gluck’s equally well-known ‘Che farò senza Euridice’ (from his Orfeo ed Euridice (from 1762)), where it is obvious that the strength of the writing has given birth to a lovely expression of feeling – although it is probably still best understood (first of all, at least) in context.

No. One has in mind, say, Beethoven’s Coriolan Overture, Op. 62 – or, as the Germans more style it, Ouvertüre zu Coriolan (Overture to Coriolan). The question of naming apart (though as true of the Manfred Overture in this concert), the music was written in 1807 for Heinrich Joseph von Collin's drama Coriolan.

Here, nothing suggests that there was any other incidental music. The complete works of von Collin (Gesammelte Werke, in six volumes) appeared between 1812 and 1814, and are still in print (so presumably still studied), but what really seems to survive with any life is the Overture*.


In the case of Schubert**, maybe his incidental music to Rosamunde*** (Op. 26, D. 797) has survived a little better. Yet the production, withdrawn after two nights, scarcely deviated from his other general lack of success in writing for the stage. Regarding this programme’s piece by Robert Schumann, it is, yet again, an extract – seemingly surviving largely on its own.

The ‘Overture’ is taken from Manfred : Dramatic Poem (with Music) in Three Parts (in the original German, Manfred. Dramatisches Gedicht in drei Abtheitungen), Op. 115, and is a setting of the dramatic work of that name by George, Lord Byron (published in 1817), mainly written in 1848.

Pictured is the title-page of the edition of Manfred that was prepared by Clara Schumann, Robert’s wife (and then widow), and it indicates that it had pretensions to be amongst his greater vocal works. Despite Hugo Wolf’s apparent appreciation for Manfred (Wolf lived from 1860 to 1903), its availability as a score (although modern scores are of the 'Overture' alone) and even as a recording, and the fact that academics are still writing about it (and, inevitably – it appears – with Schumann, his mental state at the time of writing it), the focus remains this ‘Overture’.

Curious creature, @thekatiederham - in introducing Lunchtime Concert, interchangeably pronounced Wolf as if written Wölf, @onradio3now...
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 12, 2014

Can I guess, though, that Schoenberg may creatively become Schonenberg, @thekatiederham @onradio3now... ?
— THE AGENT APSLEY (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) October 12, 2014

The result, seemingly, is that the whole Manfred is not allowed to stand alongside compositions such as Liederkreis, Dichterliebe and Frauenliebe und -leben (all earlier, being from 1840).


So it is does not even seem, after all, that this 'Overture' was separated from its musical home quite in the same way as for the other works considered above : they were attached to something that has not really survived, whereas this piece, by being picked out as the best part, has been severed from the body of Manfred and kept alive before us on the concert platform...


End-notes

* Likewise, to stay with Beethoven, his score to the ballet The Creatures of Prometheus, Op. 43 – the Overture is certainly in the concert repertoire, but what about the rest of the score (maybe only on Radio 3 (@BBCRadio3), where it has been broadcast), let alone the ballet itself ?

** If one does not check, Schubert (1797–1828) may seem more contemporary with Schumann (1810–1856) than with Beethoven, but Schubert’s life in fact much overlapped with that of Beethoven (1770–1827), since Schubert died before he was 32, and Schumann lived for more than 25 years beyond him. (As is well known, Schubert both felt himself in Beethoven’s shadow (as did Brahms (1833–1897), and was one of the great man’s torch-bearers.)

*** In full, the play Rosamunde, Fürstin von Zypern [Countess of Cyprus], by Helmina von Chézy.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Answers to a quiz for World Mental Health Day : The British* Patient

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)11 October

'Treating' The British* Patient

A quiz for World Mental Health Day (#WMHD2014 on 10 October), about patients’ rights, was inspired by re-watching The English Patient (1997) earlier in the week : here are the answers to the quiz. (That said, the answers are all The Agent Apsley’s and so - necessarily - is any responsibility for any mistakes or misunderstandings in writing them : unless, that is, you fail to offer a correction…)


A suggestion for reading : by all means read it all through, but why not focus on the answer to a question where you felt that a right had been outlined ?


Which of the following are rights of a patient in a psychiatric unit (in England & Wales*) when detained under section 2 of the Mental Health Act 1983 (as amended), headed ‘admission for assessment’ ? :


1. To be placed in a unit within 25 miles of home

Sadly, this is not a right, as recent news stories have highlighted, and even a patient being detained somewhere at that distance could effectively cut him or her off from most visits :

In rural Cambridgeshire, Huntingdon used to have its own units for adult and elderly mental health, whereas the provision for the town and its area is now located in Peterborough. A bed only being found initially at a distance (sometimes now hundreds of miles) is not a new phenomenon, but it is one that has been made more likely, and is so affecting more people, by reductions in both the numbers of units and the provision of accommodation (i.e. the capacity for which funding exists, irrespective of how many people the unit could hold (and even have been built for), if enough nursing and ancillary staff, supplies, etc., existed)


2. To see a psychiatrist within 3 hours if distressed

Since, as one might have been led to believe, psychiatric units are therapeutic, such a right might seem plausible.

However, even if the movement that gave us Patients’ Charters promised such a standard of care, or an NHS Trust itself committed to provide it, nothing under the Act itself gives this entitlement : seeing a psychiatrist within a specified time would not derive from being on section 2, but have to be a matter of Trust, or ward, policy.


3. Not to take medication, if offered twice already and refused

Although section 2 of the Act is headed ‘admission for assessment’, and section 3 ‘admission for treatment’, there is nothing to choose between them in this respect :

There is no general right not to be treated, i.e. not to take prescribed medication - which, if the patient repeatedly refuses when offered, can be given against his or her will.

This will either be by single injection (if the original medication exists in injectable form, failing which something similar), or, for anti-psychotic medications (properly called 'neuroleptics'), a long-lasting (depot) injection (to avoid the need for multiple forced administrations).


4. To take a walk in the ground for up to an hour, if the staff are told first

When on section, even such a simple thing as this depends on it being granted by the person who, at the time, is the Responsible Clinician** (RC), who can authorize (or rescind) it - for the starting position is that one is not allowed to leave the unit at all without permission.

If the staff have not been told that a person is granted ground leave, but he or she still goes for a walk, he or she is considered to be absent without leave (is this the Army ?) and can be brought back by force – if it were a longer walk, it might be interpreted as trying to abscond (is this HM Prison ?), and the police could seek out him or her and oblige his or her return.

And - cynically speaking - the unit is easier to manage, and there is less work and documentation, if patients are not, as they should be, encouraged to exercise and be physically active : RCs do not need to grant permissions that have to be checked, and it is easier to carry out the regular head-count (is this Colditz ?)


5. To have family or friends visit outside visiting hours in the first two weeks of the admission

This, too, might sound reasonable, but it is not a right that is given by falling under the Act (although the Code of Practice may have something to say about what is good practice) :

If the NHS Trust, or the manager of the unit, makes such a facility available, all well and good. (Likewise, the visiting hours themselves are determined at that level.)


6. To drive, as long as one’s partner is present

The Mental Health Act is silent about this (and it could be just as relevant to someone not detained under it, an informal patient).

Unfortunately, all too often, consultant and other staff are also silent, failing to ask themselves – by enquiring of the patient and / or his or her family whether he or she drives – whether the patient’s family realizes that his or her diagnosed (or suspected) mental-health condition needs to be reported to the DVLA (Driver and Vehicle Licensing Authority), and that it is appropriate to recommend to them whether he or she should be allowed to drive.

The DVLA then contacts the consultant for medical evidence, and makes a decision about maintaining, limiting, or revoking the driving licence, based on the diagnosis and what the consultant reports.


7. To go home on overnight leave at least once per week

Leave is sometimes called section 17 leave, because that is the section of the Act under which the Responsible Clinician** (RC) can choose to grant it. That will be a clinical decision, and, since RCs are cautious beasts (as they are still largely consultant psychiatrists), granting leave is never going to be tied to how long the patient has been admitted :

Not least on the common assumption that, if in doubt, it is better for the patient to be on the unit, rather than on leave at home (even if that is 'the least restrictive' option - and a noisy ward, with other patients who are 'high', may not do someone much good who is very depressed).

However, in practice, there will be a correlation between the length of the admission and the length and frequency of leave granted, if the patient is considered to be ‘getting better’ : so, patients can be directed to the fact that leave is being given more often, and for longer, if questioning what the consultant thinks of his or her state of mind.


8. To vote in local and national elections

One can find a summary of the position, under the sub-heading ‘Patients in psychiatric hospitals’, on Citizens’ Advice’s Advice Guide web-site.

As to the law, Acts of Parliament other than the Mental Health Act 1983 have legislated on this topic. Most recently, section 73 of the Electoral Administration Act 2006 has taken the trouble to abolish the so-called common-law rules about ‘mental state’ and ‘incapacity’ (s. 73(1)).

Also, the Representation of the People Act 2000 amended the 1983 Act of that name, to specify that, if registered to vote, there is a right to vote. Practically, though, one would not only have to get to a polling-station in one’s registered constituency, but also not be ‘subject to any legal incapacity to vote’ (s. 1(1)(b) of the 1983 Act (as amended)) : practically, then, staff on the psychiatric unit will not let one’s family take one to vote, if one has been determined to lack capacity.


9. To choose to be treated, on the NHS, by another psychiatrist who is employed by the same NHS Trust

If one credited that provisions in the Health and Social Care Act 2012 signified anything, such as the duty (under section 4) on the Secretary of State for Health to ‘have regard to the need to reduce inequalities between the people of England with respect to the benefits that they can obtain from the health service’, one might believe in a right to a second opinion, or even a choice of practitioner.

Or one can read NHS England’s web-site for what it similarly has to say about the much-vaunted principle of parity of esteem (under the 2012 Act), but one will probably search more successfully for a chimæra than in the 1983 Act for the right to choose who has oversight of one’s psychiatric care…


10. To specify that one would never, whatever the consequence, wish to have ECT

Yes, one has the right to make an advanced directive to this effect (as section 58A, sub-section (5), of the Act acknowledges (s. 58A(5)).

That said (and, again, despite that so-called parity of esteem, as discussed in answering Q9), one has less comfort in this than one might think, for, as Stephen Weatherhead (@SteWeatherhead) and The Agent (@THEAGENTAPSLEY) have suggested, the Act also stipulates (in s. 62(1), in the cases specified by paragraphs (a) and (b)) that the directive sometimes does not even signify :

For section 62(1A) says ‘Section 58A above, in so far as it relates to electro-convulsive therapy by virtue of subsection (1)(a) of that section, shall not apply to any treatment which falls within paragraph (a) or (b) of subsection (1) above’ :

Which means, as those paragraphs tell us, treatment ‘which is immediately necessary to save the patient’s life’ (para. (a)), or ‘which (not being irreversible) is immediately necessary to prevent a serious deterioration of his condition' (para. (b))…


11. To see a mental health advocate about any matter of concern

Under section 130A of the Act, the role of Independent Mental Health Advocates (IHMAs) was established (as inserted by the Mental Health Act 2007), and there is national provision for IMHAs (and their establishment and regulation).

Prior to the 2007 Act, but not in name, IMHAs already operated in some places, because advocacy services were already funded : they had protocols and agreements with psychiatric units that allowed these proto-IMHAs to see patients on units, and, because it was not IMHA, they were not limited (as IMHA requires) to addressing rights and concerns arising under the 1983 Act.

To answer the question, then, whether one has a right to see an advocate about ‘any matter of concern’, e.g. whether one can be dismissed for having been sectioned, depends on whether IMHA and general advocacy have been funded in one's locality. Only if so, and then not wholly because of the Act, could a patient raise any concern with an advocate.


12. To spend at least two hours per week, as a total duration, in conversation with one’s primary nurse

By now, the overall pattern may have emerged, so one may not be surprised that the Act would not require this amount of contact-time.

Which is not to say, whether or not directed to do so by a Clinical Commissioning Group (CCG), an NHS Trust could not have made that promise, or a manager of a unit made that part of its operational rules…


Those are The Agent's Answers (as at 11 October (updated 15 October))

It may be open to question whether any rights that are talked about were actually given by the Mental Health Act, or exist despite someone's being detained under one of its sections - the most common mistake of which there was already evidence is to believe that section 2 differs from section 3 regarding treatment under compulsion.

Probably the closest that we come is, with Q8, the changes that finally allowed someone to vote when on section 2 (whereas those in hospital because of the Act's criminal provisions are treated along with this government's attitude towards the prison population, hated for seeking to invoke the right to vote as a Human Right), provided that the person is not determined to lack capacity, though (as in Q10) there is this rather empty victory of advanced directives being acknowledged, but not always being binding (which feels as though one hand gives, the other takes away again)...

However, it was generally intended to challenge with these questions : the fact that, almost certainly, none of them embodied what one could call an absolute, unequivocal right for a detained patient.



End-notes

* Scotland has its own Mental Health Act, so this is only applicable to the law of England & Wales.

** Prior to 2007, this person was the RMO, or Responsible Medical Officer : most RCs are still psychiatrists, however, although the intention of the Mental Health Act 2007 was to widen eligibility for the role.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

A quiz for World Mental Health Day : The British* Patient

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

9 October

The British* Patient

Inspired by rewatching The English Patient (1997) earlier in the week, here is a quiz for World Mental Health Day (#WMHD2014 on 10 October) about patients’ rights...


Which of the following are rights of a patient in a psychiatric unit (in England & Wales*) when detained under section 2 of the Mental Health Act 1983 (as amended), headed ‘admission for assessment’ ? :


1. To be placed in a unit within 25 miles of home

2. To see a psychiatrist within 3 hours if distressed

3. Not to take medication, if offered twice already and refused

4. To take a walk in the ground for up to an hour, if the staff are told first

5. To have family or friends visit outside visiting hours in the first two weeks of the admission

6. To drive, as long as one’s partner is present

7. To go home on overnight leave at least once per week

8. To vote in local and national elections

9. To choose to be treated, on the NHS, by another psychiatrist who is employed by the same Trust

10. To specify that would never, whatever the consequence, wish to have ECT

11. To see a mental health advocate about any matter of concern

12. To spend at least two hours per week, in total, in conversation with one’s primary nurse




Answers, as at 11 October, are here...






End-notes

* Scotland has its own Mental Health Act, so this is only applicable to the law of England & Wales.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Mathematics for the Million (after Hogben) ?

This is a Festival review of How I Came to Hate Maths (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

8 October (Tweets embedded, 15 December, 22 April 2015)

This is a Festival review of How I Came to Hate Maths (Comment j’ai détesté les maths) (2013)

Amazon sellers hit by nightmare before Christmas as glitch cuts prices to 1p http://t.co/IV29NIiUK8
— The Guardian (@guardian) December 14, 2014

Except as far as the first part of the film is concerned, the title How I Came to Hate Maths is somewhat misleading*, for we actually spend much time with people who are studying, or employed in, higher-level mathematics…

Contrariwise, some seem to have complained that the film is not what it does not seem to try to be, which is a sweeping account of how mathematics affects our lives and what mathematicians might be like : one, in particular, with an unusual dress sense and a striking scorpion fashion-accessory (pictured below), speaks very potently about what mathematics is and what the prize that he has gone to India to be awarded means to him.

Cédric Villani, who won a Fields Medal in 2010

He, and another Frenchman, who teaches the subject, both also touch upon (as the start of the film does) the changes in presenting it that brought about what the appropriate generation would know as The New Maths, when textbooks such as that of the Midlands Mathematical Experiment were being used (for some reason, Sarah Dillon, in her review for TAKE ONE, seems to interpret this development as a specifically French one). The film makes clear that The New Maths was not, as it might be in another subject, a change in emphasis or on techniques used to understand concepts, but redefining, at much greater length, such things as what one might mean by a straight line.

What is equally clear was that there were winners and losers, in, respectively, those who related to this approach, and those who found themselves excluded by it, but also that the change itself is still not viewed, all this time later, as having been self-evidently right, but having been partly influenced by forces and paradigms outside what is essential about mathematics itself. For those who get to study mathematics in depth, those matters may be less material, and it is with them that we spend most of the film.

Some mathematicians have religiously defended maths as being on the arts side, as if to defend it from being tainted by the sciences (by not being seen as creative). One mathematician, however, was keen to stress how studying the patterns created by dripping honey onto toast, as both one moves in relation to the other and the speed of the falling material changes, is actually relevant to laying cable on the sea-bed, so that it falls smoothly and does not make those convolutions.

Maybe we duplicated our attention unnecessarily in seeing two ‘retreats’ / summer schools for mathematicians (please see comments below as to whether the film could have been ‘trimmed’), in one of which they even made seating plans so that each person sat at table with every other person at least once (hardly a higher-level mathematical task since, once a program had been devised, the names could just be slotted in each time) – and maybe it would have been nice to have heard more interesting comments from those working for organizations such as Google® than appreciation of the topology of a favourite (commissioned ?) sculpture…

In reviewing the film, Sarah Dillon takes issue with the time devoted to high-speed (or quantum) trading, as if this is somehow peripheral to the subject of mathematics, although a former academic mathematician, Jim Simons (who set up Renaissance Technologies), is at the heart of what has been happening with computer-driven decision-making. Dillon claims that :

The film loses its pace when it moves away from this world [that of ‘higher-level mathematics research’] in order to address the role of mathematics in the global financial crisis. Whilst this is clearly an important contemporary moment in the story the film is telling, the film spends too long on it – cut by about fifteen minutes it would have been a good end to an otherwise perfectly balanced piece.


Just on the figures and with a run-time of 110 mins (and, as remarked elsewhere, The Queen’s Building at Emmanuel College does not, in its lecture-theatre, have the most comfortable seating in the world), that would mean cutting it to around 95 mins. However, Dillon must be mistaken in thinking that the film’s financial focus took it this much out of her ideal proportion – for, although she may have had a stopwatch on it, fifteen minutes would seem more like the total ‘spend’ on that topic, not the amount by which it could have been shortened. The Tweet embedded now at the top of this review is meant to suggest further why such things matter to us all...

Market Turbulence: Wall Street’s Whipsaw Week Shows Global Economy’s Flaws http://t.co/TqSvkKPzql
— The New York Times (@nytimes) October 10, 2014

That said, as long as one credits the meaning of the world economy, and that global trends ought, because governments subscribe to its having significance, to be allowed to crush the lives of millions who are not at fault, quantum trading in commodities, futures, etc., will continue to have the potential to cause chaos. Couple that with the incident that occurred on 6 May 2010, which has been trivially called The Flash Crash (and which no one in the film seems to be able to explain in detail), and it must be right to question what high-speed trading has led us to, and what it might lead to again : in something of the order of 30 minutes, 10% was lost from the value of the Dow Jones, only to be gained back within the day.

Trader charged with manipulation that contributed to 2010 "flashcrash" http://t.co/aIT7M2alOC pic.twitter.com/aWm2Ydypiw

— The New York Times (@nytimes) April 21, 2015

Some human decision-makers would have ‘held their nerve’ and traded their way out of the position, others, seemingly along with the automated trading that was going on at phenomenally high frequencies, would have ‘cut their losses’ – and all over what, as no one even identifies market insecurities as being responsible to so-called positions collapsing? These are the Modern financial instruments, and does not a film about mathematics fitly ask some questions about this, when mistakes in super-string theory, not even mentioned, do not damage people’s pension-funds ?

People who like to talk about Google sometimes speak of its algorithm (as if that explains anything, when there are countless algorithms in how it is put together, not just one). With trading, we are essentially talking of the effects of one program going through the contingencies, which have been dictated by the program-steps, over and over at enormous speeds, coupled with that other programs doing the same, each at the same time, and in a process of not necessarily predictable feedback, shifting their stances / responses. Possibly a massive game of crying wolf, such as unautomated trading could also give rise to, but where one could never go back to who cried it…

The calm tone of acceptance of Wikipedia®'s article also makes for alarming reading !


Post-script

For his Movie Evangelist (@MovieEvangelist) blog (up to Day 9 of 11 so far in writing up the Festival), Mark Liversidge wrote this review, which, at two paragraphs, is rather on the short side :

Although Mark is certainly right that it is a kind of anthology, in that it begins with maths teaching and rarely, if ever, returns, one has to ask Where (in the film) is it suggested, let alone stated, that it intended 'to come close to helping those in the “normal person, hate maths” understand why maths is so cool to those of us in the other camp' [word missing, but Mark divides the world in two : 'those people like me who are good at it and enjoy it, and normal people who hate it'].

But what if the film actually is what it says, an anthology of reasons (such as high-speed trading) to hate maths, not like it... ?


For there was also, as well as implicating mathematics in the minutiae of trading, mention of how those algorithms had been written to automate lending criteria - although it was less that automation was inappropriate, but that human oversight both of the parameters, and of the resultant body of lending within a portfolio of risk, was defective.


Unless (as some will boldly still have it) one discredits such banking as one of the factors in this world economy of ours, the point is likewise : another instance of giving over the task of making decisions about risk to a program, and not seeming to check it or its ongoing performance, as if computers will necessarily do what we would have wanted.


End-notes

* And it is far from obvious that it conveys the same message as the original French title, Comment j’ai détesté les maths.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

From the archive : Dry white, best served lightly chilled

This is a Festival review of Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
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6 October

This is a Festival review of Les aventures extraordinaires d'Adèle Blanc-Sec (2010), written 16/17 September 2010 - in the days when one submitted one's response to Cambridge Film Festival's web-site in its style, and hoped that it would appear...

AVENTURES

This is a spirited and very funny romp, variously parodying and paying tribute to, amongst other things, everything from Spielberg to the phenomenon that is TOMB-RAIDER and the INDIANA JONES and JURASSIC PARK films, and it was a really brilliantly enjoyable choice for the start of the festival this year.

The title and the write-up in the festival booklet would lead one to expect no less, not least with the resonance that the French word ‘aventures’ has (I think that it is lacking in our similar English word), and that incongruously added to the heroine’s double-barrelled surname, which flagged up (if one translated it, even if one knew nothing (as I did) of Jacques Tardi) that we were to be prepared for the incredible passing calmly as the plausible (which some find convenient to call ‘magical realism’).

Besson brought his own kind of magic aplenty (which, for me, was already in the air – and very welcome – with the recent screening here of the delightful animation THE ILLUSIONIST), together with a mix that included a slightly gauche (but nevertheless engaging and helpful) nuclear physicist from the pre-Christian era, and an enjoyment of SFX that was only occasionally marred by what were (possibly quite deliberate) slight defects in the execution.

(For example, the heroine mounted a creature (not just a camel) bareback in a (successful) attempt to bring it to heel, and the seemingly unintended blurring that accompanied her return to earth with it subdued (and in harmony with her) could have been a way of undercutting our temptation ‘to believe’ too deeply in what was, essentially, a fable, charmingly distilled from the whole project’s origins in and indebtedness to the world of the illustrated page (and maybe to such films as DRAGONHEART and the trilogy of LORD OF THE RINGS trilogy). I have no doubt that some of the elements and themes were also more closely linked to that pictorial world than I, without other knowledge of it, could identify or fully appreciate, but such is the stuff of taking something from one medium to another (as with the Tati homage).

The film’s quirkiness and Egyptian theme were nicely set by the opening title-sequence, which turned out to be projected onto and panning across an obelisk that, when the edge was reached, at once brought us into focus on a familiar scene and set us in Paris. The Paris of 1911, as the initial and familiar technique of voiceover announced some important characters to be introduced to us in succession. And so their lives interacted (or, in the case of one who was asleep, failed to at that time), and brought us, via the (sometimes) hesitant character of Andrej to the start proper, with the artefact-exploring activities of the person to whom reviews traditionally like to refer as the eponymous female lead.

In the stereotyping of the villains who enter the tomb, one might be able to escape imputing the French-speaking racism towards its African empire to anything other than the plot and its time. (They come complete with an evil eye and other deformities to signal their standing, and with a brazen greed that one knew could not be leading them to their good, much as one knows that all sorts of grasping in Bond plots will (albeit with his hand to assist in it) work against their ultimate aim – and there was a delightfully typical Bond-type moment at the end of this sequence).

However, one could just as easily see a likely reference back to the cultural politics of the time of when Harrison Ford first had adventures as Jones on the screen. In that regard, but still in the spirit of parody, it could have been a deliberate unsettling of our (would-be?) more modern mores regarding (at least talking openly about) the supposed features, attitudes or beliefs that we (want to) believe link with cultural origin.

The pace of the film was, to my mind, perfect, and the little jokes of repetition with the prison scenes, the way that the action moved from place to place and character to character, and the (apparent) rootedness of the piece in its era (at least until the clock’s hands go momentarily awry) all served to echo this concept of time with which we tend to engage as a timepiece that we consult from day to day, but which Besson’s vision prompts us to approach more closely and in a different way. For that reason, I found the allusions to other forays in this field as different as BACK TO THE FUTURE, GROUNDHOG DAY and Scorsese’s (maybe overlooked) AFTER HOURS) to be undisguised and telling.

On another level, the film even embodied a challenging form of extreme (if unplanned) piercing that I had thought only to be the stuff of my very recent imagination until I saw it here: that was some surprise for me, as was the way in which it was introduced brought about a slight misdirection as to that person’s ‘life-status’ was (if I may call it that, since it has a bearing on the whole). In showing us how that had arisen, in a semi-tragic flashback (on account of the implausibility factor, which is one that is familiar from the other films already mentioned), there was a telescoped mockery of the development of lawn tennis that I was by no means alone in finding quite hilarious at the same time that I knew that it led to someone’s being maimed.

There is much more to say, and I know that ADVENTURES would repay my early viewing, but don’t think that I can make the re-run. As usual, those who left at the titles missed something, an amusing scene from the subplot that eventually (and briefly) brought Andrej and Adele together, and a flashback to a part of the film that we knew we were being taken away from, despite its being partly unresolved. It showed a possible ending to an unwilling alliance (on one side at least) that was not without its precedents, but which, for some reason, most put me in mind of the closing scenes of ‘Whinfrey’s Last Case’ in Michael Palin and Terry Jones’ series RIPPING YARNS.

What that extra snippet didn’t do was in any way to undermine the demise of one pair of highly linked characters, and their fate stood, in juxtaposition to the ‘happy ending’ of Adele being reunited with her sister. That being said, Adele was soon faced with a scheming peril that may (or may not – I am a little hesitant, unlike some heard leaving the screening, to detect scope for a sequel here) serve to end her affirmative approach to life (or, at least, until some time as her own mortal residue might be recovered.) In her case, we probably trusted to her resourcefulness to overcome, and, in the case of the inter-title peril awaiting the killer, maybe did not much care.

Life, death and our attitudes to both have been familiar parts of Besson’s work as far back as SUBWAY, with its choice of tone in ending that led (for those not wanting something else, and who would, for that reason, be deeply unhappy with where BRAZIL leaves us) to a quiet acceptance of what has gone before as life that was lived and worth living whilst it was (and as long as it could be) lived. It is not a heavy note, but it could set one thinking, if one looked beyond the jokes, whilst at the same time, relishing them greatly.

Some of those jokes themselves are not without an import or filmic referent (e.g. pairing the Jurassic period with the Isle of Jura (not, though, really known for anything other than its deer, whisky and George Orwell’s inhabitation), claiming a different historical specialism acts as an excuse not to help and to avoid being detected, and a chain of command that delegates down and down with an ever-diminishing deadline). Others humorous elements are more free in their inventiveness, and, although I am unsure whether there was a definite nod to another recent feature, the spontaneous laughter brought about by seeing the policeman, reluctantly teamed with a hired killer and in costume of the latter’s specification, suddenly viewed from behind was full and infectious.

Yet, for me, it is this theme of mortality and what it is to try to catch at life (for oneself or for others) that I will take away. It also engages nicely in theme with a radio adaptation of Faust that I hope to catch at the weekend (as well as with the revival of The Makropoulos Case in London at English National Opera). The newly resurrected, going off to explore and enjoy France’s capital, have a connection with that ready acceptance of mortality, and enjoying what one has whilst one has it, that struck chords with the South American tradition of enjoyment of bones and skulls, and, maybe, with what we miss in Hallowe’en (itself a key moment in Goethe’s great two-part play).


AJD


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)

Camera Catalonia at Cambridge Film Festival 2014 Part III : Informal interview and punting with Jesús Monllaó, director of Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013)

More views of - or before - Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (28 August to 7 September)
(Click here to go directly to the Festival web-site)

4 October (updated 15 November)

Jesús Monllaó brought his first feature, Son of Cain (Fill de Caín) (2013), to Cambridge Film Festival 2014 (@Camfilmfest / #CamFF) on Day 9 (Friday 5 September 2014) as part of this year’s Camera Catalonia strand - on the following morning, @THEAGENTAPSLEY and he met again, and ended up going punting...

The Q&A in Screen 2 at Festival Central : Jesús Monllaó (left), Director of Son of Cain (2013), Ramon Lamarca (centre), curator of Camera Catalonia, and composer Ethan Lewis Malby (right) (please see below) - image by, and courtesy of, David Riley

* Contains spoilers *

This is a follow-up piece to an account of the previous night's Q&A


Middle game (continued)

As we walked to Clare to take the punt out, we talked a little further about a point that had arisen during the Q&A the previous night, when Jesús had said that Nico would next be seen in charge of a huge corporation – which was the suggestion that some people are just ruthless and evil, whereas calling that behaviour psychopathic or sociopathic invokes illness.

In commenting for this account of our chat, Jesús has written : What I tried to convey was that Nico appals us, whereas I consider him a perfectly adapted being to an utterly aggressive and competitive society. Calling him ILL just diverts the real debate.

The chat went along the lines of whether with other conditions, such as bi-polar disorder, it is justifiable to speak of them in those ways, and there was found to be common ground in experience that it is, leaving just how helpful it is, when, even if many people who have a psychopathic condition do not kill, there is no treatment, except perhaps in the very much longer term, for those who do.

For Jesús, at any rate, it helps to ask this question, and to resist a world that seeks to pathologize everything (and so the latest edition of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual, DSM-V, was mentioned). For his part, Jesús was not aware of the rather ambiguous novel Engleby by Sebastian Faulks, which was briefly described to him, and he, in turn, referred to a novel in Spanish, Los Renglones Torcidos de Dios by Torcuato Luca de Tena (seemingly not available in English translation).


Fluid, transitional stage

After equipping the vessel with crew, cushions, paddle and punt-pole, the following images are all by, and courtesy of, Vicky Monllaó...

Not quite the classic view of Clare Old Court,
as King's College Chapel is not visible next door

The punting guests were unavoidably told the old, old story about Queens' Mathematical Bridge - of the gift, of taking it apart to see how it worked, and not being able to put it back together (as it had been)

(Insulting, of course, to undergraduate engineers, and appropriating the word 'mathematical', when, if anything, it should be non-mathematical...)

At The Mill Pond, Jesús and his family were told how the building, now occupied by a faux-Italian restaurant-chain, used to have the working water-wheel from this former mill as a feature

(Anyone remember Sweeney Todd's there in the early 1980s, with its line of descriptions of items on the menu that ripped off and insulted the patrons over the years ?)

Heading the other way from Clare Bridge*, towards Trinity Hall and Trinity

The Bridge of Sighs - a name that connects the otherwise unrelated way into The Ducal Prison (Venezia), one route into St John's cloister-style nineteenth-century accommodation (the college uniquely boasts two bridges, for no obvious reason), and a bridge over a road, so not even over water (Oxford)

The atmospheric - if slightly dead ? - little stretch of water (as just sides of buildings within John's on either side, and barely a plant clinging on) between those bridges...

Endgame

All too soon, the pleasant time on the Cam was over, and thoughts turned to directing the guests to the station for their onward journey…

Jesús does not play chess profesionally, only sometimes as an aficionado, but, when asked about how real the positions in the games were, he said that a chess master had worked with them as an adviser, and they are all famous matches – except in mirror form, because (curiously) there would otherwise have been some form of copyright for reproducing them, requiring payment of a fee.

On the right, composer of Son of Cain (2013), Ethan Lewis Malby (ELM, as he calls himself on his web-site), who has written compositions from DrumChasers to anthems for the FA and for UEFA - image by, and courtesy of, David Riley

Fighting for Ethan Lewis Maltby to score the film had been on the level of someone known to him whom he wanted to write the music, but who was not in the sphere of the backers. As Jesús himself achieves success with Son of Cain, and works on his next film in pre-production, it is clear that he is proud of Ethan’s work, and that fighting for his artistic vision should become easier…


End-notes

* The oldest bridge on the river, dating back to 1641.


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Unless stated otherwise, all films reviewed were screened at Festival Central (Arts Picturehouse, Cambridge)