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7 July
Inserted amid this reconstruction of a 13th century English Mass are two parts specially written by Gavin Bryars. The old and the new intermingle in the work of this stellar vocal ensemble.
This is what early music typically does just at the moment, e.g. Stile Antico, in their new programme of works from the times of all of the Tudors, having the Kyrie (and, maybe, the Gloria, too) of a Mass by Byrd followed by a work, say, by Tye before going back to the Credo of the Byrd, and so on.
However, since 'everyone' seems to be doing it, the words that I have lifted (above)* - from Trio Mediæval's CD A Worcester Ladymass - are describing a common approach, one that I did not want to hear applied the other night (on said Radio 3):
Stravinsky's simple, late Mass I know well, but it is never given a live outing. Unlike these fifteenth- or sixteenth-century settings of the mass, which it may be rather artificial to hear as concert works in one run and which may benefit from the contrast of another composer's style or another period's approach to help us focus on what it is that they are, his work is very compact and scarcely lasts more than fifteen minutes.
Whether it was the point of contrast for the earlier composer's music that was sung on this occasion, or it was thought necessary to allow entry into Stravinsky's sound-world by performing works that influenced him, I do not know. I simply wanted to hear his Mass, and then some other things, perhaps.
End-notes
* And which I could almost imagine Sean Rafferty saying (he who, for me, is the one and only true host of Radio 3's programme In Tune).
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Friday, 6 July 2012
Thursday, 5 July 2012
What sort of beast is Dark Horse?
This is a review of Dark Horse (2011)
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5 July
This is a review of Dark Horse (2011)
One is not exactly left, as David Lynch arranged in Eraserhead (1977), with a feeling of being uncertain what, if anything, has happened, and it's not quite the ending-after-ending impression left by how the Lord of the Rings trilogy winds up in and with The Return of the King (2003), and yet both elements are there: the latter promises resolution, the former confuses such a notion with presenting, amongst other things, a head being turned into an adjunct for pencils.
As Lynch's film did, therefore, there is a questioning in Dark Horse of what 'a story' in a film is for, whether it is to satisfy and lead us, a bit like a classical sonata, from some sort of stasis into the turmoil of a movement in a minor key and back into the catharsis of the closing outer movement, or whether its roots are in the New Wave and before, which, in Buñuel's case, gave us, at the time time when the wave was breaking, the puzzle of The Exterminating Angel (1962).
Just about anything has been fitted into that pattern of things going bad and turning good again, from 10* (1979) to You've Got Mail (1998) or, as I recall, One Fine Day (1996). Much more interesting is when Scorsese gives us, in After Hours (1985), a film that takes us back to where we began, but with an amazing and satisfying - not from moral or plot point of view of - artistic resolution, in a whizz around Paul Hackett's office. Or Gilliam - when he could still be gutsy - with that sickening moment inside the cooling-tower at the end of Brazil (1985).
Subverting building up to an ending - or the expected ending - is one thing. Some view life as linear, and expect the beginning to be at the start. Others might prefer the sort of narration that Betrayal (1983), pretty close to the stage-play, gives us, and might relate more to a muddle of dream, day-dream, imagination, and sheer fantasy, such as, probably more convincingly than Dark Horse, films like Allen's Deconstructing Harry (1997) (or, for that matter, Stardust Memories (1980)) give us.
Though I do not think that writer / director Todd Solondz is aiming at that here: this is not Thurber's Walter Mitty gone slightly more wrong, but has, as it develops, really far more resonance with something very different, a sort of US Enter the Void, but without certain embellishments.
Rather implausibly, you might infer from trusting what I am saying, IMDb seeks to sum up this work in a sentence as:
Romance blooms between two thirty-somethings in arrested development: an avid toy collector and a woman who is the dark horse of her family
Hell, if that were what this film is about, it wouldn't deserve the time of day! These are superficialities, substituting for an appreciation of what the film implies about the creation and distinegration of personality, hope and desire. It is possible that reviews are more on target than what I have quoted, but I don't think that I want to trust having to wade through many opinions that will just criticize this film for not being what it is not - if, though, they were misled by IMDb's said 23-word snapshot (probably little worse than many a trailer), perhaps it is fair for them to air their grievances there.
Confused - probably stunned - as I was when I came out of Dark Horse and incoherently tried to formulate a response in talking to Jon, who was ushering, I gratefully received his affirmation of that feeling, and I shall, at some point, be following up his recommendation of Solondz's Happiness (1998)...
This review is dedicated to Jon, with thanks
End-notes
* Which, before Baywatch, might have been seen as exploitative (probably of Bo Derek), if it didn't arrive at a convenient moral ending.
Tuesday, 3 July 2012
Shall I compare thee...?
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3 July
I was writing this in Beverley, thinking myself so original, only to realize that the Internet is full of such parodies, and even with the same opening-line:
Shall I compare thee to a pile of trash?
Thou art more dirty and recyclable:
Rough Trade doth heat the stirring pangs of Lust,
And Clubbing's hours give all too short a night.
More some time...
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3 July
I was writing this in Beverley, thinking myself so original, only to realize that the Internet is full of such parodies, and even with the same opening-line:
Shall I compare thee to a pile of trash?
Thou art more dirty and recyclable:
Rough Trade doth heat the stirring pangs of Lust,
And Clubbing's hours give all too short a night.
More some time...
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Monday, 2 July 2012
The woman at the next table
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2 July
She is talking in French - I know that - but I think that she is playing a private game, a bit as barristers do with patterns of words that they try to get past judges:
Ten minutes ago, she said crapeau, a word that anyone who studied the language to 'A' level seems destined to have been taught. (Probably, Eddie Izzard would know why.)
Then, a few minutes later, it was drapeau, and a sound-world was emerging, if not, for want of desire to follow this well-enuniciated French (unlike that rather throaty, self-swalowing kind of her interlocutor), which I think that I could, any obvious other connection.
I believe that there may be a word frap[p]eau* - will that leap out at me next?
End-notes
* Although, now that I check, Google thinks that I have got crapeau wrong, and wants to offer me crapaud instead - twice. As to frappeau, maybe not, but there's frappé, and even - with crapaud - grapaud.
Ô!
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2 July
She is talking in French - I know that - but I think that she is playing a private game, a bit as barristers do with patterns of words that they try to get past judges:
Ten minutes ago, she said crapeau, a word that anyone who studied the language to 'A' level seems destined to have been taught. (Probably, Eddie Izzard would know why.)
Then, a few minutes later, it was drapeau, and a sound-world was emerging, if not, for want of desire to follow this well-enuniciated French (unlike that rather throaty, self-swalowing kind of her interlocutor), which I think that I could, any obvious other connection.
I believe that there may be a word frap[p]eau* - will that leap out at me next?
End-notes
* Although, now that I check, Google thinks that I have got crapeau wrong, and wants to offer me crapaud instead - twice. As to frappeau, maybe not, but there's frappé, and even - with crapaud - grapaud.
Ô!
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Sunday, 1 July 2012
Beneficial exercise - or not going to the gym (2)
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1 July
What I seem to have failed to suggest in that earlier posting (although, really, it belonged there) is:
Exercise only does you any good if you're doing it because you want to do it
You can go through all the bench-presses and roiwng-machines in the world, but, if you don't do it with the love for what you are doing, there will be little or no benefit:
You will begrudge going to the gym, because it costs, hurts, makes you sweat, and, even, none of these claimed sexual encounters between gym-coaches and their trainees occur
All of these feed into a resentment at what is soon the chore of fitting in going to this place (where you have paid,or are paying) to do things that you don't enjoy on the pretence, probably no longer on yours, that it is doing - or will do - you some good
That resentment kills any possible benefit that could accrue to you, just as it would if you only had sex to lose how ever many calories the glossy magazines boast intercourse burns up*
These good things are by-products, by-products of doing something where you actually take pleasure in the exercise - if it is from rowing, then it would be from other things than just the mechanical motion replicated by the machine**, such as the people with whom you are rowing, the camaraderie with them before and after and exerting yourself with them, the river or canal where you row (of which, even if your concentration is focused, you will be aware), and, probably, the absurd pain of the hour of day at which you choose to do this
If I am a celebrity wanting to get my figure back after childbirth, unlike a mere mortal who does not have the resources, I will pay someone to urge me on, with psychological motivations picked for me to make what I doing pleasurable, if still a demand on me
I simply think that, forcing oneself to the gym (not least when one's increasingly infrequent or rushed visits are seen as something that one has or ought to do, not something that one really wants to do) is unlikely 'to deliver' what finding something like tennis or table-tennis or walking that one likes might
Which opinions I choose to sum up by suggesting that the spirit gives live, whereas the law kills
End-notes
* As if one can compare a marathon session of sexual pleasure, where your partner and you seamlessly adopt new ways of love-making (and build up a sweat because you are enjoying the intimacy of each other's body), with something perfunctory in the missionary position.
** Which, honestly, even non-stop MTV does not render palatable (or even renders less so).
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1 July
What I seem to have failed to suggest in that earlier posting (although, really, it belonged there) is:
Exercise only does you any good if you're doing it because you want to do it
You can go through all the bench-presses and roiwng-machines in the world, but, if you don't do it with the love for what you are doing, there will be little or no benefit:
You will begrudge going to the gym, because it costs, hurts, makes you sweat, and, even, none of these claimed sexual encounters between gym-coaches and their trainees occur
All of these feed into a resentment at what is soon the chore of fitting in going to this place (where you have paid,or are paying) to do things that you don't enjoy on the pretence, probably no longer on yours, that it is doing - or will do - you some good
That resentment kills any possible benefit that could accrue to you, just as it would if you only had sex to lose how ever many calories the glossy magazines boast intercourse burns up*
These good things are by-products, by-products of doing something where you actually take pleasure in the exercise - if it is from rowing, then it would be from other things than just the mechanical motion replicated by the machine**, such as the people with whom you are rowing, the camaraderie with them before and after and exerting yourself with them, the river or canal where you row (of which, even if your concentration is focused, you will be aware), and, probably, the absurd pain of the hour of day at which you choose to do this
If I am a celebrity wanting to get my figure back after childbirth, unlike a mere mortal who does not have the resources, I will pay someone to urge me on, with psychological motivations picked for me to make what I doing pleasurable, if still a demand on me
I simply think that, forcing oneself to the gym (not least when one's increasingly infrequent or rushed visits are seen as something that one has or ought to do, not something that one really wants to do) is unlikely 'to deliver' what finding something like tennis or table-tennis or walking that one likes might
Which opinions I choose to sum up by suggesting that the spirit gives live, whereas the law kills
End-notes
* As if one can compare a marathon session of sexual pleasure, where your partner and you seamlessly adopt new ways of love-making (and build up a sweat because you are enjoying the intimacy of each other's body), with something perfunctory in the missionary position.
** Which, honestly, even non-stop MTV does not render palatable (or even renders less so).
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Saturday, 30 June 2012
Meditations on John
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29 June
This is a companion-piece to Meditations on Matthew
For the performance, I shall dwell on the positives, as the lack of separation of voices in the choral singing did not make, for me, for clarity in to-night’s St John Passion. With such a large work, not everything is likely to be totally to one’s satisfaction, and it is the overall feeling with which one is left that counts.
First, the variations in power and expression that David Shipley brought to the role of Christus made it a joy: not that joy has much part in the Passion, and sadness came to the fore, with tears, when he told his mother that the disciple whom he loved was her son, and to the disciple that she was his mother.
As to what holds the passion together, Mark Wilde’s recitative as Christus was beautifully sung, and the effect of the narration, in tandem with that of the chorales was truly thought provoking, stimulating identification, reflection, and, amongst other things, an imtimate sense of how what The Evangelist is saying brings the story close to us.
More to come...
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29 June
This is a companion-piece to Meditations on Matthew
For the performance, I shall dwell on the positives, as the lack of separation of voices in the choral singing did not make, for me, for clarity in to-night’s St John Passion. With such a large work, not everything is likely to be totally to one’s satisfaction, and it is the overall feeling with which one is left that counts.
First, the variations in power and expression that David Shipley brought to the role of Christus made it a joy: not that joy has much part in the Passion, and sadness came to the fore, with tears, when he told his mother that the disciple whom he loved was her son, and to the disciple that she was his mother.
As to what holds the passion together, Mark Wilde’s recitative as Christus was beautifully sung, and the effect of the narration, in tandem with that of the chorales was truly thought provoking, stimulating identification, reflection, and, amongst other things, an imtimate sense of how what The Evangelist is saying brings the story close to us.
More to come...
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Thursday, 28 June 2012
Down the Elephant and Castle for a lark
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28 June
Well, I probably have many reasons to be grateful to Wikipedia®, some of which cannot be wisely publicized, but I am very pleased by this:
A common misconception is that the term "elephant and castle" is a corruption of "la Infanta de Castilla"
Not the sort of misconception that you would have because you dreamt it up, in the way that someone did a few well-touted (pseudo)statistics (such as inspiration v. perspiration and how much is in the words), but only because some factotum droned on, prefacing the whiffle by Of course as if it were all self evident, and wanted to get you to believe it. On some basis, there would be those who did, and who might then have passed it on to chums, family and colleagues with It's not really, you know.
The entry is an entertainining little piece, with even a Shakespearean reference, and tells you about such delights as Hannibal House (someone with a sense of humour in the planning department for Southwark? - no, I didn't mean that Hannibal!).
But forget what they tell you about the origins, and think giant chess (not necessarily in the spirit of Ron Weasley): the game was very popular in the outdoor form that we know from the seaside and the like, and this far before The Blitz, and a showman amazed onlookers with his chess-playing elephant.
Curse though I am for spoiling the story, but the elephant was just very good at following its human companion's instructions (for he was the real brains behind the outfit), and he would communicate moves to it, for execution with its trunk. The castle part came from the elephant's apparent fondness for employing the piece to get to check-mate (either that or from the sign used to advertise the attraction).
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28 June
Well, I probably have many reasons to be grateful to Wikipedia®, some of which cannot be wisely publicized, but I am very pleased by this:
A common misconception is that the term "elephant and castle" is a corruption of "la Infanta de Castilla"
Not the sort of misconception that you would have because you dreamt it up, in the way that someone did a few well-touted (pseudo)statistics (such as inspiration v. perspiration and how much is in the words), but only because some factotum droned on, prefacing the whiffle by Of course as if it were all self evident, and wanted to get you to believe it. On some basis, there would be those who did, and who might then have passed it on to chums, family and colleagues with It's not really, you know.
The entry is an entertainining little piece, with even a Shakespearean reference, and tells you about such delights as Hannibal House (someone with a sense of humour in the planning department for Southwark? - no, I didn't mean that Hannibal!).
But forget what they tell you about the origins, and think giant chess (not necessarily in the spirit of Ron Weasley): the game was very popular in the outdoor form that we know from the seaside and the like, and this far before The Blitz, and a showman amazed onlookers with his chess-playing elephant.
Curse though I am for spoiling the story, but the elephant was just very good at following its human companion's instructions (for he was the real brains behind the outfit), and he would communicate moves to it, for execution with its trunk. The castle part came from the elephant's apparent fondness for employing the piece to get to check-mate (either that or from the sign used to advertise the attraction).
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Interview with Mark Brown: The New Mental Health (1)
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28 June
This is just a place-holder - stop-gap, temporary blog-content - until I can post my interview with the editor of One in Four* magazine, Mark Brown.
Mark will be answering questions about The New Mental Health, which, following an important speech that he gave about it at a conference in Perth in Western Australia, he has just announced has been launched.
One in Four is written by people, including Mark, who have mental health difficuties for people - whether or not they have those difficulties - who want to read about the experience of having them or the further difficulties to which they give rise. (One might include construing that sentence!)
End-notes
* Thanks to an underdeveloped keystroke, that nearly ended up as the rather different One in Fur!
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28 June
This is just a place-holder - stop-gap, temporary blog-content - until I can post my interview with the editor of One in Four* magazine, Mark Brown.
Mark will be answering questions about The New Mental Health, which, following an important speech that he gave about it at a conference in Perth in Western Australia, he has just announced has been launched.
One in Four is written by people, including Mark, who have mental health difficuties for people - whether or not they have those difficulties - who want to read about the experience of having them or the further difficulties to which they give rise. (One might include construing that sentence!)
As I have grown to like this page, I shall, now that I shall soon be in a position to give Mark's answers to my questions, post the questions here:
1. Mark, you've called this The New Mental Health - what are you hoping for from
that choice of name?
2. Was launching this new approach in your mind before your strong speech in Perth, Australia?
Was there a flow of energy, in both directions, with writing the speech itself and gauging how people related to you and to you giving it?
3. Your magazine, One in Four, seems to distance itself from whether 'mental health difficulties' arise from - and are the field of - medicine by using those words. For you, will that still be the preferred term in talking about The New Mental Health?
4. Providers of services in 'old' mental health are usually hospital trusts, and, although separately set up, are part of the NHS.
Do you think that the NHS links bring with them a tendency towards being averse to risk or to a truly creative input into services from those who receive them?
5. Conversely, and maybe potentially, how might The New Mental Health differ, and what innovations in services and how, where and when they are available are likely?
6. Other than money, and enthusiastic participants, what else do you think that The New Mental Health will need to thrive?
7. Do you also expect any opposition from entrenched old approaches, and, if so, do you yet know how to challenge it?
8. Yes, the dreaded question, but let's make it three years: what do you believe the place of The New Mental Health will be in providing services by then, and why?
9. Finally, what message have you, both for those excited by The New Mental Health, and for the sceptically minded, who might be mindful of the tale of the monarch and his fresh wardrobe?
Follow this link now for the full interview...
End-notes
* Thanks to an underdeveloped keystroke, that nearly ended up as the rather different One in Fur!
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Wednesday, 27 June 2012
Tamara Stefanovich is in love with Scarlatti (and Bartók)
An account of when Tamara Stefanovich re-created Béla Bartók’s recital in Aldeburgh
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23 June
You could see it in her face (which I saw in profile) as she read the scores and came to passages that engaged and enchanted her. (She played the Debussy beautifully in the programme that she was repeating from Béla Bartók’s recital in Aldeburgh, and even gave an encore of his prelude Footprints in the snow, but the look wasn’t there.) There was a definite smile, and there was the sort of reaction as if she were studying details of a lover’s face and suddenly finding a new expression, or a new way of the light catching it.
According to the quotation from Diderot that Richard Sennett had read at his lecture two days earlier, if it had not betrayed immersion in the communion between the composer’s score (between her and that of these three male composers), making faces during a performance would have been a bad approach to playing. As for me, I liked it, seeing her light up, sometimes even surprised (at a score that she also played yesterday), because she was obviously so much at one with what she was playing.
With Bartók, I noticed that she relished passages with cross-rhythms, the more declamatory statements of a theme (as towards the end of the Romanian Folk Dances of 1915), and also had a fondness for the fay and fantastic, the swaying movement or the outlandish gesture.
I was paying less attention at the outset of the recital, which had three Scarlatti sonatas that I do not recall hearing before – not, then, so much good for Bartók in his choice (and, I gather, he had made an edition), as shame on us in this century (and the last) that we still play just relatively few. Nonetheless, it was clear that Stefanovich was delighted at the articulation of a new theme, and how the music developed in certain places.
With regard to the way that the programme itself built up, Bartók had made a selection that worked well. For example, his Three Burlesques (started in 1908) could have been written in the knowledge of Debussy’s Pour le piano (finished in 1901), and Bartók might, for that reason (or because he anyway thought that they would lead well into the other composer’s world*), have placed them where he did.
Likewise, the Allegro barbaro had space, before and after, just to be itself, not throwing the other pieces into relief, but providing a contrast. Stefanovich made this programme her own, seeming quite at home with it: playing the composers with equal conviction, and giving us the subtlest dynamic variations, after the liveliness of the opening Prélude, in Pour le piano. Debussy himself then seemed especially sure of the bewitching power his themes in the second and third pieces (Sarabande and Toccata).
Happening to speak to Tamara Stefanovich briefly later, I clarified with her whether she had seen her remit to recreate Bartók’s performance. She told me that, although she had listened to recordings of his playing and had noted how he varied his adherence to time, she had not set out to imitate him, but to interpret the music as herself in the light of what she had heard.
It was a very impressive and thoughtful recital of seventy minutes without a break (I imagine that a break would not have been feasible on the original occasion, with a schoolful of girls to be settled in the church hall). My only doubt was, when it was not – as it no longer exists – the church hall in which Bartók played, what point there was in having the recreation recital in somewhere not ideal.
In fact, the Yamaha grand piano dwarfed the stage, leaving little room, on one side, for the wonted upright, and, on the other, the performer: I simply do not know how authentic such a black beast would have been to a performance in a town in the 1920s. I suspect that Bartók’s music may have proved a bigger beast, because it was my perception that the piano went out of tune.
An addendum :
I have since belatedly read the entry for these events (Stefanovich had given the recital, at the same place, the day before, after the lecture by Malcolm Gillies about Bartók's visits to Britain), and I need to say that there had been a reason, although a slightly tenuous one, for using the church hall in Aldeburgh (rather than a room better fitted to the quality of both the playing and the programme). It turns out that this hall had been the former chapel of Belstead Girls' School, and had been re-errected for the parish as its church hall.
However, although Bartók's programme for the recital is known (in his lecture, I am fairly sure that Mr Gillies had not - whether he had one - displayed an original printed document that set it out), and also that Bartók had been invited to play at the school itself. The performance was mainly for the benefit of the girls (although others could pay to be admitted : Mr Gillies showed the document that advertised the concert, which specified no programme, only five shillings for a reserved seat, otherwise two and six).
The venue remains unknown : the advertising does not give it, and, although Mr Gillies had the chance to interview a pupil (part of which he shared with us), it appears that doing so did not shed light on the question. So it may may have been the chapel, now serving as the church hall, but it may not...
End-notes :
* I come back to what I wrote about Colin Matthews and his orchestrations, feeling again that – just as it does a hand – the Debussy fitted its instrument like a glove.
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23 June
An account of when Tamara Stefanovich re-created Béla Bartók’s recital in Aldeburgh
You could see it in her face (which I saw in profile) as she read the scores and came to passages that engaged and enchanted her. (She played the Debussy beautifully in the programme that she was repeating from Béla Bartók’s recital in Aldeburgh, and even gave an encore of his prelude Footprints in the snow, but the look wasn’t there.) There was a definite smile, and there was the sort of reaction as if she were studying details of a lover’s face and suddenly finding a new expression, or a new way of the light catching it.
According to the quotation from Diderot that Richard Sennett had read at his lecture two days earlier, if it had not betrayed immersion in the communion between the composer’s score (between her and that of these three male composers), making faces during a performance would have been a bad approach to playing. As for me, I liked it, seeing her light up, sometimes even surprised (at a score that she also played yesterday), because she was obviously so much at one with what she was playing.
With Bartók, I noticed that she relished passages with cross-rhythms, the more declamatory statements of a theme (as towards the end of the Romanian Folk Dances of 1915), and also had a fondness for the fay and fantastic, the swaying movement or the outlandish gesture.
I was paying less attention at the outset of the recital, which had three Scarlatti sonatas that I do not recall hearing before – not, then, so much good for Bartók in his choice (and, I gather, he had made an edition), as shame on us in this century (and the last) that we still play just relatively few. Nonetheless, it was clear that Stefanovich was delighted at the articulation of a new theme, and how the music developed in certain places.
With regard to the way that the programme itself built up, Bartók had made a selection that worked well. For example, his Three Burlesques (started in 1908) could have been written in the knowledge of Debussy’s Pour le piano (finished in 1901), and Bartók might, for that reason (or because he anyway thought that they would lead well into the other composer’s world*), have placed them where he did.
Likewise, the Allegro barbaro had space, before and after, just to be itself, not throwing the other pieces into relief, but providing a contrast. Stefanovich made this programme her own, seeming quite at home with it: playing the composers with equal conviction, and giving us the subtlest dynamic variations, after the liveliness of the opening Prélude, in Pour le piano. Debussy himself then seemed especially sure of the bewitching power his themes in the second and third pieces (Sarabande and Toccata).
Happening to speak to Tamara Stefanovich briefly later, I clarified with her whether she had seen her remit to recreate Bartók’s performance. She told me that, although she had listened to recordings of his playing and had noted how he varied his adherence to time, she had not set out to imitate him, but to interpret the music as herself in the light of what she had heard.
It was a very impressive and thoughtful recital of seventy minutes without a break (I imagine that a break would not have been feasible on the original occasion, with a schoolful of girls to be settled in the church hall). My only doubt was, when it was not – as it no longer exists – the church hall in which Bartók played, what point there was in having the recreation recital in somewhere not ideal.
In fact, the Yamaha grand piano dwarfed the stage, leaving little room, on one side, for the wonted upright, and, on the other, the performer: I simply do not know how authentic such a black beast would have been to a performance in a town in the 1920s. I suspect that Bartók’s music may have proved a bigger beast, because it was my perception that the piano went out of tune.
An addendum :
I have since belatedly read the entry for these events (Stefanovich had given the recital, at the same place, the day before, after the lecture by Malcolm Gillies about Bartók's visits to Britain), and I need to say that there had been a reason, although a slightly tenuous one, for using the church hall in Aldeburgh (rather than a room better fitted to the quality of both the playing and the programme). It turns out that this hall had been the former chapel of Belstead Girls' School, and had been re-errected for the parish as its church hall.
However, although Bartók's programme for the recital is known (in his lecture, I am fairly sure that Mr Gillies had not - whether he had one - displayed an original printed document that set it out), and also that Bartók had been invited to play at the school itself. The performance was mainly for the benefit of the girls (although others could pay to be admitted : Mr Gillies showed the document that advertised the concert, which specified no programme, only five shillings for a reserved seat, otherwise two and six).
The venue remains unknown : the advertising does not give it, and, although Mr Gillies had the chance to interview a pupil (part of which he shared with us), it appears that doing so did not shed light on the question. So it may may have been the chapel, now serving as the church hall, but it may not...
End-notes :
* I come back to what I wrote about Colin Matthews and his orchestrations, feeling again that – just as it does a hand – the Debussy fitted its instrument like a glove.
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Tuesday, 26 June 2012
Playing a hand with the Lord
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26 June
You know that your mind is not in quite the right place to listen to a petit motet, even if you've never heard one live before, when you start thinking certain things on seeing the line
speravit anima mea in Domino
Yes, maybe pizza, but equally that game with the spotted rectangular pieces! (Still a pub classic, in some areas, with the regulars having grudge matches, I believe.) Do we really get the name of dominoes from here?
If Wikipedia® is to be believed, though, favela has nothing to do with this other line, in the Dies irae, as set by Lully for the funreal (?) of Marie-Thérèse, wife of Louis XIV, meaning 'will deserve the world in ashes':
solvet saeculum in favilla
Odd, as a slum area would seem to have quite a lot in common with a world dissolved in ashes. Be that as it may, the real revelation comes towards the end of this text that he composed for:
flammis acribus addictis
This, translated as 'doomed to flames of woe', seems to shed some light on the nature of real addiction, of being doomed to do something: when the word 'addiction' came to mean what it does, was someone making a judgement, whether or not moral, on the power of the person to escape it?
Sounds like a fairly condemnatory appraisal to me, which does not allow for hope - or change. Its life-history is in line for being gtracked down...
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26 June
You know that your mind is not in quite the right place to listen to a petit motet, even if you've never heard one live before, when you start thinking certain things on seeing the line
speravit anima mea in Domino
Yes, maybe pizza, but equally that game with the spotted rectangular pieces! (Still a pub classic, in some areas, with the regulars having grudge matches, I believe.) Do we really get the name of dominoes from here?
If Wikipedia® is to be believed, though, favela has nothing to do with this other line, in the Dies irae, as set by Lully for the funreal (?) of Marie-Thérèse, wife of Louis XIV, meaning 'will deserve the world in ashes':
solvet saeculum in favilla
Odd, as a slum area would seem to have quite a lot in common with a world dissolved in ashes. Be that as it may, the real revelation comes towards the end of this text that he composed for:
flammis acribus addictis
This, translated as 'doomed to flames of woe', seems to shed some light on the nature of real addiction, of being doomed to do something: when the word 'addiction' came to mean what it does, was someone making a judgement, whether or not moral, on the power of the person to escape it?
Sounds like a fairly condemnatory appraisal to me, which does not allow for hope - or change. Its life-history is in line for being gtracked down...
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Monday, 25 June 2012
My new favourites
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26 June
Two new browsers, and both straight out of (old-style) Doctor Who:
Maxthon
Dalvik
Maxthon has to be a strange, deserted planet with a Dalíesque quality to it, telegraph-poles supported by what one won't look too closely at, mirages, weird constructions with boiled beans. Whereas Dalvik is - predictably - an evil genius, trying, by frantic calculation, to find the formula that makes everything implode on itself.
OK, hints of the last adventure, Logopolis, for Tom Baker, but it's late... And the residents of Logopolis were (till The Master got them), after all, performing calculations that sustained the fabric of the universe, and the loss of the mathematics, if it hadn't been for The Doctor employing The Pharos Project to reprogramme space - time (albeit too late to save Nissa's family on Traken), was what caused the destructive void to open up.
Class dismissed!
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26 June
Two new browsers, and both straight out of (old-style) Doctor Who:
Maxthon
Dalvik
Maxthon has to be a strange, deserted planet with a Dalíesque quality to it, telegraph-poles supported by what one won't look too closely at, mirages, weird constructions with boiled beans. Whereas Dalvik is - predictably - an evil genius, trying, by frantic calculation, to find the formula that makes everything implode on itself.
OK, hints of the last adventure, Logopolis, for Tom Baker, but it's late... And the residents of Logopolis were (till The Master got them), after all, performing calculations that sustained the fabric of the universe, and the loss of the mathematics, if it hadn't been for The Doctor employing The Pharos Project to reprogramme space - time (albeit too late to save Nissa's family on Traken), was what caused the destructive void to open up.
Class dismissed!
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This poem is not just about Connie Booth
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26 June
This poem is not just about Connie Booth
Connie Booth
Is so smooth
That it shows
Andrew Sachs
Had attacks,
I am told
Prunella Scales
Recited tales
Of the east
John Cleese
Fights disease
To the last
© Copyright Belston Night Works 2012
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26 June
This poem is not just about Connie Booth
Connie Booth
Is so smooth
That it shows
Andrew Sachs
Had attacks,
I am told
Prunella Scales
Recited tales
Of the east
John Cleese
Fights disease
To the last
© Copyright Belston Night Works 2012
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Stellen
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26 June
Stellen
Sane and serene
They seem
These lights
From places not there
Where they appear
And, in the north,
I will never see
For myself
What the south has
As its 'show'
The tilt of the earth,
That darkness
We call night,
At best the moon
Illumines
And all can see it,
If, at the poles,
Maybe eightfold
Like the sun
The overhead sun
Yet, midnight sun
Though it is,
Unsetting,
It tends to melt
Rather little
These pinprick cousins
At night
Melt less still,
But melt me,
Melt my heart
© Copyright Belston Night Works 2012
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26 June
Stellen
Sane and serene
They seem
These lights
From places not there
Where they appear
And, in the north,
I will never see
For myself
What the south has
As its 'show'
The tilt of the earth,
That darkness
We call night,
At best the moon
Illumines
And all can see it,
If, at the poles,
Maybe eightfold
Like the sun
The overhead sun
Yet, midnight sun
Though it is,
Unsetting,
It tends to melt
Rather little
These pinprick cousins
At night
Melt less still,
But melt me,
Melt my heart
© Copyright Belston Night Works 2012
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Tu es Petrus
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25 June
There may be others who remember an averagely diverting series about a gumshoe - if he wasn't a serving police officer - called Petrocelli. (Probably, I could find out, and even buy some DVDs on Amazon for old time's sake, but there's already too much else to watch.)
He made me think (remembering the name caused the thought) of petrochemicals and petroleum, as well as whether it was a plausible Italian surname, and that took me to what Jesus said to Peter:
Much theology wants to describe what happens when Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Jesus (using different words for the verb 'to love', as C. S. Lewis and others have observed), and to call what Jesus then says to him the 'reinstatement' of Peter. Me, I don't know whether he was reinstated or not (i.e. whether he needed reinstating).
What I do know, as others point out, is the pun that comes out in the Latin version of what was said (presumably from the Vulgate, unless, at this point in the gospel (or is it in Acts?), Jesus utters the words in Latin), which is where we came from with these products and fuels derived from what is under the rock. That, and Jesus, referring to Peter as a foundation (taken as the basis for the authenticity of the Roman Catholic faith*) when he says that on him he will build his church.
I think that it it the word ecclesia that he would have used, from which we, in turn, derive Ecclesiastes and ecclesiastical law, but I really don't know what was meant: not, I suspect, a church as we have it to-day, even if a body of people (rather than a building), and also not, I suspect, the unbroken line of succession that is supposed to go back to Peter (as the basis for the Vatican and what foes with it)...
Funny where thinking about a detective's name takes you!
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25 June
There may be others who remember an averagely diverting series about a gumshoe - if he wasn't a serving police officer - called Petrocelli. (Probably, I could find out, and even buy some DVDs on Amazon for old time's sake, but there's already too much else to watch.)
He made me think (remembering the name caused the thought) of petrochemicals and petroleum, as well as whether it was a plausible Italian surname, and that took me to what Jesus said to Peter:
Much theology wants to describe what happens when Jesus asks Peter three times if he loves Jesus (using different words for the verb 'to love', as C. S. Lewis and others have observed), and to call what Jesus then says to him the 'reinstatement' of Peter. Me, I don't know whether he was reinstated or not (i.e. whether he needed reinstating).
What I do know, as others point out, is the pun that comes out in the Latin version of what was said (presumably from the Vulgate, unless, at this point in the gospel (or is it in Acts?), Jesus utters the words in Latin), which is where we came from with these products and fuels derived from what is under the rock. That, and Jesus, referring to Peter as a foundation (taken as the basis for the authenticity of the Roman Catholic faith*) when he says that on him he will build his church.
I think that it it the word ecclesia that he would have used, from which we, in turn, derive Ecclesiastes and ecclesiastical law, but I really don't know what was meant: not, I suspect, a church as we have it to-day, even if a body of people (rather than a building), and also not, I suspect, the unbroken line of succession that is supposed to go back to Peter (as the basis for the Vatican and what foes with it)...
Funny where thinking about a detective's name takes you!
End-notes
According to www.ewtn.com/jp2/papal3/holysee.htm, 'The Holy See consists of the Roman Curia and other offices and services which assist the Supreme Pontiff in the Petrine Ministry'.What is Pritter's Achilles' heel?
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25 June
Serious or not, I do not believe that it is any more possible to have a debate by Splatter/Twatter than by MSN Messenger: with the latter, because of the immediacy of seeing the other person's reponse, it's all too easy to feel the need to reply quickly (perhaps, more and more quickly) and, sooner or later, say something (or in such a way) that, if interpreted differently, gives rise to offence, defence and even reprisal.
In theory, if the visuals on Skype weren't such rubbish and not in synch, it would be better than a telephone-call. Still, with a conversation by telephone, there is potential for noticing and acting on such cues as inflexion, intonation, breathiness of the voice, involuntary ways of evincing surprise, shock, etc. - you know, all those things that go to make up the 92% in that standard iceberg cod-psychology diagram*, which purports to show how little of the meaning in a face-to-face conversation is in the words. (Oh yes, generalizing diagram? Just try saying 'You're fired!'(or 'Your mother is dead') to someone in a serious voice, and ask how little he or she took from your words!)
As to Pratter, with a character-limit similar to text-messaging's regrettable re-invention of the telegram's pressure on words to save charges, it should be no worse than text-messaging, except that there is an arena, a sort of Big Top: by which I mean that, if I send a text-message to Dr Paul, some time (which may be longer than one expects) it gets to his phone and, one hopes, he reads it and, in his own time, replies (if it needs a reply).
So much holds true for both: I can choose to expend money or time on an extended text-message, just as I can send a follow-up Tweet straight after. What remains (or results) is the fragmentary nature, not just of the correspondence, but also of the means of conducting it (especially on a handheld device), which has the potential, not least when other debates / conversations are going on at the same, for participants not stopping to check what the other person did say before letting go a broadside.
However, telecomms errors and hacking apart, a text-message doesn't go to anyone else's phone, for which read 'is publicly available on Witter - until I choose to delete it - for anyone who decides to do what is weirdly called following me' (sounds like licensed stalking ['Someone's following me' never sounded like a good thing before], but there we go. Here, though, with my debate with Dr Paul, which may involve misunderstandings, misrememberings, misconceptions, all this is (circus again!) being played out before an audience, even if it probably is an audience that couldn't care less, and glances - or scrolls - past**.
I believe that that element of 'dirty washing in public' changes things, both as to the things said, and the desire (albeit resistible) to say things back. Combine that with doing whatever it is in 140 characters, or multiples thereof, and what a mess results!
End-notes
* Which, as Tomkinson's Schooldays would possibly say, was seen by Potter Minor on a training-course, reproduced afterwards with slightly variant percentages and passed on to Venables, who couldn't read the scribbled figures, but had a guess, and delivered them in a lecture heard by Barnstoneworth, who told Eric Olthwaite...
** Unlike the rubbernecking that gives rise to those dangerous slow-downs on Motorways, as if either the pulled-over police-car with the flashing lights gives a screw about the other drivers' speeds just at that moment, or the sight of a vehicle on its side is inescapably edifying.
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25 June
Serious or not, I do not believe that it is any more possible to have a debate by Splatter/Twatter than by MSN Messenger: with the latter, because of the immediacy of seeing the other person's reponse, it's all too easy to feel the need to reply quickly (perhaps, more and more quickly) and, sooner or later, say something (or in such a way) that, if interpreted differently, gives rise to offence, defence and even reprisal.
In theory, if the visuals on Skype weren't such rubbish and not in synch, it would be better than a telephone-call. Still, with a conversation by telephone, there is potential for noticing and acting on such cues as inflexion, intonation, breathiness of the voice, involuntary ways of evincing surprise, shock, etc. - you know, all those things that go to make up the 92% in that standard iceberg cod-psychology diagram*, which purports to show how little of the meaning in a face-to-face conversation is in the words. (Oh yes, generalizing diagram? Just try saying 'You're fired!'(or 'Your mother is dead') to someone in a serious voice, and ask how little he or she took from your words!)
As to Pratter, with a character-limit similar to text-messaging's regrettable re-invention of the telegram's pressure on words to save charges, it should be no worse than text-messaging, except that there is an arena, a sort of Big Top: by which I mean that, if I send a text-message to Dr Paul, some time (which may be longer than one expects) it gets to his phone and, one hopes, he reads it and, in his own time, replies (if it needs a reply).
So much holds true for both: I can choose to expend money or time on an extended text-message, just as I can send a follow-up Tweet straight after. What remains (or results) is the fragmentary nature, not just of the correspondence, but also of the means of conducting it (especially on a handheld device), which has the potential, not least when other debates / conversations are going on at the same, for participants not stopping to check what the other person did say before letting go a broadside.
However, telecomms errors and hacking apart, a text-message doesn't go to anyone else's phone, for which read 'is publicly available on Witter - until I choose to delete it - for anyone who decides to do what is weirdly called following me' (sounds like licensed stalking ['Someone's following me' never sounded like a good thing before], but there we go. Here, though, with my debate with Dr Paul, which may involve misunderstandings, misrememberings, misconceptions, all this is (circus again!) being played out before an audience, even if it probably is an audience that couldn't care less, and glances - or scrolls - past**.
I believe that that element of 'dirty washing in public' changes things, both as to the things said, and the desire (albeit resistible) to say things back. Combine that with doing whatever it is in 140 characters, or multiples thereof, and what a mess results!
And who softened the blow / profile of all this under the cunning aegis of calling it all 'social media'? Pratter is a tool that has the potential to be a divisive medium, if not just a repository for endlessly spread links to Internet items or products whose actual worth or interest one cannot judge from the Tweet itself. This sheer advertisement and self-promotion might be better placed on t.v.
End-notes
* Which, as Tomkinson's Schooldays would possibly say, was seen by Potter Minor on a training-course, reproduced afterwards with slightly variant percentages and passed on to Venables, who couldn't read the scribbled figures, but had a guess, and delivered them in a lecture heard by Barnstoneworth, who told Eric Olthwaite...
** Unlike the rubbernecking that gives rise to those dangerous slow-downs on Motorways, as if either the pulled-over police-car with the flashing lights gives a screw about the other drivers' speeds just at that moment, or the sight of a vehicle on its side is inescapably edifying.
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Sunday, 24 June 2012
Knots in a whale
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24 June
When Kelly Ann Parsons became Kelly Brook, maybe no one had my inclination to try making Spoonerisms of everything – Belly Crook?
It could mean that she steals people’s stomachs, or, in the Australian sense, that a recent meal disagreed with her. (Either way, I wish that I could erase this thought and think of her name as I used to!)
But names are funny things, and have what the phrase calls a life of their own. How else would an NHS Trust come up with a title for a policy (‘P’ for policy) that spelt out CRAP? You could say that they were at least honest about the worth of the contents…
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Odd words (1)
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24 June
I happened to be thinking about Harry Potter, trying to remember the exact name of the listening-devices tellingly used by Hermione, Ron and him, and I ended up thinking about the word 'sneak' and 'to sneak':
As in 'sneaking a look', what the trio of friends do is to eavesdrop (another interesting word, I suspect) on what they should not be hearing. Likewise, creeping in somewhere, in the hope that others will be unaware, is 'sneaking in'*.
All well and good. If we turn to a person who tells others' misdeeds to those in authority, i.e. 'sneak' as a noun (also called a tell-tale), the illicit act is not (necessarily) finding out the information covertly, but in revealing what those people intended to be secret.
Which brings us back to the verb, the Peeping Tom / Lady Godiva aspect, of what was being done or discussed privately (because confidential), though, of course, the lady's act of riding a horse was rather more public. And what a shame that we remember not her civil disobedience at her husband's cruel measures, but this prurient element. In fact, whatever myth there may be, do we even know whether her opposition bore any fruit (other than the unwitting, negative one of Tom's downfall)?
End-notes
* There is the US past tense 'snuck', for 'sneaked', that t.v. and film have given us.
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24 June
I happened to be thinking about Harry Potter, trying to remember the exact name of the listening-devices tellingly used by Hermione, Ron and him, and I ended up thinking about the word 'sneak' and 'to sneak':
As in 'sneaking a look', what the trio of friends do is to eavesdrop (another interesting word, I suspect) on what they should not be hearing. Likewise, creeping in somewhere, in the hope that others will be unaware, is 'sneaking in'*.
All well and good. If we turn to a person who tells others' misdeeds to those in authority, i.e. 'sneak' as a noun (also called a tell-tale), the illicit act is not (necessarily) finding out the information covertly, but in revealing what those people intended to be secret.
Which brings us back to the verb, the Peeping Tom / Lady Godiva aspect, of what was being done or discussed privately (because confidential), though, of course, the lady's act of riding a horse was rather more public. And what a shame that we remember not her civil disobedience at her husband's cruel measures, but this prurient element. In fact, whatever myth there may be, do we even know whether her opposition bore any fruit (other than the unwitting, negative one of Tom's downfall)?
End-notes
* There is the US past tense 'snuck', for 'sneaked', that t.v. and film have given us.
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Saturday, 23 June 2012
Authenticity and the actual
Quitting Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI for Tamara Stefanovich
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8 July
Quitting Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI for Tamara Stefanovich
It was my big chance - hearing Jordi Savall and Hespèrion XXI - and, I had thought, a fitting end to a great few days of talks, concerts and even a film at Aldeburgh.
Only he and his three fellow musicians weren't a string quartet, but we were sitting in the same artificial hush as if they were, and we were hearing them play what was clearly, often enough, music for dancing, yet in a concert.
But, since we were in a concert, there was a mismatch that just didn't work for me any more than it does when people in a jazz-gig do not have a natural impulse to applaud - or even urge on - a striking solo.
The ancientness of one instrument that Savall was playing was patent in that it looked like a tree-stump, but I didn't know which of it was which and which the other, and the way in which the music was coming to us in this place seemed at odds with however accurate the performance-style and elaboration of each piece may have been : in more ways than one, I just could not believe that it was intended to be listened to or presented in this way.
Yes, maybe, if there had been dancers, it would have been different. I don't know what would have helped me feel that I was not in a sterile environment, trying to listen to the life in what was being played, but I just know that, however appropriately relaxed the musicians were, the resultant event felt stiff and unnatural.
I took the chance to write about Tamara Stefanovich's recital, and didn't go back for the second half :
For me, that helped to preserve (and not just in the form of a blog-posting) what I had related to in those few days, so that I could drive home happy.
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Thursday, 21 June 2012
Do you want to contract with me?
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22 June
The language of business is changing:
People no longer seem to want to talk about making or entering into a contract, but have - from somewhere - adopted this practice of talking about it not as a thing to be agreed, but as an action.
So the riposte to the line from the title is: No, you get smaller all on your own!
And the main issue is that no one seems to know how to say this bisyllabic verb, except that it cannot be the same as the noun. So, this most artificial of human activities sounds forced, and tense, and awkward, as maybe it should do...
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22 June
The language of business is changing:
People no longer seem to want to talk about making or entering into a contract, but have - from somewhere - adopted this practice of talking about it not as a thing to be agreed, but as an action.
So the riposte to the line from the title is: No, you get smaller all on your own!
And the main issue is that no one seems to know how to say this bisyllabic verb, except that it cannot be the same as the noun. So, this most artificial of human activities sounds forced, and tense, and awkward, as maybe it should do...
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The Unthanks and a film
This is a Festival review of A Very English Winter : The Unthanks (2012)
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21 June
This is a Festival review of A Very English Winter : The Unthanks (2012)
This was a cinema premiere of A Very English Winter : The Unthanks, a film made for t.v. (for BBC Four), introduced by the film-maker, who had perhaps prepared a little too much to say for such an occasion. Although Rachel Unthank and her sister Becky (Rebecca) were mentioned as clog-dancers as well as folk-singers, they had no opportunity to demonstrate the former skills, although they did take place in what was called a molly dance (which would originally have been to seek to raise funds for the ploughboys at the start of the traditional agricultural year) and one in which six dancers with swords came together to form a star.
Rachel and Becky ventured south to Lincolnshire, to Ramsey in Cambridgeshire, and Lewes in Sussex, but were not in the south-west at all, and otherwise in Yorkshire or nearby counties. The film ran chronologically and comprised six or seven events, starting with Hallowe’en and a mummer’s play, in which The Black Prince tried to attack King George. The prince was killed, but revived by a doctor with various potions, before Beelzebub put in an appearance and stole someone’s pint, which he impressively downed in one.
Whether quite, as the commentary by The Unthanks claimed, these various traditions such as lighting tar-barrels (carried on the head), parading through Lewes in costume and with huge numbers of fireworks on 5 November, and singing carols to lively melodies that had been written in the seventeeth and eighteenth century and banned by the church as too riotous showed adherence to beliefs other than wanting to do what previous generations had done (as was attested by cine footage) is perhaps doubtful: the anti-popery banners in Lewes turned out to be said to relate to an unnamed holder of papal power who, if he had been as bad, would have been one of the anti-popes anyway, and, although driving away evil figured in the mummer’s play, it was not obvious whether people did believe in ‘the embodiment of evil’.
As it is, I think that our traditions of writing and portraying evil on the screen do often show it as other, as the blacked-up Black Prince* was: we have a Lord Voldemort or a Hannibal to relate to and to wish for his undoing, even if life is maybe a little more complicated than that.
End-notes
* In truth, The Black Prince was an honourable knight, much loved and his death bewailed, as the glory of his tomb in Canterbury Cathedral shows, with all his ‘achievements’, i.e. his gauntlets, plumes, helm, etc., above him (these are copies, with the originals on view nearby), making clear that he was valued as the height of chivalry.
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