Irony in action

Gordon's famously reduced the strength of their gin after an EU directive defined the minimum strength for gin as 37.5%. What was that about cutting corners and losing your edge again?

Mr Ramsay's very big on quality control. Obviously not that big, though..

Prometeo (RFH)

Time's a funny thing; or the perception of it. Prometeo runs for over two hours, two hours in which not very much happens. And yet, in another sense, an awful lot happens, because by the end of it you're in a different space to the one you started out in.

It's a bit different for me perhaps; I've sat through the five hours of Morton Feldman's For Philip Guston*, so a couple of hours is peanuts in comparison. And Bruckner wrote 90-minute pieces in which, in a very profound sense, nothing really happens (and yet everything!). So there's plenty of precedent.

Not everyone can take this sort of thing: there were several people who walked out, some after less than half an hour. But it takes a half-hour or so to acclimatise yourself to this sort of music, and you need the patience to do that if you're going to get something out of it.

The spacial element of Prometeo is of course one of its main selling points. Stockhausen of course experimented with breaking down the traditional relationship between performers and audience in the 60s with Gruppen, and playing Strauss's Alpine Symphony recently, with its army of off-stage brass, reminds me that playing about with these things is nothing new in itself. But Prometeo takes these ideas and runs with them. There are clusters of musicians everywhere, even before you consider the sound field created by numerous speakers distributed all around. This creates a slight tension, as the Royal Festival Hall is clearly designed for the traditional layout of audience all pointing towards a stage, so our sitting position works against what Nono is trying to achieve. But in a strange way this only seems to point up how entrenched we are in our concert-going habits, the very thing Nono wants us to question.

The (excellent) programme contained the texts used in the piece, but this is really better studied later on, as Nono deliberately abstracts the words in his setting so that it's really incomprehensible in any conventional sense. Rather, he exploits the libretto as a source of sounds and timbres for the voices. There didn't seem to be any need to think about the text or the legend of Prometheus except in the most general, abstract way, and this is part of what it's about: it's not about comprehending, it's about the pure experience of listening.

Normally when you hear something involving a combination of instruments and electronics you expect the electric part to be superimposed on the acoustic, but what Nono does is much more subtle than that, and it's a credit to him that you hardly think about the presence of the sound system, so carefully are the two elements integrated; this is use of technology as a subtle enhancement rather than a bludgeoning club. The effect as you hear sounds from their original source drift across the room and transform into complex textures is serenely discorporating.

The actual music itself seems much more eclectic than I'd have expected, ranging from terrifying clusters to the sweetest of perfect fifths, and pretty much everything in between. Occasionally a roar emerges from the orchestras, but largely the music is a great drift.

Nono is classed as one of those nasty modernists we're all supposed to reject these days in favour of Golijov. But what's striking is that this music (as well as being far more immediate than the anti-modernists would have you believe) doesn't sound "modern" at all. It sounds extraordinarily, immensely ancient. We leave the hall at the end, and to return to the bustle of London after this feels like returning from a journey to an unimaginably distant world, perhaps even time. The world seems too fast. Nono gives our thoughts space to breathe. And time.

There's so much more to be said, and yet also nothing. I go about my day as before. But behind it somewhere there's the memory of this other place, and it'll be a while before it's absorbed. it's all a matter of time.





Tim Rutherford-Johnson has a good roundup of reviews of the performances.


*I've sat through the even bigger String Quartet No.2 (over six hours on the Flux Quartet's recording, helpfully available on DVD to avoid those annoying disc changes). But somehow it seems cheating, doing it in the comfort of your own living room.

Playing with fire

A big weekend looms: tomorrow night I'll be off to the South Bank to hear Luigi Nono's Prometeo, about which I shall doubtless have more to say later. I'll be rehearsing on Sunday for the KSO concert on Monday, so annoyingly I won't get to see the Bowmans at the Borderline, but you should if you can.

And just to show it's not only BBC Young Musician that's had a lobotomy, I see the Classical Brits gave Emperor Palpatine an outstanding achievement award, and think the best classical release of the last year was cod-operatic karaoke act Bleak. To which the only sensible response is to laugh like a drain.

Apparently Villa-scum supporting mockney fiddler Nige pulled out because they wouldn't let him perform with FHM-stylee quartet Bland. Which after the above seems an odd point at which to make a stand on artistic integrity.

Young Musician of the Year 2008 (BBC4)

I missed last night's string programme (general consensus: the guitarist was streets ahead of the others, and the violinist shouldn't have even been there) but I did see the wind finalists paraded before me and the 3 other people who watch BBC4 on Monday. I'm sure the Scottish flautist who won ("He's so camp!" squealed one of the other contestants, and I'm sure he'll thank her for that when he's lying in some street late at night having his head kicked in) fully deserved his place in the grand final, but it's difficult to be sure, because one of the defining features of this programme was that you didn't get to hear very much music at all. Instead you got treated to lots of shots of the players walking about, going on Facebook (they do little else, at least that's the impression the programme gives; well, as every coked-up London TV executive knows, that's what da kidz do, innit bro?), hugging each other endlessly in the wake of auditions and recitals, thinking about what shoes to wear, lots of voice overs about how nervous they are but also how excited to have got this far... I looked at my watch at one point and realised it was halfway through the programme and not one of the four contenders had performed anything. Not long after that I realised none of them would, beyond a few seconds.

Is this starting to sound familiar? It should, because it's pretty much the same format as every other X-stars-in-Britain-have-talented-operatunity show out there; that stumbling mass of rotten-headed zombie programmes that shuffles unstoppably across the TV schedules, with the sole aim of removing the brains from our skulls.

And that's the point: you can see exactly how we arrived at this sorry abortion of a programme - lots of brainstorming by telly people, lots of guff about how classical music's seen as elitist and we've got to show how these lids are just normal teenagers, not stuck up posh kids (except that they are, because music's been sliding down the priorities of educational policy in the country for years, and only posh kids have parents who can afford to pay for them to have the lessons) - oh, and isn't it lucky one of them's Scottish, because another thing that every coked-up TV executive knows is that Scottish kids are automatically NOT POSH, so let's have lots of focus on him. Make it normal, make it accessible, don't let any hint through that there might be anything special or exceptional about these kids, certainly don't scare anyone off by showing them play an entire piece uninterrupted, get lots of reaction footage of the bods on the jury, much better to have someone tell you how good it is, can't trust the fucking plebs who watch TV to listen and form their own opinion, can you?

So you end up with a programme that fails on every count, because it's too scared to show us the only thing that makes these kids worth our time: their talent as musicians. This is how television likes to deal with classical music; anything, anything but the music itself.

You can see and hear complete performances on the website, I'm sure they would say. And it's true, you can. But why can't you see and hear them on TV? It's not as if the schedules are so stuffed full of content that they can't ever find time to devote hours of transmission time to talking heads spouting inanities about what they loved about the 1970s. I think there's a simpler explanation. I think the people who run TV don't like the music, they resent having to make space for it, they resent its very existence. They know little of it, and care less. All they care about is squeezing the last drop of life from exhausted formats while they wait for the next bandwagon to roll up. I'll bet when they put this programme together they talked a lot about journeys, about personalities, about relevance, about elitism and outreach. I wonder how much they talked about music?

Dear London

You are a fucking idiot.

That is all.

"Writing about music is like dancing about architecture"

Erin raises the subject of programme notes. It's something that I've thought about a bit over the years, not least because I've written a few myself, both for my own and other composers' music.

And the conclusion I've reached is this: most of them are a complete and utter waste of time.

I can't remember the first one I wrote, but I suspect a big factor in my starting to do them is that you're expected to do them for your own pieces if you're a composer. And most composers are terrible at it. I went to an spnm workshop on this very subject once, and some of the examples given were astonishing in their obtuse unreadability.

There's a basic problem, in that the way you think about a piece when you're writing it is almost exactly the opposite of how you perceive the same piece as a listener. One often gets the impression that many young composers are treating their note as an exercise for their musical analysis class.

It's not just composers who are bad at this. When I think of the times I heard Stockhausen discuss his music, and compare his clear, simple, lucid introductions to the reams of obfuscatory rubbish I've seen written by others about it, it's no wonder he ha a reputation as incomprehensible to anyone without a PhD in music and mathematics.

There's no point in putting musical analysis into a programme note. it's almost entirely irrelevant. Those who can understand such things don't need to be told about it, and those who can't, well, can't, so why confuse them further? it's distracting, confronted with Schoenberg, say, to be told to play spot the tone-row when what you should be concentrating on is the emotional import of the piece.

Tovey wrote wonderful pieces of musical analysis that are held up as exemplary programme notes, but what's rarely pointed out is that these wonderful essays were sent out to subscribers weeks before the concert they related to. There's an argument for bringing that back, of course,. but in the context I'm thinking of - the interested layman sitting in his or her seat waiting for the concert to start - it's way too much to take in.

I'm also confused by this habit of writing long descriptions of what happens in the piece. I don't want to know the plot of a book or film before my first encounter with it, why should I be denied the excitement of finding my own way through a piece of music?

What does help is context. It's good to know where the composer was coming from when he/ she wrote; so in the note I've just finished* for Strauss's Alpine Symphony I've talked a lot about the influences of Nietzsche's Anti-Christ and Strauss's friendship with the recently deceased Mahler. I also like to put in any odd facts I may discover relating to the composer of the piece, simply because I like that sort of thing. What I want to do is write something that is actually enjoyable to read and puts you in the world of the music and puts you in the mood for it. I like to put a bit of humour in as well, if possible. A lot of people feel like there's a barrier between them and this fancy-dan classical music stuff, and a joke or two helps reduce that, I hope.

So, my rules for a successful programme note, partly influenced by Orwell's six rules of journalism:

• Talk about historical context
• Put in something unusual or entertaining about composer or piece, the more trivial the better.
• Don't use any technical musical terms.
• Don't write descriptions of the music, except in the most general terms
• It's acceptable to mention something specific near the end of the piece, so the listener will know they're near the end.
• Entertain the reader.
• If at all possible don't mention the actual music at all.

*Sorry, no free lunch here - you'll have to go to the gig and buy the programme if you want to read it.

The Minotaur

Say what you like about the parasitical/elitist/upper class* crowd, they get service. I hardly had to queue at all to pick up my ticket from the Royal Opera House box office for tonight's performance of Harrison Birtwistle's latest show, The Minotaur. A pleasant change from some venues I could mention. The man behind the desk almost smiled, too.

They're obviously not used to folks from the regions in the bar though, as I had to repeat my request for a bottle of Pride several times, my minimally Brummie accent proving virtually indecipherable to the barman. Of course I was in the cheap sets, but i got to feel like a flash rich person with wads of cash to chuck around through the ROH's thoughtfully charging £4 for a bottle (that's about eight quid a pint - nightclub prices if ever I saw them. Maybe this is their way of reaching out to the ordinary punter).

I must make a confession: I'm not really that mad on opera. It's fundamentally a fairly ridiculous medium that seems to attract deranged fanatics who take no interest in any other form of music. So it's a credit to the composer and the production that I was thoroughly engaged in the evening, managing to sit through the 85 minute first half without fidgeting very much a all (just as well, as there's not much room in the cheap seats, certainly stretching's a no-no).

Death's always a problem on stage. It's difficult to feel genuine horror at the sight of some skinny lass writhing around the floor smearing ketchup over her smock. I suppose this is just one of those things you have to put up with, though, and Birtwistle's score and the production are both sensible enough to present something heavily stylised that makes almost no attempt to acknowledge the concept of realism. So when the Minotaur goes on his second killing spree, taking the body tally from one to a dozen in a few minutes, it's presented more as ballet than anything actorly, and is all the better for it.

As I've noted before, Birtwistle seems to be in the process of a strange image-metamorphosis from bogey man to the cuddly face of modernism in the press at the moment, and while it would be stretching it to suggest this is no more work than a night at Madam Butterfly, this is a compelling, clearly orchestrated and emotionally direct score, and hell, yes, lyrical. The narrative proceeds in a linear fashion, and one suspects Birtwistle's in danger of becoming respectable. I particularly liked the cimbalom that popped up fairly regularly, reminding me strangely of Portishead (I guess because they're in my mined this week).

There are lots of startling moments, particularly the Keres who come to feast on the dead left in the beast's wake, and the Oracle who tells Ariadne how to help Theseus escape the labyrinth. The message of the piece - the closeness of humanity and baser nature, and the way we create our demons - isn't one of startling revelation, but it's resonant, and presented subtly without being bashed around the head, and the melancholy of the Minotaur's monologues particularly is very affecting.

All the cast were excellent, but of course special mention must be made of John Tomlinson, whose head was visible as a human ghost inside the bull's head (a particularly good example of the way the design in the show uses simple ideas effectively) and brought the pathos to the role to make us sympathise with the beast. The chorus goading him on to kill come over as school bullies, creating the beast by treating him as one.

Looking round the audience at the interval, it struck me that it didn't look at all like what cliche would suggest an audience at a contemporary opera would look like, which must be a good sign. Although there was present that man who gos to all concerts it seems, and makes sure he leaps in like a demented seal as soon as the orchestra finishes to clap, thus entirely destroying the atmosphere (this was particularly annoying at the interval). No-one thinks you're clever for knowing when it's ended, mate, so give it a rest, eh?

At the curtain call I was startled to see a fat bloke in drag with a pair of comedy plastic breasts strapped on come on stage, it was the oracle. Sometimes it's best to keep the lights down low and keep the magic.

*Delete according to personal prejudice.

I tried to take a picture of the nice sandpit with a bull's head in it at the front of the stage before the show began, but it came out terrible, so I've nicked this picture from MusicalCriticism.com instead.

Telly Savalas looks at Birmingham

Beautiful. Just beautiful.

Portishead: Third

Just to show there's more than one way to skin a cat, the other excellent new release this week is from a band who are pretty much the opposite to the Fall's work ethic, this being their third album proper in 14 years, and their first for 11. But if Scott Walker (of whom more later) can take 11 years between records, so can Portishead, and who cares when the results are as good as this?

Parr-zed (as you call them if you actually come from Portishead) are also pretty much The Fall's polar opposite in terms of their style, too, but there's a connection in the way they've managed to revitalise their sound while remaining recognisably themselves - "always the same, always different".

What's remarkable about this album is the juxtaposition of two entirely different textures: most of the music is harsh and stark, underpinned by brutally minimalist beats, and this is thrown into sharp relief by Beth Gibbons's fragile, pleading vocals. The effect isn't too far removed from Scott Walker's latter-day stuff, and it's interesting that this album is getting a lot of positive mention where Tilt was received with bafflement by many when it came out. Maybe this is a sign of how we've moved on.

The other music that comes top my mind as I listen to this album is that of Galina Ustvolskaya - there's a similar feel of supplications to an indifferent God, humanity somewhere deep in the midst of a vast, uncaring machine of a universe.

This isn't easy listening - there'll be few dinner parties with this on in the background, as Portishead's first album was unfairly condemned to - but it's powerful stuff, that reveals itself more and more with each listen. And it takes a very special kind of confidence to be able to produce this stark, oppressive sound, and then throw a ukulele into the middle of it, as happens on "Deep Water".

The Fall: Imperial Wax Solvent

32 years in, and Mark E. Smith shows no sign of quitting, with the 27th(ish) Fall album out today. Good.

There are, apparently, still some people who remain wilfully blind to the genius of The Fall, and I suppose at this stage it's too late for them; I can only pity them and the drab lives they must lead.

Because there is not one band who has managed what Smith and his many cohorts have achieved: to sustain a career in this strange beast we call rock and roll for three decades that maintains an extraordinarily high quality level (I maintain they've never released a bad album: sure, there are Fall albums that are less good than the others, but their slightest effort is still several rungs above almost anyone else) and still retains its full creative force and originality.

Having established recent incarnations of The Fall as the Ur-garage band, Smith on this album seems to be playing with that sounds, pulling it apart and reconstructing it from the inside out. So what we get are a lot of startling jump cuts between textures and tempi, which seem to bring The Fall's latent Beefheart influence to the fore. now Beefheart's not someone you can emulate unless you're very sure of yourself, and of course The Fall manage to let that sound come out without ever once sounding like anything other than the Fall, which of course is the essence of their genius.

It's compelling, genuinely adult music ("I'm a 50-year old man, and I like it!" exclaims Smith) ; a big thick juicy steak of a record, in comparison to the thin gruel so many bands serve up. And it's great to dance to, too. The Fall come from the land of Northern Soul, remember; they understand the value of dancing.

R.I.P. Humph

Humphrey Lyttelton: Jazz great, master of the double entendre, a man who worked almost til the day he died. If I can die half as active as him I'll die a happy man.

slipping past

slipping past
Originally uploaded by petemaskreplica.

The days pass. I'm not dead or anything, just busy with other things.

There are two courses of action when you hit the weekend with a stinking cold:

i) eat plenty of fruit and veg to get your vitamins and have an early night.

ii) fill yourself with booze and comfort food.

Guess which plan I'm going with?

written on the wind and the running waters

I had a big long rant about Airport security in my head, something to do with being made to feel like a criminal for wanting to travel within my own country, with the way an airport reflects the world and this is how we shall live soon, but I was too tired to type it by the time I got home, and too busy the next day, and today the spleen has dissipated. So it goes on the internet - it's important to get these things online immediately, less you should have time to reflect and start being rational or reasonable about it.

Anyway, more interesting things are in the air, namely that the third and final cartoon I drew for Rhinegold is in the shops now, in the Festivals supplement to the current issue of Classical Music, so rush out and buy that, and then write letters to them saying how great I am and that I should have a regular strip in there.

A hard climb

I'm writing a programme note about Richard Strauss's Alpine Symphony for the next KSO concert at the moment, and it's an interesting contrast with the last one I did for Shostakovich 4. This is partly due to the fact that I just don't like Richard Strauss very much.

it's difficult to pin down just what it is that doesn't appeal to me; I can see that it's well written - Strauss is never less than effective with an orchestra - and there's plenty to say about the origins of the piece, what with the connections to Nietszche and Mahler. It's not even his dodgy Nazi links - the more I read about him the more I become convinced that he was naive and blinkered and self-serving rather than actually evil. It's that I can't see anything beneath the (admittedly attractive) surface. So I struggle at those sentences, desperately trying to convey an enthusiasm I don't really feel, talkign about hidden depths I'm not convinced are there.

He's the musical equivalent of a page 3 girl - very well built, but once you've got past the beautifully contoured orchestration, there's nothing to engage the intellect*. Someone once said something to the effect that of the three late-romantic Austro-German composers, Bruckner found God, Mahler searched for God and Strauss wondered what all the fuss was about. And that's the effect his music has on me. It drifts by, beautifully composed and utterly vacuous.

Composing to entertain the audience is a perfectly legitimate strategy, as valid as composing without a care for the audience, and on some level Strauss must be successful, because I certainly seem to be in a minority in my apathy. But as much as I like to look at a well built figure, it's more fun if there's a conversation to be had too.


*I'm not suggesting that all page 3 girls are air heads, of course. I'm sure there are plenty of them with degrees in comparative philosophy or quantum physics.

Tuesday Link-o-rama

Oh, has it come to this? Am I now on that slippery slope to being just another blog with a bunch of links to the words of other, far more intelligent and interesting people than me? I'll try not to make a habit of it. Anyway, in the absence of anything interesting to say coming out of my brain, here are a few things to read:

EMI's planned job cuts have been delayed by some piddling legal process. Damn those pesky Europeans with their crazy ideas that big multinational corporations can't just shit on people as they please.

The Graunaiad is publishing daily extracts from one of the Defeatist's number one heroes, Mark E. Smith. Part one is here and part two is here.

Harrison Birtwistle's new opera The Minotaur premieres tonight. Here are some interviews with the composer, director and protagonist. I'm interested in the way the media seem to have moved from portraying Birtwistle as a terrifying figure to almost the cuddly face of modernism.

And the painted ponies go up and down

Music publishing behemoth Boosey & Hawkes has been sold off, I read.

HG Capital's press release about the sale has this to say about its period of ownership:

During that time the firm supported Boosey & Hawkes’ management in executing
a transformation from a traditional classical music publisher into a 21st
century music rights group. It has outsourced a number of non-core activities
such as printing and distribution and developed a series of new revenue streams.
In particular it has developed a strong presence in the market for music in
advertising and film, where revenues are currently growing at approximately 30%
per annum.

A company deeply committed to new music, whose number one mission is artistic.

Here's Daniel Wolf on the changing relationship between composer and publisher. My own experience dealing with all levels of music publishing suggests to me that an outfit such as Frog Peak can be a very effective way for composers to pool resources, while self-publishing composers vary in their effectiveness, from someone like Christopher Fox, who runs a very effective cottage industry, to the Stockhausen verlag, which, surprisingly for the imprint of a composer who was so much at the forefront of technology, doesn't even take credit cards. Meanwhile, the big old publishing houses seem to expend more effort in restricting access to their music than promoting it.

Mothman about the house

I thoroughly enjoy reading Ben Clark's Magic Beans Comics. And so should you.

You've spun me round And knocked me off my axis mundi

The 2008 Proms have been announced.

And you know what? There's some pretty darn good stuff in there. Obviously the Stockhausen day will be a highlight for me, but there's also a hefty wad of Messiaen and Carter (and it's not often you get to celebrate the centenary of someone who's not only still alive, but still very active), and a couple of "populist" gigs which I think are both excellent ideas - although not everyone agrees with me.

It's all very well to say "If we build it they will come", but the fact is that kids today have next to no experience of classical music, concert halls are seen as forbidding places, and many people simply won't enter one (a bit like the way quite a lot of people won't watch a programme simply because it's on BBC2 - which is why shows that transfer to BBC1 get such a huge hike in viewing figures). Personally I think that juxtaposing Doctor Who and Turnage is a great idea, not only in terms of getting people inside the hall who might never otherwise go, but putting a message out that it's ok to like both. It's not going to create a brand new audience overnight, but it's a step in the right direction, and puts the whole thing ahead of the usual game for "family" concerts.

The folk day is also exactly in line with what the Proms ought to be doing - a type of music that's intimately linked with so-called classical music, and presented with some of the cultural paraphernalia that surrounds it rather than in isolation like a butterfly in a glass case. I'm looking forward to having a dance round the maypole, so there! And the Ceilidh is a great way to finish it off. If we take it for granted that the Proms is bound to the Albert Hall for the foreseeable future (and I think it is), then for all the place's faults it should be embraced, and stuff like this makes an imaginative use of the space.

Some of the concerts look a bit bizarre to my eye in terms of the wild oscillations between full symphonic works and solo piano pieces, not to mention some strange programme orders (Mahler 5 as an opener??) , but if the Proms are to survive and flourish they have to be open to innovation and experiment, and one of the things about experiments is that they don't always work. The point is, it feels like a fresh breeze is blowing over the season after the increasingly stultifying Kenyon years. There's an eclecticism and a lack of reliance on tired barrel-scraping themes and the like that leaves me feeling uncharacteristically upbeat.

So bring on the daleks, the maypole, the electronica, I say: If it works, great; if it doesn't, at least they tried. Next year they could try putting a big Wicker Man up in Kensington Gardens.

... and everything decays.

Scenes from a life I did not live

Am in Lon tmw so could meet you at waterloo after my meeting around 5? All well my end. Speak tmw Tx

I've never texted the wrong person by mistake myself*, but I suppose it must be easy-ish to do. I occasionally get a random message, or sometimes am treated to a long voicemail message consisting of the sound of half heard muffled voices through the phone owner's pocket.

There's a strange illicit thrill to receiving a random unintended moment of someone else's life. Who is meeting whom? Why at Waterloo? Is that kiss a meaningless friendly thing, or something more significant? Before you know it, I've constructed an entire scenario of affairs, desire, deception, furtive assignations and stolen kisses on train platforms. It's one of those rare moments when you're suddenly taken out of your own life and catch a glimpse of the normally unimagined, unnoticed, hidden or ignored world of others. A reminder that as we shuffle through our own concerns, other lives are happening, everywhere, indifferent to us.

*My phone's decided to text or call random people by itself plenty of times, though.

Alone again with the dawn coming up

There's a link here somewhere with yesterday's post; something to do with blurring the boundaries of what constitute sound and music, of what sounds we might use to make music. This all goes back to John Cage, of course, and quite possibly beyond; Berlioz scored for thunder in The Trojans, after all*.

Anyway, after yesterday's orgy of feedback (which some spoilsports want to eliminate - boo!), today I'm in an entirely different place, namely the sun-bleached deserts of middle America - well, that what I'm put in mind of when listening to the KLF's album "Chill Out". Like Bill Drummond, I've never been there, but it certainly sounds like what it ought to feel like there, so much so that I suspect I should never go there in case the reality doesn't live up to the place in my mind.

It's a seamless collage of samples and original music that drifts by like clouds, essentially static, as is Metal Machine Music, but that's partly an illusion - things are happening, and by the end of the album you are somewhere different to where you started, it's just that the movement is glacial. I might make another connection, this time forwards to the mid 90s when I first heard Morton Feldman's music, which similarly uses apparent lack of development to mask a much deeper and more powerful progression.

It's about space, as is the other music I've mentioned; this is something Miles Davis learned from Stockhausen and used to good effect on "On the Corner". It's perhaps the great unrecognised concern of 20th century music that reverberates still: the creation of an almost physical sense of space. You can do it by the placing of your players, in the performance area or mix; you might do it by the careful placement of notes in time; it's difficult to describe adequately, but it sure is powerful when you hear it. And feel it, because it's as much about the physical sensation as the aural.

By the way, I thought this album was long out of print, but apparently you can get it on Amazon. It's getting increasingly hard to find music that's hard to find, isn't it?

*How he thought he was going to get a roll of thunder to order is an interesting question. Of course the practical answer is that you play it on a bass drum, but the fact remains that the score specifies "roule de tonnerre", not drums.

chaos and beauty

Lou Reed's Metal Machine Music, one of the more remarkable albums of the seventies, has always had a special place in my heart. It's, in essence, an hour of feedback, and is often voted somewhere near the top of lists of the worst albums ever made. When I was a sullen pretentious teenager this clearly made it a cause to be championed in my own contrary way. Hell, Ian Curtis had once said it was his favourite album, and it was, y'know, really loud.

Actually, there was always more to it than that, but my appreciation of it has only grown over the years as I've gotten old enough to drop the posturing nonsense, and heard enough of the right sort of music to begin to appreciate the place it occupies in the scheme of things. It's stating the obvious that it's in part the extreme logical conclusion to what Reed did with John Cale in the Velvet Underground, but there are deeper roots in there, in Cale and original Velvets drummer Angus MacLise's earlier work with LaMonte Young's Theater of Eternal Music.

What got me thinking about it again was the remarkable CD by the German ensemble Zeitkratzer, who perform a painstakingly transcribed arrangement for acoustic instruments (joined in the latter stages by Reed himself on guitar). So what better way to follow this up by digging out the original for a comparison? And what better time to do this than a Thursday lunchtime?

The thing that strikes you coming back to it, is how un-atonal it is, in direct contradiction to its reputation. Reed knew this, of course - the deadpan sleeve note he specifies "avoidance of any type of atonality". The thing about feedback is, that it originates from the overtones in the source vibration, and so when you use specific open tunings, as Reed does to the guitars he used to record the album, you actually end up with something that has the sort of oblique tonal/modal feel that a lot of contemporary classical music references.

The other thing, quite unexpected if you're coming to it through its reputation, is that if you turn the volume down it's not harsh at all, simply a glittering web of melodies and harmonies, an energetic tumble of waves of notes dancing on the surface of a vast, deep ocean of drones.

It's always portrayed as a vicious, harsh, masculine "fuck you" record, but what keeps me coming back to it, and what should bring you to it, is the increasing realisation that it's a sensuous, beautiful piece of music. Try it with your sandwiches on a sunny day.

Let's go to work

Little time for blogging at the moment, as you may have noticed from the few and inconsequential posts lately. Well, I'm afraid you'll have to get used to that, because inane witterings about Doctor Who is about as good as it's likely to get in the immediate future. This is not in itself a bad thing, as it's at least partly down to the exciting thing that I'm now working on, of which I shall not speak, as talking about these things seems to have a tendency to kill them off in my mind. Maybe once you've expressed the thought behind it the need for the piece evaporates. Better to explain in retrospect, if at all. I will say there's an element of thinking about rhythm involved, in a different way to what I've done lately. All these months I've been worrying about my drained pool of ideas, wondering if I need to take a long hard look at things and reassess what I'm doing, and it turns out what I really needed was a few days off. There's a lesson for us all there.

Anyway, Doctor Who. I'm getting quite excited about that.

A nice night in

I know I'm probably too old to be excited by this sort of thing. but I am, so there.

Written in smoke

I was half-asleep at the time, so I didn't immediately realise what gave Charlotte Green such a fit of the giggles on the radio. It later transpired it was a comment overheard about a newly restored recording from 1860 - the earliest known recording of a human voice - sounding like a bee in a bottle.

There's something extraordinary and wonderful about this. This voice, the name of whose owner was apparently not considered important enough to be recorded, preserved on nothing more substantial than soot on paper, all that remains of someone from a distant past, untouchable but made tantalisingly close by this tiny fragment. Something about the fragility of existence and the tenaciousness with which we cling to it.

sea and sky

It can't last forever, of course it can't, there's too much crowding out the moments of stillness and repose for it to be otherwise. But that never stops you wishing that maybe one time it might.

Glorious

When Adam and Eve were disposessed
Of the garden, hard by Heaven,
They planted another one down in the West -
'Twas Devon, 'Twas Devon, glorious Devon.

Off for some unseasonal sea. Back next week. Happy Easter!

Arthur C. Clarke 1917-2008

Anyone who grew up in the late 70s and early 80s will remember "Arthur C. Clarke's Mysterious World", a TV series in which Clarke fronted a series of articles investigating strange phenomena. It certainly made a deep impression on me; I was obsessed with Doctor Who (as were most small boys then) and all thing extraterrestrial, and the remarkable tales I saw presented were a huge meal for my ten-year-old imagination. I even got the big expensive tie-in book, and poured over its pages, filling my head with crystal skulls, mysterious explosions, ancient anomalous technology and alien visitors. It was also the first place I heard the name of Charles Fort, whose words currently head this blog, and whose wickedly playful philosophy has been a great influence on me.

Clarke's best known amongst the wider public, of course, for his novel and screenplay 2001: a space odyssey, and for predicting satellites with geostationary orbits, but he wrote a huge number of books, many of which I read avidly. His short stories always chimed with me most, filled with extraordinary imaginative speculation as to the future, which was nevertheless always perfectly grounded in contemporary science.

What I remember and treasure most from his stories, however, is its essential optimism. Clarke wasn't naive; he was certainly aware that human nature does not evolve as fast as our technological capability. But he always seemed to project the wonder of possibility, and the hope that for all our faults, in the end all things shall be well.

It doesn't strike me that he was the sort of person who'd want to be remembered in solemnity, and so here's something I also remember from TV relating to the great man in an entirely less serious way:

Swings and roundabouts

High point of the day: Remembering I'm only working three days this week.
Low point of the day: Realising that today is in fact Tuesday, not Wednesday.

There goes the neighbourhood

Broxbourne, a quiet little town a few minutes' train ride from me (or a few more minutes on the bike I bought there) has previously been known only as the birthplace of the fine composer Elizabeth Maconchy. But eek! It has become the new home of Mr Murdoch's empire of hatred! When the Current Bun moves next door, it's time to call for escape route.

Chains at a molecular level

The sleepwalk to a police state continued at the weekend, with a call from Gary Pugh, director of forensic services at Scotland yard, for children to be added to the national DNA database.

It's really disturbing that someone fairly senior in the police force feels quite able to come out and, in essence, say that the population should be treated as suspects - he is, after all, suggesting that a child be put on not because of anything it might have done, but because of a possibility that it might in future do something. He says at one point:

'Fingerprints, somehow, are far less contentious,' he said. 'We have
children giving their fingerprints when they are borrowing books from a
library.'

What. The. Fuck?? Does this really happen?

Does this really happen?

AC Grayling eloquently dispatches the pernicious "nothing to hide, nothing to fear" argument today in the Guardian.

At a time when the Chinese government is trampling all over the rights (and bodies) of the Tibetans, we need to look to our own back yards and see what's happening here before we find ourselves at the mercy of rulers with no regard for our right to live our own lives.

Set the controls for the heart of the Sun

Set the controls for the heart of the Sun
Originally uploaded by petemaskreplica.

Gustav Mauler

Strangely wonderful.

Are conductors necessary?

A mention on the radio draws my attention to The Times pontificating about the need for conductors in the wake of an interview with Nigel Kennedy (are we back to calling him Nigel now? A couple of years ago he declared he wanted to be known as "Kennedy", presumably in imitation of Morrissey, Madonna, God, and other single-monikered celebs). It's an interesting question.

My own band probably wouldn't get through an extended piece unscathed, but we're operating on a different level to, say, the LSO, who I daresay could quite easily get to the end of a symphony without it falling apart. (Whether the performance would be worth hearing is another matter.) Plus KSO's purpose is in part educational, to broaden the knowledge and appreciation of music for both the players and our audience, which means that our conductor is working in part as a teacher as much as a baton waver.

Conductorless orchestras do exist; from what I gather the main difference is that because the approach to the music has to be decided amongst the band rather than being imposed by a single coordinator, it takes longer to rehearse. I suspect this is why stickless bands are unlikely to have much of a future beyond the relatively small forces involved in pre-(and indeed quite a lot of post-)19th century music, simply because the arguments between 30 people are going to be resolved much quicker than between 80. So, the argument in favour of conductors is essentially efficiency: it's more efficient to have one person in charge of rehearsing and shaping a piece than a group of people discussing it. And of course a pair of ears outside the band is useful, to make sure everyone's balancing well.

(Nigel) Kennedy's someone I've got a lot of time for - it's easy to forget that beneath the eccentricity/twattery lies a very fine musician - but I think he's over-stating the case. As the Times article points out, he's struggled to find anyone he can work with since Klaus Tennstedt.

(Incidentally, I'm disturbed by the comment on Radio 4's Front Row last night that (Nigel)'s (conductorless) new recording of the Beethoven Violin Concerto is slower than his old one with Tennstedt, which was so slow it's a wonder it's not still going on. Maybe he's hoping to make a breakthrough in physics by playing so slowly that time actually starts going backwards.)

The question of whether a single view of a piece or a collectively agreed one is better is a question worth pondering. Of course this does all tie in with the very idea of "interpretation", which is to a greater or lesser degree an excuse to justify playing the same old stuff over and over rather than finding something new for our ears, which goes to the heart of what the classical music industry's all about.

There are conductors who do bring something special to the table, but in truth they're rare birds. Mark Elder's a good example of someone who's worked with one band over many years (the Hallé) and has the kind of relationship with them now where he presumably knows them well enough to work with them rather than at them. Then there are the superstar jetsetters like Gergiev. And of course the huge numbers of journeymen who frankly do bugger all. The trouble is, there's a culture of insisting in so-called classical music that everything is the peak, the absolute elite, when the fact is there's a hell of a lot of the mediocre.

Could you put on a Mahler symphony without a conductor? I don't know. It'd be interesting finding out, though.

Mozartballs

Steph Waller believes she is the reincarnation of Mozart. She gives talks "in character" (and costume) to schoolkids about him, along with her partner Lynette Erwin, who claims to be the reincarnation of the first singer to play the role of Susanna (and alleged tryster with the composer) Anna Storace. Personally I think if I'd been subjected to this as a child I may have been too traumatised ever to listen to Mozart again, but maybe that's just me.

David Cope, meanwhile, has written a program that enables a computer to "compose" like Mozart. He persuades Steven Isserlis to play through a cello concerto written by this program. Isserlis confesses to developing a certain fondness for the work, despite it being "really bad". That's not just a professional opinion, by the way - my companion has no musical training at all, and she managed to recognise its awfulness, a jumble of classical cliches that fitted together in the way a random selection of clothes bought from charity shops might.

These are just some of the characters we encounter in the documentary film, Mozartballs, which was on BBC4 the other night, named after the sickly sweet chocolate balls known as "Mozartkugeln" that act as the most prominent evidence that there is nothing on this earth so tacky that the Viennese won't slap a picture of Mozart on it and sell you.

It's quite an entertaining film, and not simply in a "look at the nutters!" way. To an English mindset the title brings connotations of Private Eye, but this is an American film, and hence lacking the acid that might imply. Rather, it's an affectionate portrait of some eccentric people who've made Mozart the focus of their obsession. Whether this says something about the continuing power Mozart's myth holds over us or the desperate desire of us all to bask in associated glory I don't know, but rather than mocking the film's subjects I find myself warming to them. We live in such a drab, conformist world in so many ways. Who can blame someone for wanting to be Mozart?

Empire of the senseless

Interesting times for music publishing.

Whether EMI will still want to buy Boosey's once they've seen what sort of state it's in remains to be seen - it doesn't bode well if the current owners really have been trying to get rid of it since shortly after they bought it.

Boosey and Hawkes is a company, like most music publishers, that has grown complacent and reliant on the exploitation of some big names it was lucky enough to acquire rather than trying to create a future for the art form it purports to represent. It'd be nice to think a new owner might begin to reverse this trend, but I can't say I feel confident that a bunch of asset-strippers, which is essentially what Guy Hands' business is, will have any new approach to the selling of classical music.

Notes & Queries

A trombonist and me in the pub after the concert on Saturday:

"Great programmes notes!"
"Thanks!"
"Not much about music in them, is there?"
"Well, writing about music's a waste of time, really."

And it is.

Well, I should qualify that. There's plenty to be had out of the study of music, for performers and composers. But when you're writing for an audience the rules are different, I think. Maybe once upon a time you could have assumed a certain level of knowledge about how a piece of so-called-classical music works, but the fact is that you can't anymore. I write programme notes for intelligent people who have no musical education. I could witter on about sonata forms or whatever happens to be the bottle tonight's wine is poured into, but for those who know about such things it's unnecessary, and for those who don't it's a confusion. All those descriptions of what happens in the piece you read in most programmes - what's the point? I don't want to be told the plot before I read a book. But it does help to have the scene set, and as a lot of the time we're talking about something that was written in a different age or society, it's good to know the context in which it was created. I usually mention something that happens near the end, so that the audience knows it's nearly done. But really my ideal programme note wouldn't talk about the music at all. Long-winded technical descriptions put the layman off, make it seem an esoteric exercise that you can't begin to understand without a degree. Music should be experienced viscerally.

In the case of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony, the political context of its creation is vital to understanding the work, but that's true of anything. No composer exists in a vacuum. To put a work in context doesn't diminish its universality (as some try to claim, particularly in the case of Shostakovich). When making a case, one argues from the specific to the general, and knowing how, when and why DDS composed his Fourth can only help in understanding its wider relevance today.

These thoughts are with me regularly as I write, of course, but they also come to mind this morning reading the comments on Pliable's post about the review of Alex Ross's book on Radio 3. It's true that there's not much in the way of discussion of music in the book, but is that its purpose? My impression is that the point of it is to put 20th century composers into a social context, something which has been largely lacking. I find the earlier part of the book more successful in this than the latter - although perhaps that simply reflects the extent to which the post-war composers abdicated social responsibility? It's also true that Ross's story peters out sometime in the early 70s, but perhaps with music since then it is too soon to tell. Certainly, the book isn't as wonderful as it's been made out to be - what could live up to such hype? - but Ross has attempted to put 20th century composers before a general audience, and that's something to be admired and encouraged.

A powerful beat

We are a product of our environment. But our environment is also in part a product of us. I'm an untidy person. I create the mess that surrounds me. And yet, when I get around to tidying it up, I become aware of how much the mess around me creates untidiness in my mind, that turns a creatively non-sequential mindset slowly into an impenetrable thicket, so cluttered with detritus that I can no longer fight my way to the important matters buried within. And this process creates a feedback loop, so that the thicket of thought builds up a dam against action, the mess in the physical world builds and thus feeds the mess in the imaginative world, until something breaks and insists this will not do. And once the clutter begins to disappear somehow the mind begins to clear also, and one begins to think again of productive thought rather than the tiny, time-strapped whirring that dominates all too often.

There's nothing wrong with this cycle; it's a rhythm, and life needs a rhythm, sometimes simple, sometimes complex, and the simple rhythm must build to complexity and the complexity must in its turn give way to simplicity. It's just a shame that the moment of Nothing that acts as the agent of this change too often arouses out of imposition (of illness, say), rather than being allowed to emerge of its own will. Or is the illness simply a manifestation of this need occasionally to stop?

Politician may not actually know what she's talking about shock

The debate about the speech that Margaret Hodge gave yesterday rumbles on. And proves that for most people, the Last Night of the proms, the entire proms season and the entire range of what we call" Classical Music" are all interchangeable. Now that's what you call an image problem.

Hodge's own online diary, meanwhile, praised the Proms mightily last September. There's bound to be a suspicion that this proves that she' s simply a vacuous media tart who'll say whatever needs to be said to get some attention (I see more than one person has raised the spectre of Zhdanov), but is it just me or do those diary entries talking about operas and the Vienna Phil read like they've been cribbed from some bluffer's guide to classical music-type book? I'm now confused: is she ignorant or hypocritical?

Minister in ill-judged comment shock

My heart sinks every time a politician offers an opinion on the Arts, and today's no exception as I read Margaret Hodge's reported comments on the Proms. Whether she's talking about the whole season or just the Last Night is being debated in a surprisingly well mannered discussion on the Grauniad "blogs" ( normally a hotbed of hate and ignorance way off the image of Grauniad readers as woolly liberal mung bean munchers), and of course there are less literate discussions going on, as well as the odd person happy to hitch her remarks to their own Beeb-bashing.

Hodge's words are of course flimflam, that show no knowledge or love of the subject at hand but an addiction to meaningless soundbites (pretty much what you'd expect from this government). It's interesting how quickly Downing Street seems to have intervened to put the can on the story - Hodge was booked to appear on Radio 4's The World At One, but at the last minute "something came up", and so we had to put up with Nicholas Kenyon waffling away.

I'm certainly not going to suggest that there's nothing that needs to be improved about the Proms - there's plenty - but this sort of thing really isn't going to start a sensible or useful debate about that. Rather, it's a sop, the Proms being a lazy shorthand (because of course to most people, the Last Night is the Proms, and indeed all classical music) for a certain type of white middle class idea of "culture". The minister's ill-thought out half-ideas about "inclusivity" and this governments obsession with a "British national identity" is fuelled partly by the prime minister's determination to make us forget that he's Scottish, and partly by a hatred of anything that might emphasise individuality. Hodge's singling out of the Proms is meaningless; it's a lazy, convenient target rather than any cogent analysis of contemporary culture. The only thing more depressing is David "Dave" Cameron's equally fatuous response. Let us not forget that politicians of all hues are rarely genuinely interested in the Arts, and never, ever interested in anything other than the lowest common denominator.

golden geese on life support

You can never take anything for granted in this world, and to prove it, the European Union is looking at extending sound copyright terms, against the conclusions of the Gowers Review. Read more here, and sign the petition. Copyright is an important way of protecting the livelihoods of creative artists, but for cultural activity to thrive, it's also important that works be allowed to pass into the public domain, so that we can use the achievements of the past to build the future sound.

Photo taken from Racefan's Picassa album.

Words written in the wind and the running water

I've been listening to Goldfrapp's new album Seventh Tree, and thotroughly enjoying it. Who'd have thought all those years ago when they had their first album out, which I dismissed as just another dodgy trip hop knock-off, that they'd become one of those bands you'd get really quite excited about? What I find particularly interesting is that, underneath the folky trappings, stylistically it's recognisably the same band as the last couple of albums, the glam stomp of old absorbed into the new style rather than jettisoned. I also like the fact that they've managed to produce something that's very evocative of that Wicker Man style psychedelic-folk thing without being a rather tiresome Wicker Man-derived album.

The best thing (at the moment, anyway) for me, though, is the lyrics. Although by that I don't mean what you think I do.

Take the first track, "Clowns". Reading the lyric booklet in my nice posh special edition blah blah, I see the opening line is "Only clowns would play with those balloons." Only that's not what I hear. What I hear is more like "Only cloeooayeedohmmmaooooo." My theory is that Alison's approached the lyric writing via the method of doing some nice sounding vocalising, and then scribbling down something that it could plausibly be. And this is a Very Good Thing.

Because that's pretty much how I hear lyrics anyhow. I've never been very good at remembering, or even hearing, words beyond the odd pertinent line, even Dylan. Where some people sit about trying to deduce the inner meaning of "Subterranean Homesick Blues", I just enjoy the sounds of the words. I don't really care what they mean, or even if they mean anything. What matters is the feel conveyed by them, and that's got little to do with syntax. This is demonstrated perfectly by the greatest lyric ever penned in the history of rock and pop: "Awop-bop-a-loo-mop alop-bam-boom!"

Ships that pass in the night*

Just as the tube doors close at Oxford Circus, a gangling figure crashes through them and swerves past my cello straight into the last untaken seat, it's Bobby Gillespie. I wonder if anyone else recognises him? I resist the temptation to ask him "Are you Bobby Gillespie?". Because that would make me a wanker. Although somewhere in the back of my mind a scenario presents itself that he'll be getting of at my stop, we'll start chatting and the epic collaboration between us will be born. He gets off at Notting Hill Gate. Probably just as well.


*I say night. Obviously it was the morning. But it was underground, where it may as well be night.

reissue, repackage

All change at the coffee bar. They now proudly advertise that all their coffee is free trade, the price of the coffee has actually gone down, and "more refurbishments soon!" are promised. There seems to be a heavy determination to give the impression of a bright new dawn.

On the other hand, all the staff who worked there until yesterday seem to have been disappeared, so I find myself, half-asleep, having to ask for a small cappuccino and yes could I have chocolate on please, where previously a bleary smile was all that was needed. There seem to be about twice as many people behind the counter, and yet the queue moves much more slowly than it used to even with one person serving.

This I suppose will improve with time as the new people get used to the surroundings and get to know their customers. I certainly hope the coffee improves - it was noticeably less good than yesterday. By the time I reach my desk there is no froth at all, which makes me wonder if it can really be called cappuccino any more.

The croisants are now smaller, but better - not necessarily a good sign. I've never found any coffee house that managed to serve both good coffee and good pastries. This suggests the downturn in the beverage is to stay.

There must be a re-branding mania at large - this week we commuters down the Lee Valley have been continually reminded that we are no longer on a "One" service, but in the brave new world of "National Express".

This is all flim-flam; it's the same old company, the same old trains, just with new logos plastered over the old. I consider the question of whether a new coat can change the person inside.

Walls come tumbling down (or not)

You'd think the sky had fallen on our heads. Personally I slept right through it. Maybe I'm just insensitive. Where's Charlton Heston when you need him?

Neckwear for second childhood

It's a good and necessary thing to have goals, and it occurs to me that I'm sorely in need of an objective or two at the moment.

I don't believe, however, that the tasks one sets oneself need have anything directly to do with one's grander ambitions - in fact I've increasingly come to the conclusion that making grand plans is all well and good, but you've got to have some sort of goal that you'll achieve in the short term, otherwise you end up adrift on a floe of daydreams.

I have thus decided that this year, I will learn to knit, and make Tom Baker's scarf.

When I was 6 or 7 I had a very long scarf (well, it seemed very long to me at the time; it'd probably barely get round my neck now) that I wore, which made me actually become the Doctor. It didn't matter that the stripes weren't exactly the same as the one on telly then. As the years pass, however, imagination begins to seize up and won't get going without a good prod, and so now just having a long stripy scarf won't do - it has to be the right stripy scarf.

I wonder if adulthood isn't a matter of putting away childish things, but more of an opportunity to accrue the childish things you couldn't get hold of because you were only a child.

Now, I must make the momentous decision: which scarf should I make? The original model, the replacement that came along a few series later when the first one had had one too many bits shot off by daleks and the like (which I guess is the one I really remember, as it coincides with my getting old enough to become really obsessed with the show) or the burgundy one from Tom's last season, which came in with the shirt with question marks on the collar that I associate with the beginning of the slide into 80s awfulness?

The extraordinary continuing non-shitness of Torchwood

I mean, it's all nonsense, of course, but it's now watchable nonsense. And who couldn't love seeing Jim Robinson Out Of Neighbours turn to Evil Science Beyond His Control before killing Owen to DEATH? And Martha too! Who even managed to get through the episode without shagging any of them! Which must be a first in the 'wood.

I hope Scott and Charlene are hanging their heads in shame, that their rebellious shenanigans drove poor old Jim to this.

It ain't what you do, it's the way that you do it

Interesting post over at Kyle Gann's blog touching upon issues of notation.

Now you may think this sort of thing is pure composer-nerd territory, but think about it for a minute: a "classical" composer is in a strange position in that he or she is dependent on others to realise his work; all the great ideas in the world are worth nothing if you can't figure out an effective way to communicate them to the performer so he or she can attempt to convey them to the audience (which you hope will consist of a least a few more people than you and your mates).

I sometimes wonder if all the exciting notation software we have available to us these days isn't stopping composers from really thinking about how they write things down. On the other hand, fancy clever notation can be a smokescreen to mask the lack of substance in a piece; there's a terrible danger that the means become the ends.

It's a long, thin, high tightrope to walk: Kyle's got a point about professional musicians' aversion to anything that makes them have to stop and think, but at the same time it's important for the composer to put his instructions across as clearly as possible. Morton Feldman's a great example of a composer who writes his music out in a fashion that often sems to defy logic; but his idiosyncratic presentation does convey an important idea about the music and how one should approach it, in a way that a more superficially straightforward approach wouldn't. I guess the bottom line is, if you're going to write something in an unorthadox way, that's fine, but make sure you know why you're writing it like that. And the same goes if you're writing it just how your teacher told you to.

Culture - to go!

This article by Armando Iannucci in the Observer today is thought-provoking stuff, one of the best bits of journalism he's written. Of course kids won't just stumble upon "culture" without being introduced to it, but when a government starts declaring quotas for arts in school I get suspicious, not least because (apart from the question of where these 5 hours are going to fit in and what can be usefully achieved in that time anyway) there's a bit of me that wonders if this sort of thing isn't a substitute for proper education rather than an impetus to it. What kids need to be introduced to is the idea that there are things in the world that require effort, and that they are worth that effort. I can't see how what they're suggesting will achieve this. Plonking a child in front of an orchestra isn't enough.

Happy Valentine's Day!

A heartwarming tale of romance, stolen moments and utter idiocy for the most romantic day of the year. As seen in Classical Music's guide to music summer schools, out now. Play nicely and take precautions, kids.

The Image Game

Some time ago I found myself in the strange position of being offered money to draw comics, not something I ever thought would happen. The first fruits of that job are in the public eye now, and as the Classical Music Competitions supplement has now been out for a bit, I thought I'd post the strip I drew for it. The second one, for the Summer Shools supplement is just out, and the third, for the Music Festivals one is due in May. Well worth getting if you have any kind of interest in those subjects, and the strips look lovely on the page.

It's an odd feeling, seeing something I drew in print on nice glossy paper in a magazine, a strange mixture of excitement and terror, but one I could get used to, I think.

I might put up the second one tomorrow, it'd be appropriate given the date, ha-ha.

Lost Girls

It's not every day I can say I spent 50 quid on pornography, but in buying Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie's Lost Girls the other day, that's exactly what I did. Three hardback volumes of it, in a slipcase. A Tijuana Bible it ain't. Due to a copyright wrangle (one of the characters is from Peter Pan, whose copyright expired on January 1st this year) it's only recently become available on this side of the Atlantic.

Lost Girls is Moore's self-declared attempt to produce intelligent porn, and there's no doubt that it's hardcore - pretty much every page contains explicit sex, quite a bit of it illegal (and the rest oughtta be! I thangyew). The scenario presents us with three famous fictional women from fantasy novels - Alice (of Wonderland), Wendy (of Never Never Land) and Dorothy (of Oz), who meet in a hotel in Europoe on the eve of the First World war, and proceed to tell each other their stories while engaging in all manner of congress*. Thus the three tales from which the characters originate are recast as Freudian metaphors for sexual awakening. Moore is certainly not the first to consider these works of children's literature in this way, but to be quite so, um, uncensored about it is, er, a novelty.


This is by a country mile the most controversial thing Moore's ever put his name to, but it's a serious, thought-provoking book that argues passionately for freedom of thought and expression - only madmen and magistrates can't distinguish between fantasy and the real world, he states - and makes clear in its closing pages that there are real obscenities in the world that make a mockery of our uncomfortable reaction to sexual fantasy.

Whether it really works as pornography, however, is open to question. For all the organs shown in action, Lost Girls is a cerebral work, concerned with how society polices our thoughts and actions, with how we define the limits to what we consider acceptable or immoral, with the sexual undertow that exists within all human endeavour. It's hard to imagine it'll be very useful to anyone who just wants a quick one off the wrist.

Here's an interview with affable Al on Lost Girls:
Part One
Part Two

And here's the great man himself speaking on the subject in moving image form:




*For the musos out there, there's a thoroughly entertaining and improbable threesome that takes place during the first performance of The Rite of Spring, all the rest of the audience presumably too busy being horrified by the action on stage to notice the three women shagging in the stalls.

Daniel Barenboim plays Beethoven (Royal Festival Hall)

There are so many things I could say about Barenboim's playing. It's unshowy, deeply humane and puts music above shallow showmanship at all times. When at the end of the Appassionata Sonata he works himself into such a frenzy that he pounds the pedals and the floor violently with his feet it comes across as the perfectly natural unleashing of tension and passion that he has held carefully in check up till now. It's a pleasure to hear him play the two op. 49 sonatas, the "easy" ones that even I can (or at least used to be able to) have a stab at. There's no danger of being overwhelmed by sheer technique, as you would in one of the more note-stuffed sonatas, and yet of course you see his brilliant technical abilities all the more, and see it entirely in a musical light. I come away thiunking I'm glad I saw him play these simple (but not simplistic) pieces rather than one of the phenominally difficult warhorses that you can hear any pro playing most weeks.

I could also talk about his lack of pomposity or self-importance, his air of absolute straightforwardness and openness, the wonderful intimacy created by his having audience all around him, rather than being perched in front of us on a stage, unreachable and separate.

But the thing I keep noticing is the handkerchief. He mops his brow with it, then throws it into the piano, then retrieves it again later. There's one point where he does this in the middle of a movement, while only his right hand is occupied with the keyboard, which lends a brief nervousness to my mood. But mostly the handkerchief stays out of sight, only momentarily appearing between sonatas. It's such a mundane thing, but it sticks with me, and somehow seems to stand for what it is about him that makes this such a satisfying evening, filled with insight and humanity.

Does Norman Lebrecht exist?

Daniel Wolf links to a prime cut of Norman Lebrecht, full of the factual accuracy that afficionados of Stormin' Norman have come to expect. Daniel expresses surprise that Norm, a professional newspaper columnist, could display such a level of ignorance about a major figure in a field about which he professes to be expert, and, the general disregard hacks have in this country for the truth aside, he's got a point. After all, if that were the case, then given Lebrecht's dismissals of bloggers as a bunch of amateurs who don't get their facts right, that would make him a big fat hypocite, and surely he can't be that? So it goes that as I read the hairy blusterer's attack on Stockhausen with the bluntest of hatchets, the thought occurs to me: Maybe Norman Lebrecht dosn't really exist.

Think about it: there have been cases before of spoof columnists who paraded a ludicrous series of columns before the public, who nevertheless took it seriously; Chris Morris's suicide journalist in the Observer springs to mind. If you were to create a satirical character, a music journalist filled with utter pomposity and egomania, entirely convinced of his own correctness despite his inability to do basic research properly, who assumes a stance of integrity and moral probity even as he trawls through the gutter looking for his next scurrilous bit of gossip, what would you come up with?

So, let others deride his ignorance and self-importance. I say, praise him! Praise the nameless shadow who has created one of the greatest caricatures of our age! Laudibus regina Jocasta in pestilentibus Thebis!

(It is of course possible, though highly unlikely I think, that I'm wrong, and Norm is a real person. If anyone can show me satisfactory evidence that Lebrecht does exist, and is not a fictional entity, I shall buy them a pint, or equivalent drink of their choice. Bet you can't.)