Separated at birth?

Why this is hell, nor am I out of it

I just joined Facebook, thus dragging myself a little further into the hideous mire of online networking, the fashionable alternative to having real friends. By a strange coincidence, having heard John Humphries sneering about "Face Back" (sic) on the radio this morning, I checked my mail to discover I'd been added as a friend on the place. I wavered, then typed in my name and created an account, partly out of that horribly British sense of social embarrassment that demands I say yes to things for risk of offending, but also partly to annoy John Humphries.

Palindrome

I am Berlioz

I don't even like Berlioz. I am disturbed.

You scored as Hector Berlioz. You're OCD. You may think you want something... but think again before you move land and sea to get it. However, you are very talented. Hector Berlioz 75% Mozart 65% Beethoven 60% Tchaikovsky 55% Schumann 55% Brahms 55% Handel 50% Haydn 50% J.S. Bach 45% Liszt 45% Chopin 40% Wagner 35% Schubert 35% Which classical composer are you? created with QuizFarm.com

The Classical Brits, or, Big Mac and Fries.

Do you think I enjoy this? Two and a quarter bloody hours of this? Of course not. But I must do this, because even if it is ultimately futile to make the gesture, a stand must be made. Because this will not do.

Here we begin, with Katheryn Jenkins looking pretty and blonde as she squeezes Holst into a 4/4 meter, with added bongos, male voice choir and a key change so unsubtle it could be in Eurovision. Here's Joshua Bell, who ought to know better, posing his way through Vivaldi in that "exciting", highly charged" fashion previously associated with Vanessa Mae. Why doesn't he stick a wet T-shirt on and be done with it?

Oh look, here comes Sting with his lute. Is there a bigger, smugger twat than Sting? (Well, yes there is, but we'll let that pass for now.) I should be glad he's bringing Dowland to a wider audience, I ought to applaud the fact that he does these songs straight, without the sort of knobby "crossover" bollocks you'd normally get with this sort of enterprise, but when I see his smug face all reason leaves me, and I want to punch him repeatedly in the mouth while shouting "You didn't invent Dowland, you fucking smug twat!" Oh look, he's bunged some close harmony singers in halfway through. Twat.

Ooh, here's Katie Derham presenting the Record of the Year award to Simon Rattle for the Planets, she must be annoyed at losing the presenting gig to Fearne Brittain. Some bunch of actresses calling themselves "All Angels" croon their way through "Nimrod", robbing it of all dignity and subtlety in the process. Still, they're fit, eh? So that's all right, then.
Mrs. Sting pops up to award George Fenton the award for soundtrack for Planet Earth (or was it Blue Planet? No, that was last time). I suppose I should be grateful that John Adams won the contemporary composer award rather than Karl Jenkyns and his dreary new age toss.

And on and on it goes, culminating in the award of Classical Album of the year to Paul McCartney's new "Classical" work, another bit of trite rubbish that soils the genuine legacy of his work with the Beatles. I have a horrible feeling he really believes that this insipid nonsense is better and more worthwhile than "Helter Skelter" or "Penny Lane".

It's not that it's bad as such, it's that it's relentlessly average. I can't report that it was badly presented or that there were any terrible howlers (although it was edited terribly, shoddily), but the whole thing reeks of mediocrity. Music can be exciting, dangerous, provocative, heady, all-embracing. But the Classical Brits, and the industry they celebrate reduce it to muzak. It's not bad because it pushes crossover and TV soundtracks over more serious work. It's bad because it neuters the music, it removes all ambition and reduces it to a cheap bauble. The Classical Brits have the same relation to music as pornography to sex, or MacDonald's to a restaurant. They tell their audience that they should limit their horizons, that they're too stupid to cope with anything more than the scraps they're thrown, that they shouldn't above all make any effort to try and understand. That they don't deserve anything better, and neither should they aspire to anything better.

They diminish us all. This is what will kill music: the insistence that mediocrity is not just acceptable, but desirable.

Now go and listen to someone who understands what music can be.

Idiot Joy Showland

Ever heard the opinion voiced that stupid people shouldn't breed? Well, apparently that's no longer a problem, judging by this poster I saw on the tube today.

Low

There are many bands who wish they were the Fall, and Meat for a Dark Day are another one. Impressive facial hair, though.

Death Vessel turns out to be one man (although we weren't entirely sure about this, and I can only state this definitively having looked at his website). Our first thought is "Hey look! It's Neil from the Young Ones!" but he wins us round with some very impressive guitar picking and a distinctive, androgynous voice. The material maybe doesn't always match the performance, but nevertheless, this is someone worth keeping an eye on. Although I maintain that "Death Vulture" would be a better name.

People say Low are slow, and miserable. Only slow in the way an iceberg is. There's a driving power in their music that belies their steady tempi, and while they don't address the audience much at first, when they do there's a wry, dry humour that puts the miserablist tag into perspective. They're certainly not the sort of band you're likely to wave your hands in the air (like you just don't care) to, but they're a compelling live presence, and not too removed from rock 'n' roll theatrics to make us wait for encores that they clearly are going to play.

Slava V

Sound vs. Noise (4)

Regular readers will be aware of the constant stream of verbal diarrhea that plagues my working hours. Just because I haven't mentioned it recently, don't imagine that it's gone. Oh no. A long weekend is of course a very pleasant and welcome thing, but it leads to a heavier heart when you have to haul yourself out of bed on Tuesday morning to go to work, and even the prospect of a 4 day week can't quite lift the spirits. The mood is as grey and dark as the sky, and the babbling that assaults the ear seems to ricochet around the skull. Meanwhile, the seconds, minutes, hours slip away, and stifle the ideas and thoughts that are, or might be. The clouds stretch across the whole sky, imposing and oppressing, and the light feebly scratches through.

Slava IV

Earworms

One of the collateral delights of cycling through London is the music that appears unbidden in the mind. This week I've found tunes from Bill Callahan's new album popping into my head, as well as bits of The Rite of Spring and Carmen. Both these are understandable - I've been listening to the album a lot, and KSO is currently rehearsing the Stravinsky and Bizet (in arrangement by Shchedrin) and for our next concert. This evening, though, I suddenly found "Mack the Knife" running through my mind. Why should Kurt Weill suddenly pop into my head this way? Once these things get into your consciousness, they linger. I briefly wonder if the appearance of these old tunes will interfere with my own composing - a pre-existing idea in the head must make it harder to think of an original one, I conjecture - but I decide not to worry and enjoy the moment. It is a holiday weekend coming up, after all.

Slava III

Something you don't see every day...

...is the second performance of a piece of contemporary music. Well, I'm pleased to announce that I'll be bucking this trend later this month, when Le tombeau de Feldman receives its second outing. Toby Deller once again plays (and sings), coupling it this time with Bach's Cello Suite No.4 (on the viola, obviously). It's at St. George's Bloomsbury (near the British Museum) on Sunday 27th May, and entry is free! A bargain if ever there was one.

Slava II

Slava

Bill Callahan

It's the dancing you remember.

Bill Callahan has been making music for many years now, generally under the name of Smog (or, in an act of obfuscation typical of the man, as (smog)). He's much admired by those who know his work, but there aren't that many of them. However, the massive attention that's been paid to his current beau Joanna Newsom means that inevitably some more light is shining on his corner at the moment, and maybe his time is finally coming. There's been a change in the Callahan method, bringing a new album released under his own name, which features songs presenting a demeanour that might be described as cheerful. Fortunately this doesn't seem to have compromised the quality of his work, so we take ourselves to the Queen Elizabeth Hall to hear how this newly lighter mood transfers to the stage.

Last time I saw him he was on his own with his guitar, and although this time he's brought a band with him, all the songs at their core retain that aesthetic. Although he's linked with the "lo-fi" movement, that label doesn't really do him justice. His sound might broadly be described as "countrified Velvet underground", but he seems to draw from a deeper and older well, the same feel you get when you listen to old scratchy blues records from before the war, of something rooted in an ancient past. He's not one for stage banter, his quiet demeanour contrasting incongruously with an audience that applauds the opening bars of most of the songs in the way you might expect at a Barry Manilow concert (incidentally, this audience seemed to spend an awful lot of time standing up and going to the bar, although maybe it just seems more obvious because it's a seated venue with the bar outside the hall?). He stands upright and rigid, strumming his guitar and intoning his lyrics, deadpan and impassive. Which makes it all the more strange, his penchant for suddenly twitching, his legs writing and kicking occasionally, rather in the manner of a slow-motion Elvis as impersonated by Max Wall. The music is hypnotic, soulful, occasionally terrifying in its intensity, and seems utterly at odds with these curious movements. And yet afterwards, on long reflection on what I've seen and heard, it comes to seem absolutely right, the man's movements as singular as his music.

He doesn't say much to us, although at one point he does announce, "I feel good tonight". And it seems a simple, honest thing to say, that at the same time suggests something more profound, merely alluded to.

Mstislav Rostropovich 1927-2007

Tortelier was the cellist of choice in my household when I was small, so it wasn't until later that I discovered Rostropovich, which coincided with my discovering Shostakovich. Rummaging through my parents' LPs, I discovered Slava's recording of Shostakovich's First Concerto, and it made an immediate impression, not just the music, but the extraordinary personality of the soloist that leapt out of the speakers, a boisterous, extrovert earthiness that contrasted sharply with Tortelier's Gallic nobility. I was hooked, and began to seek out any recordings of his I could find, and my admiration grew as I discovered just how much of the cello literature of the past 60 years came into being through and for him. His status as a man without nationhood after his exile from Russia seemed the noblest of stances, and he came to stand for much more than being simply a very fine musician.

Of course, it's very easy when someone has just died to paint them in saintly colours, and it would be dishonest to deny that he was far from flawless as a man. And I have to say I thought he was an awful conductor. But he opened up worlds for me as a child, and I don't see that anyone could hear a few bars of his performances of the Beethoven cello sonatas without being struck by the sense of being in the presence of a great, generous and very human spirit.

Elgar

I was thinking of Elgar, whose 150th birthday falls this year, and this came up.