Author: Manuscript Notes

Charlie Brown, of Peanuts fame, often had the mot juste. Two, in this case, simple words are all that’s needed to encapsulate how most of us feel in the UK right now.

The ennui can be enough to stop you writing a blog; and yet I realise it’s exactly the reason for doing so. For a few minutes I have the pleasure of steering you away from the ugly vitriol which pervades our political pigpen – and that, alliteration – is yet another thing which is weally winding me up wight now. Our current leader, have you noticed?, has a particular propensity for practising prolonged pompous pronouncements, peppered with diatribes on dithering , delaying, deceit and denial.

So it’s a touch ironic that I’m turning to the Russian composer, Modest Mussorgky (1839-1881) today. It’s a strange name, Modest. First you commit perhaps the most selfish thing possible by gifting the world a reflection of yourself; and then you foist upon your creation a name, meaning moderate or restrained, as if by way of an apology.

Sadly his musical output did little to disabuse this. Nowadays he is chiefly known for works like Night on a Bald Mountain and his opera about another Boris chieftain, Boris Godunov. He was a highly gifted pianist, but he struggled with the subtleties of orchestration, causing many, including Tchaikovsky, to be uncharitable in their assessments of him. Even his teacher, Mily Balakirev, concurred that “Yes, Mussorsgky is little short of an idiot.” Despite the success of Boris, he did not get a good press.

Time for some belated balance. In 1874 Mussorgsky composed a fiendishly difficult piano piece in ten movements to celebrate the pictures of his friend, Viktor Hartmann, known as Pictures at an Exhibition. Its main theme, The Promenade, which filters in and out of the piece to reflect the different mood of the viewer as he wanders through the exhibition, was used in the 1980s political sitcom, The New Statesman, (when did we last see one of those?) featuring an MP called Alan B’stard, many of whose irreverant views have turned out to be spookily prescient. It was a part specifically created for, and acted by, the late Rick Mayall, and is comedy at its very best. Dig it out on The Youtube.

Classical music often seeps into our minds in ways like this. We know or like the tune, and can be content to leave it at that; but a little more digging adds to its appreciation. Today’s passage is the last of the ten, a picture for the design of the Gates at Kiev. Don’t go looking for them, the project got cancelled. (Another taste of things to come?) This final part comes from the orchestrated version by Maurice Ravel in 1922.

Brace yourself: this is a stonking sound, so don’t hold back on the volume. It’s precision playing. As you listen to it patiently,  you will hear how it expands and unfolds, bringing back the original theme, and culminating in a thundering, majestic finish.

I suspect Mussorgsky’s life was not a particularly happy one, and a high dependance on alcohol from an early age did for him at just 42. His grave has long since been covered by tarmac, but he gets his fair share of visitors: it’s now a bus stop in St.Petersburg. This famous portrait by Repin was done just days before died.

Click on the link and forget our political shambles – albeit with the help of some music applied to a political satire.

Forgive me if I strike a slightly sombre, or maybe just reflective, mood with this post. Over the years, especially as my own seem to pass ever more quickly, I have found the season of autumn to be an unwelcome visitor.

It is a reminder, however beautiful the colours may be for a few days, that there is decay in everything. As I write, rain is lashing down and strong winds are stripping trees of what leaves remain – to reveal the nothingness, the skeletons, that lie beneath.

Yes, I know it is part of an essential process, you might even assert a long-term harbinger of spring; but I cannot look at it that way right now. It is, for me, more of a summation of things past, of things gone for ever, whether they be happy events, of which I was fortunate to share many this summer – or people who are no longer here.

Anniversaries fall throughout the year for all of us, obviously. But autumn. Autumn, in its greyness and early nightfalls, has its way of bringing them all together. Which is why it is particularly apt that in the Christian calendar the feast of All Souls should be commemorated at this time of year.

So today I will be brief with my own words and let the music of my favourite composer, Franz Schubert (as if you needed telling) do the work. Many wrongly assume that Schubert’s brief life – just 31 years – was a sad one. He was, in fact, much loved and loved almost as much. I have no idea how many of his 600 songs or more I have heard, but this one, Allerseelen, set to the words of Johann Jacobi and written for the feast of All Souls, captures precisely my feelings of autumn and what it brings.

This version by Ian Bostridge is in the throat-lumping category. Each of the three verses has exactly the same melody, yet each is treated with different colour and emphasis, at times assertive and others almost whispering and yet never losing the note. Add to that the crystal clarity of his diction and you have 4.5 heavenly minutes to savour and reflect.

And no, you do not need to be a Christian or even a person of faith to appreciate this. All of us, at some stage, will wish this for those we have loved. Here is the translation (by Richard Wigmore) –

And here is the music, click on the image –

Today is Sir Bobby Charlton’s birthday.

Where on earth is he going with that?, I hear you thinking.

Bobby Charlton was a boyhood hero of many; but his appeal was not confined to young fanatics alone. My late father revered him as much as he did Arnold Palmer. So it was almost a dream come true that, through circumstances too lengthy to explain here, Dad was Charlton’s exclusive host and guide at Trooping the Colour about ten years ago.

For this more senior fan, the highlight of the gloriously sunny day, was when Charlton suggested walking back to his hotel and accepting Dad’s request to escort him. It was probably about a mile, but every recognition was acknowledged, every request for an autograph graciously and patiently provided. It gave lie to the saying that you should never meet your heroes.

And whilst on the subject of his heroes, another, of a completely different kind, was John Henry Newman, (1801-1890) who converted from a Church of England priest to a Catholic one, and became a Cardinal. This Sunday, he will go a step or two further and  be made a saint. Newman was the writer of the poem The Dream of Gerontius, set to music by Elgar, and about which I wrote in April 2017 (see Archives, right). The poem tells of the passing of a man’s soul through death (the name coming from the Greek geron, old man) and its escort by a guardian angel to judgment and purgatory. The text includes words to the hymns Firmly I believe and truly and Praise to the Holiest. 

It is a magnificent choral work, (Elgar wrote ‘This is the best of me’ at the foot of the score) in which I once sang at the Royal Festival Hall, and today I am plucking out those few minutes as the soul, accompanied by the angel, approaches judgment with the mighty acclaim ‘Praise to the holiest’. It is about as confident an affirmation of belief as you will find in all music: the words of the hymn embody all that it is to be a Christian, with Elgar’s music building to this huge statement after the angel’s brief introduction. And it doesn’t stop there, but culminates in a massive and enduring note, with the line ‘Most sure in all his ways.’

It actually doesn’t matter what your religious persuasion is, or whether you don’t have one at all: neither will be a barrier to your appreciation of these few minutes.

A final, and personal, thought on birthdays. If my father were alive today, he would be 93; but he would also be celebrating his youngest sibling and my very dear godmother, Pat, reaching her 90th birthday – as well as joining two older sisters in their 90s. Funny to see how you can forge an unlikely link between Charlton, Dad, Newman, Elgar, and Pat: heroes all of them to me, but today this has to be for Pat. Happy birthday to my terrific godmother!

Click on the image – and don’t be shy with the volume.

‘Welcome back.’

It’s always struck me as an odd greeting when live programmes on television, such as the evening news, open with this phrase after a thirty-second commercial break. ‘I didn’t go anywhere, actually, you’re the ones who decided to leave, not me,’ is the thought that often crosses my mind.

So I shall go with ‘Hello again,’ for I have been absent for a couple of months. Moving into a new house with no wi-fi for eight weeks has tested patience to near breaking point, but the thrill of finally having sound again has reinvigorated my urge to share music with you at a time when it is much needed. We seem to lurch from one shambles to another.

Amidst all this chaos, music is the one enduring constant. What else has the ability to take us out of ourselves, to allow us to inhabit another space away from whatever life throws at us, to silence world noise for a few moments, and hence to put everything else around us on hold? Drink and drugs may do it for some, but the full benefits we get  from music come from dedicated and attentive listening, not merely hearing, thereby ensuring our willing surrender to it and the need to return for more.

And the need is very great just now, especially for an element of calm. Which is why I have turned to the French composer Francis Poulenc (1899-1963), a name which will be new to many, and might not be that well known to those it isn’t. Despite his output being prodigious, Poulenc (pronounced Poolank) has struggled to earn the respect and coverage he deserves, possibly because much of his early work, notably his songs, is seen as light-hearted, even frivolous; a perception which his later religious, and more serious pieces, helped to reverse.

Coming from a prosperous family, Poulenc was not expected to follow a musical career, but his mother was a decent pianist and music was always in the house. Both parents died while Francis was a teenager, and it fell to his teacher, Ricardo Viñes, to encourage the young man to compose, in the first instance by introducing him to Georges Auric who became a life-long friend and mentor. During his musical development, Poulenc drew upon all sorts of composers for his inspiration, old and contemporary, but in the end there is definitely a style which you can pin down as his own: it is one which combines his love of simple melody – with a dash of brief quirkiness thrown in to the mix.

Simplistic it may be to say so, but it is, perhaps, a reflection of his anything-but-straightforward personal life. He proposed marriage to one lady, but the combination of her involvement with another man and her discovery that Poulenc was gay, was never likely to have her rushing into his arms. He did, nevertheless, father a girl elsewhere, who, in a precursor to the fictitious Wilson-Pike relationship in Dad’s Army, grew up never knowing him to be her father. But his sexual predilictions were predominantly elsewhere and there were affairs aplenty.

Back to that style of tune and quirkiness. Here is the 2nd movement of his Concerto for Two Pianos. The whole piece can be seen as a combination of mild ridicule of the standard approach to concerto-writing with a reverence to those names he respected – Ravel, Stravinsky; and in this extract, Mozart. It’s a lovely, simple Mozart tune, the Elvira Magdalene reference clear, with eerie Poulenc dissonances thrown in here and there, before returning to a gentle, if abrupt, conclusion. The man had a sense of humour, but that does not make his output lightweight: dig out his Organ Concerto with Strings and Timpani, it is rivetting.

There is no dialogue between one piano and the other here, you cannot really tell them apart. It is just a case of two are better than one. The sound and picture qualities are not the finest, but I have chosen it to show you the man himself at the keyboard, even if perhaps past his playing best.

So leave the chaos for five minutes and just let go.

Click on the image –

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The tools of modern warfare mean that nowadays engagement with the enemy at close hand is rare.

Of the many themes which have emerged during these D-Day commemorations, one has stood out to me more than most: it is the frequency with which veterans have referred to the main feature contributing to the terror in front of them as they scrambled to the beach.

Noise. A deafening volume in a cauldron of death. A sound, I suspect, which is not heard as often by today’s military, because the location of the enemy is mostly completely out of sight.

And that got me thinking more of what a horrendous experience these young men encountered. Wading through water, in some cases so deep that many drowned under the weight of their equipment, heading straight into a din so awful, a cacophony of sound with only one intent.

Fifteen years ago, on the 60th Anniversary, my son went on a school trip to visit the key areas. On one blissful afternoon, I was sitting on the wall, high up, overlooking Arromanches beach. Below me, the tide was out, a considerable distance away, exposing a vast expanse of smooth sand and a surprisingly sparsely populated beach.

In the midst of it, I could see my 12-year-old son playing cricket with half a dozen mates. I sat there gazing out to sea, when it struck me that I was watching a scene of purist innocence being played out on the very stage which had hosted a portable harbour to enable equipment and men to land for about five months after D-Day. And, consequently, to enable my son and friends to enjoy their freedom in front of my eyes. It was an intensely moving experience.

I’m going to get to the music soon, but there is one more diversion you must allow me. My late father was president of the Political Society at his school. In that capacity, the choice of whom to invite to address the society was his. In the spring of 1944, he decided, somewhat precociously, to write to General Eisenhower asking him if he would do the society the honour of addressing them on Monday, June 5. They always met on Mondays and my father was particularly specific about the date.

Below is a copy of the letter dad got in reply: wonderfully unspecific, not only about the date of my father’s letter, but also, perhaps deliberately, about the date of his invitation. Just 17 days later, the landings had begun. This letter is quite a treasure.

And now, finally, to the music I have selected for today’s commemorations. A strange choice, you might think at first, but there is some sense to it. Schubert’s quintet in C was composed in the last months of his life in 1828 and not performed for the first time until over 20 years after he had died; but it is now widely acknowledged to be one of the most popular pieces in all chamber music. It is highly likely that you will recognise this second movement, for it has been used in films and television programmes.

Don’t even think of putting this on unless you are going to completely relax and allow yourself to be absorbed by the music. It is not to be played while you are rushing around, or even between chores. It is the ultimate music for quiet contemplation, imbued with melancholy and turmoil.

And, as such, a fitting and beautiful passage with which to reflect the sacrifices made by so many young men.

Click image

If Beethoven were alive today, there has to be a decent chance – likelihood, even – that he would have been cured of the deafness which beset him for the last fifteen years of his life.

Of the various remedies which were suggested to him, and there were plenty, amongst them was the suggestion to use olive oil.

In Cornwall last year, I managed to collect some water in my left ear which refused to come out, with the result that by April this year I could barely hear a thing if I blocked my right one. Nearly two hundred years after the great man, I was also recommended the use of olive oil, but as a precursor to having the ear syringed, as the oil softens the wax and thereby reduces the risk of damage to the drum during the procedure.

There is a theory, one of many, that Beethoven’s own deafness may have had its roots when plunging his head into a bowl of water in times of frustration. In later years, his personal hygiene was almost nonexistent, so his ears may have escaped proper cleaning: I am equally sure that it would have taken more than syringing to deal with his problem. But my own experience has given me the teensiest sense of what it is like not to hear properly.

Summing up the work of any composer in just one piece is not just difficult, it is verging on the daft. Beethoven’s enormous output in his miserable life had many landmarks, many ‘firsts’. His third symphony, the Eroica, changed symphonic writing for good. His ninth was the first to include a choir. I could go on…

But if I had to single out just one piece which summed up the core frustration in his life, it would be his 23rd (of 32) piano sonata, now known as the Appassionata.

Writing about music is notoriously hard, and, some would say, a little futile, because it is the hearing of it and the experience which is personal to each of us. Beethoven, however, who once quipped that he would rather write 10,000 notes than a single letter of the alphabet, speaks to us so directly in his music, and this piece in particular, that it is not at all difficult to understand its message.

Beethoven has something of a reputation for tumultuous, even ballsy music. Because of this, it is easy to forget that the man wrote some of the most exquisite and sensitive slow movements in the entire repertoire. It’s like a lion stopping in his tracks and scooping up a lesser mortal to tend and nurture, rather than trample or devour.

So today I’m giving you the last two movements of the Appassionata, played with appropriate passion and wonderful clarity by Valentina Lisitsa.  It starts with a simple theme, followed by three distinct variations, before returning to the original. At first it may seem a little pedestrian, but as it unfolds, Beethoven’s mastery of counterpoint, the ability to have two or more tunes singing at the same time, comes to the fore. It becomes five minutes of pure tenderness, which grow on you each time you hear it. As it comes to its close, Beethoven launches straight into the final movement without a pause.

This is Beethoven ranting at the world at the deterioration of his hearing. Listen to that circular motif after the first few seconds, which remains a theme throughout: it is the cry of an anguished man, pacing up and down in his room. Anger; frustration; desperation; turmoil. In the unlikely event that he has not made his point, the final minute will leave you in no doubt. And yet,  in the midst of it all this, a pleading beautiful melody, begging for a cure.

(I was once advised by a piano teacher to concentrate on the left hand and the right will take care of itself. Not a chance that works here.)

This is Beethoven laid bare in the sound. Of all composers, few reach us on such a human level: he goes directly to our souls like no other. Some of Beethoven’s greatest works were written when completely deaf. Imagine that for a moment: to know how it’s going to sound without the experience of actually hearing it. What a genius.

I have deterred you too long. Listen to this and be glad you can. And if you haven’t had your ears syringed, you might like to consider it. I’m now turning the volume down, not up.

Just need to stop saying ‘what?’, which has become something of an irritating habit.

Click on links below –