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The chronicles of Ruin, continued. Call me Ishmael said....intelligence is knowing what to do when you don't know what to do. Anonymous said... When I don't know what to do,I come here. 10 September 2009 22:59
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15 comments:
Memories of infancy came flooding back.
Likewise, Mr Banned. I can hear my father warbling that song at top volume from across a field. Usually with somewhat random lyrics. In this age he'd be a wide-eyed victim of CrueltyTV. Then he was (and is) a sweethearted eccentric. Thanks, Mr. I.
I really must be missing something. It's like a club that I can't gain entrance to. Me and Horatio Hornblower, forever looking in, slightly puzzled, rigidly bored,respecting the wierd and surreal posturing and noises generated in the name of music.
Mr Ishmael is a great fan of the White Heather Club. Best club in England.
Ah, Mr Mongoose, tuggin' at ma heart strings noo.
The reception was as bad as I mind it was on oor wee telly.
The Joe Gordon Folk Four, FFS.
Ah, Mr Mongoose, tuggin' at ma heart strings noo.
The reception was as bad as I mind it was on oor wee telly.
The Joe Gordon Folk Four, FFS.
Goodness me, I've suddenly become Katherine Wilde!
Blimey, surreality must be contagious. Bring on the dancing milkmaids!
Here you go, Mr PTB.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tESb0sO8Huo
I remember Antal Dorati reminding us in a very Hungarian accent, "Song is the spoken word within the musical idiom."
Sometimes the word is dominant, sometimes the music is dominant.
A good song combines the two to make something more than the sum of the parts, and a good singer has the technique and the attractiveness of voice to combine them. After that, it's simply a matter of taste for the listener. Whether it's classical, pop or jazz, or any other musical riches from around the world, good musical wine doesn't need any label.
For some, complex singing and accompaniment can be more intellectually satisfying, and, for some, beautiful words wrapped in a simple melody can be equally satisfying. Emotion will sound its depth.
I don't think there is a right or wrong, Deputy AG, if I may say so - just a subjective sliding scale, off which mediocrity falls.
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And, thanks to you, Mr Ishmael, I remember this song, too, with great fondness.
Mr PTB, please forgive me - And to you also!
Dear Katherine 'Noblest Prospect' Wilde, regretfully I am forced to decline your suggestion, since at least half of those depicted are not milkmaids, but milkmen. And I see no yoke of milk churns on their shoulders to enhance the delights/difficulty of their dancing.
Mr Anon @ 18:38 - all credit to Mr. I as ever.
It's some time since I understood what our parents saw in Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers; a while back, for the first time, I saw Tallulah Bankhead and thought, Wow! but it's only in the last day or two that I fully appreciate my mother's fondness for Slim Whitman (and subsequently Frank Ifield); my thanks, therefore, to Mr ptb, for raising the matter.
My comment was much more to do with the singing of songs, specifically, than with music in general, but
I lack the skills to have made my point well enough.
When I finished with "- just a subjective sliding scale, off which mediocrity falls", I was trying (but failing) to compress too much into that single sentence. The "subjective sliding scale" is so, so much shorter than the money men would have us believe, or I was able to convey.
So I think we are at one, Mr I, in so far as it is the mediocrity of which we both speak, and which bullies its way into our heads day in and day out, should we allow it; cheap soap in a perpetual, tepid bath of noise, assaulting the senses and clegging the pores, when, for so little more money and selective effort, the senses could be washed gently but purposefully amidst the chosen variety of the Savonier's perfumes.
We both, I think, seek quality rather than width, and by far the greatest part of what Evensong pieces you have been kind enough to share with us would make your searches fruitful for me.
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All forms of music are most definitely not equally meritorious, and if I conveyed that impression, I regret that also - however, it can include an 'apples and pears' element of differentiation, and I would choose a good apple over a poor pear, and the reverse. We tend to be served up the Masterpieces of the acknowledged great composers, but there is sometimes a good reason why we don't hear some of their other pieces very often! And, even in relation to performance of the Masterpieces, the quality of the performance overlays the previous point. For example, there are recordings of the Brahms Requiem which are consistently under the note, and display the piece as a boring dirge, but the best, for example The Sixteen's piano version (arr. Brahms) reveal it for all that it is; a masterpiece of sorrow and optimism mixed.
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"we need to be more and not less elitist " and "the confectionery as being equal to the meat"
Yes, our children do need to have a bench mark of what is validated by the composers' and performers' efforts, and I wish I knew how we could take appropriate revenge on Simon Cowell who
has done everything in his vile, manipulative, grasping way to cover the said bench mark with his meaningless graffiti, in the elevation of his whoring, prancing, pathos-filled, one trick mediocrities - everything to do with show business, and little or nothing to do with the better purpose of music; but this repulsive man would persuade our children that they are one and the same.
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My telly was 'permanently borrowed' 30 years ago, and I'm yet to be convinced that it's worth replacing. How can so many faulty effluent treatment works be contained in such comparatively small containers - it's a marvel of our age, and we can only hope that our children will force a more beneficent provider of bread and circuses - one with nutritious food and nutritional entertainment, if you like. My hope, full of sorrow and optimism mixed.
Hasty concision is often the default setting of blog writing, both in posts and comments, it is the immediacy of e-communication which is it's strength yet it's weakness, too; the ability to comment urgently, especially when deployed via an often self-taught and inexpert keyboard skill can restrict reflection and discourage editing; nevertheless, mr anonymous, I thought your original comment on the values and qualities of music appreciation was entirely correct and proper and I just used that one line from it - as I said, in isolation - as a peg on which to hang a discussion or, among our silent majority, suggest a point of view worth considering. I don't think you lack any of the essayist's skills and it was perhaps unfair of me to, unwittingly, set you on the back foot and I agree entirely with your above post.
I hate that When I Was A Kid stuff but when I was a kid at primary school, the caretaker, once a week, would wheel in a robust, brown radio on a trolley and the class - and classes around the nation - would do Singing Together, with William Appleby, stirring, if rigid renditions of (mainly) English folk songs - D'ye ken John Peel, the Jolly Miller, Brennan on the Moor and The Minstrel Boy. Every term, there would be a visit from the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, it didn't then give me any love of classical music but it certainly made me aware of it's grandeur and scale and helped break down barriers natural in a working class child. The singing together - and the country dancing which was also part of the curriculum - however, never left me and much later led me, via ensembles such as Fairport Convention and the Incredible String Band to the Copper Family and to the rural, non-industrial history which their songs reflect and embody, the sung, social history of our lands. In my twenties somebody was kind enough to sit me down and say listen to these, they are Beethoven synphonies, you'll really like them and I did and do. It would have amounted to only a few hours a month, in primary school, spent on real music and yet it has influenced my whole life, influenced everything which appears on this blog and in the commentaries of stanislav, a young Polish plumber and much else besides; the music runs through everything, mr mongoose catches a lot of the references, a lot of them, though, are just there for me.
My lament, therefore, my rage, is not focused entirely upon the execrable Cowell and the forces which enable him but on the abandonment, in primary schools - along with much else - of the benchmark-setting which you speak of and from which so many of us, here, benefited.
Once upon a time I was married to a primary school teacher; Cat Stevens, she used to play to her charges, Morning Has Broken, and stuff from the Andrew Lloyd Webber Songbook. Almost in a heartbeat the emphasis had shifted from the traditional and the serious to the popular and sentimental; no singing of Men Of Harlech, no symphony orchestra in her school, the local steel band, instead, grinning its grinny music at grinning children, whose own children now, Cowellites, cannot, for all their discussions and votings, differentiate between quality and shit, and if they could would choose the shit, everytime.
You are too kind, Mr Ishmael!
More, another time, I hope, between us all, about the power of music, and especially about the music performed, heard and learnt in early years, and on which you touch with, clearly, such gratitude and happy memories.
I think the simpler acts of music making and music listening which have been denied to children in recent times for want of "a few hours a month" has been one of the most thoughtless, if not straightforwardly evil, deprivations that can be inflicted on a child, short of withholding love and food.
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