Friday 18 April 2014

GOOD FRIDAY EVENSONG. TO SING IS TO PRAY TWICE.

It's one of those triumphs of Ruin that great art is ever hijacked by Filth. I don't play it much, these days, but the Choral movement of Beethoven's ninth symphony was played on Radio Three a while back; I came late to it, in my twenties, at the kindly urging of an older friend, and for most of my life since, I have listened to it, what, several times a year, until the past few years; I had forgotten its power, not forgotten, it had just gone out of my mind, stuff does. A couple of days before hearing it and weeping afresh I had witnessed the entirely worthless Nick Clegg painfully, almost pathetically being put through his limited and unconvincing paces by Sergeant Farage, Ist Ukippers Batallion. As I listened to poor, mad Ludwig's gigantic, magnificent imagination I was conscious not only that God was bowing the strings of my heart but also - thanks to Clegg acting as unknowing reminder - that our masters in Europe had claimed it for their own, as their very own anthem, as though a bunch of crooks, degenerates and shysters could, from their bureaux of tyranny, align and conflate themselves with divine, artistic genius. How fucking dare they? 

 Listening to Beethoven and thinking of Clegg; Christ, it's enough to give you a brain haemorrhage.

 I have always felt conflicted about more formally sacred music, songs celebrating a wretched blood sacrifice, and the entire Baroque  movement was, after all, patronised, primarily, as a weapon of Counter-reformation, propaganda, first and foremost for centuries-old beasting and torture and extortion, for wicked, degenerate, greedybastard Popes, prelates, princes and priests. Even so, it works on me as its creators intended and even as a non-believer I am comforted by St Augustine's maxim, above - doesn't matter if it's Jackson Browne or the Choir of King's College - To Sing Is To Pray Twice.

 Ruin may purloin and suborn the good tunes
 but we own them.
Have a happy and reflective Easter. 

Oh, haupt voll blut und wunden,
(Oh, sacred head, now wounded)
St Mattew's Passion,
JS Bach.

14 comments:

Anonymous said...

It's worth the entry fee just to their faces.

Mike said...

All fascist dictatorships hijack art for their own purpose. I can't listen to Ode To Joy anymore.

Nice clip, more moving with eyes closed. Must say I prefer young male voices to females - more pure and innocent.

On another matter, the Duke n Duchess were on my local beach (Manly) yesterday. I didn't go for obvious reasons, but my wife went and described the scene as very warm and friendly - even the fat cops on motorbikes. Hideously white, which of course wouldn't be popular back home.

callmeishmael said...

I was wondering whether you'd be granted an audience; you wouldn't believe the coverage, here; Princess Skank is such a good sailor that the Kiwis want to put her in charge of their Royal Navy, canoes, mainly, I think, and the brat is already, according to the PBC's Nicholas Knobcheese, displaying all the qualities of Kingship associated with this extraordinarily talented family. Chavvy Kate got sand in her shoes yesterday, proved, according to Skymadeupnewsandfilth, that she was really human, like the rest of us, really.

Still surprises and delights me, the Ninth, as does, I must say, Haydn's Kaiser/Emperor quarter, as though there was an invisible line on their manuscripts, an invisible clef, marked "tears". That the one is now an ode to Clegg and the other Deutschland uber Alles doesn't matter. Well,not that much.

I was watching Jimi Hendrix, last night, doing StarSpangledBanner amongst much other tedium at the Woodstock Shebang and I remembered learning it as a classical guitar piece. Originally it was a tongue in cheek folksong about a wily old Greek god, To Anacreon in Heav'n, where he sat in full glee.....becoming: O-oh say, can you see, by the dawn's early light.....Sometimes, I think I'm the only person in the world to know that.

Anonymous said...

Always liked Tchaikovsky. Beethoven too. Rach 3 when I'm maudlin. Bach knew what he was doing as well.

RE the Royals. WTF would anyone want to go and see someone you don't know, who doesn't give a shit about you, never has, never will, who is responsible for robbing the nation blind and depriving its inhabitants of the free use of huge tracts of land, simply by virtue of the fact that one of their murderous ancestors killed a load of dissenters and claimed divine right to be kept in perpetual luxury at everyone else's expense?

I despise the Queen. The one person in the nation with the authority to tell Heath and Thatch and Blair and the whole sorry mob to go and take a running jump, but no, she pisses the nation away, a thousand years or more of British tradition, culture and society, signing treasonous treaties with the EU, getting richer and richer, along with her freakish son and grandchildren.

Another load of scumbags, ripe for the bullet, Mr Ishmael, I'm afraid. No better than common thieves, benefit scrounging perverts.

Vincent

callmeishmael said...

Yeah, I hope she has a rotten Easter, too, mr vincent. It is as though her longevity is a virtue which outweighs her decades of crime and greed.

Brian and Horseface, though, they'll manage to do a Samson, pull the whole rotten thing down, lossing-over his treatment of Diana was one thing - for which he, I mean we, hired an ex News of the World liar - but once he starts strutting around, proper Ruritanian-like, the press , MediaMinster, will rip him to bits; as for Prince and Princess Skank, well, we may as well have the Beckhams on the throne, at least we and they know that they're filth and make no bones about it.

Anonymous said...


Never wished ill of the woman Mr Ishmael, but it is a mercy that the people's trollop is dead. Imagine her as Queen, pouting and posing, stroking blackies and lepers and shagging rugby players and colonials, banging on about land mines and AIDS, and that great pooftah servant of hers mincing about. Feck, it's almost enough to make yer grateful for Camella,

Was it around about that time, Mr Ishmael, when the wreckers stamped on the accelerator? When she died in that 'accident', was it then that people started to think that the most undignified displays of mawkishness and sentimentality were not only acceptable, but somehow desirable, compulsory even? That a teddy and some daffs from the Shell station were a suitable token of respect? That Bliar decided the Office of PM was such a triviality that it ought to jossle with the palace, display public grief for a woman he was not grieving, use the whole sorry spectacle as a marketing campaign for his caring side?

Princess Camella. I rather think she more closely resembles a camel than a horse, don't you think? It's the yellow and brown teeth, I think. And the wrinkles. Put some make-up on luv, for goodness sake. Whatever, I'm afraid the Samson option is unlikely. Oh, granted, Charlie will cock it up, right royally, so to speak. Only for Prince Baldy to ride to the rescue with his totty.

And the crowd go wild.

I think monarchy is a reasonable system for running little Islands like ours, IF you get a decent monarch. I think the reason we have such dross nowadays is that they no longer obtain the throne in time-honoured fashion; on the field, with a sword in their hand, with men behind them, prepared to die to put them on the throne. Let Charlie attempt to raise an army, and let him meet his opponent at Bosworth field, like the very last time a King fought his own battle. The sight of that prick in shining armour would be enough to energise the feeblest of opponents, surely? They don't respect the throne when they obtain it because they risked nothing to sit upon it. They don't respect the people as they sit, because they have no fear any of them may attempt to evict them.

I wonder if the Queen pays bedroom tax on her hundreds of spare rooms? Probably just as well she doesn't, she'll only stick it on the tab.

Have a nice Easter Mr Ishmael. I hope God blesses you.

Vincent

callmeishmael said...

He already has, thanks, mr vincent.

I agree about the shallowness,vanity and promiscuity of Diana Tart but I do feel it was a position she was manouevred into by Brenda, Phil and Brian and considering she was up against that shower of filth and their gangs of spiteful fairies I could forgive her anything.

One of the things which so distresses me about her sons is their willingness to kowtow to their Mum's tormentors. I dunno which one is the worst, Harry the moron or William the moron.

I do think it was a watershed in the national character, garageflowerisme, but again orchestrated by Ruin. BoJo, I believe, wrote, wrote Spencer's cathedral denunciation, applauded by les sans cullottes, Lady Sir Elton plumbed unimaginable depths of banality, even by his standards, the PBC was tearfully ridiculous and Blair indecently opportunistic.

We now have a predominant national characteristic of mawkish sentimentality, ladled over with obscene ghoulishness which as well as devaluing the nation in its cathartic exercise lets Infamy off the hook, witness the Scouse chumps, last week, holding Villainy's
coat for him. Instead of raging, now, we wail like Arab women.

Mike said...

Mr Vincent: you have articulated something which for me makes a lot of sense - viz the decline of the worth of the monarch when they don't raise men to fight for it and don't fear the people. Ditto the stinking politicians. Much as I dislike the French, their revolution ought to be the model we aspire to.

Anonymous said...

I had (mercifully) forgotten about Candle in the Wind, Mr Ishmael, what a load of claptrap. Twaddle, my father would have called it. Reg is another one (yes, I know, they're stacking up, I can't help it) who'd have to go, in the People's Glorious Republic of Vincent. An enemy of the state, put the fat poof out of his (and our) misery, before he buys more children with his man-wife. Words fail me, they really do. Just the sight of the vile little shit endangers the well-being of my TV screen, if there is anything chuckable at hand. Apoplectic I get, Mr Ishmael. I cannot understand why people do not realise how ridiculous he looks, how utterly obnoxious he is, just a selfish, sad, lonely mentalist, apparently ignorant of how very limited his 'talent' is.

Mr Mike, I'm quite keen on the guillotining aspects of the French Rev, you may have guessed, pour encourager les autres, as they say over there, but when I think of the crooks and degenerates like Mitterand, Chirac and the simply dreadful Giscard d'Estaing, not to mention the more recent dross, with their slappers and illegitimate children, mistresses and wot-not, legions of hangers-on, they cost as much as Brenda and her mob. People are being robbed by this scum, in every way imaginable, yet they keep waving flags and cheering their own beggaring, Union flags or Tricolores, doesn't matter, beggared to keep these pigs in silk sheets. Presidents or Potentates, it's all the same if the incumbent is a crook, which they invariably are. The frogs are not better off than us, not in the criminals that govern them. Different shit, same stink, I'm afraid.

Vincent.

Alphons said...

In most countries where “democracy” exists the relationship between electorate and elected is much the same. The electorate are promised jam tomorrow in return for power today and when tomorrow comes the electorate find itself in a jam and looking to the elected for fulfilment of their empty promises. However the elected are more interested in their own new supply of jam and champagne and more ways to hypnotise the electorate into another period of inertia.
The “State”, in what ever form, has always worked in this way and until the electorate are awakened to just how crooked and immoral the”State” is there is no hope of any change.
In my view the average life span is not long enough to imprint on the sceptics the reality of the situation. Too many of the electorate are taken in by the propaganda and too many are too simple to see the situation as it is, and thus it is not until experience forces a body to face reality, and by that time apathy and old age have taken hold.
The majority look upon Royalty as being a harmless sideshow and part of the “theatre” of our democracy.
We really need an Agnostic Cromwell from somewhere to do to our Politicians what he did to to King Charles.

Anonymous said...

Mr Alphons,

Funny you mention the human life-span. I had the very same thought just recently.

Imagine if we lived for, say, 300 years. I really don't think people would be so easy to hoodwink if we did. As you say, cynicism would have set in after 50 odd years, but a man would be less than 20% the way through his life at that point. They'd never get away with their tricks, particularly the spinning of history, as people would have been present at the events and would not accept being lied to. People actually think that the shit we have nowadays is good, an improvement on yesteryear, because they weren't there and know no better.

Still, living for 300 years would have its drawbacks too. World 'leaders' would devise methods for retaining power for a couple of centuries, instead of decades now. Imagine having to live with that Bliar murderer for centuries. Three score and ten is probably sufficient, though it does seem rather lacking the closer a man gets to it :-)

Vincent.

Alphons said...

Well Mr Anonymous

"Three score and ten is probably sufficient, though it does seem rather lacking the closer a man gets to it "


I am well past that and I can tell you that it is a very sad state to be in when one can look back and see where it has all gone wrong and realise that there is absolutely no way it can be corrected retrospectively and there seems to be little hope of the current "establishment" even recognising that, let alone doing anything about it.



psycho-mechanical breakdown said...

listening to beethoven and thinking of clegg; christ, it's enough to give you a brain haemorrhage

you thought that was tough? just wait till you get the welfare state of being forced to listen to clegg before even contemplating beethoven

cultural explosion said...

do you think he bangs to the beat?