Wednesday, July 31, 2019

Reading Laurus

As I've been reading Eugene Vodolazkin's extraordinary novel Laurus, about the life of saint in 15th century Russia, I've become convinced that I can distantly hear Sofia Gubaidulina's music. Laurus reads like a sort of holy picaresque novel. There isn't necessarily a plot but rather a series of events, often strange and humorous, that make one extraordinarily fond of Arseny. He is always suffering, always experiencing setbacks, encountering the most peculiar of characters. And through his journey one gets a vivid impression of the Orthodox faith: magical and oddly dark, yet a constant vertical struggle towards what is good. And so, naturally, the glissandis and austerity and stark aural landscape -- so like I imagine the Russian landscape to be -- of Gubaidulina's music has never felt more powerful. Start reading Laurus, and then listen to this:


Gubaidulina must be one of the few great living composers. I think it's become clear that we're living either in a transitional period or an epoch of decline. Where are the great composers, novelist, poets, artists? Yes, there are some, and many good ones, but greatness seems to be an ever rarer quality. Some (I think mistaken) traditionalists believe it is because too few write tonal music. (The less intellectual critics complain about the lack of 'melodies' or more broadly 'tunes'.) I love Arvo Part and Morten Lauridsen too, but equally there are great composers like Gubaidulina and Messiaen and other (usually less known) composers who show that the modern idiom can produce great art.

Tonal/highly dissonant music is not, therefore, an important divide. But there are some divides worth noting. There do seem to be more great religious composers than great secular composers. I think there is a lot of promise in Central and Eastern Europe while Western Europe and the Anglosphere seems to be faltering. And I think the best composers now -- or at least the composers I most like -- are the ones looking back to the Renaissance more than the 19th century. As it happens, Vodolazkin believes that we are in new Middle Ages. And like him, I believe this could be a good thing.

Saturday, July 27, 2019

Jacob Rees Mogg's Style Guide

Why do journalists refer to Jacob Rees-Mogg as the 'member of parliament for the 18th century'? In terms of fashion, beliefs and manner he is more of a Victorian, perhaps an Edwardian. And in other respects he is very much a man of the 20th century. Of course to most people old is old, and they mistakenly draw a straight line from the past to the present, which denotes for them a transition from rigid formality to liberation.

Anyone familiar with the 18th century knows that it was quite unlike the 19th century. Read Defoe or Smollett, whose fictions could not possibly have been created in the 19th century. In terms of language (which shall be the subject of this blog post) it was still a time in which words could have multiple spellings, where dialects varied considerably, where grammar was not yet standardised. Samuel Johnson's compiled his Dictionary not in order to prescribe but describe. When we read it now we do not use it as instruction necessarily, but as an insight into the linguistic customs of the time. It was really a journalist effort to document how language was used.

The overly prescriptive approach to the English language is primarily, as far as I can tell, a 20th century obsession. Grammar lessons are no doubt to blame. Jacob Rees-Mogg, whom I shall hereafter refer to as Esquire, is clearly continuing the obsession. Esquire has sent a list of rules to his staff, banning words and phrases such as 'very', 'due to', 'ongoing' and 'got', and requring them to double space after full stops and to use 'Esq.' after non-titled males names (which, you may have noticed, I find rather silly; and it too is, I believe, solely a 20th century custom).

I agree with Esquire on a few of his choices. He insists on the use of imperial measurements. Good! The imperial system is a far superior and more tangible system than the metric alternative. The EU's Napoleonic directives calling for all member states to use the metric system exemplifies why Britain should not be a member. And phrases like 'no longer fit for purpose' are indeed useless and, moreover, irritating. 

But, goodness, who cares if 'due to' is used instead of 'owing to' -- what loss of clarity is there? 'Due to' no longer has the exclusive meaning it once had, and I can think of no reasons why this is a bad thing. 'Very' provides a very useful emphasis. And what is wrong with 'got'? According to a quick search in Google books, it appears four times in Esquire's dull little book, The Victorians. A book which, might I add, showed about a much literary flair as a 50 Cent lyric. After publishing such a book I would be quite reticent to advise others on their use of language.

Thursday, July 25, 2019

In Praise of Weather

There is a reason hell is found in the hot core of the earth and heaven is found in the cold vacuum of space. (Though I believe Dante (I haven't read him) might differ on this -- something about the devil flapping his wings and creating a chilling breeze.)

People always seem to want to love the heat. They rejoice when summer comes. The prospect of endless days of intense heat seldom fails to gladden them. Then they go out in it: their skin burns, they suffer heat stroke, dehydration, their risk of cancer multiplies, they feel entirely enervated, they have to cover themselves in gooey chemicals in order to help protect their skin -- yet they still think the heat is wonderful. Not even the frostiest of mornings has such adverse effects. The thing about heat is that, even while it slowly burns and drains you, you feel happily out of it, happily incapacitated, and that's a feeling most people unfortunately enjoy. They like submitting to the laziness heat demands of them. To enjoy the cold weather one has to enjoy struggle and activity. One has to like the sharp awakeness that the cold air brings.

Now, I do not particularly enjoy cold weather. Sure, I like the exhilarating feeling of a winter's walk, especially on a blustery day. But I am always relieved to reclaim my sedantry position at home. My favourite weather is found in spring. I enjoy the rain, the wind, the crispness in the morning, the gentle sun in the day, the cosiness at night. But I also enjoy autumn for its otherworldliness, even summer for its sudden and brilliant rainshowers. It's a sad thing about most adults that they seem to lose their childhood love of weather. All they want is dullness, weather that does not interfere, weather that is uneventful. How terribly boring.

Monday, July 22, 2019

Encountering Beauty

Buskers are usually a nuisance. They sing bad versions of already bad music, made a thousand times worse by the invention of the amplifier (which I'm convinced has done as much damage to the beauty of our environment as the car).

Yet today I heard the most wonderful busker. She was performing in a busy, commercial seaside high street, the sort of place where beauty is usually made unwelcome. She was from China and played a four-stringed plucked instrument called a 'pipa', which she described as the Chinese lute.

I heard her from across the street and there was something familiar about the music. As I approached and listened more closely I was ecstatic to realise that I knew what she was playing. It was the most unlikely of things: an almain by one of the great English lutenists. I had that extraordinary feeling wherein my whole body seems to tremble excitedly, as if an angel had just tickled my spine. For it felt like the impossible had happened, almost a miracle. What are the chances of hearing such an obscure piece on any instrument in any high street, then for a passerby to actually recognise it? And to hear it such an unlikely and unattractive town centre, on such an unlikely instrument?

She was improvising on the melody with great skill and musicality. I imagine Dowland, Bacheler, Johnson et al. would have done the same. The pipa had a very beautiful and characteristically Chinese tremolo, which was all the more impressive as she was not using a plectrum but rather her fingers. Any classical guitarist will tell you how hard an even and lyrical tremolo is to execute.
This really is the kind of multiculturism I can get behind. More pipas and Renaissance music, fewer pizza-kebab-burger shops. It was not some tasteless, hollowed-out crossover music, but a sincere and beautiful communion of traditions.

I have a particular love of music for solo instruments. I adore the Bach violin sonatas and partitas, the Weiss sonatas, the Milano fantasias, the Scarlatti sonatas, the Telemann fantasias (I could happily go on -- and on). It is the intimacy of one woman and her instrument. Particularly if it is an instrument one can hold or cradle, like the gamba or guitar (or indeed the pipa). They are quiet, reflective, so unlike most of modern life. They do not shout at you or compete for you attention; rather, they draw you in to their soundworld. This is why I was so affected hearing this busker. She was wonderfully out of place, such an unexpected reprieve from the noise and bustle that surrounded her. Her music was perhaps the one thing in that town that didn't repulse me, the one thing that drew me in. It was quiet and so fragile, yet by virtue of its exceptional beauty, which so clearly differentiated it from its surroundings, any sensitive person would have found it capable of penetrating even this, the most loud and viscous of aural landscapes.

Thursday, July 11, 2019

No More TV Debates

Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson and Jeremy Hunt had their first (and I believe only) one-on-one debate. They both spoke like tedious graduates applying for internships, just as all the candidates had in the previous few leadership debates (well, somewhat less so with Rory Stewart). Count how many times you hear words like 'passionate' or 'vision' in such debates. And of course there is always at least one member of the audience who asks some painfully stupid question (because the audience, not the professionals, have to ask the questions in our pathologically democratic age). 'What is your opponent's great strength?' 'Why do you think you have the personality for the job?' This would all be bad enough if we lived in a republic. But we don't, so what possible excuse is there for making us suffer through this rubbish?

Monday, July 8, 2019

Go to the source

There seems to be a great deal of outrage online about a supposed Brexiteer boycott of a performance of Beethoven's Ninth. You can find coverage of it in the Observer (Brexiters boycott choral festival over EU’s Ode to Joy) and of course over at Slipped Disc (here and here).

Yet when one actually reads the articles the true scale of the boycott quickly becomes apparent. The headlines and rhetoric would lead one to believe a group of ardent Brexiteers are leading a campaign against the performance. But tucked away in the middle of the Guardian article one discovers:
A spokeswoman for the Three Choirs festival, which is held in Gloucester every three years, alternating with Hereford and Worcester, said that an email and a phone call had made the feelings of a small minority of local people very clear.
One email and one phone call. Both may well have been by the same person -- the article refers to only one complainant. One wonders why a national Sunday newspaper thought the story deserving of an article. Were the Observer all too eager to take up a story that fitted so well their worldview? Were the festival organisers desperate for some publicity in light of disappointing ticket sales?

One of the Slipped Disc articles, written by the festival's chief executive, says they have sold one hundred more tickets since the story broke. She also admits that 'all I can say with certainty is that two people are not attending this event because of a perceived connection with Brexit politics'.

I despair at how gullible people are. One constantly finds stories like these, massive exaggerations based on scant evidence, designed to encourage the blindest and phoniest outrage. They are stories written for those who love to be appalled and indignant, which is almost the entirety of the human race, bar the occasional saint. We are always told that people don't trust the news anymore, but I'm afraid this is only true insofar that people do not trust the news from sources they regard as 'on the other side'. Most blindly trust news that comes from their 'side'.

One thing that would make our public life infinitely richer is if every schoolchild is taught four vital words 'go to the source'. Do not really on secondary sources, do not rely on accounts, analysis, opinion, quotations, retellings. Find the earliest accounts of an event, find what those closest to the event had to say, find the core facts and ignore the many reactions and afterthoughts. Find what it was before it became a 'story', a process which invariably changes its nature. If it is a controversy about what someone said, find what they said -- not merely the quotations but the whole thing. If, like the Beethoven story, it is a controversy about a boycott, find out who is boycotting and why, look up who broke the story, who supplied the story, and form your own judgement.

I fear that the people who should be most aware of all this -- supposedly educated people -- are in fact the most gullible. Academic students are entirely reliant on secondary literature. Papers are mostly tedious documents overburned with hundreds of footnotes -- compilations of recycled thought as an exercise in exhibitionism and memorisation. They constantly reference other people's judgements -- absolutely everything has to be 'backed up' by some book, article, quotation or argument. Original thought seems to be mostly absent. Anyone who goes to university (at least most unversities) will likely come out knowing what to think but not how to think.

Thursday, July 4, 2019

Green MEP Magid Magid claims he was asked to leave EU parliament...

Magid Magid, a black newly-elected Green MEP, claims to have been asked to leave the EU parliament by an official who clearly was unaware Magid is an MEP. Magid believes his race is why he was asked to leave. 'I know I’m visibily [sic] different. I don’t have the privilege to hide my identity. I’m BLACK & my name is Magid. I don’t intend to try fit in. Get used to it,' he tweeted.

Yet is it not the tiniest bit possible that it had less to do with his being black and more to do with his walking about in shorts, a reversed baseball cap, and a t-shirt with the text 'f**k fascism'? Any official would naturally assume he is not a serious person, and most certainly not a parliamentarian. It is like something out of Idiocracy.

Magid prides himself on his supposed unconventionality, but his 'unconventionality' seems rather normal in modern Britain. If you want to be truly unconventional avoid swearing, forgo social media obsessions, be polite and thoughtful in your political discourse, and above all conduct yourself, especially when in a position of power, as a dignified and cultured person. I'm sure Magid has his virtues, but his personality, far from being refreshing, is merely a banal affirmation of the dominant values of our time.

What I've read, listened to and watched while under house arrest

I am too lazy at the moment to write this post in paragraphs, so it will instead take the form of a list. This suits me well as I am a compu...