A post at Sequenza 21 about Palestrina takes me back twenty years to heady (and chillier than now) days at Cambridge University, where all music students had to learn to write 16th-century counterpoint. It was rather like filling in a crossword puzzle. I suppose it kept us out of all-night parties, dangerous drugs and, worst of all in the faculty's eyes, daring to practise our musical instruments. I'm not certain what other useful function it fulfilled, but I do have a vague fondness for the calmness and beauty of Palestrina as a result. Two LPs of it found their way into my then-modest collection and I used to play them frequently in an attempt to immerse myself in the ancient aesthetic we were attempting to recreate. The trouble was that the music is so calm and so beautiful that it's also extremely soothing. I don't remember ever hearing either album to the end - I always fell sound asleep about half way through...
If you're new to the wonders of Palestrina, try this CD.
Meanwhile, to wake you up, here are a few responses to Google searches that have led to some readers finding this blog:
The Octobass is huge and magnificent and lives in the Musical Instrument Museum in the Cite de la Musique in Paris.
I don't think Nikolai Znaider is married, but I may be wrong.
I don't know who Leif Ove Andsnes's girlfriend is.
Marc-Anthony Turnage is NOT 'awful'. He's a great guy and writes fantastic music.
Saturday, October 15, 2005
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Heim truths
Oh yes! Norman tells it like it is.
All I can add is that I wouldn't mind paying to hear this lady if I could stand what she does musically. But I can't. Her Korngold recording, to be fair, is OK, but the Tchaikovsky that's paired with it is cringe-worthy...as for the Mozart, well, we'll see.
All I can add is that I wouldn't mind paying to hear this lady if I could stand what she does musically. But I can't. Her Korngold recording, to be fair, is OK, but the Tchaikovsky that's paired with it is cringe-worthy...as for the Mozart, well, we'll see.
Monday, October 10, 2005
KEATS for golden October
TO AUTUMN by John Keats
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind,
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Season of mists and mellow fruitfulness!
Close bosom-friend of the maturing sun;
Conspiring with him how to load and bless
With fruit the vines that round the thatch-eaves run;
To bend with apples the moss'd cottage-trees,
And fill all fruit with ripeness to the core;
To swell the gourd, and plump the hazel shells
With a sweet kernel; to set budding more,
And still more, later flowers for the bees,
Until they think warm days will never cease,
For summer has o'er-brimm'd their clammy cells.
Who hath not seen thee oft amid thy store?
Sometimes whoever seeks abroad may find
Thee sitting careless on a granary floor,
Thy hair soft-lifted by the winnowing wind,
Or on a half-reap'd furrow sound asleep,
Drowsed with the fume of poppies, while thy hook
Spares the next swath and all its twined flowers;
And sometimes like a gleaner thou dost keep
Steady thy laden head across a brook;
Or by a cider-press, with patient look,
Thou watchest the last oozings hours by hours.
Where are the songs of spring? Ay, where are they?
Think not of them, thou hast thy music too -
While barred clouds bloom the soft-dying day,
And touch the stubble-plains with rosy hue;
Then in a wailful choir the small gnats mourn
Among the river sallows, borne aloft
Or sinking as the light wind lives or dies;
And full-grown lambs loud bleat from hilly bourn;
Hedge-crickets sing; and now with treble soft
The redbreast whistles from a garden croft;
And gathering swallows twitter in the skies.
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Rites of publishing...
UPDATE 3.35pm: OH MY GOD, it's already up on Amazon.co.uk! You can pre-order RITES OF SPRING here right now!
The bound proofs of RITES OF SPRING arrived yesterday. Bound proofs, in case you've never met any, look like normal paperback books but are actually a kind of mock-up, less polished and requiring correction, but useful for advance promotion, book fairs, sales of foreign rights etc. It's the nearest thing I've seen yet, though, to My Novel In Print. Publication date for the hardback is scheduled for 13 March (they promise me it's not a Friday) and paperback should, I hope, be sometime in May. My agent will be taking her bundle of these to the Frankfurt Book Fair in a couple of weeks' time.
For the moment, I'm staring at the spine of this almost-book that bears my name, the title and the immortal words HODDER & STOUGHTON, trying to get my head around the fact that I've 'done it' . I have to try, however, not to look inside at the text because every time I do, I find something I want to change. And now I can't.
"Artistic fulfillment", for want of a better expression, is very different in writing from that of music. A musician works for weeks, months, sometimes years towards a performance: then, on the day, you're on the spot, producing the goods and feeling the energy coming back to you from people listening. In writing, however long you work on something, when you finally release it to its audience, all you can do is sneak an occasional glance at them while they're reading and say daft things like, "Where are you up to?", "Do you still like it?" or "You know that bit where....well, do you think it's believable?" The immediacy of emotion that you feel in performance is missing; on the other hand, if you've written well enough, the impression you convey has a much better chance of being what you set out to convey in the first place. And unlike a concert, the book on the shelf will be there forever. It's a tad scarey to reflect that RITES OF SPRING will be gathering dust in a library somewhere long after I'm pushing up the daisies........
The bound proofs of RITES OF SPRING arrived yesterday. Bound proofs, in case you've never met any, look like normal paperback books but are actually a kind of mock-up, less polished and requiring correction, but useful for advance promotion, book fairs, sales of foreign rights etc. It's the nearest thing I've seen yet, though, to My Novel In Print. Publication date for the hardback is scheduled for 13 March (they promise me it's not a Friday) and paperback should, I hope, be sometime in May. My agent will be taking her bundle of these to the Frankfurt Book Fair in a couple of weeks' time.
For the moment, I'm staring at the spine of this almost-book that bears my name, the title and the immortal words HODDER & STOUGHTON, trying to get my head around the fact that I've 'done it' . I have to try, however, not to look inside at the text because every time I do, I find something I want to change. And now I can't.
"Artistic fulfillment", for want of a better expression, is very different in writing from that of music. A musician works for weeks, months, sometimes years towards a performance: then, on the day, you're on the spot, producing the goods and feeling the energy coming back to you from people listening. In writing, however long you work on something, when you finally release it to its audience, all you can do is sneak an occasional glance at them while they're reading and say daft things like, "Where are you up to?", "Do you still like it?" or "You know that bit where....well, do you think it's believable?" The immediacy of emotion that you feel in performance is missing; on the other hand, if you've written well enough, the impression you convey has a much better chance of being what you set out to convey in the first place. And unlike a concert, the book on the shelf will be there forever. It's a tad scarey to reflect that RITES OF SPRING will be gathering dust in a library somewhere long after I'm pushing up the daisies........
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Read this one aloud
A chicken goes into a library, goes up to the librarian and says: "Book."
"Ah?" thinks the librarian. "A chicken wants a book?" She pushes a book over the counter to the chicken, who tucks it under one wing and goes out.
An hour later the chicken is back, pushes the book over the counter with its beak and says to the librarian: "Book book." The librarian gives it two books. It tucks one under each wing and heads off again.
Two hours later the chicken comes back, gives her back the two books and says: "Bookbookbookbookbookbookbook...bookbookbookbookbook" So the librarian gives it a whole pile of books. The chicken balances the books on its back between its wings and goes away.
At the end of the afternoon, the chicken comes back with all the books and returns them to the librarian. She's very surprised. "Hey," she says, "for a chicken you certainly get through a lot of books."
"Oh," says the chicken, "they're not for me. I've been getting them for my friend, the frog. But every time I give him a book he says: 'Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it."
"Ah?" thinks the librarian. "A chicken wants a book?" She pushes a book over the counter to the chicken, who tucks it under one wing and goes out.
An hour later the chicken is back, pushes the book over the counter with its beak and says to the librarian: "Book book." The librarian gives it two books. It tucks one under each wing and heads off again.
Two hours later the chicken comes back, gives her back the two books and says: "Bookbookbookbookbookbookbook...bookbookbookbookbook" So the librarian gives it a whole pile of books. The chicken balances the books on its back between its wings and goes away.
At the end of the afternoon, the chicken comes back with all the books and returns them to the librarian. She's very surprised. "Hey," she says, "for a chicken you certainly get through a lot of books."
"Oh," says the chicken, "they're not for me. I've been getting them for my friend, the frog. But every time I give him a book he says: 'Read it. Read it. Read it. Read it."
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