corollary: Music

Listening to:

Handel, Saul.

Listening to:

Shostakovich, Cheryomushki, in the reduced orchestration, English-language version performed by the Pimlico Opera.

Listening to:

Summertime, performed by Ella Fitzgerald and Louis Armstrong. Definitely one of the best performances of this standard I’ve ever heard. Fitzgerald and Armstrong bring out a beautiful melancholy in the song.

Just read:

Rohinton Mistry, A fine balance.

This is a finely written, compelling novel about four disparate characters in 1970s Bombay. Mistry unfolds quite a saga, drawing the characters together, and gradually making friends of them. This makes for a satisfying read, and there are plenty of obstacles to be overcome as they get there.

Some of the obstacles are within the characters, but a significant number are caused by the deprivation, poverty and exploitation that are unavoidable parts of life in ’70s Bombay. Not having any experience of the time or place, I can’t vouch for its accuracy, but the depiction in this novel makes it seem very real, and quite fascinating. (Yes, a horrid fascination in some ways, but a fascination nonetheless.)

I read this novel with my heart often in my mouth, worried that the author was not going to let his characters have a happy ending. This is a sign of good writing, and it is a good novel. However, I finished it feeling annoyed that Mistry did eventually dispose of his characters in what seemed a rather callous and capricious manner.

Listening to:

Dinah Washington singing Cole Porter’s Love for sale. This is a pretty seedy song:

Appetising young love for sale.
Love that’s fresh and still unspoiled,
Love that’s only slightly soiled...

I have another version of this song, sung by Ella Fitzgerald. Though she sings more verses than Washington, and is as musical as ever, Fitzgerald really doesn’t compare, in this instance at least. Washington’s distinctive, almost raspy, voice is perfect for this lyric and she nails it with a slightly derisive, cynical tone. Fitzgerald sings the same words in a smooth and melancholy tone, making the song rather disturbingly creepy. Creepiness is a perfectly reasonable feeling to convey when singing a tale of sleazy prostitution, but that doesn’t make the song as enjoyable to listen to.

Listening to:

Bach, The well-tempered clavier, Book 1. This recording is played by Angela Hewitt on the piano, and is published by Hyperion (serial number CDA67301/2). I bought this recording just a fortnight ago, and I definitely like it. My other recording has Bob van Asperen on the harpsichord. What with the Naxos recordings of Scarlatti’s sonatas, which are all on the piano too, and a version of the Goldberg variations on piano, my music collection is losing its ideologically pure cast.

Particularly with Bach, one can’t afford to be too precious about this: Bach clearly intended lots of his keyboard music to be played on whatever instrument was available, and towards the end of his life, was even approached to try out new-fangled forte-piano instruments that were being developed at the time. In any case, the criterion for judgement has to be whether or not one finds the music beautiful. With Hewitt there’s no doubt: I’ve had the CDs on many times in the past two weeks.

Just read:

John H. Mundy, Europe in the High Middle Ages, 1150–1309.

This big fat book covers the given period in detail, but without often managing to convey much of a unifying theme. If there’s a big, simple story to tell to summarise this period, Mundy doesn’t come out and give it to the reader explicitly. Instead, the reader has to construct it themselves. Given that I read the book over too long a period, I didn’t often feel that I had enough detail in my head to allow such a synthesis.

Here’s my best attempt: this period is characterised by the growth in power of the states, particularly France, the miniature states of northern Italy, and also England. Simultaneously, the German empire is collapsing. In the religious sphere, the papacy asserts its dominance over local ecclesiastical hierarchies, but otherwise loses influence over the states.

This story is very much behind the scenes in Mundy’s book. Instead, his pages are dominated by descriptions of various aspects of medieval life in this period. For example, he talks about various social classes, many aspects of the Church (monasteries, itinerant orders, cathedrals), and the economy. I was particularly fascinated to hear that in this period, various states started issuing tradable debt. In other words, you could buy (and trade in) the equivalent of national bonds. Mundy is very good on how this activity interacted with the Church’s prohibition of usury. In an earlier section, he also discusses how Jews fared in performing this activity themselves.

Hinted at, but never explicitly dealt with because they come after his time period, are the Black Death and the Hundred Years War. Mundy gives the impression that these are going to completely devastate a continent that is otherwise developing in a variety of fascinating ways. Sometimes it seems the best efforts of humanity count as naught in the face of random environmental hostility. (No doubt they brought the war on themselves, but the Black Death doesn't seem fair to inflict on anyone.)

All this good stuff is tied together in a way that is rather bitty (again, not helped by my reading it over such a long stretch of time). Mundy also has a writing style that is quite dry, and that occasionally results in sentences that have to be read twice in order to figure out what they mean.

Now reading:

Joseph Conrad, The duel and other tales.

Listening to:

Sidney Bechet, Runnin’ wild. New Orleans, “Dixieland”-style jazz from 1949 and 1950. The true connoisseurs of the day apparently deprecated it as retro and archaic. Yes, this style of jazz had its heyday in the 1920s, but people less hung up on how things should be, simply appreciate it as stylish, exciting music-making. From the 21st century, it’s all equally old, and all the stars are equally dead.

Just read:

Patrick O’Brian, The thirteen-gun salute.

This is an enjoyable addition to O’Brian’s series of novels. There’s not a lot of naval combat, but there’s lot of naval life, and drama. Some of the drama is life-threatening, but more is concerned with personal relationships and how these can play out when people are crammed together on a confined man-of-war. Stephen Maturin gets to play a useful rôle in diplomatic negotiations, but is also allowed a naturalist’s holiday, and enjoys the company of orangutans in and around a Buddhist temple. The perfidious French and their agents come to a sticky end, but our heroes also end the novel as ship-wrecked sailors on a remote island. Roll on the next book (The nutmeg of consolation).

A recent movie:

Master and commander: the far side of the world. Russell Crowe as Jack Aubrey is actually pretty good. Occasionally, I felt he was starting to sound a bit too much like James T. Kirk, but then, Kirk was modelled on James Cook, so what better model could Crowe have? I was less happy with Maturin. The actor was fine, but the adaptation to film completely ignored the diplomatic and espionage facets of his activities and character. In the film, he is a surgeon and a naturalist only. I felt this as a loss, though I can well believe that the film-makers felt that trying to fit it all into the one film would be too difficult.

The naval battles were very impressive. The explosive crash and terror of cannons was very well conveyed, and I got a strong impression of the way in which a whole crew had to work together to pursue its goals. There were also a number of vivid images of the ship at rest (or at least, not at battle) that conveyed the nature of ship-board life. For example, the film opens with a shot of many hammocks strung up below decks, with sleeping sailors crammed together. Later, there is also an impressive aerial shot of the crew assembling on deck, emerging like a host of ants from below, and rapidly forming into an ordered mass. Ship-life is also well-conveyed by sub-plots involving various minor characters.

Plot-wise, the film has only a superficial resemblance to the novel The far side of the world. In both film and book, Aubrey pursues an enemy ship around Cape Horn and into the Pacific, and stops off at the Galapagos islands. In the book, it’s 1812, and the enemy ship is American. In the film, it’s 1805 and the ship is French. In the book, the enemy ship is destroyed by nature, and the climax takes place on a deserted island where the two enemy crews have had to take refuge. In the film, there is a big naval battle to finish things off. I wasn’t too bothered by any of this, though it’s very easy to be cynical about the motives for the change in nationality of the bad guys.

More significant to my mind was the admission that Aubrey is exceeding his orders in pursuing the ship ’round Cape Horn. This doesn’t ring true to Aubrey’s character in the books. There he’s adventurous, but he is also very concerned about his status in the naval list, and keen to make sure that his career progresses well. In awarding marks for fidelity to source material, I will happily let plot go by the board (particularly if, as with O’Brian, plot isn’t hugely important in the feel of the books), but I do want to see tone and character retained. In this way, M&C: tFSotW seemed not quite right, though close.

The films of The Lord of the Rings make an interesting contrast. They include some glaring “tonal errors”, but they have at least succeeded with Frodo, Sam and Gollum. Their characters are not necessarily perfectly realised, but the dynamic between them, and its development is definitely well done. The Aubrey-Maturin relationship is much more static through the O’Brian novels. There’s very little development to portray, which means that I want the relationship from the books done as well as possible in the film. In terms of plot, the LotR is different again: getting the plot right is important there because the story is an epic, and the plot dominates.

But I’ll give you the low-down on the LotR films when I’ve seen The Return of the King.

Listening to:

Mahler, symphony no. 3.

Listening to:

Dvorak, string quartet in E flat major, op. 51.

Listening to:

Ella Fitzgerald singing Just squeeze me, on the album Ella Fitzgerald day dream: best of the Duke Ellington songbook. Apparently a recent American TV series about jazz reckoned that Louis Armstrong was jazz’s Bach, and Duke Ellington was its Mozart. I can’t remember who got to be Beethoven. As the account I was reading pointed out, this is a neat metaphor, but it breaks a little when one realises that Louis Armstrong was alive for about two thirds of all of jazz’s history. Bach lived a long time, but he didn’t manage to do quite that well!

A recent movie:

I saw Minority report last night. I was quite impressed. The plotting was pretty good, and the extrapolations built on top of the sci-fi background didn’t seem too ridiculous. Some of the cinematography was quite stunning too. Philip K. Dick wrote the short story that the film is based on, and it’s his title. I haven’t read the story, but in the film, the fact that minority reports are possible isn’t actually that significant (it doesn’t happen at all that we see, though the possibility that it might have does motivate the hero).

Listening to:

Shostakovich, string quartet no. 15 in E flat minor, op. 144. Each of this quartet's six movements is given the description adagio (the last two are adagio molto, even).

Listening to:

Eduard Tubin, symphony no. 3 (Heroic). This is part of a CD from the BBC Music Magazine featuring music by Estonian composers. I’d never heard of Tubin before, but I definitely like this symphony of his. There's also a piece by Arvo Pärt on the CD. He would be the Estonia’s most famous composer, I’d guess.

I’m listening to this on a new CD player that I bought this morning at Argos. The computer on my desk here has a CD drive and a phone-out socket, but it’s become so flakey that it fails to recognise a high proportion of my discs when I put them in the drive. So, I’ve given up the ability to control my music with the mouse, but I can listen to more of it.

Just read:

Vikram Seth, A suitable boy.

This is the 1400+ page monster that I’ve been reading since the end of May. And the verdict is: it’s great. I found it absolutely enthralling. The characters are almost all sympathetic, and Seth takes the time to paint a beautifully detailed picture of post-Independence India (1951 and 1952, specifically). The novel’s duration is defined by the search for a husband for Lata Mehra. It starts with Lata’s sister’s marriage. With this marriage achieved, the sisters’ mother makes Lata her next project. The novel ends when Lata has finally found and chosen her suitable boy.

But Lata is just one of many characters, and there are many chapters where she does not feature at all. Instead, we get many others’ stories as well. These people are connected with Lata one way or the other, but they all have lives of their own, and their stories are quite involved. The other character who gets most attention is probably Maan Kapoor, who is Lata’s brother-in-law through her sister’s marriage and a bit of a ‘wild child’.

I could write for ages trying to describe all that the novel covers, but I don’t think I’d do it justice. Rather, I should defend it against the possible accusation of being a family-saga pot-boiler. I think it escapes from this charge because it’s not simplistic, and it doesn’t seem to trade in stereotypes. Big sections on the politics of land reform and religion aren’t just there as window-dressing either. I suppose it’s possible that someone with more experience of Indian literature in English would identify much of it as cliché. My experience is more limited, and it all comes across as a wonderful window on an exotic world.

To read next:

Margaret Atwood, A handmaid’s tale.

Listening to:

An extract of Mahler’s symphony no. 6. This is on the tail end of a BBC Music Magazine CD. The main part of the CD was a couple of works by Scriabin, but the magazine now also includes a few extracts from what it thinks are the best new releases. This is what Gramophone magazine has always done, but I much prefer having a magazine that comes with a CD containing complete pieces of music. Extracts can at best be a minor aid to the text of a review.

Listening to:

Handel, The Alchymist. My CD liner notes (by Anthony Hicks) say that this was the first orchestral music by Handel to be heard in England. It was originally an overture for his opera Rodrigo, but it gets its name because the suite's various movements

...were used as ‘act tunes’ (i.e., music played between acts) during a revival of Ben Jonson's play The Alchymist at the Queen's Theatre, Haymarket, in January 1710.

Still reading:

Vikram Seth, A suitable boy. I'm up to page 905 of this edition's 1474 pages. It continues to enthrall.

Listening to:

Something stupid, sung by Frank and Nancy Sinatra. I really like this song, but I've never heard of C. Carson Parks, who wrote it. He’s got a web-page and I don’t recognise any of his other songs. I wonder how rich you get on the back of a top of the charts song from 1967.

Now reading:

Vikram Seth, A suitable boy.

Listening to:

Beethoven, Grosse Fuge, op. 133 in B flat. This is easily the most difficult music of Beethoven’s that I’ve ever heard. It was originally intended to be the final movement of his string quartet op. 130 in B flat, but when it was first performed people complained that it was too long in comparison to the rest of the quartet. In my recording, it’s almost 19 minutes long, while the first movement is 14 minutes, and all the others are less than 10 minutes long (two are less than five).

The difficulty probably stems from the fact that it is a fugue, with multiple lines happening all at once. I guess I don’t listen to it often enough to have become entirely familiar with it. It’s pretty fierce stuff, on the whole.

Just read:

Peter Whitfield, Mapping the world: a history of exploration.

This is a revised edition of a book written for the British Library with earlier title New found lands: maps in the history of exploration. It’s one of the Folio Society’s special presentation volume freebies, which means that it’s big (30cm) with lots of nice plates, mainly of maps, but also of various other prints. These are very nice, but the text is also very good.

The book summarises the history of European exploration, starting the main text with the Portugese expansion along the west coast of Africa, and then getting onto the Americas, the Pacific, Australia and the polar regions. Before the main text there is a brief introduction explaining why earlier and other foreign exploration was qualitatively different from the sort of thing done by the Europeans. For example, the Polynesians did a pretty good job of spreading themselves across the Pacific (an ocean whose vastness Whitfield is expressive about). Nevertheless, they never maintained any centralised repository of knowledge about the discoveries that were being made. (Nor, being pre-literate, would this have been an easy thing to do.) In contrast, people with the maps back in Lisbon really did see their net knowledge of the world increase.

Though the book is not too long, it is pretty comprehensive, with good discussions of every continent and the explorers who went there. I enjoyed it. There are a couple of subjects it doesn’t touch on (though I’d have been interested to read about them): the mapping of home territories and how this improved (being a book about exploration, this is a pretty reasonable omission), and also a little more about technology. For example, Mercator is mentioned, but his projection is not.

Now reading:

Granta 71: shrinks.

Listening to:

Ella Fitzgerald singing Just one of those things, by Cole Porter. I saw what I assume is a new pop album by Kylie Minogue being advertised in a record shop’s window on the way into town this morning. The poster was a side-on view of her in a skimpy outfit displaying a lot of leg. Well sure, say I, if you can add a bit of sex to your product, you may make that little bit more appealing and sell a little more. But really, what’s on sale here, the body or the music?

I’m sure Kylie Minogue doesn’t feel that she’s being exploited, and being exploited is really in the eye of exploitee, so all power to her. However, it is a comment on the superficiality of the pop world. Just how many unattractive women pop-singers are there? (In the boy band world, all the men are smooth-faced and good-looking, but elsewhere there doesn’t seem to be much restriction.)

At least Ella Fitzgerald established her (well-deserved) reputation in the era before TV.

Listening to:

Bach, concerto for harpsichord and strings in G minor, BWV 1058. The CD on which this piece appears is part of a five CD set of Bach concerti. It’s very well documented. In particular, there’s a nice chart at the back of booklet explaining how Bach reused music from a variety of sources to write his harpsichord concerti. It appears that there is no extant harpsichord concerto of his that didn’t start out as something else. What’s more, even if the “something else” no longer exists, it’s apparently possible to figure out what it was. So, while this concerto (BWV 1058) corresponds to an existing violin concerto (BWV 1041, in A minor), the concerto in A major, BWV 1055, is based on a concerto in A major for oboe d'amore that is now lost.

The musical detective work that goes into this process of reconstruction and discovery is described a little in the booklet. There’s enough there to make me think that, one, it must be pretty neat, and two, it’s yet another of those jobs I am never going to manage to fit into my life’s schedule. That’s another to add to the list that already includes astronaut, conductor, and TV sports director (that last one might require further explanation later). Incidentally, the code for the CDs I’m listening to is Archiv 463 725-2, all the recordings feature The English Concert with Trevor Pinnock and date back to the early 80s.

Just read:

Oscar Wilde, The picture of Dorian Gray.

I read this over the weekend, and rather enjoyed it. It’s written in just the style I expected from Oscar Wilde, though this is the first thing I’ve ever read of his, and I’ve never seen any of his plays. (I did see the film of The perfect husband a while back and quite enjoyed it.)

The tone is definitely melodramatic, and over-the-top. There’s lots of description of rich surrounds, flowers, ornaments and general upper class trappings. There’s also quite a few witty asides, and epigrams, mainly due to the character Lord Henry. He is rather enigmatic in a “the devil is a gentleman” kind of way, and should probably be held responsible for Dorian Gray’s downfall.

In basic form, this novel is essentially a tragedy: Dorian Gray is seduced by eternal youth and comes to a sticky end. I don’t know that Wilde was entirely convinced by the requirements of the form though; I couldn’t help but feel that he didn’t really want to have to tell the tale of a downfall. It’s well done, and apart from a longish section in the middle that details a variety of pursuits that Gray takes up in order to give himself something to do with his life, reads very quickly.

I can’t help but wonder what a S/F author might do with the basic story. Has anyone ever written the story of someone who is given eternal youth, and then thinks hard about putting this unique opportunity to work? How would you conceal the fact of your immortality from the rest of the world? In an age of increasing centralisation and bureaucratisation, it might be quite hard to escape the notice of the state. I know I’ve read stories about people who have somehow managed the trick of establishing themselves, and who turn up in the 20th century having been born in the 15th, but this is less interesting. (From the film Interview with a vampire, I guess Anne Rice’s books might go on about this, but I don’t think all that vampire baggage is necessarily very helpful.) Such a story wouldn’t have the moral and dramatic oomph of Wilde’s novel, but done well, would surely be mentally stimulating. (For those that like that sort of thing, of course.)

To read next:

Another book with art in the title, James Joyce’s Portrait of the artist as a young man.

Listening to:

Nielsen, clarinet concerto. This is the most modern work for clarinet that I have in my collection, yet it was only composed in 1928. Nielsen wrote it after making the acquaintance of the Copenhagen Wind Quintet. He wrote a quintet for them in 1922, and then planned to write each member a concerto. Unfortunately, he only managed two before died in 1931. The other concerto was a Flute Concerto in 1926, which I haven’t heard.

Now reading:

Joseph Conrad, The secret agent. Rather to my surprise, this novel has turned into rather a detective story at the moment. All may yet change as I’m only about half-way through. (I only managed one reading session over the weekend.)

Listening to:

Mozart, sonata for violin and piano in A major, K305 (293d). This music classification business is more complicated than you might think. Why do you suppose there are two Köchel numbers for this piece? And why does one of them have a d suffix? I believe the original numbering scheme was revised as more works were discovered, and also as it was realised that some works thought to be by Mozart weren’t actually by him at all. Now this doesn’t in itself require a renumbering; you could just have a scheme with gaps that occasionally acquired new, later numbers.

No, the real problem, and the source of the revisions, is that the numbers are supposed to increase with date of composition, and the relevant scholars have changed their minds about when some of the works were written. Further, certain works have such famous numbers by now that they can’t be shifted around. It’s a problem. The new edition of the complete Mozart catalogue is discussed here. There’s also a cute discussion of other “letter” catalogues on this page.

HTPE#5:

Don’t expect that singles badminton will be just fractionally harder and more exhausting than doubles.

Listening to:

Arthur Sullivan, Macbeth overture. As well as being the composer partner to Gilbert, Sullivan wrote music for a variety of other occasions. He didn’t want to just be a composer of music for musicals. This overture is the first piece on a CD from the BBC music magazine . Next up is a reconstructed cello concerto, and the CD finishes with a Te Deum. It’s very listenable music, probably perfect for writing web-log entries to, but perhaps not so memorable.

Now reading:

Joseph Heller, Catch-22. This is another novel mainly set on a Mediterranean island during World War II. Its tone is completely different from Captain Corelli’s mandolin though. More when I’m finished.

A recent movie:

State & Main. This is a very amusing story about a film production that comes to a small town in New England. There are all sorts of satiric digs at the nature of the film business, and a gently done romance. The hero (the screen-writer) is played by Philip Seymour Hoffman, who also had a relatively minor part in The talented Mr. Ripley, playing a completely different sort of role.

Listening to:

Carl Nielsen, symphony no. 5, FS97. I’m listening to the first movement of this piece, which features a rather sinister side-drum. It’s a use of percussion that reminds me of Shostakovich. At one point in this movement, the player of the side-drum is instructed to improvise as if at all costs to stop the progress of the orchestra.

Listening to:

Schubert, Adagio in E flat, D. 897 «Notturno». I bought some headphones yesterday, so that I could listen to music at work and get better sound. Until yesterday, I'd been using some very cheap in-ear pieces. The difference is definitely significant.

Listening to:

Mahler, symphony no. 9. Mahler was apparently a little affected by a superstitious worry to the effect that nine symphonies is as many as a great composer is allowed. Bruckner didn’t even manage to comlete his ninth, and Beethoven’s ninth was his last. As it turned out, Mahler’s ninth was indeed his last completed symphony. (There is a “performing version” of his drafts for a tenth symphony.)

Thirty-five years later, it seems quite likely that Shostakovich deliberately thumbed his nose at this tradition of great ninth symphonies (and thereby thumbed his nose at the Soviet government, who expected something great of him), by producing a ninth symphony that was short, not overtly dramatic, and which seemed very slight.

Anyway, Mahler’s ninth is quite a mysterious work. Its opening and closing movements are both slow movements (an Andante and an Adagio), while its two internal movements are quite raucous and full of strange eruptions of sound. However, it’s definitely coherent and melodic at the same time.

A recent movie:

Mission Impossible 2. We got this out on DVD. It’s slickly done, but it suffers from a number of faults. It has a serious case of Bond-envy; its plot is ridiculous; Tom Cruise smirks far too much; the other good guys are far too marginalised (the best part of the first MI movie was the initial segment when you saw a team of operatives working together; Cruise as lone operative dominating the plot destroys that interesting, and distinctive, flavour), and those bloody masks are used far too much.

Plot holes range from the typical ridiculous science (why didn’t the operatives that stole the magic medicine pick up the disease from the scientist carrying both the medicine and the disease on the plane?) to the implausible assumptions. Why, for example, on knowing where the bad guys were (great location, Sydney Harbour), did the good guys not get in several truck loads of police to arrest them? The Australian authorities would be more than willing to arrest people that special US agencies fingered as terrorists.

Listening to:

Mendelssohn, symphony no. 3 in A minor, op. 56 “Scottish”. Felix did actually go to Scotland at one point, so it seems reasonable that he should have been inspired by what he found there. I’m currently up to the sprightly second movement (Vivace non troppo), which opens with a gorgeous theme on the woodwind.

Listening to:

Brahms, symphony no. 4 in E minor, op. 98. There’s a moving account in Swafford’s biography of Brahms of him going to see a performance of this work just weeks before he died. When the performance finished, he stood in his box to acknowledge the applause, and with tears running down his face, shocked all and sundry with how obviously ill he was. Like his other three symphonies, this is one of my favourite works; dramatic, full of feeling and lyrical.

Now reading:

Charles Dickens, Martin Chuzzlewit. Staying firmly in the nineteenth century. In the edition I’m reading, this is a 700 page epic, and may take me a while to finish.

Listening to:

Shostakovich, symphony no. 11 in G minor, op. 103 “The year 1905”. A definite programme symphony this, it being a musical depiction of the events of 1905, when an attempted revolution in Russia was crushed by the Tsarist government. It’s exciting stuff, though it can also sound a bit like soundtrack music.

Holiday reading:

Kaz Cooke, Up the duff.

This is an amusing and informative book about pregnancy. The couple we stayed with in Brisbane "are" pregnant (apparently this is acceptable usage; you say the couple are pregnant, even though we all know that it's only the woman who's going to go through the really painful bits), and this was on their shelves. Being what you might call a “will read anything once” reader, I picked this down in a dull moment and really found it quite engrossing.

I’d never heard of her, but the author is apparently quite a famous comic writer in Australia (she even has a website). I found Up the duff a fascinating read. On the other hand, I can quite imagine women finding it rather off-putting. I don’t think that I’m particularly squeamish, that I could cope with all the mess of child-birth itself, but the descriptions of all the changes that the pregnant woman undergoes while the baby develops are really quite an eye-opener.

Listening to:

Beethoven, string quartet in E flat major, op. 127. This is one of Beethoven’s “late quartets”, and thus tarred with the brush of perhaps being rather difficult. Really though, it’s not so bad. The really difficult piece is the Grosse Fugue, a very long self-contained work that was the original last movement to one of the other late quartets. I still haven’t got my head around it.

A lost comic:

Calvin and Hobbes. The first of the commercial comics I was in the habit of reading. The author, Bill Watterson, stopped drawing this comic in 1995, and the United Comics site is gradually putting all of them online, revealing them one at a time, 11 years after the fact.

C&H is very well drawn, and features some very funny strips. My only criticism is that it occasionally gets a little preachy, particularly on environmental themes. It’s also sometimes gives Calvin a perception of his blissful childhood state that is both unrealistic (“youth is wasted on the young”) and a little irritating. All that notwithstanding, still a classic.

Holiday reading:

Patrick O'Brian, The Mauritius Command.

This is the fourth book in the Aubrey-Maturin series, and it’s very enjoyable. Instead of the relatively straightforward solo naval actions of the first three books, Jack Aubrey is given responsibility (as a commodore) for a group action in and around Mauritius. To make things even more interesting, he has to coordinate with the army. All this brings a new dimension to the storyline, and I really liked it.

Listening to:

Beethoven, piano sonata no. 8 in C minor, Op. 13 Pathétique. I wonder when it was that the word “pathetic” came to have its modern derogatory tone. I’m pretty confident that its use in 19th century English was similar to that in French. Beethoven actually gave this sonata its nickname, something he didn’t often do. (For example, the “Moonlight” and “Appassionata” sonatas both got their nicknames from other people.) I’m not sure who gave Tchaikovsky’s 6th symphony the same nickname, but in any case, the use of the word is not meant to imply “feeble, helpless and incapable” in the unsympathetic (ooh, there goes the same word in disguise!) modern sense.

Maybe the modern world is fundamentally less tolerant of helplessness than it used to be.

Still reading:

John Byng, Rides round Britain. No progress with this over the weekend, I’m afraid. I did invade Russia in the Kishinev scenario of Panzer General II. I’ll have to write a game review of PG2 at some stage.

Listening to:

Mahler, symphony no. 10. This symphony is one that Mahler never finished himself, but which was subsequently published as a “performing version of Mahler’s draft”. Mahler’s wife was initially suspicious of the project to do this, but was apparently brought round to the idea on hearing the initial performances of this version. It does sound like Mahler, and there doesn’t seem much argument against letting the world in on music that would otherwise be accessible only to musicologists, who would be forced to imagine it as they read the manuscripts.

Elgar’s third symphony was recently turned into a performable work in a similar way.

Listening to:

Eliades Ochoa, Sublime illusion. This is the guy that I liked so much on the Buena Vista Social Club CD and film. I got this album just a little while ago, and though it’s instrumentally less varied than BVSC, it’s very good.

Still reading:

Mitford’s Our village. This one is going to take ages to finish. This is not because I don’t like it, but because it’s difficult to read in big chunks. In turn, this is because there’s no over-arching plot to move you forward. The various stories/vignettes are pretty much unrelated.

This book has emphasised how ignorant I am of botany. What do periwinkles look like? What’s woodbine? Am I even sure what beech trees look like? The book was clearly written in a period where this stuff was common knowledge. It evokes a lost era very effectively; making you think that maybe living in a English village in the early 19th century would be quite nice.

Listening to:

Schubert, Octet in F, D803.

Listening to:

Beethoven, symphony #9 “Choral”, in D minor, op. 125. The world’s most famous symphony? Beethoven’s fifth, with its famous “da-da-da dah” opening, would probably be the only contender. The last movement of this symphony earns it the “Choral” nickname. As far as I’m aware, this was the first time a choir and solo singers were used in a symphony. Unless the first performance had the singers file on seconds before their (musical) entrance, I guess the audience won’t have been too surprised.

In any case, it’s just beautiful music; the Ode to joy tune is simple enough to whistle yourself, but Beethoven uses all the tricks (orchestration, digressions, distortions) to make sure that there’s something to keep the attention as the piece progresses. Just now, there’s been a big climax, followed by light, spiky, slightly militaristic flute and piccolo playing. Then in comes one of the male voices (the tenor, I think), and suddenly things accelerate. So much so that now the voices have dropped out and the strings are going nineteen to the dozen. I can’t do it justice in words, and I’m not sure anyone can.

Still reading:

Mary Mitford’s Our village. Being a big collection of bits and pieces originally published for a magazine, it’s a bit difficult to read this in solid sessions. Yesterday morning, I alternated with a recent issue of the New York Review of Books, including this interesting review of a book about the Langhorne sisters of Virginia. One of these sisters married Waldorf Astor and became Nancy Astor, one of Britain’s earlier woman parliamentarians, and the woman who said to Winston Churchill, “If I was your wife, I’d put poison in your coffee.” His retort was “And if I was your husband, I’d drink it.”

Listening to:

Shostakovich, cello concerto #2, op. 126. Even over the hum of computer fans, this is relentless stuff. It grabs the attention, interrupting attempts to write web-logs.

Listening to:

Sibelius, symphony #2 in D major, op. 43. This is Sibelius’ most famous symphony. It’s dramatic and beautiful without being overblown. There’s quite a contrast between Sibelius and Mahler, despite the fact that they were contemporaries. Part of this may have been geographic: Sibelius was all the way away in Finland, whereas Mahler was in Vienna, the heart of the Austro-Germanic tradition. In any case, this symphony of Sibelius’ is lyrical, and shimmering. Mahler’s second symphony, the Resurrection, which I also love, is completely different. It’s strong, forceful and heart-pounding. It has a message, and it makes very sure that you can’t possibly ignore it.

Just read:

Granta 10: travel writing.

This was a very good read. There was all sorts in it, and I enjoyed it all. For example, there was someone retracing the steps of Robert Louis Stephenson on a trip in France, visiting a Trappist monastery and getting footsore on lonely roads. Bruce Chatwin, now dead of AIDS, wrote of getting caught up in a “coup” in Benin, and Martha Gellhorn (who I read about in a previous Granta) wrote about having a miserable time in Haiti. Richard O’Hanlon provided an excerpt from his (then forthcoming) book, Into the heart of Borneo.

Granta 16: science.

This was much more disappointing than the travel writing. Really, it was a good demonstration of C. P. Snow’s two cultures, because much of the supposed writing about science was nothing of the sort. It further seemed rather significant that they couldn’t fill the issue with their so-called science writing and resorted to other stuff later on. Further, there were three pieces in a row after the science section on nuclear war. Perhaps that was all the editor felt science was good for.

Still, Stephen Jay Gould was good in his piece Adam's Navel, I liked the two pieces by Oliver Sachs from his book The man who mistook his wife for a hat (which I’d already read, but hey), and Primo Levi’s account of chemical detective work in Chromium was very good.

To read next:

Granta 48: Africa.

Listening to:

Elgar, Pomp and Circumstance marches. These are the quintessential Imperial English tunes. It’s easy to imagine the feeling of Victorian pride and confidence that might have attended their first performances. Of course, maybe I’m imagining a pride too far. Circumstances when they were written may have been utterly unlike the way we imagine them now. Nonetheless, this is the aura I think most people attach to them now. Women in the elaborate dresses; men with monocles and an Empire on which the Sun never sets.

Still reading:

Maurice by E. M. Forster. This conveys rather a different picture of a similar era needless to say. However, I’m afraid to report that I haven’t made any progress with it at all. This is because I was in London over the weekend. We went to see the Tower of London on Sunday. It’s an impressive building, and fascinating for the history that it “embodies”.

Listening to:

Mahler Das Lied von der Erde. This famous piece is not typically counted as one of Mahler’s nine symphonies, but it is really symphonic in scale and character. It was written after the death of Mahler’s four year old daughter, taking as texts some supposedly Chinese poems in German translation. The overall theme of the poems is of the beauties of the earth and its eternal cycle of death and rebirth. I found that it took me a while to “get” this music, but I now think it’s one of my favourite works by Mahler.

Still reading:

Howard’s End by E. M. Forster. The novel is developing apace. It’s hard to believe that the impending marriage between Margaret Schlegel and Henry Wilcox will be a glorious success, but at least Margaret’s personal emotions and feelings seem to make a deal of sense. She is much more successfully drawn than Lucy Honeychurch.

Listening to:

Heinrich Schütz, Motets for double choir. This is beautiful choral music with a distinctive “churchy”, ancient sound.

Listening to:

Brahms, symphony #3 in F, op 90. My traversal has passed through Beethoven and onto Brahms. This CD is the first Brahms CD I ever owned. I remember buying it and thinking, “I wonder if I’m going to like this.” Dear reader, I do.

This is the symphony that features briefly in an episode of Fawlty Towers. Basil is listening to the opening movement on a tape recorder, and Sybil, walking past, tells him to turn off the “racket”. Stridently, Basil replies, “Racket? Racket? This is Brahms’s third racket!”

Just read:

Pick of Punch

I finished this on Thursday night. It had its moments.

Granta 62: What young men do.

I read this in bed on Saturday morning. The previous Sea issue was better, but this was still pretty good. The title piece was all about rioting and carnage in Indonesian Borneo. There was an amusing story in there about a high-heels fetishist, and also a very interesting extended obituary for Martha Gellhorn, a respected journalist. (Well, the writer of the obit. certainly respected her.) She was Ernest Hemingway's second wife as well, and had interesting, and fairly derogatory things to say about him.

Where angels fear to tread by E. M. Forster.

I read this in bed on Sunday morning and thought it very good. I saw the film when it came out in NZ. This was one of at least three Forster adaptations featuring Helena Bonham-Carter that all seemed to come out at roughly the same time.

The book is really quite amusing for most of its length with savage, but funny, portraits of repressed Edwardian sensibilities. Nonetheless, there are dark tones throughout and the ending is definitely dark, if not absolutely tragic. I think I slightly missed some of the impact of the ending because I was reading so quickly, but that's just some indication of the way in which it was a compelling read.

To read next:

The longest journey, again by E. M. Forster. A while back I bought all six Forster novels and now the day of reckoning is upon me.

Listening to:

Shostakovich, symphony #4 in C minor, Op. 43. This symphony was composed in the mid-30s, but not performed until 1960. After being severely criticised by Pravda for his opera Lady Macbeth, Shostakovich withdrew this symphony from rehearsals and the next symphony of his to be performed was the fifth.

The Soviet Union in the 1930s has to have been one of the most terrifying places to live.

Listening to:

Beethoven, piano sonata in D, op 28 Pastoral. What, yet more Beethoven? It just so happens that I've decided to “traverse” my CD collection. I keep track of where I’m up to, and every day I try to listen to one CD from that position in the collection. I bring in other CDs too, but I typically start my day with the traversal CD.

Listening to:

Beethoven, piano sonata in F minor, op. 57 Appassionata. This recording is on a now defunct CD label called Lunar. This comes from the DDR (i.e., East Germany that was). It’s a good recording, and it was very cheap ($10 in New Zealand). I’m pretty sure that the Lunar CDs were the first I ever saw that were budget. Since then, Naxos have moved into this market in a serious way, and the Berlin Wall has fallen.

(Incidentally, there’s no sign of any deterioration in the physical substance of the CD, which is pretty good going for something that is now over 10 years old.)