Too much for Henry James, I fear

My circadian rhythms are shot to pieces.

Several months ago I began rising at 6.30 am to start “messing about upstairs with your - ie, my - writing” (courtesy one of my daughters twenty years ago). I tell myself my mind is brighter then. Also I feel smug doing something as trivial as writing fiction in the dark. But there are problems.

Once the computer is on I inevitably check my blog and others. Often the two hours of added “brightness” are dissipated in comments and responses – all of which now seem to be longer. Nobody appears to have noticed that any of this stuff is the product of a brighter mind.

But that’s mere impulsiveness. The other problem is physiological. Technically early rising doesn’t affect me since, like other gerontocrats, I no longer need eight hours’ sleep. Try telling that to my brain. Once I’m done at the keyboard I go downstairs to eat dinner and/or read or watch telly. Both these latter activities are severely circumscribed by heavy eyelids. Please don’t recommend any more hard books. They’re probably beyond me.

But the photo says it all. How dedicated it makes me look.

A MUST! Charles Rosen, concert pianist and academic, is the best writer on music I know. I will kill anyone who disagrees. He mentions a double concerto for piano and harpsichord with two chamber orchestras by the modern composer Eliott Carter. Could be tough. Here’s part of Carter’s description: In addition to being isolated in space and timbre, the antiphonal groups are partially separated musically by the fact that each emphasizes its own repertory of melodic and harmonic intervals. Instruments include metallophones and lignophones. Doesn’t matter; Rosen says it’s OK so I’ll love it. Going to download it right now. More later.

NOVEL (Blest Redeemer) 21,540 words

A tentative take-off

Neither Plutarch nor I could easily remember or pronounce A Stall Recovered the title of my second novel (now finished) so I junked it. Before I embark on the drudgery of sending the MS to agents I’ve been playing with a new title – modified biblical – and here it is on a draft dust jacket.

QUICK DESCENT No hymn starts with such splendour as:

Hark the herald angels sing
Glory to the new-born king;
Peace on earth and mercy mild,
God and sinners reconciled: etc, etc

and then deteriorates into:

Late in time behold him come
(Backward ran the sentences…)
Offspring of the Virgin’s womb;
(A Jack-in-the-box?)
Veiled in flesh the Godhead see;
(Backward into the butcher’s shop)
Hail the incarnate deity
(More flesh than we need)
Pleased as man with man to dwell,
(Tempted to say “Pleased as Punch…”)

Plus this shocker in the third and final verse:

Risen with healing in his wings.
(Is it bread, or a chicken pie?)

Alas for C. Wesley, author of the above. In my hymn-book the next hymn is Christina Rossetti’s In The Bleak Mid-winter. Nuff said.

Problems with my bags

Once I bought four casual shirts all the same dark green. Having four absolved me from further shirt buying for five, possibly ten, years. Mrs BB was outraged, talked about variety. Our sartorial views are incompatible.

Fifteen years ago I decided I would only buy chinos. Seemed a sensible decision, allowed me to forget about trousers for ever but didn’t carry the finality I required. Chinos (trousers made of cotton twill fabric, usu. khaki-coloured) vary widely. Some come in thin, slippery, synthetic material that seems to flow over my legs like well-diluted paint. Others in something more like sailcloth, capable of stopping a .22 bullet. Others like waterproof pyjamas.

And there’s the colour. Khaki is not standard. My ideal is pale beige but I’m especially put off by diarrhoea (in all its forms). M&S’s Blue Harbour range was perfect until some fidgety designer got out his colour charts. Hereford is not the chino centre of the world; online sources lie about the details and colours are not dependable. And if I found perfection how many pairs dare I buy? I might get fatter (Am getting fatter!) or thinner.

But believe me my legs need covering.

DON GIOVANNI From the Met in HD at Hereford’s Courtyard theatre. Stodgy, slow first act, too many close-ups (even in duets!). Dull, dark set: one side of three-storey building which NYT said resembled an advent calendar. Superb voices made it all the more irritating. Don Octavio (not admittedly Mozart’s most heroic role) played by “veteran” (courtesy NYT) Spanish tenor Ramón Vargas had softest, most melodic voice ever yet looked like a greengrocer in mufti. Next Monday: Siegfried.

Bliss it was, indeed

The novel is finished (for the moment!), revised right through three or four times, sent to Amazon as a Word document, transmitted back to me - converted - so that the italics show up on Kindle, emailed to Plutarch for structural assessment. The opening chapter is too tight, too brusque (two Americans talking to each other) but I cannot presently tease it into relaxation. A lifetime’s conviction that all articles are too long leaves me deficient when asked to add rather than cut

I am under-employed. Wrote a post this morning, here’s another. Nobody’ll read them when they are jam-packed like this. But this is different, this is bliss.

Bliss means music, the greater power that leaves prose – even poetry – rocking in its wake. Nothing high-flown, just the sea-shanty/lamentation, Tom Bowling, where lines like

… lies poor Tom Bowling
The darling of our crew;
No more he'll hear the tempest howling
For death has broached him to….

Thus Death, who kings and tars despatches
In vain Tom's life hath doff'd
For tho' his body's under hatches
His soul is gone aloft

are matched to a simple, unsimple, desperately sad tune. Which I faintly know but have never learned. I listen to tenor Robert Tear, boy treble Lewis and a school band and – oh joy! – ensnare and hold the first eight bars. But the next eight rise gently, subtly. Just the first two notes - that’s all I need! Got them! Can sing them. On to the keyboard and – ah! – that’s it, the song’s heart laid bare, it’s mine damnit. And now I can take it with me to the kitchen, fill the coffee percolator, sing it confidently in the sharp acoustic and snuffle at its sadness.

Miss Kappelhoffer came a long way

It is fashionable to mock Doris Day. She presently lives on the Carmel Peninsula in California (for which I profoundly envy her) and has latterly devoted her life to animal welfare. It was my impression she'd filled her house with cats but I accept The Crow's correction (see below) that the cats were dogs. As to her singing she’s probably remembered for bouncy inconsequential numbers like The Deadwood Stage, and Ya-Ya Roly Poly Bear. She appeared in a suprisingly wide range of non-singing movies of which intellectuals were wont to complain about the sexual ambiguities implicit in those with Rock Hudson

With the “professional virgin” thesis disposed of, I thought the Day/Hudson movies were quite witty, but that’s another matter. What is criminal is that her voice might be forgotten. A very precise and lovely instrument indeed capable of handling dross (A Bushel and a Peck), trades union negotiations (Seven and a Half Cents), great thirties standards (Bewitched, A Foggy Day, I’m Beginning to See the Light) and much more. It was said she sounded too healthy, too happy to be a great singer but, for goodness sake, she did Hollywood films.

Away from rank commercialism she could move me as much as Ella, Sarah or Peggy and she was just as technically accomplished. Still think I’m a sentimental old twerp? Try Fools Rush In, exquisitely accompanied by the Andre Previn Trio – very slow with beautifully sustained, rock-steady tone control. Forget the anatomical impossibility line (“my heart above my head”) and dwell instead on those aching final words “and let this fool rush in.” Despite the richness of the voice the sentiment is expressed modestly, the gentlest of pleas.

Incidentally she is the subject of an excellent biography by A. E. Hotchner who, at the time, had just done Hemingway and thought he was above movie stars. But she said she’d tell him everything and she did.

Down with Cio-Cio San! Well, why not?

In Music magazine, August 2011, published astonishingly by the BBC – main conspirator in the myth that all classical stuff is masterly – comes the article I have been waiting decades for. Ten leading critics describe with relish the pieces which bore them rigid.

Fiona Maddox of The Observer (a newspaper I read) trashes Strauss’s Don Quixote (Hurrah, say I.), all Vivaldi operas, solo oboe and flute music and Boccherini, while homing in on Purcell’s Dido and Aeneas despite its sublime “When I am laid to earth”. Doesn’t like the screechy sorceress, the sailors (especially when sung with rural accents) and the endless, repetitive, mawkish choruses. Oh cor!

Michael White (The Daily Telegraph) would rather endure dental surgery than listen again to Tristan and Isolde, resenting the interminable wait for something that resembles action and hating Tristan “moaning in delirious competition with that bleating cor anglais.”

Other equally qualified critics take the axe to Vivaldi’s Gloria (“Its opening flourish – nine Ds in a row – aptly warns of the banalities”), Bruckner’s seventh symphony, Madame Butterfly (Hurrah again, from me.) and Brahms’ Requiem (Now that’s rather harder for me to take.). Plus others.

Why my glee? Don’t I like so-called classical music? Yes, but I have antipathies and I’m reassured when the musically literate reveal theirs. Also, a well expressed antipathy may tell you more than predictable plaudits. Good on the Beeb.

NOVEL Now called A Stall Averted. Huge progress (88,794 words) as a result of rising at 6.30 am so I can loll during the afternoon, watching the Tour de France. A 5641-word chapter as Jana tremulously starts to imagine she’s in love. Yes, that fascinates me just as much as ATC chat.

Marriage and its defective glue

Mrs BB has gone to Hereford and I’ve hung out the laundry. Like washing up and packing bags at the supermarket check-out this task defines our marriage.

I’m prepared to work the clothes-line but do not care to share the task. During my professional career I needed to understand the logistics of many industrial processes and the clothes-line has much in common with them. Efficiency depends on the hanging peg bag and how it is moved. Mrs BB and I have conflicting views and we’ll leave it at that.

Washing up is more important. Mrs BB cooks and I wash up. This is obviously not a fair division of labour and to compensate I have subjected washing up to extreme analysis and am confident I have mastered this dynamic process. My sequencing techniques, insistence on a brush, pre-rinsing, hot-water management, methods of racking and parallel handling of pans combine to give the ultimate in speed and hygiene. On the rare occasions when Mrs BB washes up it is clear her mind’s on other things. I have no complaints. When she cooks she concentrates and that’s what matters.

At the supermarket check-out I have learned to take a passive role. I believe some form of logic operates but it is beyond me. I am frequently upbraided for crimes I know not what. Like Boxer in Animal Farm I lift the bags into the car silently.

B-FLAT ECHOES Buy something on line and you’re spammed for the rest of your natural. The resultant emails are often odd and poignant reminders of how irregular our lives are. Take Dawson Music, for instance. Once I downloaded the sheet music for The Lady is a Tramp from them. Now they’re having a sale. Should I take a look?

A couple more lists

Seen at Borderline Film Festival
March 25 – April 10, Hereford.
Another Year (dir: Mike Leigh) – Middle-class couple view social/emotional failure among friends; first half tedious/repetitive, second more dramatic.
My Afternoons With Margueritte – Illiterate handyman, Gerard Depardieux discusses La Peste with aged woman doctor; completely charming.
Black Swan – Hilariously OTT; supposed ballerina Nathalie Portman is seen dancing, but only from the waist up.
Genius Within – Amusing but overlong documentary about pianist Glenn Gould; few musical insights.
Rashomon – Four views of murder; 60-year-old Japanese classic; still shines.
The Secrets in Their Eyes – Brilliant Argentinian mystery thriller/love story; amusing and profane.
Of Gods and Men – Austere, truth-based account of Algerian monastery monks, facing life or (literally) death decision about terrorist threat.
Biutiful – Overlong, over-miserable account of petty criminal/father of two in Barcelona; Javier Bardem superb.
The Illusionist – Jacques Tati screenplay in cartoon of musical hall musician ceding his profession to rock-n-roll and TV; authentic and beautiful fifties Edinburgh backdrops.
Blue Valentine – American couple marry too young, squabble, separate; much bonking; do not be tempted.

TEARS, BUT OF WHAT QUALITY? BBC’s classical music channel, BBC3, invited listeners to say which pieces made them cry. The choices (a Chopin étude, for goodness sake) raised the suspicion that the tearful were parading their intellect. But I’m just as bad with Strauss’s Four Last Songs and Mozart’s Soave il vento.

Let’s be more vulgar: the Free French singing La Marseillaise in Casablanca, Jo Stafford’s Blue Moon, the Pogues’ And the Band Played Waltzing Matilda, anyone singing My Luve is Like a Red Red Rose and/or Believe Me if all Those Endearin’ Young Charms, Elton John and Kiki Dee with Don’t Go Breaking my Heart (repeatedly on juke box during my first ski-ing holiday), Charlie Parker’s Embraceable You, the Z-cars theme. Salt water a’plenty.

No laughs here, I fear

Works Well has been getting flabby (Useful adj, Lucy), playing to the gallery, looking for cheap laughs. Time for custard-pie risk.

Here’s musical counterpoint defined: Simultaneously sounding two or more parts or melodies. Sounds easy. Who’s big in counterpoint? J. S. Bach, it figures in most of his stuff. And what’s one of his many pinnacles? How about the chaconne, the fifth part of his second partita for unaccompanied violin. Don’t take my word, here’s Brahms:

On one stave, for a small instrument, the man writes a whole world of the deepest thoughts and most powerful feelings. If I imagined that I could have created, even conceived the piece, I am quite certain that the excess of excitement and earth-shattering experience would have driven me out of my mind.

Spotted the contradiction? “On one stave.” Two (or more) melodies on one instrument! Fine on the two-handed piano, but a violin?

For music I turn to Prague. I ask Julia: Does this mean that the line is broken into alternating fragments from each voice and that the listener “carries over” the alternating gaps in his own mind?

Julia responds: Great question! (You see why I email Julia.) Bach is able to sneak in lots of voices through both chords played double stop (across two strings) and then by using arpeggios, etc, to create an implied counterpoint.

And Larry Solomon on the chaconne, adds: ...what looks at times like a simple scale often divides into motivic counterpoint between two voices.

As I write Itzhak Perlman scrapes. Julia suggests “the violin sonatas (may be) more for the performer than for a listener.” Hmm. The jewel case sticker says I spent £23.99 for Itzhak’s two CDs. When I was very poor.

Suffering - the tie that binds

The Salvation Army has set up (paid****SEE STARRED COMMENT BELOW) hot drinks and snacks to ease the agonies of those lost in the Heathrow Time Warp. At first glance this hardly seemed to fit in with social welfare provision, the SA’s raison d’etre. Do those hopping off to sunny beaches and expensively smoothed pistes deserve our charitable instincts? Then, fatally, my thoughts turned from the general to the particular.

Four or five years ago Mrs BB and I contrived a Christmas ski-ing holiday in Cervinia with the whole immediate family, a party of eight. A very rare event, unlikely to be repeated, and something we can look back on fondly. But suppose it had all ground to a halt in that modern-day Slough of Despond – the airport departure lounge? We were lucky. And the SA is probably right. The middle classes are not immune to despair.

ALL GOD's CHILLUN When I saw a rat insouciantly climbing the central support of the bird table we stopped putting out bird food. But today a blackbird, fluffed up like a ball of knitting wool, poked sadly round the snow on that empty shelf. The service has been resumed. If the rat returns, so be it.

INNER PULSE Lucy recently posted a list of 49 exhortations, observations, indulgences, what- have-you, that I suppose help define her passage through time. The first was: Don’t forget music. I was reminded of my mother who abhorred the idea of playing music while she read, but embraced it while working – notably as she ironed. Today Radio 3 droned out a Kodaly cello sonata as we belatedly decorated our living room, hardly Christmassy but a little warp to add to the woof. (Note: MSWord’s style guide hated that last bit).

Sing along with Old Bach

In the West Riding of Yorkshire where if tha does owt for nowt, do it for thisen (If you ever do anything without cash reward, only do it for yourself) Messiah was big around Christmas. Yet Handel devotes only six airs, choruses and recitatives out of 50-plus to this festival. There is nothing Christmassy about “All they that see him, laugh him to scorn.” and “Why do the nations so furiously rage together?”

For wall-to-wall Christmas we need ace professional, master recycler J. S. Bach and his Christmas Oratorio, cobbled together from six cantatas intended for separate days – New Year’s Day and the Sunday after, among others. It’s amazing it works and yet, in another sense, it isn’t. Bach fed the public demand for new music and though capable of standalone masterpieces (the Goldberg, the Brandenburgs) he didn’t bust his ass every weekend.

To spare his inventive powers he craftily eased his second-hand secular music into sacred works. Christmas Oratorio contains bits from Hercules at the Crossroads, and Strike the Drums, Sound the Trumpets, both non-religious cantatas.

My Bach has a dream cast (Elly Ameling, Janet Baker, Robert Tear, Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau, King’s College Choir) and they make a fine racket. But it’s the Colin Davies Messiah that is the greater musical event. For one thing the soloists (Heather Harper, Helen Watts, John Wakefield and John Shirley-Quirk) are required to improvise curlicues; for another the choir is far smaller and better throated than was usual at the time of the recording (1966).

BIG QUESTION So, why does an atheist (presently considering a switch to rationalism or humanism, given a declining capacity for intellectual rigour) listen to this God stuff? Well, it’s simply not true the Devil has all the best tunes.

Painless delivery for corned beef

I’ll brook no argument (a silly verb I grant you). The best tin-opener in the world is the Brabantia Profile. No longer available in this form the model name is still retained and I can’t believe Brabantia has lowered its high – and frequently expensive – standards. It costs £9.32 and passes the ultimate test.

What test? The traditional corned-beef tin is a symmetrical trapezium in frontal elevation, thus one end is smaller in area than the other. OK if you have tag and twisty key; if not you need the Profile. To ensure the contents can be pushed out neatly in one piece, you need to remove both ends and it’s the short-radius corners on the smaller end that test cheapo openers. Easy with the Profile and no jagged edges. One caveat: even the Profile suffers wear, notably the cutting disc and the sprocket that “drives” the tin. Be prepared to replace the Profile in a dozen years or so. But then perhaps you don’t eat corned beef.

BEST WURST Mrs BB is back from her continental Christmas market visit: last year Prague, this year Munich. My prezzie is a Steirische Burgsalami in a dinky hessian sack resembling a bucolic Xmas cracker. Huge flavour, even a huge bouquet. But so, so hard. Denture wearers needn’t apply.

FANCY THAT I write a lot and take a physically active break now and then. Hence the piano keyboard. No big deal, often just hymns. Did you know the seventh and eighth lines and one note of the ninth of Ye Holy Angels Bright:

Or else the theme,
Too high doth seem
For…

are a C-major octave plus one? Makes things easy.