Adrienne Rich

I see that Adrienne Rich has died.

On the evidence of this poem, http://www.poets.org/viewmedia.php/prmMID/15229, she is one I ought to have known more about. And so I will make sure I do.

It's always a shame if somebody has to die to bring themselves to one's attention but while they're alive you always think there is still time.

Well, eventually, there isn't.

BSO - Beethoven and Berlioz

Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra/Karabits, Beethoven and Berlioz, Portsmouth Guildhall, March 29

'Byronic' and 'height of Romanticism' would not always be terms of endearment on this website but I've always made Berlioz one of many exceptions to the sort of rule I'd never make. Harold in Italy is, in effect, Symphony no.2, for viola and Orchestra, and Ralf Ehrens here brought both spirit and consideration to the changing moods of this adventure. He did more than make the music, he made his own viola as well. I was very impressed to read that and might have a go at one myself over the weekend if I can find a suitable bit of wood and my saw.

There's not much repertoire for viola and when a player finds that this rare major piece was written for Paganini, it must be quite daunting. But Ehrens, for me, was particularly impressive in the more reflective, solitary passages, like the arpeggio across all four strings in the second movement. And I am indebted to Terry Barfoot, the pre-concert lecturer, who was kind enough to answer my interval question on what to call that. But it is a great piece, not forever to be overshadowed by the Symphonie Fantastique, and was given a rousing and eloquent outing for an appreciative Portsmouth audience.

Beethoven, of course, invented Romantic music when he wrote the Pastoral Symphony. Only joking. The clarity of both orchestra and acoustic for this performance was stunning from my seat in the second row. I have to declare an interest that it is my favourite symphony, a position that was enhanced by this wonderful account. Beethoven creates the most gorgeous countryside in this finest of all descriptive, and programmatic, music. Whether it is the tone of the violins, the birdsong in the woodwind or the natural unfolding of the composition, this is orchestral music almost in a class of its own. But the double bass parts are compelling, too, and it's a fine storm he conjures. It was a captivating 40 minutes and seemed nothing like as long as that.

The recording I had of it by Giulini must have been bought nearly 40 years ago and was played a great deal, one having fewer things to pick from as a teenager, and it is a privilege that the difficult, tempestuous man's realization has become so much a part of one's own consciousness for such a big part of one's life. It is seamless and it is genius and to hear it played at such close quarters by an orchestra in tremendous form was a gift at a mere fifteen pounds, including Mr. Barfoot's excellent lecture on the Berlioz beforehand.

I might get myself a season ticket for next year at this rate.

Stooge

Poems don't always come fully formed. For what it was worth, this was hard work, going through different shapes and sizes and several edits before scraping through to this version. One begins to wonder if the initial idea is really worthy of pursuing.
I'm hoping it will now suffice without making any oversize claims for it. But it was long overdue that a poem appeared on this page.

Stooge

Halfway through the act I am brought on stage
where I have been a hundred times before
in towns like this, to earn my meagre wage.
And I don’t want to do it anymore.
The audience seem to think it's comedy
and they have paid and want their money’s worth.
It no longer means anything to me.
I’d rather be anywhere else on earth.

I wish I’d been a shopkeeper and sold
commodities to customers I’d chat
to, relaxed, as if I knew them as friends.
But I’m in this dilapidated, old
playhouse, still repeating the same old hat,
my life postponed in permanent pretend.

View from the Boundary

My digital camera is a much admired piece of kit and so it is only right that I share some of the masterpieces I've made with it with you. I'm afraid I've no idea what the church is called but it was on a walk near Bursledon and the river is the Hamble. The stained glass window is by Marc Chagall in Chichester Cathedral.

Some might be thinking the website should be renamed on a musical theme given so many recent items on music but it is still the intention to write about books and poetry when the opportunity arises, it just isn't arising at the moment.

Carcanet have new titles by Neil Powell and Clive Wilmer that I've not ordered yet and Amazon write to tell me that the Sean O'Brien essays are delayed. I only hope they are not delayed as long as The Deregulated Muse was because I first placed an order for that some three years, I think, before it appeared.

Apart from that, I hope to be able to announce soon that I will be making a public appearance in Havant on May 23rd at the launch of the new edition of South, to present my credentials for the requisite five minutes. I wouldn't want to detain anyone for much longer, to be honest.

In the meantime, I will go to see (hear, really) the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra play the greatest symphony ever written on Thursday. And I'd be interested to hear from readers what they consider their favourite symphony.

Top 6 - Jazz, selected with Phil Green

The Top 6 feature here is not quite as regular as it used to be but it is always there to be continued on an occasional basis. Readers are invited to submit Top 6's in something like the format of the others. It began as a poetry project but can be extended to any art form or any other area of interest roughly within the range of the website as established over the last three years or so. Last year I shared six hymns with my mother. As any child should know, you really can't show favouritism to one parent over the other, so I've invited my father, Phil, to select six jazz tracks between us. He'd probably prefer to do brass bands but one can only go so far in trying one's best and jazz might not be exactly my area either. Adherents of John Coltrane, Charlie Parker or modern jazz might as well tune into another channel, though. This is likely to be fairly Trad, Dad, would you like to give this a go. To conjure another little feature for the David Green Books website, can we take it in turns to pick favourite jazz tracks until we've got six. You're the guest and so should have the first go.
Obviously the British 1950's scene would be the main ground if only because having seen many of the bands of the time live in teenage impressionable years.
However for starters one of my favourites of all time is Louis Armstrong's version of West End Blues. Have it somewhere on a record but not sure where to find it at the moment but the playing with 'Hot Breaks' is exceptional. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f5Hbh_-IRs8

I'm glad that Louis is the first pick. It wouldn't seem right to start anywhere else. Much of what I first heard of jazz was from records that you had and it certainly wasn't their fault that jazz never quite made it into the top parts of my favourite music. But one artist I found for myself was Lester Young and the restrained, late night bar room atmosphere of Ghost of a Chance is one of his best pieces. The rules of this game say that we are not allowed to mention anything beyond the six choices and so I can't say that it was his version of These Foolish Things that first stood out on that album. What have you got next?
Careless Love. Ottilie Paterson with the Chris Barber Band.
My recording was 1st March 1958 at Brighton ref LACDD56

It wasn't until quite recently that I'd ever heard anybody say they didn't like Fats Waller. I didn't realize that was possible and it made me wonder for a while. But I had a cassette for my 21st birthday and it got played regularly for a long time. The chaotic The Joint is Jumping is the choice. I knew the police siren came at the end. I hadn't realized until I saw this video that the police joined in the party when they arrived. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LKe6yH3ZwGo
My third choice is Trog's Blues played by Wally Fawkes with Humph's band 1954. The recording is on you tube, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wH-Y3Jt3wiY. Great clarinet playing.

I listened to Keith Jarrett's solo piano improvisation on the Koln Concert for the first time in several years the other day. Let's say, Part 1. It has lasted very well and I'm sure it can be included in Jazz because I don't think it will go anywhere else.
And thanks for doing that. According to us, at least, ‘That’s jazz.’

James MacMillan - Miserere

The Sixteen, James MacMillan Miserere (Coro)

One thinks of The Sixteen as top of the league in performance of Renaissance polyphony, or one does if one is me. But here they present three pieces of modern Catholic choral music by James MacMillan. I have lost track of MacMillan's prolific output in recent years but few were bigger fans than I was of his Seven Last Words from the Cross and the other earlier works with which he made his name.

The first piece here is the Miserere, a setting of the penitential Psalm 51 best known in the version of Gregorio Allegri, the C17th Roman chorister who would be forgotten without it. In MacMillan's hands it is sombre and pitiful, sorrowful and spare, gaining strength gradually towards the prospect of redemption.

Among the Strathclyde Motets, the Lux aeterna is a wide and glorious aural spectacle that brings to mind the golden age of Thomas Tallis but the major attraction is the In splendoribus sanctum, for the occasion of Christmas Eve with all its expectation of wonder and miracle, marked by the use of trumpets apparently set some distance away. It is a special piece genuinely expressive of mystery and presage and would be worth the album's price alone were it not surrounded by such a profound and sometimes moving programme.

On first hearing I was less than convinced that this was any more than another disc of devotional choral music in contemporary style. On second and third runs through, it quickly established itself as a modern masterpiece and demonstrates that MacMillan is fulfilling all of his early promise.

Engelbert Eurovision

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-17429151

This is all very well and good. I'm a big admirer of Engelbert and would certainly be purchasing his Greatest Hits if I couldn't do most of them myself to my own satisfaction whenever I felt like it.
But it mooches about for the whole of the first half and declines the opportunity to reach for any attention-grabbing climax until it's too late. Like going 2-0 down by half time, coming back with two tremendous goals in the last half hour but going out on away goals count double. It's tactically naive once you've seen what Russia are up to.
Why do we insist on taking part in this when Italy have been proud enough to withdraw. Why do we still take part in international football when it is obvious that the players, never mind the supporters, don't actually care about it.
We did have a proud history in Eurovision. The USA is the only other country that could take us on at pop music, although, with Tamla Motown on their side, it's not much of a game. Cliff came second and then third, bravely, and the likes of the New Seekers were brilliant.
But it isn't going to happen any more. We all know why that is and that's the rules of the game. But we should give it one last go in a blaze of glory and show them that we were always the best at pop music and it is simply that they won't vote for us.
We could enter Robbie Williams doing the unused Curtis-Green masterpiece that languishes forlornly on demos in London and Portsmouth; we could teach The Saturdays a dance routine to go with my own composition called Break. But it doesn't have to be a pay day for me. Just put in Led Zeppelin or Paul McCartney. They'd surely win anyway or at least prove it wasn't worth the ticket.
There seems to be something about this country that makes it look as if we aren't really trying. There are four suggestions. You either try or you don't bother at all.

The Magnetic Fields - Love at the Bottom of the Sea

The Magnetic Fields, Love at the Bottom of the Sea (Merge)

Being the owner of perhaps 35 Gregory Isaacs vinyl LP's, not all of which are masterpieces, it might be asked at what stage I should have realized and stopped buying them. I think I suffer from a brand loyalty syndrome that stops short of completism but makes me continue buying from the same mountebanks long after their cures have been revealed as ineffective.
Nobody would expect The Magnetic Fields to repeat the performance of 69 Love Songs but its pervasive influence keeps whispering that every subsequent release is still from the same purveyors and since we don't expect it to be quite as good, perhaps don't notice that it might not be much good at all.
The single, Andrew In Drag, is a neat enough exercise but we are used to such outrageousness and wit now and regard it as perfunctory. What has survived from 69 Love Songs is the doodling on studio equipment, using funny new noises whenever possible. It was never the most intriguing side of the Merritt personality and one tires more quickly of a quirky new synthesizer effect than one does a dark, lyrical masterpiece. The closest we get to that on this album though are the modulations on a theme of I'd Go Anywhere with Hugh, which stands out immediately.
The unsatisfactory cupboard of out-takes and oddments that was the Merritt Obscurities album was excusable as such productions come with a warning that they might be for devotees only but here either the Merritt seam has been mined to exhaustion or his best efforts are being saved for other projects. It's only in places but, as had happened before, traces of old pop standards crop up in the tunes. In Andrew in Drag it is Flowers in the Rain; on I've Run Away to Join the Fairies it's Those Were the Days; Infatuation might have been Depeche Mode before they matured into their tin-pot early hits.
So it's a shame that any artists comes so burdened as to be forever in the shadow of previous great work. On the other hand, we admirers have a more difficult job having to admit that if the new album wasn't from our heroes we would never have thought of buying it. The album has a limited number of chances to convince before it gets dispatched to a more distant CD rack and once it's on there it will find it very hard to get off. I wish it all the best.

Gregory Isaacs Brixton Academy 1984

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=betyKqTJfaQ


You Tube is wonderful, isn't it.

Even the gigs you missed are on there, even if you thought your favoutite singers were in prison on gun-running charges.

God rest Gregory's immortal soul.

Terry Eagleton - The Meaning of Life

Terry Eagleton, The Meaning of Life (Oxford)

I've been re-reading this in the absence of more recent matter as I await the outcome of the more pressing conundrums of the Cheltenham Festival of horse racing. It was published in 2007 and I was quick to snap it up as the follow-up to Prof. Eagleton's masterpiece, the fall-about hilarious The Gatekeeper, which I am still tempted to nominate as the best book I ever read.

Even though it is very short, I don't think I finished it in 2007. Either I tired of it or other things came along and overtook it in priority. I am similarly still halfway through a biography of Walter Sickert that is forever being outstripped by more crucial reading, but I'll find my way through the detail eventually.

I don't know why this was abandoned, though. It might not have the knockabout, music hall entertainment value of The Gatekeeper but it approaches its very ultimate question with all necessary methodology intact and provides a sort of beginner's guide to philosophy, taking apart every angle of the question, bringing in the biggest names, like Wittgenstein, Berkeley, Marx, Schopenhauer, Hegel et al, and shows that there might not have been any more profound answer to the question than what one had thought already. But it provides the comfort of knowing that even the cleverset people in the history of thought didn't know either and that football, fundamentalism, religious sects, and perhaps even God himself haven't provided satisfactory answers either.

Prof. Eagleton is exceptionally good at showing how language, which is the vehicle of philosophy, sets up so many of the traps that thought falls into. It is as if you chose a mode of transport, like a car or a horse, but it refuses to take you anywhere because it insists on being the subject of the journey rather than its conveyance. But he also cajoles the mulish conveyance by subtle circumvention.

Philosophy is either thrilling or pointless, and so, much like football, horse racing or poetry. In Terry Eagleton, it has an admirably accessible and entertaining apologist. I don't think I know the outcome of the book because I don't remember finishing it five years ago but I suspect I will finish it this time, be none the wiser as to the answer, but feel fulfilled in as far as I think I knew all of it but never had it quite so well explained to me before.

Time Team Excavate New Place

Channel 4's Time Team made a contribution to our knowledge, or at least our theories, of Shakespeare's life in last night's broadcast of the excavation of New Place.

In their jaunty and user-friendly way, they seemed to establish the likelihood that the facade of Startford's second biggest property was all front. The five-gabled frontage was almost certainly the gatehouse occupied by servants and staff. It led immediately into a courtyard and the Shakespeares, which for most of the time from 1597 onwards were Anne, Susannah and Judith lived in a less grand-looking building behind it. It seems a brewhouse would have been among the outhouses lining the courtyard along the side and the orchards and gardens were behind it. Why it was suggested that beer would have been made in the brewhouse rather than cider wasn't clear to me but a ready supply of apples in the immediate vicinity made that seem a worthwhile guess. It would appear that they also found a laundry but their imaginings that Shakespeare's underwear was boiled there was undermined by a reluctance to include the idea that Shakespeare is unlikely to have spent very much time there until about 1612 since it is thought he was only there as a full-time resident after a semi-retirement. The programme seemed determined to imagine Shakespeare writing plays there but that's not very likely.

Germaine Greer was brought in to provide the briefest precis of her Shakespeare's Wife book when she explained that Anne would have overseen the upgrading of the house which was in a state of some disrepair when the Shakespeare's bought it. There was also some surprise at how Shakespeare could afford the house when he was paid 6 pounds for writing a play and produced two a year although it wasn't mentioned that he was also a theatre owner in London as well as an actor and so had several income streams from his work there, and The Globe could hold three thousand paying customers for each performance.

Tony Robinson was delighted to be standing where Shakespeare might have stood but he'd been in the birthplace, Holy Trinity Church, the Rose Theatre and could have gone to Southwark Cathedral so he wasn't short of equally likely places to do that. And so although, as one might have expected, the programme did more to shed light on the building than it did its one-time owner and it was never less than interesting, as ever, pursuing small clues to find more about the man was a speculative and difficult enterprise that leaves much unproven.

However, the history of New Place continued after Shakespeare's death by being left to Susannah, who 'probably lived there with Anne' afterwards. That is Susannah, the favourite daughter, who was well set up having married the physician, John Hall, not Judith, who married less well and who might have needed it more. Why that might have been wasn't a question they found time to pursue but it might have provided a lead into the family history. It might only be because Judith lived the longest that there wasn't room for her grave alongside the rest of the family in Holy Trinity but she is still noticeable by her absence there, too.

Possible reasons for that can be found elsewhere on this website under the 'Shakespeare' label.

Things I like

I like Robert Crampton’s column in The Times magazine on Saturdays. It’s called Beta Male and, specifically identifying himself against an Alpha Male culture, he’s on the right side. Although how he can be married, have children and hold down such a great job and still be Beta Male is hard to say. It’s a bit like Philip Larkin being the best poet of his generation and yet pretending he didn’t want to get famous.
What Robert does when he runs out of stories about family life or his job is simply go on a spree about things he likes and then the next week he’ll do the same about things he doesn’t like. He gets paid big bunches of spendable cash for doing that. But I’ll tell you mine for nothing.
I like Diana Ross & the Supremes, especially when singing Come See About Me, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PycKSdKG_74 . I like to cook up a saucepan of Sainsbury’s 29p Spicy Vegetable Rice, put half a tin of Chick Pea Dhal into it just before it boils dry and have it with three Cauldron Lincolnshire Sausages and some Jalapeno Cole Slaw.

I like it on a Saturday morning, or any other time of the week, if I investigate my garden and find that next door haven’t chucked their very specifically identifiable white-filtered fag ends over the wall. I’m sure it’s her and I wonder if she’s crazy. Why would you live there for two or three years and then start smoking at the age of thirty and start doing such a thing.
I like mist, I like snow, I like rain. It’s all good and necessary. I like Radio 3 as long as it’s not at those times of the weekend when it plays jazz (for ‘jazz’, see next week). I like books, not all books but the idea of books and good ones especially. I like Count Arthur Strong, The Men from the Ministry, I’m Sorry I Haven’t a Clue and Much Binding in the Marsh. I like Danny Baker although he is clearly not what he once was.
I like Handel. I like Bach and I like The Magnetic Fields, and Stephin Merritt whose terrible voice was last week reviewed as a ‘wonderful bartione’. I had thought that, like some other great songwriters who couldn’t sing, like Dylan, he had invented his own style and got away with it. But L.D. Begthol still ought to be a part of The Magnetic Fields.
I like friends. The best philosophy tells us that good friends are the answer to most things. I don’t have enough of them but wouldn’t swap the best ones that I have for more because I don’t think I would be dealt a better hand.
I like horse racing. What more noble way could there be to remain poor. Jump racing, not the flat. Everything about it is so heroic and yet so unreliable. Could there be any other world so full of spivs, unreliable reputations, stories, tipsters, fraudsters and yet also complete class acts? Well, yes, there could. Lds & Gnlmn, I like poets, too.
We might find the other side of some of these categories appearing next week.
But, in the mean time, I like hats, I like unfashionable people who can pull it off, I would like everything ‘gay’ if they could just shut up and get on with it, I like Tony Blackburn, chips from the chip shop but not the one nearest to where I live, Japan, Jamaica, the best bits of Scotland, France, French, Latin, Astronomy, Fawlty Towers, Blackadder, Tommy Cooper, George Best, Derek Randall and, most of all sportspersons now, Jessica Ennis, but mostly, Mark Cavendish.
I do like Robert Crampton but I’m surprised he gets paid as much as he does for doing a list that is no better than this.

William Boyd - Waiting for Sunrise

William Boyd, Waiting for Sunrise (Bloomsbury)

I saw some discussion somewhere recently about how and why a new novel by William Boyd is not quite regarded in the same league as an event like a new one by Julian Barnes, Ian MacEwan or Alan Hollinghurst.

But he's simply not as 'good'. He is not quite as 'literary'. He is not quite in the same league. This is another fine entertainment, full of interest, imagination and fine writing but, like Ordinary Thunderstorms, it is episodic with the twists and turns required of an adventure story. Not only does one wonder if disbelief needs to be suspended- and one needs to suspend it willingly- but for once I remembered the Classical unities of Time, Place and Action and considered their benefits. Not having been a WW1 spy, it's not for me to comment on the likeliness of the story because I'm sure that some very unlikely things did happen. Also, although the book seems to unfold with alarming turns of events, it must have been plotted from the start and not just made up as it went along. Neither do I know if being 'up for it' was a phrase in common usage in 1915 in the same way that it has been in recent years. I remember one theory of Aesthetics advancing the idea that every art work is implicitly prefaced by the sentence, 'I see the world, and invite you to see the world, thus.' But, on the other hand, we were also taught about the 'Intentional Fallacy', very much in vogue when I was at University, majoring in playing pool and drinking draught bitter, and so it might not be a measure of this book's success if we find any difficulty in believing it.

But I didn't have any difficulty in believing every word, the authenticity, of Barnes' Sense of an Ending, MacEwan's On Chesil Beach or Hollinghurst's The Stranger's Child. Therein might lie at least one difference. I don't want to disparage Boyd at all. This is full of interest in Psychology, espionage, theatre and, inevitably, sex and it is a pleasure to read, never being anything less than something one wanted to get back to, and so I wouldn't try to dissuade anyone from it because it is surely a page-turner with all the escape into another world that reading fiction ever has to offer.

One does start to anticipate the twists and turns, though, and begin to have little side bets on which way it will go next, like all the red herrings and false clues provided in an episode of Midsomer Murders. In fact, at the end, when Andromeda, the traitor, has been identified by Lysander, the protagonist, I was still wondering if that was the answer. I wondered if Lysander wasn't the ultimate 'unreliable narrator' himself and he was the double agent but was the last person that would ever reveal himself and so didn't. That's the trouble with so many twists and turns. You can't tell if there is still one more or if you've finally heard it all and that's your lot. Perhaps that was the point. Isn't it always the way.