Splore, Backscattering

 Splore, Backscattering (Blue Matter)

The last time I listened to a 25-minute rock track it was circa 1973. How time flies. In the meantime, the 3 minutes or so it takes Miss Ross to implore her errant boyfriend to Stop! in the Name of Love has been enough. 

Splore is multi-instrumentalist, Nick Saloman, making full use of all his instruments and the studio, with Dave Palmer and guest friends. Instrumentation that includes Electric Dulcimer, Baby Sitar, Mellotron, Theremin and Harpsichord signposts us to the fact that it's Prog, Man. Il Pirata makes one wonder if this is what Tonto's Expanding Head Band would be doing by now if they had been any good.

While the effect gives the impression of abundance and plenty, it can also suggest excess. One wonders if some of it is necessary, and included because it's an available resource. Motown productions, even at their most expansive, remained economical while here it's in danger of getting mighty crowded.

Kevin John Rogers recites The Beaver with a sense of dark other-worldliness before the elegant Knot Garden has hints of Renaissance music. Saloman is a fine musician and the production job can be admired in its own right but the guests are welcome in breaking up the ongoing exhibition of technical prowess. Keyboard parts and studio effects make that which could have stuck at baroque or been pared down to classical into something rococo. 

Debbie Wiseman singing on You are the Light is classy and, for a pop fan like me, Louis Wiggett on Come Home Melody Moon is the absolute standout that I'm sure would have achieved high placings in the hit parade of 1967 had it been released then, a stylish retro piece that Tony Blackburn could play on Sounds of the Sixties if only it had arrived more than 55 years earlier.

Kevin is back on the title track, intoning jazz references in his evocative, attitudinal way before the full potential of the Saloman aesthetic is unleashed. It is to be admired, for sure, and is clearly brilliant at what it's doing while for me it was a bit like watching expert players play Bridge. I appreciate I'm witnessing something being done exceptionally well but not in a position to appreciate it. I wonder why it needs to be done while being impressed nonetheless.

I'm impressed that the audience for such music remained faithful to their creed and still provide a market for it after I came and went in fairly short order at an early enough age before acquiring an Al Green album and making my way from there. I'm impressed by the commitment and technique still being put into a genre that I'd thought was as long gone as skiffle but no genre is ever entirely over. I'll be playing Come Home Melody Moon plenty more times. I'll go back to Il Pirata and I'll listen to Kev's bits again but I'm not sure how many times I'll have 25 minutes to spare and think they will be best spent with the rest of Backscattering, brilliant title though it is. If anybody is going to fill in such of my time with their labyrynthine excursions, it'll be Bach.

Quiz Night

It was Quiz Night at Portsmouth Poetry Society this evening.  I was Bamber Gascoigne.

You can never tell how such things will go down but it went not badly at all. Answers another time.

Hidden Melodies 

Well-known songs disguised in the style of famous poets.

One point for the song, which are mostly nursery rhymes, and one point for the poet.

1.

They ascended the upward trail,

They did not mean to but they did, 

Then lost the contents of their pail. 

Such misadventure. Silly kids.

2.

An oval man sat on a fence  

Precariously 

And hit the ground 

injuriously

Not from jumping

But from falling.

3. 

Another year closer to death, 

The scavenger croaked, 

And gorged on a piece of cake. 

Let’s celebrate.

4.

If we had long enough, awkward lady, 

I’d ask about your horticulture, maybe, 

And in your demure, leisurely way 

You could at length describe how it looked gay, 

Blossoming with tintinnabulations 

Of pewter, conches and ranks of beauties.

5.

You and your royal routines 

- after you’ve defied the smoking ban 

And had your Corn Flakes,

It’s a String Quartet with your musical friends. 

Still, it keeps you happy, I suppose. 

What Forms of Poem are these,

6. 

Only seventeen 

Syllables, hardly enough 

To say very much

7.

 
One of these 

If you please 

Rhymed AABB 

Like this, you see

8. 

A poem that’s made of five lines 

That tries its best to make rhymes 

The first two end words, 

The fourth with the third, 

It must be like that every time.

Cryptic Poets, 

9. Peter Pan’s companion, manage

10. George and Louis’s sister and a cat’s noise

11. A cartoon bear and a stream

12. Fourth gospel author swindled

13. Old Testament priest and British currency

14. Two queens and a senior clergy person

15. King of Macedonia and a pontiff 

Poetry Arithmetic, 

 
16. Lines in a sonnet x lines in a couplet

17. Eliot’s Quartets divided by lines in a quatrain

18. Beats in a line of pentameter x A.A. Milne’s Now We Are…

19. The year Shakespeare died minus the number of sonnets he wrote

20. How many years the Poet Laureate currently serves plus how many years Portsmouth Poetry Society has been going.

Special Guest - Chris Martin

 The revival of the Top 6 and My Favourite Poem features continues and I'm honoured by having Chris Martin here.

A retired librarian, editor of the old, pocket-sized Poems from Portsmouth magazine and much else besides, it's going to take someone pretty good to beat him in next week's Portsmouth Poetry Society Quiz.

Top 6 Films

The Searchers (John Ford)

Vertigo (Alfred Hitchcock)

The Magnificent Ambersons (Orson Welles)

On the Town (Gene Kelly, Stanley Donen)

La Regle Du Jeu (Jean Renoir)

A Matter of Life and Death (Michael Powell, Emeric Pressburger)

My Favourite Poem

The Wreck of the Deutschland by Gerard Manley Hopkins

This cathedral of a poem has a thrilling and illuminating rhythm running through its 35 stanzas, and is packed with memorable images which I at first thought of as cinematic but now consider visionary in both senses. It is an intensely religious work that can appeal to both those of faith and those of none, and rewards repeated reading or recitation. Its heft and majesty has been justly rendered by Alan Rickman. I'm sure if I memorised it in its entirety, I would be high, such is its power. My desert island poem.

 

The Wreck of the Deutschland 

--

Thanks, Chris, and please, if anybody else would like to contribute a Top 6- of absolutely anything- or a few words on their favourite poem, do get in touch.

Racetrack Wiseguy

This is the time of year I, for one, wait for for most of it and these are the sort of days why. The big stables with the good horses are in-form and trying, taking each other on, and it's sport as interesting as it gets.

Mr. Henderson usually starts knocking in a few good winners by the end of November and today, with Act of Innocence, he impressively landed the Newbury race won by such horses as Jonbon and plenty of others that Act of Innocence might go on to be mentioned alongside. Confidence behind that and Impose Toi, who got there in the end, provide the ammunition for what is surely the race of the season thus far.

I've taken a view about tomorrow's Fighting Fifth Hurdle at Newcastle for quite some time and looked forward to a 'proper bet' never mind what condition the account is in. But it's easy to be bullish before one sees the state of play when the moment arrives. 

Constitution Hill was the horse of a generation, if not a lifetime, until one or two things went amiss. Illness didn't stop him re-appearing and winning but then he started tripping over things and then came disappointingly nowhere in Ireland. Market confidence tomorrow indicates that some big money thinks he's back to his best but my first instinct was to take him on.

Willie Mullins's Anzadam is also noticeably shorter than what he's achieved so far gives him any right to be and rumour has it that he's a machine although A.P. McCoy today was determinedly unimpressed. 

Harry Skelton has long been advertising what he thinks of The New Lion (Newcastle, 2.00) and that has been backed up in a couple of top class races. I'm not inclined to desert him until he's beaten but, in the light of the betting, I'm not going to re-mortgage the house to back him either. I'd only have my own overblown confidence to blame if the Irish or Henderson money got it right but equally so if I'd been right all along and missed out. So, we still stick to the plan and back it without going overboard because if there's one thing to be trusted, it's the plan.

I'll be out of the Menuhin Room in time to find a shop to watch it in. It's a bit too exciting not to see as it happens. 

Special Guest - Kevin Rogers

I'm always glad to revive the Top 6 and My Favourite Poem features here. Maybe I'll think about sending out some more invitations. Meanwhile, back at the ranch, I am privileged to have here Kevin Rogers, the other half of 'the bad boys of Portsmouth Poetry', as I jocularly call us since I'm about as bad as Cliff Richard. But it's best he introduces himself,

Ageing punk rocker and sometimes poet. In the late 70s I was in the Von Trapp Family and later the ‘post punk’ Room 13. Like so many we were John Peel ‘superstars’ but ignored most everywhere else. I went to college in the 80s and then worked and brought up my family. I have recorded my first music in 40 odd years this year, a couple of my poems set to music and recorded on vintage instruments (60s and 70s guitars and synths), with the band Splore. It is released in October 2025. Splore, Backscattering (Blue Matter Records).  Bizarrely, I have had several poems published in various books about Tottenham Hotspur, bizarre because I am a Fulham supporter (a favour for a friend).

Top 6 underrated pop songs/performers

Death, Politicians in my eyes.

What Jimi Hendrix might have done if he had lived. Combination of Hendrix/funk and punk rock. They looked great, too, black punks in leather.

David Ackles, American Gothic.

I’ve always loved Ackles. Critics might say they are ‘showtunes’, if so, he is Sondheim not Lloyd Webber. Totally transforms this song about perversion and poverty with the last line, 'They suffer least those who suffer what they choose’.

Atomic Rooster, Winter

That sweet spot where melancholy meets clinical depression. OK, they had hit records ‘Tomorrow Night’ and ‘Devil's Answer’ but this is their first incarnation with Carl Palmer and Nick Graham. Vincent Crane has been a ‘hero’ since The Crazy World of Arthur Brown, a tortured genius - don’t play it if you are feeling low. Vincent committed suicide after many stays in psychiatric hospitals.

The Saints, Messin’ with the Kid.

That sneer in Chris Bailey’s voice makes Lydon sound like Richard Burton. Don’t leave early the guitar glissando at the end is something to behold. Best Punk band of all time?

Beacon Street Union, The Clown died in Marvin Gardens

Boston’s finest. Vintage psychedelia underscored by the funeral march on Hammond organ. Esoteric lyrics and the voice of an angel.

Wire, A Serious of Snakes.

 Wire was the first gig I took my wife to. One of those rare groups whose second phase of their career was as good as the first. Lyrically perfect; ‘You tulip, you pea brained earwig’ is an insult I still use today.

-- 

My Favorite Poem

 I would say Gregory Corso’s, The Last Gangster. Corso is the most authentic of the Beats and the imagery of rusting guns in arthritic hands is beautifully crafted. That sense of waiting for that moment that never comes is universal. Surely if you are the last gangster, you are safe, but maybe yesterday’s sins are always with us?

 What a glorious Early Music Show today. Featuring the Early Opera Company for who, on the evidence of this programme 'early opera' means Handel. Perhaps they will do some Monteverdi another day. I will have to return to the Handel opera section of the shelves. He can't possibly be only my fourth favourite composer. Beethoven's elbowed his way back to prominence in recent years. Bach is surely unassailable and ring-fenced at no. 1, isn't he, and so my original favourite, the composer of The Magic Flute, The Marriage of Figaro and all such things would miss out. Never mind feeling sorry for those who finish fourth in the Olympic Games but four into three won't go. I'm lucky if that's the most concerning thing I have to worry about.

--

Reports of Bob Harris's illness has led me back to Sounds of the 70's in recent weeks. He still appears to think the 70's mainly happened in California and Nashville but at least this week he began with Curtis Mayfield and the Jacksons and ended with Thelma Houston. A comprehensive survey of the 70's should be the agenda and so I'm not necessarily complaining about the very worst record ever, Music by John Miles, or the hideous thing by 10cc. I even quite enjoyed the Genesis.

Hearing a few things well off the limits of my playlist, like Voodoo Chile and something by the Band was like a glimpse of the vast genre of 'rock' music that I drifted away from decades ago. All those old 'heads' in denim or some more flamboyant attire purveying their guitar skills and outré philosophies. It's impressive what a colossal body of work all those bands left behind but maybe the glimpse of the mountain is best left at that because I'm sure if I was left with a pile of Doobie Brothers albums I would capitulate very quickly, not unlike the way that Donald Trump solves wars.

--

At halfway, The Woman in White is doing very well. It is genuinely gripping, and a bit of a psychological thriller, as Marian and Laura scheme clandestinely to uncover the secret of Sir Perceval and his friend, Count Fosco, while not much better than being kept hostages by them, not least because Laura is married to Sir Perceval.

Alongside Jane Eyre, Wuthering Heights, George Eliot, Hardy and plenty more, one can see how feminist readings of the Victorian novel are standard issue. Men are grotesque, women their idealized, innocent victims - we are betting without Becky Sharp here- and it's obvious whose side we are one. 

In Jane Austen, as it says in a poem, the main interest revolves around a heroine who either,

gets married, or doesn't, or dies, (my little joke) but in Middlemarch, The Mayor of Casterbridge and here, they've got married and that's the problem.

There are some fine passages in among the deepening tension. For example, of Count Fosco,

I have always maintained that the popular notion of connecting excessive grossness of size and excessive good-humour as inseparable allies, was equivalent to declaring, either that no amiable people get fat, or that the accidental addition of so many pounds of flesh has a directly favourable influence over the disposition of the person on whose body they accumulate. etc, etc. Brilliantly set out, citing Henry VIII as evidence against, and it's great to have the time and space for such diversions.   

Unless it throws all its early achievement away in its later stages, this might have been one of the best books I hadn't read but it's far too soon to be calling that because endings can be hard to do. I think beginnings are in some way easier, not least for not  being troubled by thoughts of 'the moral of the story' if stories need to have 'morals'.  

Retirement Diary

 Five years or more ago there were a couple of pieces here entitled Retirement Diary. I don't think it was ever intended to be a permanent or ongoing series but it seemed a fitting title at the time. The cessation of full-time paid work seems to me more of a 'coming of age' than 18, 21 or any other age were. It's as significant as one's first or last day at school, one's first at work, perhaps the beginning and end of significant relationships, moving from one place to another or even buying one's first record.

When still in paid employment I would see people who had graduated to the leisured  classes and would often ask how long it had been since and they'd say things like, 'five years', and I'd think, Five Years, as if it indicated something akin to an eternity in paradise. And, of course, as long as one has enough to do, it's a vast improvement and it's not long before one is saying you don't understand how you ever had time to go to work.

But it is one of those tricks that time plays on us that we are caught up in it while the rate at which it disappears accelerates. I've had a sort of flexible structure that is like a half rhyme with routine in that the diary of concerts, walks and other events isn't fixed week by week but regular things recur in a time signature more appropriate to modern jazz than the 4/4 of a pop record. 

Today has been spent reading The Woman in White to the accompaniment of Alina Ibragimova playing the Brahms Violin Sonatas, returning to the bookmakers most of the small amount I relieved them of yesterday and now attending to this need I have to use words irrespective of if anybody wants to read them.

It's been writing that has accounted for most of what I might think of s 'achievements' in the last five years, which it was ever meant to be. I'm glad in a way not to have been a journalist - which is possibly what I should have been- and had to produce words to a deadline. I like doing it but, like anything one likes doing, I like doing it primarily to please myself. There have been times when I've thought I should have produced more, and better, but one can only produce that which the ideas for present themselves. 

Thus, writing about local music events has become a staple diet, a few essays appeared in print, the final edition from David Green (Books) collected the handful of poems from the last six and a half years and there's been the flow of casual thoughts here, for better or worse. It could have been worse.

Before I finished at work, one of the great last four managers I'd had asked what I intended to do, travel? Oh, dear, no. Not very far. Stay in the same place, having chosen it almost by default. But even when one's life is one big holiday, there are places one feels like going to while no longer wanting to complicate matters by going to other countries. Thus, Durham Cathedral with a supporting cast of Lindisfarne, Newcastle and Alnwick last year and Nottingham, with Lincoln and Lichfield earlier this year, were great successes within my limited ambition.

One can find oneself wondering if it should have been better but I'm convinced it could easily have turned out far worse. For the most part, so far so good, I got lucky. The way we live measures our own nature, as it says in Mr. Bleaney, and I don't think I wanted to be Rod Stewart and couldn't have carried it off. I don't know how much more there ever was to want and if, having got it, it would have delivered any of its promised satisfaction. I suspect that a life spent mostly concerned with books, music, art and the like is 'secondhand' but I'd rather read about the Wars of the Roses, Soviet Russia or James Joyce, perhaps, than be there at the time.

There are still people of my age and older, for reasons of their own, attending the office each week, undergoing the latest half-baked business initiatives focussed on improvement. I won't ever entirely escape them because they sometimes come back to me in the mildest of panic attacks but as much as the pleasures of taking part in sport are over for good by now, so are the horrors of them.  

Angelina Kopyrina in the Menuhin Room, Portsmouth, Nov 29

 

Eventbrite

Elizabeth Bishop, Wilkie Collins

What came next off the top of the waiting pile of books was Elizabeth Bishop: A Very Short Introduction by Jonathan Post. 

It's a self-deprecating title, not all that short and somewhat deeper than a mere 'introduction', I'd think. In the same way that Vermeer was just about one's favourite painter before finding out that there is more to him than than one had thought, it offers some admirable analysis without yet providing material towards the sort of succinct sentence with which one could lazily, casually, claim to have summarized the work of other great poets. 

I'll leave out the details of those but one can give some sort of idea of what a poet is like in only a few words, obviously without doing them justice.

 

I can't even get close to providing an idea of what Elizabeth Bishop is like in one or two sentences. One would stand more chance with Shakespeare. 

Michael Schmidt's Lives of the Poets is a reliable place to return to when in need but even he only gives us 'travel', looking and seeing, and the ways in which she relates to Marianne Moore, Robert Lowell and John Ashbery but I'm not convinced how useful those correspondances are and find it as meaningful to compare her with Wallace Stevens whose poems, whatever you think they are about, turn out to be about much more than that. Or even not that at all.

You'd think A Very Short Introduction would show you the easy way in but no sooner have we had some biography, some hints about place, travel, gender and descriptions of nature than we are into all those abstractions that academics deal in. This is the twelfth book written by or about Elizabeth Bishop that I now have and it means she takes up just about a foot of shelf space which is three inches more than Edward Thomas but three less than Dr. Johnson. You'd think that by now I'd be in a position to define her, however loosely, but whereas in her poems 'less is more', more seems to make such an effort less possible in her case.

But perhaps that's why she's so good. Perhaps being indefinable is the endlessly interesting thing. Vermeer was very much that until Andrew Graham-Dixon came along and explained so much of it away. Larkin is relatively easy to write about. The fact that I've understood Thom Gunn to my own satisfaction hasn't diminished the greatness of his best poems. Of course, Auden, Rosemary Tonks and all that top echelon of my favourite poets. 

I'm not even saying that this elusiveness makes Elizabeth Bishop better than the others. She's not 'elusive', she's just -apparently- impossible to summarize. And that's a good thing to be.

Top 6, without commentary,

Sandpiper,

The Map,

Crusoe in England,

One Art,

The Shampoo, 

In the Waiting Room 

--

And so, we move on. Which is the greatest/best/most famous novel I've never read. Probably War and Peace, maybe something by Dostoevesky or Jane Austen. But I have read things by those authors. What about The Woman in White, picked up in the Chichester Oxfam shop recently. Hugely enjoyable in its first section and there's no reason to think it will falter. As far as C19th fiction goes, it might not quite be Hardy or George Eliot. I know Dickens has his admirers. Jane Eyre, George Moore, George Gissing, the Great French and Russians, Samuel Butler but Wilkie Collins might not be far away.

The 'action' might yet be to unfold but it was a great choice and won't be the Best Book I've Never Read for much longer.

--

I need a rest from the music writing and the midwinter hiatus arrives just in time. I'd write a poem is one presented itself but they don't. As with the essays, it's not easy to think of anything to say that I've not said before although that doesn't deter me here. Like, for example, intermittently saying how I'd so like to write some satisfactory fiction. Just one thing to begin with would do.

I'd be calling the new little effort The Woman In Black if Susan Hill hadn't got there first but I'd better finish it before giving any more thought to a title. A Perfect Muder, at about 3500 words proved longer than what most amateurish outlets want so I'll try to bring it in at under 3000. That's still a lot of words for me when poems rarely go beyond, say, 200. C19th novels have barely got beyond their opening scene in 3000 words but in those days both writers and readers had world enough, and time.

I'd better see if I can make further progress, even finish a tentative first draft. If one lets these things lie too long one doesn't go back to them. 

    

 

 

Andrew Graham-Dixon - Vermeer, A Life Lost and Found

 Andrew Graham-Dixon, Vermeer, A Life Lost and Found (Allen Lane)

As with Shakespeare, we are told very little is known about Vermeer so one wouldn't expect it to take a 360 page book to cover their lives. Plentiful background and a good deal of informed speculation are the main ingredients with which authors fill out their work. It's useful and one wouldn't want to take the artist out of context but Vermeer isn't born until page 78 out of the 327 of the main text here. We are by then, however, well informed about the Thirty Years War - which might explain why Vermeer's earliest known paintings have one or two soldiers in them, his mentor, Gerard Der Borch and the likeable, liberal Protestants, the Remonstrants, dissidents in a time of Calvinism, into which part of the community he was born.  

History is all too often the story of war and carnage and the Thirty Years War was pro rata the most expensive in lives lost. The Remonstrants' more open attitude to religious faith could be interpreted as 'enlightenment' and so it is tempting to see Vermeer's clear, calm pictures with light being let in as a product of a newly achieved peaceable territory that values its humanity. 16 years old when it ended, Vermeer had arrived at an opportune time to benefit. 

The point of all the peripheral detail becomes clear. The abusive marriage of Vermeer's mother-in-law explains why Catharina Bolnes was so attracted to Vermeer as a husband, because he was, as far as can be told, not violent, not misogynist and,

would spend much of his life painting pictures of women that radiate empathy and tenderness.

which we are ready to believe on the evidence of his art but we might bear in mind that those biographers of Shakespeare who find him so attractive a personality on account of his gift for writing might not be deducing as much reliably.

But Graham-Dixon brings great scholarship to his readings of the paintings and finds great depths of religious imagery, not least in a nail in a wall in two paintings, an idea likely to have been lifted from Rembrandt, symbolizing the crucifixion. If no word is wasted in a good poem then surely no brushstroke is recondite in a good painting.  

So, the 'sphinx of Delft', at least in the first part of his career, turns out to have been a religious painter. It might seem important to have known that about one's favourite artist but the 'sphinx' aspect of what are such luminous pictures is in a way more attractive than the fuller understanding of them. We can enjoy things without appreciating them properly. In fact, once completely bottomed out there's nothing left to know and so perhaps the mystery is part of their appeal. But one can hardly ignore the main premise of this brilliant book, it only makes Vermeer an even more involving artist than the one we thought we knew.

His best work was nearly all done for one patron in a period of not much more than a decade. In Maria Thins he has a mother-in-law that would give credence to the work of Bernard Manning and a ready-made baddie in a story in which our hero all but stops doing his paintings in the period before his death, aged 43. I'm distressed to find that the Young Woman Seated at a Virginal, c.1665, as per the print on the wall just to my left here, is 'coarse' and,

the picture as a whole is lacking in conviction. It looks like a Vermeer, but with the lights switched off.

I might try to find some decadent glamour in the idea of the genius in decline but that picture might have to go. But I find some resonance in how,

Demoralized by the return of war, saddened by personal loss, and dispirited by the realization that a thousand years of promised peace was not going to begin any time soon, he may have been so deeply disappointed there was no coming back from it.

I make no claim whatsoever to anything like the things that Vermeer went through but find a much diminished parallel with how, when young in the 1960's and 70's, anything seemed possible and some good things happened but, later on in life, the future looked bleak again.

What's so great about Vermeer is his frugal output, the possibly unfathomable depth of his best work, the outrageous talent apparently so quietly, almost anonymously, applied to what few pieces he left behind and what seems to be not much interest in doing any more than what he did, a few important things among which are lost.

And what's great about Andrew Graham-Dixon is how he has so rigorously and objectively set out his ground-breaking thesis without falling into quite the same idolatry that certain Shakespeare authorities can't help but become victims of. Without the evidence that Vermeer was beyond reproach, he only finds nothing to reproach him with and that allows us to think what we will of him while taken aback by his art.  

Mayflower Ensemble in Chichester

 Mayflower Ensemble, Chichester Cathedral, Nov 11

Ruth Gipps was a Sussex-born composer and thus the Mayflower Ensemble played a piece of her music by way of commemoration of Chicheter Cathedral's 950th anniversary. Music is for the most part an abstract medium and so one can make of it what one will, for better or worse. Once I'd wondered if her Rhapsody in E-flat for Clarinet and String Quartet was an evocation of the South Downs it was hard not to think of it as such and so I persevered with the idea.

The rolling countryside and, possibly, Autumn colours were easy to correlate with an opening that led to a gigue-like passage, all en plein air with Alison Hughes's spacious clarinet above the soft strings. The tempo quickened a beat or two into what might have been chilly winds and in due course what might have been a cadenza turned out to be a coda and the clarinet was left alone in the wide open spaces. Other interpretations are available, I'm sure, and would be as valid as anything that might occur to me.

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor studied with Vaughan-Williams at the Royal College of Music and then Vaughan-Williams taught composition there where Ruth was one of his students, which made for some of the subtlest programming here. Coleridge-Taylor's Clarinet Quintet, op. 10, was restless.  Some becalmed cello pizzicato from Nicola Heinrich didn't subdue the the overall hints of unrest. The Larghetto affettuoso second movement was tinged with sadness, the melodic line moving into the cello and then Liz Peller's violin and provided the most memorable music in the piece with its fine lyricism. The higher strings, with Catherine Lawlor, vln, and Ruth McGibbon, vla, were bright in the Scherzo but, never entirely settled and - agitato, indeed - the Allegro finally made its way to a pastiche 'classical' ending to round off a 'various' quintet.

With all the fine musicianship that Chichester is accustomed to, I'll monitor the Mayflower Ensemble's website for future appearances. String Quartets are one thing I'm aware of not seeing enough of in these parts and there's no shortage of repertoire from Haydn to the present day. While I'm happy enough to go to Wigmore Hall in January to hear a favourite, I'd rather the mountain came to Mahomet.  

Lists

 The tendency to make lists, or feel one needs to, is something of an affliction. I think it comes from a pre-occupation, in a certain sort of boy, with league tables and pop charts. It was once important where one's favourite record was in the hit parade and where one's chosen football team were in the league. While those concerns have faded in significance, the vestiges of a subliminal need to put things in order has endured.

But there might be a good reason for it. For example, in work, whenever senior management were questioned on any issue, we were assured that diversity/pay and conditions/well-being, possibly even doing the job were 'taken very seriously' and were a 'high priority'. But like tradespeople whose vans advertise them as specialists in many different types of work, not everything can be a specialism and not everything can be of the highest priority. 'Priority' means 'coming before' and so not everything can come before everything else.

I wish I'd written a letter to the in-house newspaper to make the point. I could have asked to see this much-vaunted order of priorities made real so that those whose concerns were lower down the list could ask why the concerns of others were considered more important. By making a list, one answers such questions once and for the time being.

 

A friend takes a virtuous passing interest in classical music and sometimes asks about composers. This week it was Mendelssohn. Very good, I said, and listed some Greatest Hits. I couldn't quite say he was a favourite because about a year ago I made a list of composers in order of preference- 87 of them with Pierre Boulez bottom- and Mendelssohn was 11th. Can one have eleven favourite composers. He can't get into my Top 10, the Violin Concerto in E minor notwithstanding. None of Tallis, Francois Couperin or Sibelius make the 10, their obvious masterpieces not quite comparing with the depth in the catalogues of others. The Top 10 looks quite solidly to be,

J.S. BACH
BEETHOVEN
MOZART
HANDEL
SHOSTAKOVICH
MONTEVERDI
BRAHMS
SCHUBERT
BUXTEHUDE
JOSQUIN DES PREZ

the biggest problem with that being not fitting both Mozart and Handel into the Top 3. Maybe it's Handel at no. 3 on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays. 

 

I was glad to hear on R2 in the small hours a programme on Neil Young by someone called Sigrid, a bit of hagiography but an overdue reminder of one who was 'favourite' enough for me to have a few of his albums. Much-loved but not under consideration for at least my Top 50 'pop' artists. But Bob Harris put in an appearance to say he was one of the best. For him more than me, yes, but ahead of The Eagles, Jackson Browne, Bonnie Raitt and all the other legends he would say the same about?

Bob at least deserves some credit for venturing outside of his own envelope by beginning Sounds of the 70's this afternoon with Sugar Baby Love by the Rubettes. 

But I'm left the chance to resurrect the old Top 6 feature by doing Neil Young. In no particular order,

Like a Hurricane, Unknown Legend, Harvest Moon, Lookin for a Love, Out on the Weekend, Heart of Gold. 

Racetrack Wiseguy

 This is exactly the wrong time to start tipping horses here. Extending the run of winners today to six, the eternal pessimist knows that each winner only brings the next loser and the end of the run one bet closer. 

The prices of this sequence of success have been 10/11, 11/8 and Evens in a double, 10/11, 7/5 and 2/1 so it's hardly Pricewise. But all you have to do is come first and resisting the temptation to have a go is a big part of it. Gillespie at Chepstow yesterday, of which a very small part is owned by my mate, was heavily backed but so was another and Gillespie has hundreds of owners. The main reason for not joing in was that I'd missed the price but I had suggested 'no bet' was the preferred option when taking on another well-backed horse from an ambitious stable in red-hot form.

Confidence is one of one's worst enemies in this precarious game. There is an episode of Bilko in which he's on a great winning run and, like one does, he starts to think he can't go wrong. He thinks it's his lucky day and so he puts it all on the last and loses it. The 'kicker' is that the race is in a different time zone and it wasn't his lucky day there any more. 

It's still a long and winding road back to the good times but the 'plan' still works. I could have got a bit richer putting anything like proper money on this week but I could have blown it any number of times by doing so before arriving at this often worthwhile time of year.

So, with all those provisos in mind and no firm decisions made or cash invested yet, Fontwell tomorrow offers some temptation.

You'd think Philip Hobbs is back from a few seasons in the wilderness and that Doctors Hill in the 12.50 was a candidate but then one compares the market with the betting forecast, knows that Chris Gordon raids Fontwell like an old plundering Viking and that Kocktail Bleu wasn't expected to be best price 2/1.

A similar thing applies at 2.35 when Mr. Nicholls, not a regular visitor to Fontwell- which might be a bit beneath his dignity- has got Brave Knight apparently 8lb 'well in' and yet Grenadier Jed is half his predicted price. But he's from one of those less glamorous, honest-to-goodness stables and they've not been troubling the judge in recent weeks so I'd be tempted to stay with the fav there.

One is again somewhat taken aback by the price of Chris Gordon's Fortune Dancer whose last season's form figures don't inspire but you go with He Is A Cracker at your peril.

It looks like the Skelton's think they have the 1.25 in the bag with Malfoy Manor; I'd find it difficult to pick between For Gina and Flintara if I was there and doing well enough to want to have a go at the 2.00. I doubt if I'd be taking odds on about Tigers Moon in the last but the market seems to think it's a blot on the handicap.

So, it's one of those cards one might think one can go through. However, if any of the above-mentioned horses were ones I was seriously suggesting you put money on, they'd be in bold letters. It wouldn't be a bad afternoon out there - maybe win some, lose some. But, meanwhile, I'm still thinking.

 

 

John Bryden in Havant

 John Bryden, St. Faith's, Havant, Nov 5

While some performers just want to play, others provide some background detail. Few more so than John Bryden who packed a lot into his hour in Havant with stories from his own musical life and those of the composers he played. Tremendous to think that his students can trace their tutelage back through six degrees of separation to Beethoven ! A horse with lineage like that would go off favourite for the Derby.

After the Londonderry Air and some jazzy Gershwin, John sang Silent Worship by Handel representing an earliest memory. He moved to what felt like more substantial pieces via Mozart's Eine Kleine Gigue, a virtuosic pastiche of Bach and then Elgar's Mina, a portrait of his beloved dog.

A flamboyant Capriccio by Haydn and Liszt's Un Sospiro illustrated contrasting sides of John's catholic repertoire but might have hinted where his main sympathies lie by having them lead up to Chopin and then two pieces by Schubert, an Impromptu in A flat and one of the Moments Musicaux.

A most enjoyable and friendly lunchtime tour full of memoir and tales from history, it brings to an end St. Faith's little International Piano Festival which has been a great success. Enough of one to make us hope the idea will come round again. 

The Liverpool Poets

The Liverpool Poets- Adrian Henri, Roger McGough and Brian Patten but not necessarily in that order - are the subject of tomorrow evening's monthly meeting of the Portsmouth Poetry Society. St. Mark's Church, Derby Road, PO2 8HR. Introduced by me old mucker, Kevin Rogers, which is how Rod Stewart refers to Ronnie Wood. We ain't been together as such for very long but it already feels like we have, for good reasons not bad.

In the 1970's, as an embryo 'poet', the Liverpool Poets were like a godsend to me. They were pop music and yet passed for 'poetry'. Roger was once considered in the running for Poet Laureate. They weren't difficult. The fact that I passed over them in my university dissertation on British Poetry since 1945, in 1980, was questioned.

But, surely, we are talking about serious people, something a bit more 'highbrow', rather than these cheeky chancers who, as it turned out, made a good living out of coming from Liverpool, where the Beatles came from, being the English reply to the American 'Beat Poets', who definitely were taken seriously, and one of them becoming Top of the Pops with Lily the Pink. 

Quite why the likes of Elizabeth Bishop, Seamus Heaney and, still, Philip Larkin were  concentrating on writing such finely-crafted poems when one could attract multiples of the audience for that by doing a sort of music hall act, halfway between comedian and the sentimental idea of the 'poet' as the dreamy, thoughtful loner is hard to say but maybe they put art above box office.

Adrian Henri was the British answer to Allen Ginsberg in the same way that Cliff Richard was to Elvis Presley, and I'd rather have the 'safer' version, if that's what they were, in both cases. Roger's best claim to artistic success was how he re-worked e.e. cummings, like a sort of quirky, poetry Erik Satie. He almost could have got away with it but he was a commercial artist, had his act to sell and fell, quite successfully, really, between art, whimsy and 'comedy'. 

Having made a living out of it, and still working, I think, at 88, if I were him I'd be wondering if what I'd left behind was what I'd meant or if I could have been more honest about it and been more like John Gorman.

Which leaves us with Brian Patten, who was the upstart, pretty young one in The Mersey Sound, who - tempus fugit - died, aged 79, at end of September. How cute was he when he was the Davy Jones, the good looking one, who seemed somehow more traditionally 'poet' than the performance constructs the other two had set up for themselves.

I met them in 1979. I'm sure we all did. I was thrilled to. At that time, I'd have rather have met them than David Bowie. But we get over it eventually.

There might be such as thing as 'cool'. I suspect it's an apparition.

There was a time it applied to applied to the Liverpool Poets. And, yes, I think it was. 

Yasmin Rowe & Daniel Grimwood at Chichester

 Yasmin Rowe & Daniel Grimwood, Chichester Cathedral, Nov 4

In the Spring of 1971 I was entranced by a mysterious, shadowy sound that had crept into the hit parade among the pop tunes. An Argentinian arranger called Waldo de los Rios had made an easy-access version of K.550, not that it was any trouble to listen to in the first place, and it became the first record I ever bought. Mozart has lasted me much longer than most but by no means all of the Top 20 from those more innocent times. He might have had some stiff competition from Beethoven along the way but here was a chance for him to re-state his case.

Reports of Mozart's manic personality make one wonder what sort of company he would have been but his music exudes great courtesy and with four hands operating on one keyboard, etiquette, consideration and simpatico between the two musicians must be essential, too.

KV. 381's Allegro has pre-echoes of Voi Che Sapete and Eine Kleine in it, as if we were playing 'hidden melody'. Joyfully done by Yasmin and Daniel, they proceeded to Daniel's  serene melodic line over the sway of Yasmin's accompaniment in the Andante. And then the rapid chatter between them in the Allegro Molto was like two gossips with much to tell. The 14yo Mozart was all but fully formed and already providing his unique brand of pleasure.

Not as Schubertian as Schubert usually is, the D. 818 Divertissement is upright and march-y with Daniel's excursions up the keyboard not enough of a clue for me, at least, to recognize it as Franz. The Marcia was a close variation on the same thing with some melody handed across to Yasmin. But the Allegretto was extended into an insistent 'Rondo a l'Hongraise' rather than 'a la Turk'. It could have been made to sound more ferocious but Yasmin and Daniel gave us more range in their intonation and some might have found a seasonably eerie tinge to it before its 'piano' ending.

But on a day when almost anybody could be mistaken for Amadeus, an encore of a swirling, semi-baroque Sonata movement by J.C. Bach was beautifully done and it is much to be hoped that this duet return to Chichester soon-ish, possibly to play all of it. Such duets have a charm all of their own, being the equivalent of riding a tandem in cycling. You know they are in it together, for richer, for better, not poorer or worse.

Nico

 Reading a book about Nico so soon after John Cooper Clarke's is almost unnecessary. It's like reading two novels by Dick Francis, or Jilly Cooper. Hard to see the difference. The story of one heroin addict is exactly the same as that of another. It's certainly not pretty and if Nico might look like some glamorous ideal from a distance, such glamour isn't glamorous close up.

I have sometimes thought in recent years that there must be easier ways to make money than that of Gerald Ratner, the High Street's answer to Mr. Bean and my one-time employer, opening a chain of tawdry jewellery shops. But taking a home-made group of ramshackle musicians in support of a clapped-out drug addict on a tour of Eastern Europe in the 1980's is no less madcap, and no more successful than Gerald's misadventure turned out to be.

I listened to Songs for Drella during the episode featuring John Cale. I haven't played that, or any of those in the record collection like it, for years. Quintessentially Lou, one can be struck by some gorgeous guitar sounds on the slow ones, try to judge if his 'poetry' can always manage without a tune to speak of and come away thinking that it stood up fairly well and it could have been much worse returning to it after so long.

Heroin addict isn't the only stereotype that Christa Paffgen represented. She had no sense of humour, as per being German is said to manifest itself in, knew no jokes and didn't understand them. To be fair to her, she seems to have been every bit as brutalist as her cold demeanour suggests. Even John Cooper Clarke, apparently far funnier and unrelenting in private than in his act, didn't register with her as humourous, only as someone who knew the right dealers.

Having just read John's account of himself, there is a comparison to be made with James Young's view of him from the outside. John didn't lack self-awareness but whether he was aware of quite what a state he was in is open to doubt.

But, in spite of it all, one remains in thrall to Nico as an icon of uber-cool and this is the closest one is ever going to get to meeting this heroine, as it were. It's close enough.

--

But the reading matter is due to take an upturn in palatability. Eugene Onegin is pushed further down the waiting list with the arrival of Andrew Graham-Dixon's new book on Vermeer. It might turn out, once it's the only thing left, that the Pushkin is brilliant but it's regarded as a duty to be indefinitely deferred at present, like so many books at school and university were.

But C17th Dutch Art is a safe place, an area of such guaranteed excellence as T. Rex singles 1971-2, Bach's keyboard music and Elizabeth Bishop. Having long ago abandoned any thought of overseas travel, Utrecht looks simply gorgeous. I wouldn't at all mind going there with Delft, and Lubeck for Buxtehude, and Leipzig for Bach and maybe even Berlin for Berlin but it's more likely I'll buy books about them.

 

These days I seem to think a lot
About the things that I forgot to do
And all the times I had
A chance to 

Was that really written by Jackson Browne. Well, I never. 

Nico made it so much her own. It reminds me of how I think of Wish You Were Here as a Wyclef song rather than Pink Floyd.  

Claire Barnett-Jones with Rebecca Cohen at the Menuhin Room

Claire Barnett-Jones and Rebecca Cohen, Menuhin Room, Portsmouth, Nov 1 

Reading the biographical notes of Claire Barnett-Jones and Rebecca Cohen, it suddenly dawned on me. They have performed in such prestigious venues as Wigmore Hall and now I realize that the Menuhin Room is Portsmouth answer to that special place. Not quite as exquisite in its decor but its Portsmouth equivalent, given that Portsmouth architecture doesn't equate to London's on the whole, and with a comparably well-informed audience and engaging programme of events.

'A recital inspired by the unique voice of Alma Mahler' is a bit more 'niche' than a Classic FM Four Seasons by Candlelight experience but one can't live by popular classics alone. Our ongoing adventures into music can't afford to stop, not least because for a long time we might have thought that names like Mendelssohn, Schumann, Mozart and Mahler meant Felix, Robert, Wolfgang and Gustav and not Fanny, Clara, Nannerl and Alma but we know better by now. Alma, as we found out, was at least as feisty as any of them, and then some.

Her songs, interspersed with those of Zemlinsky, Richard Strauss, Korngold and her first husband, are high church Romanticism, beginning with the melancholy of Der Stille Stadt. In meines Vater's Garten featured some vivid narrative in Rebecca's colourful accompaniment.

Claire's mezzo is rich and capable of great power when unleashed but that wasn't always what was required. Gustav Mahler's Liebst du um Schönheit was poignant and Strauss's Die Nacht anxious before Zueignung more powerfully 'banished evil spirits' on All Soul's Day. Also, in Der Erkennende, the desolation of,

One thing I know, never shall anything be mine. My only possession is to recognize that fact.

defined what the consolation of art is.

Korngold's Der Kranke was hauntingly despairing but then, in a genre that doesn't have much time for irony, his My Mistress' eyes was a lyrical setting of Shakespeare's unflatteringly realistic sonnet. Ending with Alma's Ekstase, Claire and Rebecca transcended this sublunary world but most of us not fluent in German might not have realized most of what was happening without an excellent text provided with translations which was gratefully received. However, a most ingenious and entertaining encore was Tom Lehrer's The Loveliest Girl in Vienna, by way of a contrast but an equally fitting tribute.

Oh, Babe, What Would You Say

 So there was no case to answer for Rachel Reeves in the oversight of her estate agents. As there wasn't, either, when Keir Starmer had a bottle of beer during a break from work during the election campaign. Okay, Angela Rayner maybe had to go because it was a bad look but none of them were sending a lackey out from 10 Downing Street to the off licence to fill a suitcase with booze during lockdown the night before the Queen's husband's funeral. One can't help being a bit partisan about it when your lot are trying to do a proper job in very testing circumstances after the other lot thought their own rules didn't apply to them and carried on with their charlatanry regardless.

But in the past I've been told by both Northern Irish and Portugese people that we are lucky to have the politicians we have. And we take a look around. At the USA, say, being run haphazardly by a felon that pardoned himself. At France where an ex-President is in prison. At large parts of Africa. Of course at Russia. And maybe we should be grateful for what we've got.

Caitlin Moran in The Times the other day did well to point out that some elements of the UK we think we miss so much are still, in fact, in evidence. Maybe she has a point. On balance, I have little to complain about that isn't largely self-inflicted.

--

It's a long road back from a very minor, self-inflicted problem- that this year has not kept pace with the steady profit-making on the turf of the last several years. February-ish was a disaster in which much of the brought forward ammunition was lost. But one sticks to the plan and the plan is not to put any cash into an account with a bookie. The plan is to periodically, as and when, take it from them and transfer it to an account of my own. Consistently, like one-way traffic, however gradually.

It's been like the Alamo for months, defending a precarious last stand position, but it's a game in itself. One big, bold false move and it's game over and, like Rachel, one has to break one's own fiscal rules.

One needs a string of winners without breaking stribe but three steps forward and one step back will do. Thus 4 out of 4 in the last three days, at necessarily short prices but all winning easily, provides the latest glimpse and an escape back to 'business as usual'. After which, of course, it will be nhecessary to keep on winning. It's like the football supporter looking at their team's upcoming fixtures and saying, 'we need to win most of those'. Well, yes, that's what sport is like. It makes no sense at all to be playing games that one doesn't want to win.

It reminds me of 1975, was it, when I first played in the Gloucester Sunday League for a team bottom of the division and winless. Each time we went out I wondered whether I'd take the draw if it was offered and thought not but generally found I should have. After being relegated and finding a bit more backbone, it turned around eventually.

We didn't have anybody 'world class' in Gloucester Sunday League Division 4. Nobody quite as classy as Precise (Del Mar, 23.05, tonight). How she picked them off at Newmarket last time looked as pretty as a picture. Drawn widest of all this time is not ideal but Soumillon is a dream substitute jockey and the ideal rider for the job. There's never a more dangerous time in horse racing than when one feels confident and so we still stick to the plan, only glad of our 6/5. If I'd stuck to the plan early in the year I wouldn't have to be dragging myself out of this quagmire now.   

 

Alison Weir, Queens at War

Alison Weir, Queens at War (Jonathan Cape) 

Tainted with suspicion and impeded by his own aloofness and arrogance, York found it increasingly difficult to win the support of his fellow magnates.

History might not repeat itself but it often rhymes. That was in 1449, not 2025.

And in 1456, 

a London apprentice was hanged, drawn and quartered for asserting that Prince Edward was not the Queen's son. 

So we can at least be glad that, at present, in 2025, speculation on who the fathers of Prince Andrew and Prince Harry really were doesn't bring with it the goriest death penalty.

But we might enjoy a bit more witchcraft. It was the pretext on which Joan of Navarre, wife of Henry IV, was sidelined in later life but only sidelined and not burnt at the stake which suggests that nobody actually believed it but it was a lurid, politically expedient charge to put her on.

If history rhymes then perhaps Henry V was the successful, war-winning hero, not unlike Margaret Thatcher was but he had his cruel downside, like some say she had, although there is no record of her having had any Scargillite miner buried alive.

But thus, public opinion had favoured the Alpha Male, front foot winner, the fifth Henry, more than it ever did the sixth, who was more pious and less of a warrior. Given to other-worldliness, 'simple', they said.

It's hard to take sides in what is the central story of the Wars of the Roses, with emphasis on the role of the female. The contrasting claims to the throne of England of the houses of Lancaster and York are medieval spin-doctoring at best but having the best claim doesn't mean you are best suited to the job. I gradually became Lancastrian although had pre-set prejudices towards that side anyway, not that the eventual 'readeption' of the bewildered Henry VI ever looked like a good idea.

But it's an entertaining, vast catalogue of tales of carnage, dodgy deals with France and Burgundy, turncoats, executions, monarchs dashing off to the north, Scotland or Wales, sometimes in disguise or onto ships. One eventually has to admire Margaret of Anjou ahead of Elizabeth Widville but both have plenty to like about them. Alison Weir's summary of all these episodes is necssarily fast-moving and one might want to stop at certain moments to consider the situation. Except we did that at school a few times in very dull fashion when given the versions by that terrible historian, William Shakespeare. Tremendous poet and dramatist he may have been but now I wonder where the sympathies of our 1970's grammar school teachers lay who seemed to be in thrall to royalty and his representation of 'history'. That the glorious history of this sceptred isle is one of sinister machinations and dark ambition comes as no surprise.   

Anne Neville, wife of Richard III, barely features in her own chapter. Alison Weir is in little doubt that Shakespeare got it right about Richard, the evidence overwhelmingly implicates him in the murders of the princes in the tower, plus being involved in murders of Clarence and, it is suggested, perhaps Anne, as he wanted to move on and marry his 18yo niece. If all political careers end in failure then the Plantagenets found the right man to end with, notwithstanding that he died bravely at Bosworth.

One can't help but notice that the life expectancy of English kings in those days was short. Edward IV avoided being dispatched by a rival but found an illness to do it for him instead. But the future Henry VIII comes into the picture in the last few pages of this action-packed roller-coaster of riches, desperation, glamour and suffering and so we know it's by no means finished yet.

Chichester Symphony Orchestra in Chichester

 Chichester Symphony Orchestra, Chichester Cathedral, Oct 28

An orchestra at lunchtime is a special treat and putting together the annual dates with organist Charles Harrison and the CSO was neat planning. Chichester Cathedral has a number of French connections, not least with the Poulenc Organ Concerto, and so we were French throughout.

The woodwind and harp made for a floating En Bateau and further movements in Debussy's Petite Suite with soft pizzicato strings, into the serene perambulations of the Cortège and supported by the horns in the airy, light-filled Menuet. The Ballet, though, changed up a gear as if possessed by Aaron Copland and a heavier rhythmic charge.

Next, Ravel's Pavane pour une infante défunte unfolded with beguiling solemnity under Simon Wilkins's calm direction. In the front few rows at least, the CSO always sound immaculately balanced and they achieved all the sensual dignity of this gorgeous lament.

But perhaps the Poulenc was the big story. Dark and imposing from the start with low strings and timpani underscoring Charles's arresting sound, the higher strings shivered at a quicker tempo. With distant echoes of Bach and Buxtehude, it was really more discontinuous than any such thing from the C17th or C18th with its never settled mood. It worried along through portents and their subdued aftermath, hinted at something more military before cool, austere reflection. And just when it seemed that was how it might be going to end, it ended with a bang. Sometimes it can be a benefit not to have done any homework and thus not know what to expect. One can only hear a piece for the first time once and 'live' is the best way to do it.

The concert was dedicated to the memory of Patricia Routledge, supporter and patron of both the orchestra and the cathedral. It made for a fine musical bouquet.