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| Harry Worth, his finest hour |
I've never been a fan of Jane Austen and I've known it was my fault. I even saw Giles Coren on the telly trying to cure himself of the same affliction and allowing himself to be persuaded but I need to find out for myself.
I sat in front of Mansfield Park rather than read it when I was a student and didn't even need to. And then went back to it a couple of years ago to see if she compared with George Eliot and she didn't. I've never been able to tell which bits were funny.
However, yesterday on Radio 4 Extra, I listened to the episode of Harry Worth in Things Could Be Worse, which was the passably safe and homely one about the quiz show and let it run on into Northanger Abbey, which turned out to be a satire on the gothic novel and hilarious.
So today I found Northanger Abbey and Persuasion in one volume for a pound in the secondhand shop and by this time next week I should be out of the wilderness and be able to say, yes, of course, I adore Jane Austen. I've always wanted to.
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I've always been able to say I like Brahms but never quite as much as in recent weeks. The opening bars, followed by the rest of, The Fourth Symphony is a given. He's always been generally fine and well within the scope of the acceptable face of Romanticism but the Violin Sonatas that followed the Chichester concert recently have only more recently been replaced by the Beethoven. And then some of the Final Piano Pieces, roughly op. 115-119, were on a Wigmore Hall recital soon followed up with Stephen Hough lauded as Record of the Month in Gramophone which in turn led to the Hammershoi painting on its cover being decided upon as that with which to fill the remaining space on the front room wall and today I might have found a suitable frame for when it arrives. One thing leads to another.
So, next, the moribund, anorak proclivity for listmaking raises its immature head again as I need to see where Brahms comes in my Favourite Composers. And who, if anybody, he has gone ahead of since a few weeks ago.
Lists are nuts and only detract from the proper enjoyment of art by trying to put things in their place somehow. The John Peel Festive Fifty, the NME Poll, and Smash Hits only defined their audience and that is all any such thing, from the Booker Prize, the T.S. Eliot or the Turner is ever going to do.
Still I need to know and so must do it. Brahms has probably gone ahead of Sibelius and Schubert but once you get beyond the essential few, it becomes a bit arbitrary. The lines denote Top 6 and Premiership. I'm aware that Wagner, Bruckner, Korngold and Mahler aren't anywhere in it. I did once have a Mahler record but didn't bother to pursue getting it back.
And there is another Top 6 of One Hit Wonders that is Reynaldo Hahn, Gregorio Allegri, Robert Morton, Max Bruch, Pietro Mascagni and Albrechtsberger, for his Concertos for Jew's Harp.
Otherwise, it is,
JS Bach, by a country mile.
Mozart
Handel
Beethoven
Josquin des Prez
Buxtehude
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Shostakovich
Tallis
Purcell
Monteverdi
Brahms
Francois Couperin
Byrd
Schubert
Sibelius
Mendelssohn
Puccini
Gluck
Vivaldi
Haydn
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-somewhere in here come all those baroque composers from Corelli, Telemann, Albinoni, Geminiani and Frescobaldi to both Scarlattis and all the others-
Erik Satie
Charpentier
Elgar
Poulenc
Biber
Chopin
Berlioz
Clara Schumann
Britten
Dvorak
Tchaikovsky
Verdi
Robert Schumann
Ravel
Saint-Saens
Debussy
and then, certain that you've missed out someone essential - Errolyn Wallen, Ockeghem, James MacMillan and numerous other Bachs, one ought never to make a list again.
