Recent Acquisitions

Those scores of Bach, Beethoven and Ravel look fine on the shelf but might prove to be more ornamental than of practical use. I persuaded myself I could see roughly what was going on for a few pages of the Pastoral Symphony but was soon lost. The Ravel isn't scored for the same orchestra as I played it so that was a dead loss. I'll await the arrival of Alina Ibragimova's Mendelssohn but I don't have high hopes of following it very closely. It occurs to me that solo piano scores might be a better option but I didn't see any of them. 

Not to worry. I like having them to have the place look more expert than it is, like the copy of Finnegans Wake that meant precious little without an accompanying guide to it.

--

I missed the obvious thing about Derek Jarman's Caravaggio, that it was by Derek Jarman.

It's far too 'arty' and self-indulgent and I shouldn't have been surprised by that.

It would benefit from a large screen showing because it's great to look at. Jarman was a 'failed' painter before being a successful film-maker and it recreates some tableaux in primary red and black but Jarman is doing what he does, being himself. It was worth a try, not a complete waste of time and it would be dull if everything was an unmitigated success because then it would be like the Chichester Cathedral lunchtime concerts - always to be relied on to be superb.

The book is better than the film.

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Whereas A.N. Wilson being A.N. Wilson is a guarantee in itself. Paul was highly informative and astonishing in perhaps more ways than it meant to be, not least as an insight into a religious mind.

It is outrageous, as below, but it happens. We are all, I dare say, the last ones to be aware of our own absurdities. In a 'post-modern' way, nobody knows what happened to Paul in the end. Wilson wants to imagine he found his way to Spain to spread the word there but it doesn't look like it to me.

Andrew Graham-Dixon wasn't entirely sure about Caravaggio's end but at least he knew roughly where it was, just not whether it was illness or revengers that finally got him.

With Jesus's brother, James, having been a political agitator who left less of a legacy after being stoned to death, the precedents and odds for all these vociferous figures give them a high percentage chance of meeting grisly deaths and whether it's in classical times, the Middle Ages, Plantagenets, Tudors or Elizabethans, right up to C20th American good guys or Russians through the ages, not much has changed in that respect. 

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Tales from the Colony Room turns out to be a better read than it first looked.

It's a horrific world, much better viewed from the outside, and surely a great deterrent for anybody considering a life dedicated to booze unless they are likely to find the descent into slavery and paralysis an option they think they might enjoy.

Elvira Barney, we are told, got off with shooting a 'lover' after a 'party' but went on to make 'dreadful scenes' in the club, with her cry,

'I've murdered one bugger and got away with it. Don't think I'd hesitate again'

Muriel Belcher, the club owner,

remembers her as 'enchanting'. 

 

It looks worth staying with before moving onto something less harrowing. It is about time I read some proper Dostoevsky.