Top 6 - Cricketers

The cricket season gets properly underway for me tomorrow with the first of probably only a few visits to see it in the flesh, at the recently re-branded Bowl at Southampton to see Nottinghamshire come and do the business against the local team of international mercenaries.
I don't think I've done cricketers yet so here the occasional series continues with them.
Derek Randall (pictured doffing his cap in jovial mood to Dennis Lillee) is my favourite cricketer, the maverick batsman and miracle cover point fielder. His fielding, from a purely statistical point of view, was worth 20 or 30 runs an innings but it was the almost boyish innocence and enthusiasm for batting that endeared him, as well as a few incidents involving Geoffrey Boycott. One could hardly imagine two more different characters, e.g. one was deeply endearing and the other deeply not.
We featured Basil D'Oliviera here last year when he died after a long and sad illness. But there was no more dignified and respected character that played the game. Even without his heroic back story, he was a hugely talented batsman and useful change bowler and an automatic pick for the All Time Favourite XI, or as it happens here, VI.
It might seem from old video footage on You Tube that Michael Holding was somewhat less gentlemanly out in the middle but he was playing within the rules of the game and the 1970's West Indians didn't invent intimidatory bowling. England took similar tactics to Australia to combat Bradman and both Larwood and Holding and his compatriots forced rule changes in the game because you couldn't play it nicely otherwise. And it turns out in the end that Holding was only one of several of that generation of fearsome Caribbeans who were actually very articulate and intelligent men. You don't always hear that said of their Australian fast bowling contemporaries.
We are inevitably going back to a sort of Golden Age here by taking Mike Procter next as the all action all-rounder, a potential match-winner with bat or ball, who carried an otherwise ordinary Gloucestershire side almost on his own in those days. Not quite as pretty to watch as Holding when bowling but rarely less than an exciting prospect.
Sunil Gavaskar wouldn't necessarily be immediately 'exciting' but there is something to be admired in the application of technique and the concentration required to continually put together big scores. Gavaskar's dedication to the long innings rendered him immune to an understanding of quickly accumulating runs and his effort in an early outing in one-day cricket for India was to be left 36 not out, presumably well set for the second day which wasn't scheduled, and well behind the run rate. And he is another fine and modest ambassador for the game in an increasingly cash-driven industry.
We could go in various directions for the sixth choice but I think we will come more up to date with the coolest of rulers of slow bowling practitioners and top short game batsman, Chris Gayle, perhaps the cricketer I'd most like to be. I knew quite well the feeling of the ball coming off the middle of the bat (sometimes), not having to run but watching one's handiwork disappear over the horizon. It does feel good but I don't think any of mine went as far or as often as most of his.

Allegri

Allegri, Missa in Lectulo Meo, etc, Choir of King's College London/David Trendall (Delphian)

Gregorio Allegri, as every schoolboy knows, is famous for writing the Miserere that was so precious that it was not allowed to be written down outside of the Vatican. And then Mozart heard it and wrote it down afterwards from memory.
Except, like all good stories from history, it isn't quite true. What Allegri wrote seems to have been the fairly routine plainchant of the verses and the embellishments that include the sublime high C was most likely added by an anonymous chorister who got no credit for it whatsoever. And if it wasn't for that then Gregorio would hardly be remembered at all. And, although I couldn't do it, transcribing 11 or 12 minutes of plainchant might not be the prodigious feat for Mozart that it might appear and he probably wasn't the only person who did it anyway. So, there go yet more wondrous stories, ruined by the letting in of daylight on them.
And thus what remains of the rest of Allegri's output isn't much and is heard rarely. But, having wanted to have other examples of his music, the Miserere having been a venerable favourite for decades, this new release was an essential acquisition.
What it reminds me of most is Thomas Tallis. I then find that Tallis died only three years after Allegri was born - 1585, 1582 - and so they are a couple of generations apart and I'm a bit out. But then the booklet notes tell me that one reason Allegri might not have been at the forefront of his time is that he wrote in a style already old-fashioned, school of Palestrina, one generation younger than Tallis, and I don't feel so bad.
The penitential Miserere never lets one down, achingly sorrowful and reaching forlornly for elsewhere. It is given a reading here fine enough to put alongside the classic MFP release of the Tallis Scholars from so long ago I can't remember. I'm afraid it is always going to outshine the rest of Allegri but that is not to say the masses here are not worth having. I am surprised how good they are and if they are all genuinely Gregorio's own work, at least he can be credited with a place among the masters of Renaissance polyphony without the assistance of the unknown extemporizer. It's a shame that anyone should ever be regarded as a one-hit wonder. I guess that Allegri would be mystified to see how his legacy has come to be regarded 360 years after his death.

View from the Boundary

I would like to think that this website was closer to Radio 3 than any other part of the BBC's output but you will be the judge of that. What I mean is, that using a picture of Sally Bretton here, Lucy from Not Going Out, does not mark a departure into the gratuitous use of pictures of eye candy young ladies but a completely justifiable and relevant illustration of one of the reasons to be a devoted viewer of the recently finished fifth series of the situation comedy.
The art of Sitcom was widely thought to be dead and probably to have died as My Family went from acceptably inane to dire. But I'm not convinced that an art form can ever be dead and Lee Mack has taken it up and made it essential viewing again. Not only that, but he forgot to turn up as Danny Baker's guest on Radio 5 a few weeeks ago on Saturday morning as if to suggest that the slacker image is one he can live down to in real life.
Would I watch it if it wasn't well written and made me laugh out loud once or twice each episode. Well, no, ladies and gentlemen of the jury, I would not. My Family had a sexy girl in it as well but when I realized it wasn't funny, I stopped watching it.
At the Portsmouth Poetry Society last week, the subject was American Poets. It is the usual protocol for whoever had the idea for the meeting's theme to do an introduction to it but that person wasn't there. So I was flattered to be invited to say a few words at the drop of my hat. I think I got away with it and was glad that it developed into an open discussion that meant I wasn't required to reach a conclusion. But Doris, who I usually sit next to, wasn't sure which poets in the anthology she had brought along were American. I am nothing if not helpful in such circumstances and so picked for her a well-known piece by William Carlos Williams for the first half and then North Labrador by Hart Crane. Great poem and a welcome impetus for me to get into Hart Crane further who, as a depressed, difficult, alcoholic, young suicide ticks several very promising boxes in the poet profile. His Complete Poems arrived today and look as if they will provide the finest of bedtime reading.
It would be interesting to know how many pages of all the poetry books I have remain unread. I can't claim to be avid. I just think I know what I like and I know what I think but I'm not devoted to the subject in a way that makes me spend all night consuming poetry as if it were the very essence of life itself. It isn't that for me.
And so it makes it scary that a new, young generation of poets, born into a genre that has Paul Muldoon as a central figure is even more playful, allusive and deliberately outre than ever before. I don't know if I'm up to it. C'est magnifique, one might say, but ce n'est pas la guerre, as the cavalry are shot down by weapons from the age that was to succeed them. If I do it quietly, can I be allowed to stay with Hart Crane and poets born before, say, 1965.
But, then again, it's always been like that. Every generation has been welcomed in as if they were new and sexy and nothing that had come before them was relevant any more. Thom Gunn was as cool and sexy as the Elvis Presley and Beatles that he took the trouble to write about, famously turning 'revolt into a style', but at that stage he did it in iambic pentameter.
I'm yet to be convinced that anything drastically important has happened beyond some young people wanting to wilfully assert their newness, a phenomenon that has always been with us. Only the very best poets have alerted us to their significance and potential importance before they were 30. Muldoon and Gunn were two of them. It might be wise to give the latest crop a chance to prove themselves. It can be very damaging to be told you are destined for great things before you've achieved them.
I know that.

Alan Hollinghurst's Books

I'm sure I'm not the only one who, when a writer or other intellectual-type is photographed for a newspaper in front of a bookshelf, spends more time looking at the books than the person. They usually have a few titles you can make out, often the bigger art books. I'm the only person in the country, it seems, who doesn't own a big volume of Klimt.
This picture of Alan Hollinghurst was in yesterday's Observer. It was more generously cropped in the paper so that one could see two more shelves higher than this internet version, and two more below. As luck would have it, this turns out to be predominantly the poetry section of Alan's well-stocked library and he has them in alphabetical order of author and so, once I'd got started, I knew what I was looking for. For example, books by his friend Andrew Motion are just above his left elbow, the orange volume being the memoir, In the Blood. Heaney is to the left of his head as we look; Hughes (Lupercal, Wodwo, etc) is two shelves below; Lowell is two shelves below him; Thom Gunn is just out of shot here, just above and to the left of Alan's head, with the Collected clearly visible and then, once you know, most of the individual volumes readily identifiable.  
So, Hollinghurst is unlikely to be bettered in the competition for who has the most books that I also have, the most similar collection, although his inevitably more comprehensive than mine if less completist on specific favourite poets. There was another prize once for who had picked the closest selection of Desert Island Discs to what I would have but I'm afraid I've forgotten who that was.
It's probably a bit impolite in other people's houses to immediately start to scrutinize their books while making a token effort to keep the conversation going but I move on eventually. And then start rifling through their CD's.

Bad Day at the Wapentake

Bad Day at the Wapentake

The word is Scandinavian and refers

to the brandishing of weapons

to signify assent in a popular assembly.

Cloud is heavy on the hills,

a late snake moves slow

through long grass.

Whey is being stirred thick

in an outhouse

and sullen children in the yard

are not inclined to misbehave

as their grisly father pours

a dark measure of ale

and loosens his belt.

Local men gather to oppose

a motion. Pikes glint

in the Autumn light,

dumb cudgels are not counted

and then they don’t vote no.

Bach Motets

Bach Motets, Monteverdi Choir/John Eliot Gardiner (Soli Deo Gloria)

Why would the cover of a new edition of the Bach Motets feature a tightrope walker. It's hard to believe J.S. had time to practice doing that in between writing all those cantatas and fathering so much progeny. We are being encouraged to think about a fine balance, one would think. It might be a hint towards correcting the supposition that Bach is simply a mathematical perfectionist.
While the baroque style is clearly elaborate and apparently more disciplined than later Romantic composers who indulged in more self-indulgent expression of their overflowing passions as 'individuals' became more highly valued than the application of formal principles, it isn't fair on either side to regard Bach and his contemporaries as abstract pattern-makers or C19th composers as lacking order in composition.
So, if we prefer to, we could read the picture as a sign of great daring or an act of trust in God. Whatever it is, if we like it, art is often much better enjoyed rather than over interpreted and I sometimes think it better if it doesn't have to mean anything defintive.
(Having evetually read the notes in more detail, I find that John Eliot Gardiner writes that 'Bach expected of his singers an instrument-like virtuosity and the agility of a tightrope-walker, never more so than in the motets.' So I need not have wondered. But I'm not editing out and wasting all that introduction now, three days later).
Johann Sebastian's massive and immaculate output wouldn't necessarily miss these 72 minutes of music if he hadn't written them whereas if someone else had, they might be the centrepiece of a very respectable reputation. There are small continuo parts in places but this is choir music for all intents and purposes, wonderfully clearly recorded and if at times offering broad hymn tunes, also gorgeously intricate and cool in texture. Cool and warm, I'd say, if I wanted to undermine the whole idea of describing music in words and showing the whole art of music reviewing for the nonsense that it sometimes is. It sometimes seems like looking at a painting on the radio.
German can sound like a hilariously funny language to us Englanders but it never does in these settings. There's a wide range of thoughts and emotions here from one piece to the next, I'd rather not reduce them to 'moods'. Gute Nacht, o Wessen,  is gentle and sympathetic while actually saying,

Good night, O you
who have chosen the world;
I do not love you.

whereas Weicht, ihr Trauergeister is a sweeping hymn line advising you spirits of sadness to go hence. The booklet's notes tell us that most, if not all, of these pieces are regarded as being written as 'funerary motets' and, if so, you can't help but appreciate the confidence with which their authors face their worldly demise. It can be a fine and noble thing to regard the world as unworthy if it can be done with the proper sense of decorum but it does rather depend on the gamble that there is something better to be had elsewhere. That thought doesn't seem to have troubled these writers.
The notes also refer to 'another example of Bach's unlimited cleverness' which hasn't ever been in doubt but which I take on trust and appreciate by absorbing it in smooth helpings rather than having any chance of being able to explain. He is one of those very few whose music would take an eternity to tire of if he was all you had on the desert island.
This is also a stylish release in that the disc is contained in a pocket at the back of a CD-sized hardback booklet so tastefully done that I might sleep with it tonight. It wouldn't honestly be among the first Bach music one might have to have but once you have some cantatas, concertos, violin sonatas and partitas, cello suites, the Well Tempered Klavier, the Mass in B Minor, the Passions, etc. then this wouldn't be a bad thing to put alongside them. There is something routinely wonderful about it.

Against Science Fiction

Against Science Fiction 

They say one day they’ll come and find

us, them in their sleek, gleaming sputniks;

us stranded on our beautiful, lost

rock that’s somewhere in the outskirts,

not wanting to know, trying

to shoot them down

with our quaint, old-fashioned guns. 

All the years that we have sat here,

rained on by brief meteorites

if we’re lucky, and we think so,

gazing lonely at a vacuum,

all that bleak, dark, endless madness

(is it thus or do we just see

reflections of ourselves in it),

did we spend them in hope or fear

or would we rather see as intruders

those who might represent some wisdom

that we’ve not arrived at yet.

Is it not vain, and self-regarding,

to think that each flicker of light

that we suppose we might have seen

is a sign of their arrival.

But, if it was (and we will remain

both watchful and credulous),

should we not be so

in love with the quite unlikely,

knowing life is chemistry,

and only that. But if they’ve found

their way here to us, who haven’t yet

travelled beyond the moon,

they’re not Gods

but they must be cleverer than we could know

and obviously speak English.