Cornflower

Pantries, pianos and pretty things

    Some links today to things interesting, sad and inspiring.

Over at The Runcible Bin, Mrs. Lear is talking about pantries (you should see my pantry - no, really you shouldn't as it needs a proper sort out and is not a pretty sight just now, so perhaps I should get that book!).

Today sees the closure of Britain's last piano factory - how times have changed from the days when pianos were almost as ubiquitous as televisions are now. If you are at all interested in piano music (or in Paris) I thoroughly recommend T. E. Carhart's The Piano Shop on the Left Bank (and Dark Puss, you'll be pleased to know that I was playing the other day, and the Poulenc was fairly respectable).

Lastly, while flicking through an old magazine yesterday I found an article about this treasure-house of trimmings, ribbons, buttons and other pretty things, and I know there are a lot of us who enjoy a virtual browse of this kind!

Jam session

    In the comments recently, Dark Puss requested more music here, and as I've got a musical link on Cornflower Books today I thought I'd extend it a little on this side.

   Who'd have thought that reading the new William Boyd would have me reliving my youth listening to Mr. Weller & co. on Youtube, but there we are, and here you are if you want any more of him: there's this one, or this, or who could forget this?

    Normal service will be resumed soon!

Blown away

 

 

We haven't had a musical post for a while, but I guarantee that if you are feeling sluggish and in need of something to get you going today, following the links here will do the job!
     It's a joy to hear something good for the first time, and that happened this morning when what was on the radio was so compelling that I had to put down my newspaper over breakfast and listen properly! I thought at first the piece must be by Janacek (you'll see why in a minute), but it turns out to be the Oriental Festive March from the Aladdin Suite by Nielsen, and I've trawled through the Youtube offerings to find this performance. It's great.
      I thought of Janacek because the brass reminded me strongly of his Sinfonietta, and here is the finale of that: if you haven't got time for the whole thing, 'the best bit' is from 4.50 to the end. Boulez is remarkably cool, but the timpanist is fair gi'in' it laldy!
    Alex Ross in The Rest is Noise says of Nielsen that he "wrested music of brilliance and violence from rough-hewn folk melodies", and that Janacek's signature sound was "the raw pealing of trumpets" as in the "rustic, military Sinfonietta", so I wasn't far wrong in hearing similarities, but if you have the time do go and listen to this very stirring stuff.

Knitting musically

  
     I am not one of those clever people who can knit and read at the same time, but given that I'm getting the hang of stranded colourwork by concentrating on rhythm, I thought I could manage to knit and listen to music simultaneously, so having two pleasures in one. I've found the perfect piece for what I'm doing: with a repeating four stitch pattern sequence, in this case knit 1 blue, purl 3 brown, and so on, I've got Ivo Pogorelich and Schumann's Toccata as my metronome. Choose your pianist with care, though, because if you listen to Emil Gilels, you'll see he takes it at the speed of a runaway train, and there's no way my needles could keep up!

    But with or without an accompaniment, the Bohus hat is growing. The widest section is done, so fewer stitches per row make for faster progress, and we're moving into the darker colours heading towards the all black crown. With a good few rounds of the current pattern ahead of me, I can settle into my rhythm, but poor old Ivo's fingers will be worn to the bone because, demanding woman that I am, I have him play the piece again, and again and again!

Friday flowers

     Yesterday's post was words only, and a subject it would be hard to prettify anyway, so today something nice to look at - what is in flower in the garden. The daffodils are almost out, but not quite, and there's a viburnum I couldn't get close enough to photograph, otherwise lots of green shoots and signs of things to come, but just a few actual blooms.

This is when I should be making a note to plant things which will give colour this time next year, but will I? Not unless I keep the words "as ye sow, so shall ye reap" in a prominent position on my desk (and what has just popped into my mind is Tom Jones et al. paraphrasing that in this song! - do you remember it?).

And on the subject of music, let's digress even further as it seems there are benefits to a musical education quite apart from the obvious ones. (All those hours at the piano were not in vain!).

Bright spot

    Bright spots in the day: well, I've just eaten a very good muffin (recipe later), there's been some knitting (not quite enough to merit a picture yet, but soon) and here's some joyous music, the brightest spot beginning at 4 mins. 56 secs.

Music and medicine

    Starting on Radio 4 at 2pm tomorrow (3rd. Feb.) is a series called "Musical Analysis" presented by the multi-talented Professor Robert Winston. You can read the details here, but as you'll see, he examines the relationship between the music of four famous composers and the medical conditions - both physical and mental - from which they suffered.
     On a lighter 'note'(!) and interestingly, lots of doctors are musical; our GP, for instance, is a member of The Really Terrible Orchestra......

Edited to add: that should be 1.30pm.

On wings of song

     Between eating my toast and turning the pages of an excellent novel which was just reaching its climax, my attention was mostly elsewhere yesterday morning, but I did have an ear half-tuned to Radio 3 so I caught the presenter asking the audience for suggestions for music suitable for listening to at airports!
    My mind went blank, though on further reflection I thought something 'uplifting' might be in order... But as we haven't mentioned music here for a while, I wondered what the Cornflower readers' ideal airport listening might be? Perhaps you already listen on an iPod, etc. while you wait to be called to the gate, and if so, do you choose anything in particular, or does it not matter?
   If it's to be piped through the terminal for everyone to hear, Daniel Barenboim in Everything Is Connected: The Power Of Music has firm views "...we often suppress the signals [the ear] sends to our brain. More and more .....we create opportunites to hear music without listening to it. ... In terms of musical ethics, it is absolutely offensive. Muzak cannot possibly provide a full experience of music because music requires silence and total concentration on the part of the listener. Muzak is, in fact, intended to create exactly the kind of indifferent satisfaction described by Settembrini in "The Magic Mountain", replacing the participation of the intellect with passive consumption."    
     But if you'd welcome something pleasant to listen to in what can amount to a stressful environment, what would it be? (For inspiration - and thanks to Peter for the link - you might visit the 'Gramophone' archive).

Someone must have heard me

    

If you were a Cornflower reader late last year you may remember this post. Well, I've just found the song!

Remembrance : music

   For an example of the music of war I've chosen a favourite piece of mine: the intense and very beautiful "Metamorphosen" by Richard Strauss. Written in 1945 and inspired partially by the bombing of Dresden, it is described in The Rest is Noise: Listening to the Twentieth Century as "dusky and doleful" with a mood of "wounded desperation" and "contrapuntal lines intertwining like kudzu on a ruined mansion". You can listen to the first part of it here, and follow the links there to the second and third parts.

Chain reaction

    Lindsay and Peter may be pulling my (third) leg about my birthplace, but I ought to mention that I was born in the Jane Crookall Maternity Home, Douglas, I.o.M., whose most famous babies (until me) were the Bee Gees. And I couldn't not give a link to them, could I, so here's a song whose modulations are 'key'!

Task avoidance

     I'm supposed to be doing something other than this; that is, I am allowing myself to be distracted from the real task in hand which is typing up the minutes of a meeting. So far this morning I have visited a few favourite blogs, had a cup of coffee, played several games of solitaire and read the latest episode of Corduroy Mansions, all displacement activities - I own up! I have made a start on the minutes, doing the preliminary, formulaic bit, but now I'm on to the meaty stuff and having to decipher several A4 pages of my handwritten notes in order to produce a document dense with fact and stylish yet economical in its prose. Because I'd much rather be doing something else I'm having to force myself to get on with it, but doing so on a 'reward' basis - another paragraph or section done earns me a few minutes off to do something more fun. I've just had a browse around for some music to keep me 'on task', and how about that for an excuse for slacking. So far I've had a little dalliance with this favourite, a change of mood with this one, or I could listen to numerous repeats of this, (and for complete silliness there's always this - blame my children). If all that doesn't work I'm going to remember I have a pressing engagement with the ironing board (sorry, the pun wasn't intended!) which will give me a legitimate reason to leave the minutes for a minute.
Back later, I hope, with a proper post, (though at the rate I'm going today I wouldn't hold your breath).

Rapt

   

Let it not be said that we don't keep up with the modern idiom here on Cornflower, nor that the range of this site isn't sometimes surprising. Today, for your delectation, I bring you a couple of examples of 'contemporary style in song', but this is not just for the sake of it, there are underlying educational messages, too!
     First off, physics. My lack of knowledge of this subject stems from a couple of dull years in senior school when we worked from the misleadingly named (brown, if I remember correctly) textbook, "Physics is Fun";  all that electron/neutron stuff failed to excite me and I dropped it and its fellow sciences at the earliest opportunity. But nowadays physicists are playing with toys on a scale far removed from the old Van de Graaff machine, and the magnets they use are not wee things with 'Duracell' on the side. We are talking about The Big Stuff here, so if you want a reductionist version of what must surely be the largest experiment in the world given a musical interpretation, have a look at this. (My thanks to Peter the Flautist for that link - he's involved in the science, if not the rap).
    Still in the same vein but changing to a part of the curriculum I'm more familiar with, what can I say about this version of a very famous poem?
    Words may have failed me with that one, but the next clip is a classic, written long before raps were ever devised but yet, to my ears, sounding remarkably similar in style. M.C. Auden, anyone? (Bet he didn't scratch his records).

Later: it seems this post is more topical than I thought as Sir Ian McKellen is rapping away, too!

Reading and listening

 

 
  Daniel Barenboim's Everything Is Connected: The Power Of Music is published today and tonight he is performing at The Proms, conducting his West-Eastern Divan Orchestra in this programme. Much of his book is about music as a model for co-operation between peoples, and how and why - along with Edward Said - he came to found an extraordinary orchestra of young Arab and Israeli musicians which is an inspiration for long-term optimism about peace in the Middle East.
     He talks about how even the most passionate phrase in music requires an underlying sense of order and discipline, and how an orchestra depends on that and a clear hierarchy. "The hierarchy that exists in all music respects the individuality of each voice, which may not have the same rights but certainly has the same responsibility as all the other voices...how difficult it is in the world to create equality within hierarchy". But then he goes on to stress the importance of dialogue, listening and understanding: he quotes Goethe - "To merely tolerate is to insult; true liberalism means acceptance", and how with that in mind music requires a perfect balance between intellect, emotion and temperament, and can show society how those things along with the fundamental interconnection between transparency, power and force foster sympathy and harmony.
    It is a lively book, eloquent, considered and Barenboim speaks equally from head and heart. It does not require in the reader a close knowledge of either music or politics but rather, as he himself says, "a curious mind that wishes to discover the parallels between music and life and the wisdom that becomes audible to the thinking ear".
    I've enjoyed it greatly and my only complaint is that it is too short - I wanted more! Encore, maestro, please.

It's wonderful...

   

     As a dog's coat is to burrs from the plants it rubs against, so is my brain to the tunes it hears - it hooks them in the musical memory and they remain firmly stuck.

Years ago I was taken by the catchy song used to back an advertisement for investment trusts but I didn't know what it was. Earlier this week I heard it again, in a restaurant, and now thanks to Youtube, I've tracked it down. And for your delectation, ladies and gentlemen, here is a true renaissance man: poet, painter, musician and lawyer (yes!), it's Paolo Conte, performing his wonderful Come away with me (the rest of the world probably knew this, but I didn't). Go and listen, and don't tell me you didn't tap your feet to that!

Unenamoured by my musical taste, my children thrust headphones at me, pointedly shut doors and caution me not to snap my fingers in time to the music even. Huh! They're used to the pattern, you see - Mum gets a craze and listens ad infinitum. They don't understand my capacity to hear the same piece over and over again (the youth of today have no staying power...). We had it last summer with Astor Piazzolla's Libertango (first heard on a programme about physics, then rediscovered on Tower of Goo the computer game) now here it is 'for real' with YoYo Ma. Then there was Music for a Found Harmonium (Terry Wogan chat show, Irish seaweed piece in the series Coast), and previously The Divine Comedy's Songs of Love (Father Ted - of course -  and accompanying a Gary Rhodes dish involving cabbage, as I recall).

But now I have the rest of Paolo Conte's oeuvres to discover (and I feel a CD purchase coming on...)