SOME RANDOM THOUGHTS

 

It is probably a feature common to the older generation, but recently some lively melodic phrases came fleetingly through my mind, which I could not quite place:

And the jocund rebecks sound, and the jocund rebecks sound

To many a youth and many a maid

Dancing in the chequer’d shade!

In time, the penny dropped; I was remembering a song I had to sing aged 10 at a schools’ choir competition in Edinburgh in 1952. I recall our choirmaster snorting dismissively at the “jocund rebecks” – obscure words indeed (a rebeck is a 3-stringed, pear-shaped medieval bowed instrument)! To my surprise, the lines come from Milton’s L’Allegro (1645).

Singing this kind of stuff in 1952, though I was unaware at the time, was a reflection of the Folksong Revival which had gripped the UK in several waves of varying intensity from the early 20^th century. The early enthusiasts included Cecil Sharp, Ralph Vaughan Williams, Delius and Holst. “Traditional” airs were hunted down and collected (quite a few bogus, I would guess) while Scotland was a folksong factory, creating songs with decidedly tenuous connections with Rabbie Burns and Walter Scott. The world of academic music was all fiddlers, peasant ditties and Morris dancing, satirised uproariously by Kingsley Amis in his 1954 novel Lucky Jim in the role of Professor Welch played by Hugh Griffith in the 1957 Boulting Brothers comedy film version starring Ian Carmichael.

                         Ralph Vaughan Williams

…………………………

Some of our most treasured institutions are being undermined by our enemies, who well know just how treasured they are. There is a daily roll-call of idiocy. I think of the QAA (Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education) which is urging all universities to “decolonise” the mathematics (sic!) curriculum. According to the QAA, maths is biased towards Western world-views, excluding the rest of mankind. Since mathematics originated in Chinese, Indian and Mesopotamian civilisation and developed greatly under the Arabs and Moors, this argument is hard to credit. But why even discuss it? The QAA is just another woke quango, with too much power, infiltrated by the enemy.

At Oxford, Oriel College’s dons readily agreed to topple their statue of Cecil Rhodes, their generous benefactor but Woke’s bogeyman, to appease a noisy mob. Happily, more senior bodies have blocked this absurd demand. In Cambridge, the vice chancellor Stephen Toope, a super-woke Canadian, had from 2017-22, led this great University into what many see as a surrender to Chinese “soft “power by accepting large donations for research in return for offices promoting “dialogue” with China. This dialogue often involved supporting the suppression of Western values in Hong Kong and Taiwan. Jesus College, Cambridge, with its China Forum, has been a particularly egregious supporter of China. Mind you, Cambridge gave us the 5-man nest of traitors comprising Burgess, Maclean, Philby, Blunt and Cairncross who betrayed secrets to Russia last century, so expectations are low there! Our enemies are not just fanatical Muslims or murderous Commies but also “the enemy within”, the 5^th column deeply embedded in our Establishment and State.

                        

                       Stephen Toope

……………………..

I was much struck by a recent article in The Spectator about the sophisticated classical musical tastes of our new King written by Damian Thompson. Charles learnt the cello in his youth, for which he was probably bullied at philistine Gordonstoun, and has been patron of several orchestras and choirs. His favourite music includes the, to me, utterly obscure piano concerto of Julius Benedict (1804-85) and the only opera of French violin concerto composer Jean-Marie Leclair, Scylla et Glaucus (1746).

   

                                    King Charles III

 The Windsors have not been notably musical – the late Queen much enjoyed George Formby’s cheeky songs on the ukulele (so do I!) - so King Charles will be untypical. As a prince, he had oddball passions and he may have been unwise as both a husband and a father, but he can consign most of that baggage to history. I suggest his role-model might best be Edward VII, Victoria’s notorious Bertie, who had a taste for gambling and an eye for the ladies, who became a diplomatically astute monarch performing his duties with exemplary dignity. Whatever, may the King prosper!

                                    ……………………………….

SMD

17.11.22

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2022

REDEEMING FEATURES

 

With the rain teeming down outside and the temperatures falling with British persistence, it is easy to feel a trifle gloomy. My esteemed Greek friends are clever but also prone to strike a plangent note, and I note that the so-called Seven Wise Men of the ancient Greek world, who gave us some brief words of rather banal wisdom, include a certain Bias of Priene (he doesn’t sound neutral to me!), who declared Most People are Evil…(Pleistoi anthropoi kakoi).

This is a scandalous slander of course but, as is usual, it contains a grain of truth. The saying is often loosely translated as “most men are evil” and that is a trigger for certain types of woke “wimmen” to launch into a furious denunciation of historic and contemporary macho deeds and attitudes. But Bias did not distinguish between the sexes and our delightful sisters are tarred by the same brush as we males. The grain of truth in the slogan revolves around the fact that all people have a dark side, a concealed mental sub-world, skeletons in the cupboard we would prefer not to resurrect.

Just how dark that “dark side” is naturally varies a great deal from person to person. The spectrum of evil is a broad one. At one end, there are the monsters so familiar to us from history and, alas, the present. Then the darkness lightens from those with criminal propensities, chips on the shoulder, family schemers, compulsive liars down to those who bear grudges, harbour inappropriate erotic thoughts or are simply a regular pain-in-the-neck.

If you had to create a League Table of evil, contenders for the top spot would alternate between Stalin, Mao Tse-tung, Hitler and Putin, followed by Pol Pot and Nero. To include the ladies, there is always Lucretia Borgia. History also gives us Vlad the Impaler (aka Dracula) from 15^th century Romania, with allegedly 80,000 victims dying messily – our Charles III confesses he is a cousin, 16 times removed, of Vlad, through his great-grandmother May of Teck, Queen of George V. We can only hope 16 times removed is far enough!

                        

                                                                 Lethal Vlad the Impaler

Many political figures have an ambivalent reputation, demonised by some and admired by others, like Napoleon Bonaparte of France, Franco of Spain, Ataturk of Turkey, Peron of Argentina or Mussolini of Italy. Then there are lesser very controversial figures like Donald Trump and even Boris Johnson, who hardly feature on the evil-meter, and, (OMG!) both could easily return to office, just like Benjamin Netanyahu. Yet each country has her plaster saints and I suppose Churchill, de Gaulle and Franklin D Roosevelt are our contemporary icons – for the time being at least!

But ranking evil deeds is not a healthy nor an uplifting occupation. A riposte to Bias’ ancient dictum comes from a rather OTT Shakespeare:

What a piece of work is a man! how noble in reason! how infinite in faculty! in form and moving how express and admirable! in action how like an angel! in apprehension how like a god!

 Humanity has demonstrated these qualities through profound thinkers like wide-ranging Aristotle in Athens, the father of logic, enlightened David Hume in Edinburgh, founder of empiricism, or idealist Immanuel Kant in Königsberg, who fortified ethics with his “categorical imperative.” 

  

 

The philosophic trio, Aristotle, Hume and Kant

More accessible in the search for beauty and poetry are Shakespeare, Goethe, Hugo, Tolstoy and Keats – all men of genius. But the goodness of man is maybe best expressed in music. What could be more uplifting than a Bach cantata?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gBfHemeJTfg&ab_channel=Bachstiftung

How lovely shines the morning-star.

As Remembrance Day looms, we will be inspired too by Elgar’s Nimrod

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sUgoBb8m1eE&ab_channel=medpiano

The ancient Greeks rather favoured short philosophic slogans, like Know Thyself, inscribed on the portal to the Oracle of Delphi. But gateway slogans uneasily remind me of Arbeit macht frei at the entrance of Auschwitz. So, forget about slogans and luxuriate in profound literature and contemplation.

Whatever the temporary setbacks, our benevolent human spirit will overcome all evils and the sunlit uplands beckon!

 

SMD

6.11.22

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2022

FAINT HEART NEVER WON FAIR LADY

As a firm believer in the music of the spheres, in the curative powers of cheerful dance and song, and as an enemy of dissonance and discord everywhere, I wish to celebrate the Savoy Operas of Gilbert and Sullivan, which gave late Victorian England and the whole world a wonderful abundance of melodic music, rib-tickling comedy and innocent pleasure.

Gilbert

Sullivan

W. S. Gilbert (1836-1911) was a formidable dramatist and poet noted for his Bab Ballads anthology of comic verse. Arthur Sullivan (1842-1900) was more self-effacing but he was a musical child prodigy, who had already written incidental music for 2 Shakespeare plays, a ballet, a cello concerto and much church music. They were brought together by the dynamic impresario Richard D’Oyly Carte (1844-1901) who believed the London theatre would be receptive to English operetta rather than the risqué French fare then familiar to the West End.

Gilbert and Sullivan (“G&S”) collaborated, with some interruptions, from 1871 to 1896, They produced 14 Savoy Operas, named after the Savoy Theatre which D’Oyly Carte built and opened to house them in 1880. The Savoy Operas were immensely successful, most notably HMS Pinafore, The Pirates of Penzance, Patience, Iolanthe, The Mikado and The Gondoliers. Indeed, so substantial were the profits they generated that D’Oyly Carte was able to acquire the land adjoining his theatre and erect the palatial Savoy Hotel which opened in 1889, for long London’s best luxury hotel.

                                       Richard D’Oyly Carte

Sullivan was often berated by the snooty music establishment for “wasting” his talent on the popular genre of operetta, when he might have rivalled Brahms in composing concertos and symphonies. Yet he had a great lyric talent as can be seen in his Overture to the Yeomen of the Guard.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vv7plNo0j18&ab_channel=AcademyofSt.MartinintheFields-Topic

Gilbert was renowned for his “topsy-turvy” plots, the more far-fetched the better, involving fairies, peers, pirates, long-lost children, executioners and emperors. Typical is Faint Heart from Iolanthe where the Lord Chancellor is steeled by fellow-peers to propose to a pretty ward of court.

 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WQqgoHklUs4&ab_channel=FriendsofthePeccadilloPlayers

From the same opera is the mock-patriotic song, When Britain really ruled the waves parodying the House of Lords:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uyimj8CEypU&ab_channel=D%27OyleCarteOperaCompany-Topic.

Gilbert gloried in alliteration and word-play – this from The Mikado:

To sit in Solemn silence in a dull, dark dock

In a pestilential prison with a life-long lock

Awaiting the sensation of a short, sharp shock

From a cheap and chippy chopper on a big, black block!

Gilbert’s speciality was the patter-song, a satirical song with an ever-rising tempo. Now I am the ruler of the Queen’s Navee from HMS Pinafore is a typical example. WH Smith, bookseller and Tory MP, became known as “Pinafore” Smith when he was appointed to run the Admiralty.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Kfao1s3Tiek&ab_channel=StratfordFestival.

Sometimes Gilbert contented himself with a comic song attacking contemporary targets, constantly updated by new generations of singer – famously, I’ve got a little list from The Mikado

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1NLV24qTnlg&ab_channel=OperaAustralia

G&S have a wry look at equality with the delightful There was a king from The Gondoliers:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ie4OwwmFj8o&ab_channel=Gilbert%26SullivanAustin

One could go on forever selecting one’s favourites, so let me sign off with two lovely songs from The Gondoliers and The Mikado. - Take a pair of sparkling eyes and He’s going to marry Yum Yum!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5FMldbPNZzg&ab_channel=stevethetenor

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnaHqL4bkX8&ab_channel=jlf180

Both Gilbert and Sullivan were deservedly knighted. Sullivan produced an opera Ivanhoe which was a moderate success but the Savoy Operas were their apogee.  D’Oyly Carte retained the copyrights and their touring companies delighted audiences in the UK, USA, Australia and elsewhere for generations. Schoolmasters and many “Savoyards” could recite the operas backwards but fashions change and expensive touring ended when the UK Arts Council withdrew their grant in 1982.

 G&S’s Savoy Operas were for many a highly agreeable stepping stone weaning them to Grand Opera and opening up the world of music to much larger audiences. Their influence on the American musical was considerable with patter-songs from Rodgers and Hart (Zip) or Cole Porter (Anything Goes) widely enjoyed.

Let’s lift our glasses in gratitude to Gilbert and Sullivan!

 

 

SMD

1.11.22

Text copyright © Sidney Donald 2022