AN UNEXPECTED CORONATION

Settling down by my TV on Tuesday evening at about 11pm, I expected to be watching a leisurely but decisive victory for Hillary Clinton over Donald Trump. While Hillary failed to inspire me I could not give any credit to her opponent, The Donald, a loud-mouthed, egotistical demagogue who seemed quite incapable of articulating any policy proposal with conviction or lucidity. Well, I staggered to bed at 8am on Wednesday having seen Trump overwhelm Hillary with famous victories in Ohio, North Carolina, Iowa, Florida and Pennsylvania leaving the political complexion of America radically changed, nay revolutionised, to global astonishment.

The Winner, Donald Trump

Trump’s triumph is just another amazing dénouement in the labyrinthine world of US politics, the Greatest Comic Show on Earth. The Donald has a well-honed showbiz persona and oozes a kind of dark charisma, cocky and thick-skinned, emitting tons of chutzpah like the bouncy New Yorker he is. The fact that he has precisely nil experience of politics, few considerable allies and an invisible knowledge of the world outside property development has not deterred the American electorate.

The loser, Hillary Clinton at bay

   

All this speaks volumes on Hillary Clinton’s candidacy and campaign which must have been peculiarly inept. She spent much more than Trump but for all her admitted experience and for all the liberal values she paraded, she failed to ignite the enthusiasm of her supporters. Fewer women, fewer Hispanics and fewer African-Americans than expected rallied to her standard. She is an indifferent orator and too well-known a face. The prospect of 8 years of Hillary did not appeal, as she represented the old guard carrying all the baggage of scandals in Arkansas, Bill Clinton’s pock-marked presidency, a controversial tenure as Secretary of State and a belief in her own divine right to privacy even in office with her illegitimate e-mails. She lived in a privileged cocoon of elitist entitlement (just like the diehard opponents of Brexit) and did not survive the populist tsunami bearing down on her.

I think some lessons will be derived from this debacle. The Americans are not great royalists and recently two Bushes, father and son and two Clintons, husband and wife, have more than sated their taste for dynasties. People are talking up Michelle Obama as a Democratic runner in 2020, but she should forget it – she is attractive and articulate but Barack Obama was a one-off, an exceptionally eligible and magnetic candidate even though in office he has been frustrated. The Papandreou and Mitsotakis dynasties have despoiled and ruined Greece, the French LePen family is not much admired while Papa Doc and Baby Doc Duvalier drove Haiti into the mire – keep the family out of it!

There was a strong whiff of nostalgia about Trump’s candidacy – a yearning for a time, say in the 1950s, when America really was the greatest nation, when jobs abounded and foreigners were kept in order. Born-again Mike Pence invoked God and wandered into religiosity on victory night. Those old days of motherhood and apple-pie and Norman Rockwell certainties, will never return. The same note can be heard in Brexit, evoking days when Britain was stronger, the beer weaker and communities were happier. It is a mirage, alas; the real world is a tough old place.

Saying Grace by Norman Rockwell (1951)

Hillary’s defeat has been ascribed to misogyny – that hostility to women every feminist sniffs out in the most innocent males. Nothing in the Trump campaign struck me as misogynistic – of course Trump’s groping crudities about women were well documented, but far from glorified – and the failure to crack the “glass ceiling” was down to Hillary not to the system. A better lady candidate will seize the Presidency soon enough.

What metropolitan Britain and America forgot was that there are plenty “peasants” and “rednecks” about who have a vote and cannot now be dragooned into supporting Establishment politics. These are the former shipyard workers in Sunderland or steel workers in Pennsylvania who experience job insecurity, pay cuts and worry about immigration. They hope to gain from radical change in the system. Brexit sees Britain turn away from Europe’s ingrained mediocrity but the Brits would not choose a Philip Green wheeler-dealer type as their leader. Trump questions free trade, NATO and onerous foreign commitments. Fortress America often plays well in harder times and such a policy will be damaging to the outside world. We can only hope Trump surrounds himself with vigorous and well-informed lieutenants (names like Gingrich and Giuliani seem long in the tooth to me) to guide his administration through the global minefield.

Hold your hats – we are in for a roller-coaster ride!

SMD

11.11.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016

AN INCOMPLETE MUSICAL EDUCATION

It was well observed by Sir Thomas Beecham (1878-1961) that The English may not like music but they love the noise it makes and, although I am Scottish, this remark resonates with me. I do love much classical music but I am a complete layman, incapable of reading or playing a note. I have become ever more conscious of the yawning gaps in my musical education and of those composers of whose works I am sadly ignorant.  I am particularly ignorant of middle to late 19^th century composers, the Late Romantics; I admire Brahms, Dvorak and Tchaikovsky, can tolerate small doses of Wagner and love Elgar and Sibelius. Slipping through the cracks however is any appreciation of César Franck, Camille Saint-Saëns, Anton Bruckner and Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov – all four, I now realise, considerable contributors to the blessed harmony of our world.

Sir Thomas Beecham conducting

This winter the wonders of modern technology will allow me to slip on my earphones, switch on my laptop, download and listen, as millions have done before me, to recordings of great performances of all the classics, all in the cosy haven of my own dwelling. Bliss! Searching for a change from my favourites Purcell, Handel and Mozart I turn to exploring the four composers above.

César Franck (1822-90) was born a Walloon in Liège, then in the Netherlands but soon in Belgium, though he spent most of his life in France. His domineering father was ambitious for him and César excelled at the Paris Conservatoire as a pianist. He broke with his father when he married the daughter of an acting family. His early compositions were badly received and he became a poorly paid organist at various Parisian churches, latterly at St Clotilde and yet with his cherished Cavaillé-Coll organ, he revitalised French organ playing and added to its repertoire, notably with his Trois Chorals.

Cesar Franck composing for the organ

 

His 1888 D Minor Symphony, he only wrote one, is much admired for its vigour and melodiousness as is his Violin Sonata. His communion anthem Panis Angelicus (what Beecham would call a “Lollipop”) is a popular favourite among the tender-hearted and is much sung by Irish tenors and College choirs. Franck pushed at some musical barriers with his complex polyphony and his Wagnerian influences; he became a revered teacher at the Conservatoire and a prominent flag-bearer for French music after the 1871 Franco-Prussian war.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=9srAs4ss2kU Franck D Minor Symphony

Camille Saint-Saëns (1835-1921), a proud Parisian, was a leading figure of the French musical establishment and effortlessly rose to be regarded as the greatest French composer of his time. He was born with perfect pitch and was a child prodigy at the piano on a par with Mozart. His first public concert was given at the age of 10 and his output was prolific - symphonies, concertos, chamber music, operas, oratorios and sacred music flowing from his highly efficient, if not always stretchingly creative, pen.

                                            Saint-Saëns at the piano in about 1910

He is best known for his suite The Carnival of the Animals, his 3^rd “Organ” Symphony, the 2^nd Piano Concerto and the Danse Macabre. He wrote three excellent cello concertos and it was perhaps at a rehearsal of one of these that Thomas Beecham rebuked an under-performing lady soloist in these indelicate terms: Madame, you have between your legs an instrument capable of giving pleasure to thousands and all you do is scratch it!

Saint-Saëns had championed Brahms as against Wagner and had not embraced Modernism in the controversies of the time: he was latterly considered a reactionary by some – I would warmly sympathise with the gifted Frenchman on this issue.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=tVCvJZtzkqQ Saint-Saëns 2^nd Piano Concerto

Anton Bruckner (1824-96) was such an odd-ball personally that this gets in the way of appreciating his music. Born in Linz, Austria, he was physically unprepossessing and wholly lacking in self-esteem and confidence. His inferiority complex led him to change the scores of his works constantly if they were criticised, so definitive versions are elusive, creating what musicologists call The Bruckner Problem. He hero-worshipped Wagner in the most obsequious manner. His inability to find a wife led him to stalk adolescent girls. A pious Catholic, Bruckner is much associated with the St Florian Monastery near Linz, where he was organist and composed sacred music in inspiring surroundings. His friend, Gustav Mahler, described him as Half simpleton, half God.

He created 11 symphonies – the 4^th (the Romantic) and the 7^th being particularly admired for their harmonic language, his orchestrations in the style of Wagner and his structure following Beethoven. Their length is noteworthy, perhaps an influence from Mahler, one of whose symphonies a wit dubbed The Interminable! Bruckner also produced a large body of sacred music, motets, masses, Te Deums etc. His music was judged particularly German and it was usurped and glorified by the Nazis who played the solemn but undeniably impressive Adagio from the 7^th Symphony on the radio to mark the fall of Stalingrad and the death of Hitler.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=yjJprIS4zQE Adagio from the 7^th Symphony by Bruckner

Anton Bruckner

Bruckner's organ at St Florian, Linz

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov (1844-1908) was a largely self-taught composer, born into a naval family East of St Petersburg. He went to naval college, but his talent for music soon manifested itself, even though he pursued a naval career until the 1880s. He became a founder of The Five, a group of brilliant nationalist composers admiring Glinka, comprising their leader and mentor Balakirev, Borodin, Mussorgsky, Cesar Cui and Rimsky-Korsakov. They enjoyed the encouragement of Tchaikovsky and embodied Russian folk-songs and rhythms in their work. Western traditions and themes were not neglected and Rimsky-Korsakov joined a course at the Conservatoire at St Petersburg to catch up on his formal musical education. The orchestrations of Rimsky-Korsakov helped create a distinctive Russian School: He wrote a substantial body of work including 15 operas but is best known for his orchestral suites Scheherazade (1889), describing the Arabian Nights, Capriccio Espagnol, with lively Spanish themes, and The Russian Easter Festival Overture, incorporating tunes from the Orthodox liturgy. His Beechamesque “lollipop” The Flight of the Bumble-bee (1899) is from one of his Oriental operas.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lh6mDL-VwYw Capriccio Espagnol by Rimsky-Korsakov

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov

It is always difficult to write about music – to describe the inexpressible. It is doubly difficult when the writer has scant expertise and only “knows what he likes”. My tastes are conservative and yet I cannot support Beecham’s jibe when asked if he had conducted Stockhausen No, I have not conducted any, but I once trod on some! Innovation and experiment must be encouraged in music as in most other spheres. My four composers will surely reward further study.

SMD

3.11.16

Text Copyright © Sidney Donald 2016