last concert with Jane

...and the penultimate one in Cambridge for quite some time, if all goes according to plan with our shift eastwards. I was under the influence of man-flu, ibuprofen and paracetemol so my emotions were suppressed in the service of finger art, but it was still exhilarating and moving (for the performers, at least, though the audience seemed quite happy, too!) It was nice to end with Brahms 3, which has long been a goal, and very gracious of Jane to indulge me by learning my Fantasy in G minor, which has been performed once before, in Cricklade College, Andover, by another great violinist, Daphne Moody - also a pupil of Grinke in the 70s... small world! There were quite a few kids in the audience last Wednesday at the URC, and they all said they liked my piece the best - so take that, Mozart & Brahms.

Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart
Sonata No.18 in F major
Andante cantabile
Allegro
Andante con variazione

Written in 1788, this was Mozart’s final violin sonata, though by no means his most dramatic. There is an almost serene gentleness to the outer movements, with touches of cheeky humour, and only the central Allegro (in sonata form) betrays any agitation. As was customary for the classical period, the piano takes centre stage and most of the good melodies.

Johannes Brahms
Sonata No.3 in D minor, Op.108
Allegro
Adagio
Un poco presto e con sentimento
Presto agitato

Brahms’ last violin sonata is a much darker, brooding work. Mystery, and a sense of circling round something unpleasant characterises the opening movement. There is tremendous stasis in the harmony—the whole development section is worked out over a dominant pedal, like an insistent drum beat, a menace that is only finally put to rest in the coda over a tonic pedal. The slow movement brings much needed warmth before an ambiguous scherzo and brutal finale.
In this last movements the composer completely upsets the pulse and the expected rhythms, pushing his idiom and his interpreters to their limits.

yours truly
Fantasy in G minor (1998)

This Fantasy is a teenage pastiche of all that I loved about romantic virtuoso music. Taking in Verdi’s Requiem, Grieg’s Piano Concerto and Peer Gynt Suite, James Bond and a Rachmaninov prelude (plus a few others) I weave together three themes—one martial, two reflective—in various minor keys, before the triumphant conclusion in the tonic major. There are a lot of notes—I apologise for that… what can I say? I was young and foolish.

vignettes from the great clear-out (1)

Some old sheets of glossy local authority propaganda, on that back of which Nick had written out the chords for some jazz standards so that I could provide the lower part of some 4-hands jazz a few years ago when he visited us in TG. He does have a wonderfully florid hand!

Nostalgia at every turn, as our house has spilled its guts all over the floors.

Art and the artiness of being

was the subject of a little email conversation I had recently with a distinguished evangelical pastor ;-) in South Leicestershire, no less... ;-)

After our NTI seminar on aesthetics back in April, he asked...

I also wanted to (if you have time) continue a little conversation about art that you began on Friday when you asked the question "on what grounds should we judge art?"

I think you asked it when I was madly defending Shrek 2 for its cinematic purpose, and you rightly asked "well, if you're defending Shrek 2, how can\ we judge something as bad art?"

Here's what Rookmaaker says:

"Some people feel we ought to define the principle of art solely by the aesthetic. Is this not the core of art? Is not this its true meaning? ...Personally I have many doubts about this...The strange thing is that artists, almost without exception, do strive to express something in their art, and only rarely are happy with the aesthetic element alone. To me, this is one of the proofs that any theory that goes too much in this direction is out of touch with real artistic practice... Another question often raised is this. Should art be criticized on two levels, one aesthetic, the other moral? I think not. First, the term 'moral' is too narrow. It is better to speak of content, or expression, or portrayal of reality..."

Of course his argument goes deeper than this, but I was wondering what you thought were the right grounds on which to judge art.

And I replied in a not-terribly-theorized fashion, along the lines of...

On the question of art, I like Rookmaaker's point there, and think that
we should have (at least?) two ways of judging art simultaneously, the
aesthetic and the moral. On aesthetic grounds there's lots of argument
to be had over what the right standards are to use, of course! And on
moral grounds, I like what HR says about not merely attending to
'content' or 'morality', but on a broader spectrum of things. I wonder [and only the Lord knows what I intended to write here - I unaccountably broke off this sentence!]

Another question worth thinking about is how the art is used, and how it
can be used. It seems to me that we need to look at this because from
the viewer/listener's point of view that is he prime consideration. We
can discuss the morality of art in the abstrct all we like, and talk
about, e.g., camera angles, cinematography, etc, but is it possible to
watch 'Hostel' (to pick a random example) in any other way than either
relish or prurience towards its goriness? If not, then in neither case
is the attitude worth having, and I'm not sure that any amount of 'good'
film-making can justify it being used as art.

So, I think I'm advocating a full-orbed hermeneutic of art - descriptive
(moral check on content), structuralist (the aesthetic, what the work
is), and reader-response (how it is used). Maybe with a combination of
all three measures we can arrive at a total score for each work of art!?
However, it must score above/below a certain threshold on each one to be
worth it.

What do you think? Perhaps we need some more examples...

And then I tried out this approach on Serenity.

Generosity of friends

The little things are important. Some Polish friends of ours nipped back home to see family and on their return to Cambridge brought us back a duce of local sausages. A small, dark one made from wild boar, and a longer, folded one (you know, in the fun way continental sausages are, but British sausages never seem to be!) of more domesticated meat. Absolutely delicious – on toast, on bread, on pizza, in lentil stew, neat as a midnight snack – in three meals a day for the last five days.

L

I lost, I lost!

Last weekend there was something of a Downing College reunion in Huddersfield – a surprisingly attractive place. A large number of games were played at the home of a certain small businessman and “UK writer”. These games were played by said writer, his former room-mate and my best man, me and in some cases by firstwriter’s long-suffering wife. I came out loser in almost every scenario…

500
Aka “Bridge for Idiots”. A great game. Poor firstwriter was dealt duff hands in every round but still managed to win, in conjunction with our card sharp (NJB). We stayed up rather late on the first evening playing this.

Risk
Never having played proper world domination Risk before I approached this (on the second night) with a certain amount of excess adrenalin. Even being the only player to be eliminated from the game after 5 hours of play could not dampen my enthusiasm. This was partly because I saw the writing on the wall a few turns before the end and decided to do a Mao, concentrating my forces in a single province in Asia (initially China) and then marching around to victory. Or so I hoped… I was actually cornered in Siam and wiped out in a pincer attack from Indonesia and India (imagine if that had happened in 1949!) Still, it cost my attacker considerably more armies than I lost. Something of a pyrrhic victory for him, as the other two players were then poised to carve him up, but an honourable three-way draw was then (propsed and brokered by me) and agreed. I awarded myself the carnage prize for the most enemy armies destroyed, a decent consolation. Interestingly the decisive province in the game turned out to be Yakutsk - no battles were fought on or from it, but after a few turns its owner kept reinforcing it heavily preventing anyone (especially me) from expanding throughout Asia until it was too late.

Wii Sports (tennis)
Wrist strain and collision were the hallmarks, along with constant defeat. The married team were too coordinated for N and I.

Wii Mariokart
I managed not to be 12th in every race I played, but that’s about the extent of my achievement. A 5-year-old could have beat me – and, in fact, did on several occasions.

Triple Crown
Mancala, Abalone and Reversi (Othello). One of the triumvirate played two games at once, the simultaneous handicap passing to the next player as soon as someone was defeated. The games swapped in and out after two matches had been played of each one. There were three games of Reversi (no wins for me), five games of Mancala (one win for me) and three games of Abalone (a shock double victory and no defeats for me!), which revealed that I was generally the loser – the other two won four matches each.

Never before have I lost so many games and enjoyed myself quite so much!

Heywood (Lancs) was the next stop on the grand northern tour for a long-overdue reunion with a chemical engineer who is also a Scrabble King. We tried Banangrams, which is like Take Two, a game played with Scrabble tiles which need to be arranged and rearranged at top speed into a little crossword formation. I managed to distinguish myself here, too. I blame it on lack of sleep through 500 and Risk earlier in the weekend!

Wordsmiths

The former inhabitants of I3, Downing College (1999-2001) and I are getting together in the north at the end of this month. After those heady student days we have now all grown up and got married. One of us even has children! Punctuated by clunky prose blocks from me, this is how the I3-ites have arranged things...

JPD
Good evening, gents, if gents you be!
Oh won't you come and dance with me?
By "dance" I mean to come; to stay;
A winter's night to while away.
Around the time of Yule, perhaps?
Before another year hath lapsed;
Before another year is seen
Since we three dined on mush so green;
Since we three played our silly games
That overwrought our feeble brains.
My folks can lend accommodation,
Or at our house you may be stationed,
So if agreed that meet we should,
Let us discuss when would be good,
And when your fem'nine selves you'll yield
To seasonal joys of Huddersfield!

NJB
This invitation is so kind
It wakens memories in my mind
Of games we played and mush we ate
And evenings when we stayed up late.
At Christmas we may surely gather,
Or earlier, if James, you would rather:
October offers up a chance
For me to join this so-called "dance".
A week's leave I have yet to take
And could go north, for old time's sake,
Provided that this suits us all
Especially our host, dear Paul.
Tell me, you gents, if gents you be
If you concur or disagree.

[will the sourthern wives be joining us?]

NJB
It will be I, and I alone,
To sojourn at the Dyson home,
When to that hallowed hall I wend:
Roll on October's last weekend!

JPD
Okay, gents -- the time is fast;
the date is set; the die is cast.
So when you're here, where wouldst thou stay?
Knowing that you're nearly gay
Perhaps you'd share a sofa bed?
(there is another couch instead
if either of you feel alarmed
at lying in each other's arms)
but if you want more privacy
my parents' is the place to be.
Please, feel free, to quick-confer,
then tell me which you would prefer.

[I could get to Halifax for 7pm...]

JPD
Halifax station could be done,
but Huddersfield's the closer one.
As regards suggested time
the hour of seven will be fine.
May I assume that on arrival
you'll need be fed for your survival?


In the presence of such wit, I am practically mute. I expect I'll have something to say at the end of October, though.

Illness and work

At least a couple of my friends are seriously dedicated to their work. In a good way, not just in a bad way. This is illustrated by what happens when they get ill. They soldier in anyway. One friend works for builders merchants and wholesalers, one is a teacher. Even though they get paid for being ill once in a while they almost never miss a day of work.

Wow.

Me, I was quite happy to get a day off when ill, and I wasn’t complaining about the generous sick leave legislation we have in the UK. But now I’m self-employed it’s slightly more annoying to be ill. Which is probably just my greed and lack of contentment in Christ talking. Which temporarily blinds me to the fact that, actually, it’s never really fun being ill, it’s just that certain types of job aren’t so fun or satisfying that missing a day of work once in a while isn’t a small relief in itself quite independent of the reason for being off.

All that twaddle was prompted by the first strike (2 weeks ago) of the man-flu for around 18 months. I have now fully recovered, so you can breathe a sigh of relief that no more extraneous sympathy will be required.

Philippines chess and more important things

The Philippines is a surprisingly distinguished chess nation - the world's first Asian Grandmaster (E. Torre) was from the Philippines and the youngest Grandmaster in the world right now is Wesley So, who is shooting up and up at the moment.

A curiosity to note: Filipino IM Tan-Cardoso won this stormingly weird game against David Bronstein, costing the wizard a shot at the world title in 1958.

More importantly, the gospel is advancing in the archipelago despite entrenched nominal and syncretistic Catholicism and despite a terrible history of Muslim-Christian encounter in its southern islands (Jonathan Fuller's recent book on the subject, Cross Currents, published by OMF in 2005, is one of the best historical books I have read [and I have read hundreds!] truly bringing his subject alive in a loving and fully Christian fashion).

And we are getting to know some lovely Filipino believers at Hope Community Church as we make our tiny contribution to the body of Christ here in Cambridge.

Prof Richard Bras

The new father has returned to the blogosphere! Some quality thoughts on a verse that is one of my favourites as well. I enjoy it because of its setting. The threefold attack on Christ by successive waves of the establishment intelligensia, just before they have him killed.

To the first question (is it lawful to pay taxes to Caesar?) Jesus gives a 'proper' response, which is to say that he accepts the question as valid and uses it as a springboard for a cutting response about covenant fidelity to YHWH. After all, YHWH's image is much more prominent and important than any mere Caesar's is!

To the second, from the Saducees, he takes an 'orthodox' Jewish line, as it were. The response is just plain rude - no fancy work. Direct and to the point.

The third - well, look at that one yourself...

BHWE Monday

What is this? Some sort of diary!?

Anyway, typical grey bank holiday activities. With Kate's help I strung together a set of 15 or so 30-second excerpts (try typing that one quickly!) of classical music designed to express/portray/exemplify (I'm not going to go into the philosophy of art at this point, as I don't understand it!) emotions from very miserable up to moderately happy. This was to assist a history teacher friend from church who has asked her class to present their verdict on the debate over Southern Slavery in the US: how decent were the slaves' conditions, and how well off were they?

I trust that the kids will be able to make use of the opening 60 seconds of...

Bach, Brandenburg Concerto No.6, 1st mvt (busy and cheery)
Kabelevsky, Piano Concerto No.3, 1st mvt (madcap and busy)
Rachmaninov, Suite for 2 Pianos, Romanza (yearning and wistul)
Sibelius, Symphony No. 5, 3rd mvt (noble and positive, but laborious)
Brumel, Lamentations (ambiguous; reflective but no strong minors)
Bliss, Adam Zero, The Stage (ambivalent)
Dvorak, Symphony No. 8, 1st mvt (sad but sometimes hopeful)
Bach, Violin Sonata in D minor, Allemande (busy and fairly grim)
Tallis, Lamentations I (slow and mournful)
Glass, Facade (slow and mournful)
Doyle, Sense and Sensibility, Combe Magna (sighs and darkness, but not unmitigated)
Reich, Eight Lines (hammer and tongs)
Khachaturian, Piano Concerto, 1st mvt (melodrama, noise and brutality)
Brahms Symphony No.1, 1st mvt (relentless, slow, effort)
Brahms, Symphony No. 4, 4th mvt (crash bang, hard work)
Tchaikovsky, Symphony No.6, 4th mvt (despair)

What would your sliding scale of 16 have been?

Then I assisted Kate in sorting out all the photos we used to decorate our wedding reception almost 4 years ago, returning them to their albums. Nothing like procrastination to make a job ultimately very satisfying. And nothing like old university and family photos to make me misty-eyed, sometimes sad, usually laughing, and grateful to God for his goodness over the last 27 years.

While that was going on we watched Hitchcock's Notorious with one eye each (just as stylised as Rushmore though without surprises), were occasionally interrupted by visits from friends, visits to the garden centre and food.

BHWE Sunday

Praise the Lord for another great day. A real answer to prayer. I managed to get through the tricky theological questions surrounding parables, with the help of a bowl of dodgy flour and a string of immitation pearls (priceless in the sense that I gave the word aged 7 - 'with no value' - a sense that persisted for many years...)

Celebration of the Lord's Supper - hurrah! Lots of great chat with people at church. Back home to feed 17 people, including several neighbours and a friend of ours from Japan who we hadn't seen for months. More answers to prayer and tremendous fun.

Could have carried on for a lot longer, but at 4pm rushed across Cherry Hinton to take a service at an old people's home that we visit every fortnight. Managed some lovely conversation with a couple of residents who are often unable to speak or communicate, and a really challenging conversation with one lady who is razor-sharp mentally, and sadly, still agnostic. Kate and she talk knitting and the gospel regularly, though.

Playing piano at the evening service and then off to a concert of contemporary music. Noisy and odd, but stimulating. Geoffrey Poole, Grieg (some unusual folk music that sounded very 20th century!) Ligeti, some Dutch guy for solo flute and also a big work by a friend, Edmund Bloxam (composer to watch in the future). Couldn't quite get my head round some of the sentiments in the programme notes, or some of the noises, but it was enjoyable nonetheless, and I'm always in awe of those who can string something artistic together coherently. And the concert kicked off with jazz piano by a good friend, Andy, who is a clarinet maestro but has been excercising himself at the keyboard over the last few years while allegedly training to be a doctor...

What an exhausting day!

Cambridge

One of the great things about living in Cambridge is that I often feel very small. Almost everybody I meet is cleverer or more dilligent than me. Just the other week I had lunch in the Materials Science Dept. of the University with Dr Kawasaki, a Japanese friend who comes to our church. He is studying/developing carbon nano-chip technology and new tpes of computer memory, using, among other things, a big furnace that employs infra-red waves to heat substances to 1000 degrees inside 10 seconds (how cool is that!?)

When I work out how to stick pictures on this blog I will show you the diagrams he drew for me on a scrap paper as he graciously tried to explain to me what he was up to. The wow factor is big here. And my wonder increases every week at the God who gave us such tools (as the organisation and transmission of knowledge and technology) in order that we might understand, fill and subdue this fabulous earth he has made for us.

And how exciting it is for us at Rock that so many from overseas, particularly Japan, come to be part of our community as we seek to worship God and witness to them of His love. I pray that God would graciously extend his mercy to all those who visit the church who are not yet believers in Jesus, so that we might rejoice all the more at His great salvation.

Meek(s) and Milder

Having children seems to work a civilising influence on men of my acquaintance. I'm thinking particularly of a good friend, Michael, whose wife and three tiny daughters have smoothed from mere genius engineer into family man and genius engineer. The Meeks family have generously fed us on many occasions since they started up!

As an undergraduate, I didn't quite realise what a great influence Michael was having on the Christians in college. He was in his third year when I arrived at Downing. His beard, his eccentricities and his uncompromising faith - never afraid to ask hard questions or stand up for Christ - really bolstered my walk with God, and I'm sure that was true for many of my peers. I've only come to realise what I owe to older Christians like him as I've grown up a little and got married to an older Christian myself (older by 2 months!)

Although hearty, Michael is extremely humble, and so until recently I didn't realise quite how famous, yea distinguished he is. The world of (opensource) software is a pretty closed book to me, but even a dusty artist can see that its social and technological significance is pretty vast. Praise God for men like him. The words of Paul to the church in Philippi are apt...

Join with others in following my example, brothers, and take note of those who live according to the pattern we gave you. For, as I have often told you before and now say again even with tears, many live as enemies of the cross of Christ. Their destiny is destruction, their god is their stomach, and their glory is in their shame. Their mind is on earthly things. But our citizenship is in heaven. And we eagerly await a Saviour from there, the Lord Jesus Christ, who, by the power that enables him to bring everything under his control, will transform our lowly bodies so that they will be like his glorious body.