profitable insomia

Came across this fascinating link when thinking about musical opportunities in years ahead...

http://www.calvin.edu/worship/stories/ethnodoxology.php

I particularly enjoyed what various peoples had to say about the Hallelujah Chorus from Handel's Messiah: like a jet engine, "crying music" or “not steady.” This last group "wondered how a song with so many high and low pitches and loud and soft volumes could be considered fine art". Ouch.

Also managed to rip 18 more albums to the back-up drive. Don't want to take all 600 CDs to the othe side of the world when they can sit in the attic and something the size of a large filofax can do the business.

Which is not to say that doing without most of my sleep tonight will be pain free in the hours to come. Perhaps the possible collapse of the old laptop has been preying on my mind rather too much. There are a LOT of files on there (not backed up since about Christmas, alas) I would be very sad to lose! And almost all of our projects for the next 6 weeks will be up the creek... Back to praying not preying.

vignettes from the great clear out (2)

Old music is getting the once-over at the moment. A few sad volumes have decayed so much (or are missing the solo parts) and have had to be junked, which feels very wrong. One simply shouldn't throw books away, especially not sheet music!

Came across some compositions by me. A work claiming to be the solo piano arrangement of the finale of a concerto in A major (entered into a "perform your own composition" class at the Mid-Somerset Festival in 1996?), which never actually existed in any other form except for several drafts of the first 20 bars of so full score. There are a great many drafts of the most recent classical piece I tried to compose - sometimes for clarinet, sometimes viola, sometimes euphonium, and with various attempts at writing out the piano part. A sad end to what could have become quite a nice pastiche work if on;y I'd had the time!

Also came across equivalent material from the 60s in the form of Gordon F's sketchbooks. More completed compositions than I managed - lots of short works for intermediate piano, and the drafts for his excellent Prelude & Fugue, which I've performed a few times.

Plus the copies of pieces I was asked to record for my sister to sing a few years back when she was well enough to be going to the Welsh College of Music and Drama for woodwind and voice on Saturdays. And a lovely handwritten note (her writing is a perfect feminine version of Ad's!)

...
If I didn't have man flu and thus no strength to spare I'd be bawling me eyes out at all these dusty home-made pieces of culture and history.

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.

just watched School of Rock

It rocks.

Kirk on resurrection in Christianity Today

A splendid article I need to mull on later, and work out how to pass on all its good points when people ask me tricky questions, which happens from time to time!

maybe Orthodoxy is everything... ;-)

Searching online for David Thomas' discussion of the dating of Paul of Antioch's Letter to a Muslim Friend (as you do), I stumbled upon this blog, which opened a window onto modern Orthodox Christian experience.

Most interesting indeed, and one to return to when I have two-and-a-half hours spare (possibly in July) is this lecture by a real scholar, Roman Catholic professor Sidney Griffith. His breadth of learning and ability to synthesize and interpret the complexity of Middle Eastern Christian history in its fragmentary and repeatedly politicized context is outstanding. I've read most of his publications, and if I had time I'd read them all!

Geography is everything

...as a teacher at my school used to say, and as my brother, who now teaches it at a posh and overachieving school (even more than the one we went to!) is fond of reminding me.

Well, here's a fascinating Christian geographer's blog. It's not all maps and colouring in, you know.

So interesting that I'm putting it in the sidebar too, if I can remember how to do that...

no Psalm 8 without Hebrews

Jesus Christ is the one who makes most sense of that Psalm and indeed of everything.

And while we're on the subject of nostalgia, Hebrews and Psalm 8 were right there at the start of this blog (eke and mild and Hebrews 13). Glad to know I haven't moved on from what is important, but, rather, I ought to have moved further into it. Like the fractals, I hope to be going round and round, not in circles of emptiness, but in spirals of ever-increasing richness. That's what growing up is about, and thus what growing up into Christ all the more so. And, of course, it can't be done without Christian brothers and sisters, so praise the Lord for the church, too.

nostalgia and productive chat

We had Tim Keller from Redeemer Presbyterian in Cambridge last week to speak at Great St Mary's the Corn Exchange for "Passion for Life". Saturday (which I didn't hear) was the Reason for God; Sunday (which I did) was Counterfeit Gods. Each evening was loosely based on key ideas from his two best-selling books. By all accounts the Sunday one was better - I certainly found it stimulating, and it contributed greatly to the conversation started between Dave and Dave months ago, which I joined in the Panton Arms shortly before we wandered up to hear Keller.

What a great chat that was - stimulating and intimate, the history of philosophy, the perspective of faith, music, searching, questioning, formulating, reformulating, just what our brains were made for. Looking forward to continuing. Probably have to read some Schopenhauer, now...

It really took me back to the panelled rooms of Downing College at the end ofthe last century, staying up all night with green tea and my agnostic best friend and best man, whiling away the hours on everything - not to mention back to the studying itself, a historical whip-round political thought and ethics from Plato to Nietzsche (in amongst more prosaic [and poetic for that matter] stuff on medieval social history or Renaissance literature).

And that got me thinking about another friend who stayed up all night patiently trying to explain chemistry to me (in those days I was still under the impression that A-level chemistry was "true" and was pleased with myself for having done some science as well as all the arty-farty business), while writing beautiful fractals on the computer. We managed to discuss Reformed theology and the Christian life quite a bit, too, and it was great to see him again at my 30th in the summer after a gap of many years.

Praise the Lord for such wonderful experiences, and for keeping me following him since then. What a wonderful world, what wonderful creatures, what a wonderful Creator.

 O LORD, our Lord, 
  how majestic is your name in all the earth! 
  You have set your glory 
  above the heavens. 

 From the lips of children and infants 
  you have ordained praise
  because of your enemies, 
  to silence the foe and the avenger. 

 When I consider your heavens, 
  the work of your fingers, 
  the moon and the stars, 
  which you have set in place, 

 what is man that you are mindful of him, 
  the son of man that you care for him? 

 You made him a little lower than the heavenly beings [c] 
  and crowned him with glory and honor. 

 You made him ruler over the works of your hands; 
  you put everything under his feet: 

 all flocks and herds, 
  and the beasts of the field, 

 the birds of the air, 
  and the fish of the sea, 
  all that swim the paths of the seas. 

 O LORD, our Lord, 
  how majestic is your name in all the earth!

Economist and the earthly city

I am 5 days behind on The Economist (i.e. last Friday’s has not yet been opened). Either my bowels are moving more quickly than usual (the magazines are generally stored in the bathroom), or else it’s been a productive week in other areas of endeavour. Anyhow, as I finished off last week’s edition this morning, I was taken with the style of the obituary, as often happens. The page on Alexander Haig (American General, White House Chief of Staff under Nixon, head of NATO, foreign policy spokesman for Reagan, etc, etc) closed with a sweet metaphor from the General’s book Caveat, riffed by the journalist…

“The [Reagan] White House was as mysterious as a ghost ship; you heard the creak of the rigging and the groan of the timbers and sometimes even glimpsed the crew on deck. But which of the crew had the helm? …It was impossible to know…

If someone evidently had the helm, General Haig saluted. If not, rather than let drift and uncertainty give any comfort to America’s enemies, he had acquired the habit of seizing the wheel himself.”

Grand sentiments, steely nerves, national business – all in a day’s work for the rich and powerful, I suppose. Even the little people like me can get dewy-eyed about this sort of stirring stuff, actual or fictional (as happened when I re-watched the ludicrous yet strangely charming cornfest that is Independence Day over lunch on Tuesday). But let’s be aware of the mythic and ideological guises of the state, the nation, human hierarchies, construals of enemies, and so forth. Let’s remember what really lasts, where the city with foundations comes from, who it comes from, and what really counts...

the mini-series has concluded

Jane and I have loved the Grieg-Beethoven combo over the past year or so, and audiences seem to have got into the swing of things, too. Wednesday witnessed a very swashbuckling performance of Beethoven 3 and Grieg 3, and we hope to repeat it with less swash for the University of the Third Age (what a good idea that is) next week.

Ludvig van Beethoven (1770-1827)

Violin Sonata No.3 in E flat, Op.12, No.3

I Allegro con spirito

II Adagio con molt’ espresione

III Rondo (Allegro molto)

Beethoven’s first three violin sonatas were dedicated to his teacher, Salieri (an Italian composer who didn’t poison Mozart). They display clear adherence to classical forms and were designated sonatas ‘for piano and violin’, with the emphasis definitely on the piano. In these early works Beethoven was writing music for the concert platform and music to pay the bills, not music driven by a need to express deep inner passions. There is a certain foursquare-ness to the design of this sonata. Nevertheless, more than its fellows in Op.12, this third work looks forwards. The opening Allegro sticks to the letter of classical sonata form, but is busting with dark, wayward harmonies and crams in far more notes than one might expect from such a stately opening. The Adagio’s extended coda gives space for plenty of jolts and surprises, characteristic of the composer’s maturity. In the final Rondo Beethoven employs his skills in counterpoint to good effect, along with a gift for folksy melody that one normally associates with Dvořák or Grieg.

Edvard Grieg (1843-1907)

Violin Sonata No.3 in C minor, Op.45

I Allegro molto e appassionato – Presto

II Allegretto espressivo alla Romanza – Allegro molto – Tempo I

III Allegro animato – Prestissimo

Twenty years separate Grieg’s second and third violin sonatas. The earlier work was carefree, experimental in form and infused with Scandinavian folk music. This sonata – and particularly the first movement – is angry, extremely simple in structure and more sparing in its melodic inspiration. The opening theme rushes around before collapsing into the more lilting second subject. The development offers mystical cascades and a violent bass, ending up in a flurry of gruff diminished chords that fade away into a quiet false recapitulation. The real recap is impossible to miss! And see if you can spot Grieg’s jazz moment just before the coda. Norway seems to exercise more influence over the sweeter second movement, a simple ABA of melodies that do the hard work and various patterns of accompaniment that don’t. In the C minor third movement, a binary AB/A’B’, we are subjected to constant buzzing and foot-stomping (A) alternating with pure romantic indulgence (B). The insistent coda may be in C major, but was Grieg protesting too much in this, his final chamber work?

bring back the Luddites!

I'm not quite sure what to make of this. I used to think I could understand most modern English prose. I also used to think that the University of Cambridge was immune to the excesses of garbled postmodern opacity. Alas, not. Here is the abstract of a paper delivered to the Literary Theory Seminar yesterday evening. My provisional verdict on it is "complete twaddle". It's not just a pointless piece of abstract musing or antiquarian interest (I found plenty of examples of those as a student, and might even have been responsible for some), it's truly, madly, deeply incomprehensible.

This essay explores how to find a way of being in the world at a time when
common meanings become scarcer and the gauntness of unmediated objective
existence starker. A recent study of the poetics of place in modern French
writing (by Steven Winspur) stresses the irreducibility of ontic presence
as itself revelatory. I argue that the way humans encounter objects and
places is more problematic, not because "absolute contingency" (Curry 1999)
is not a given but because the "way" along which it is given offers a
threshold of relation which is hyperbolic. The conditions for
re-enchantment do exist, but as part of a poverty of dependent response
making itself "less" in order to "greet" the object as sacrally given, but
in a way which does not disperse the enigmatic commonality of that
givenness.

The mute presence of the non-modernist spear-grass in Wordsworth's Ruined
Cottage is at once chastened and in excess of the naturalistic. What
exceeds the naturalistic is a givenness not reducible to the conditions of
description of the object. Here a plenitude of existence is already
diminished but retains its role as gift amid the scarcity of its own
reception. This section involves some debate with Paul H Fry's radically
ontic reading of Wordsworth's poetics.

The second part of the essay reflects on some fragmentary remarks in
Merleau Ponty's The Visible and the Invisible, Jean Luc Marion's notion of
the "adonné" and the themes of call and response in Jean Louis Chretien,
before adducing William Desmond's sense of the "between" further developed
in John Milbank's writing on diagonals. The between is not a mediation but
the sheerly disjunctive porosity of being, whereby nothingness is itself
open to divine invitation.

Any ethics of responsiveness (Wheeler, 2008) should include a response to
the inaffordance of origin, not as a negative idealism, but as the apex of
what it is to live in relation to existence under the radical poverty of
gift. My argument concludes that the scarcity of origin finds itself rooted
in the hyperbolic, ie in an earth offered sacral horizons, not just
frugally from within but as an active (festive) poverty before, which
generates ritual and art.

I then began to read the paper itself, just in case it got any clearer...

creeping out of the Luddite era

Yukie kindly uploaded our recent concert onto youtube in various slices.

Mozart: Sonata for Keyboard Duet in C, KV.521

(1st mvt)
(2nd mvt)
(3rd mvt)

Brahms: Variations on a Theme by Schumann, Op.23 
(part 1)
(part 2)

Satie: La Belle Excentrique - serious fantasy 
four odd movements

more letters

While I was away in a mobile phone blackspot last week my post was opened and a message left on my mobile (which I could just about pick up if I held the thing upside down while standing next to the external kitchen door of the Harby Centre, so long as I didn't move my head at any point!) by the lovely post-opener to the effect that I had passed a music exam with distinction.

I was quite chuffed, as it was the Associated Board's LRSM, the second-highest diploma one can get round here, and I'd had to wait about 7 nervy weeks to hear the result. In fact, I was awarded a distinction, which was extremely pleasing, since when I took the exam in the heady summer of 1998 (the last time I did anything exam-like on the piano) I failed!

I don't think I've got all that much better over the last 12 years, but I am sure that the ABRSM's diplomas have got a lot easier. Just compare the syllabus pre- and post-2005. Back in the good old days there was a 3-hour essay-based repertoire paper and a long listening test that included fiendish 4-part dictation... before you could get anywhere near the recital! This time it was just a long programme note and viva that was required in addition to the keyboar-based stuff.

So, chuffed indeed, but well aware that the value of the piece of paper has been roughly in keeping with the value of sterling over the past decade!

more recent Orthodox missiology

Well-meaning attempts at proclamation-in-power, or less well-meaning cynical manipulation of religion for secular political ends has dogged the Roman Catholic Church more than any other, but the Protestant churches have been by no means free from such taint, nor have the Orthodox.

Recent missiological writings from the mainstream and historic denominations have tended to shy away from exclusivist positions and from what evangelicals would recognise as direct proclamation of the gospel. The wording of many WCC documents, and the thoughts of today's Orthodox spokespeople on mission is often rather mealy. Alternately uplifting and hand-waving, these writings express an ambivalent view of cultural power.

On the one hand, we read of the great importance of "inculturation" (granted) which 'occurs when Christians express their faith in the symbols and images of their respective culture. The best way to stimulate the process of inculturation is to participate in the struggle of the less privileged for their liberation.'

Lovely, but why is Vladimir of Kiev still celebrated (nay, revered) by the Orthodox? A brute who was impressed by a showy Byzantine liturgical celebration (aimed straight at the elites of its day) and who forced his people to be baptized in a river, thereby 'accepting the Christian faith' on behalf of the Rus, and perpetuating in a new place a 'gospel' of power and a church so violently implicated in the workings of the earthly city that its integrity as a church has often been obscured...

[The quotation is from a 1982 WCC document, Mission and Evangelism: An Ecumenical Affirmation, recorded with approval by Ion Bria, a leading Orthodox missiologist and academic, in his Go forth in peace: Orthodox perspectives on mission (Geneva: WCC, 1986), pp.80-81.]