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A land without music? Parry, Holst and Elgar to you, Schmitz
Of all the wounding things that foreigners have said about the English people, it is hard to think of an insult more savage than that directed at this country in 1904. They have called us perfidious. They have called us a nation of shopkeepers. They have said that we are in love with our nannies. Nowadays they tell us that we are the fattest, drunkest people in Europe, and that our children leave primary school with the vaguest understanding of reading and writing.
At all these barbs, we just take a deep breath. But when a German critic called Oscar Adolf Hermann Schmitz composed a dithyramb of abuse of the English cultural scene, just over 100 years ago, he included a jibe from which we have never really recovered. It stung. It made us blink like puppies suddenly kicked, and until now we have never had the nerve to fire back at Schmitz — because we have a terrible feeling that he may have been on to something. England, he said, is Das Land Ohne Musik.
Since this is nowadays — thanks to Labour’s abolition of modern languages — a land without German, I will translate. England is the country without music, said Schmitz, and in his verdict on our attainments he was, for a German, quite mild. In the 1840s, the German poet Heinrich Heine had been on a tour of England, and had soaked up quite a lot of the early Victorian cultural scene: the wife crunching something out on the upright piano, the chap in whiskers yodelling over her shoulder.
advertisementTeufel! said the German. Mein Gott! “These people have no ear either for rhythm or music and their unnatural passion for piano playing and singing is all the more repulsive. Nothing on Earth is more terrible than English music,” said the shell-shocked aesthete, “except English painting.”
And how have we reacted to these teutonic assaults, my friends? I am afraid we have responded with more or less complete acquiescence. We cough. We shuffle and we hang our heads. We look at the world’s top composers, the real megastars, and in the first rank we see nothing but Germans or Austrians: Bach, Beethoven, Mozart. And when we get on to the second rank we find Wagner, Haydn, Rachmaninov, Shostakovitch, Mahler, Brahms, Verdi, Puccini, Mendelssohn and so on (extend the list as you like).
Where are our lads? What was going on in this country from about 1700 to 1900? There may have been plenty of Thomas Hardy-style scraping of fiddles and stamping of feet, and there may have been plenty of peasant lasses hitching up their skirts and dancing round the barn. But where is it now? How much of it has been recorded and how many original English compositions, dating from that period could you expect to find in a record store in Berlin?
It seems there was one chap called Thomas Linley, who died prematurely, in a boating accident, in 1777, and whose death was keenly lamented by Mozart. But it is stretching things to blame boating accidents for our failure to produce a first-rank composer from the entire romantic or classical period.
In our despair we turn to the deep socio-economic explanations. Perhaps it was our usual vice of snobbery; perhaps the English did not esteem the composers of music in the way they were esteemed on the Continent. Perhaps our monarchs spent too much time hunting or rogering to think it worth sponsoring the creation of great art.
Or perhaps we were simply too good at literature (where, of course, we have a series of heavyweight champs), and too blessed in our freedom of expression, so that artistic temperaments did not feel the necessity to sublimate their feelings in music or painting.
It sounds like a feeble excuse, doesn’t it? Whatever the cause, we have tended to acknowledge the dreadful truth of Schmitz’s insult, and in 1964 the critic Colin Wilson said that “much English music has the insipid flavour of a BBC variety orchestra playing an arrangement of a nursery rhyme”. English music has been the subject of reflexive embarrassment, like Morris dancing. We associate it instinctively with corduroy-jacketed professors in sandals, their spectacles fixed with Sellotape, descanting madrigals before Sunday lunch.
For children of my generation, the idea of great English composers was about as plausible as the idea of great English tennis players or the great English Austin Allegro. And as soon as you put it like that, you start to wonder whether we are, in fact, falling prey to the characteristic English vice, and doing ourselves down.
Because at the very moment that Schmitz was composing his insult, English music was on the verge of an extraordinary inflorescence, an explosion of talent that we have tended to forget — precisely because it is English. Parry and Vaughan Williams were founding the Royal College of Music, and leading British composers away from the German tendency, and there are many who would say that, for the rest of the 20th century, we left the Germans standing. This week in Dorchester on Thames, in the ancient and beautiful abbey with its perfect acoustics, I humbly invite you listen to the works of Vaughan Williams and Elgar and Holst, Britten and WH Reed, Algernon Ashton, Gerald Finzi and many others. There will be the BBC concert orchestra, Julian Lloyd Webber, and above all there will be the chance to test for yourselves the truth of what Schmitz had to say.
Now I must be frank with you. I am just the president of this English Music Festival, the first and quite possibly the last of its kind. I cannot vouch for the genius of all the pieces you may hear. Though I love music, and though I passionately want more music in schools, and more hymns, I should confess that I once failed Grade One piano.
I leave it to my colleague Simon Heffer, who raves about this stuff, and above all I hope to leave it to you to judge. But my proposition is that England overtook Germany, in music, at almost the moment Schmitz spoke; and even if you don’t go for Vaughan Williams, let me end with a knock-down argument. What would you rather take from the 20th century: the Beatles and the Rolling Stones, or Nina Hagen’s 99 Red Balloons? Put that in your pipe and smoke it, Schmitz.
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There were two blokes walking down the street. One was a composer. The other hadn’t any money either.
A change from Iraq, thank God. Yes Boris, you’re absolutely right - our Victorian composers knocked spots off those from the European jukeboxes of Germany and Austria. But I hate to say it, as we moved into the 20th century it was the French who were at the cutting edge. Some of the most glorious and inventive (at its time) music ever written came from the pens of Debussy, Milhaud, Poulenc, Messaien, Saint-Saens, Ravel, Fauré et al - and my top faves, Duruflé and Langlais.
Then came Charles Aznavour. Oh dear. Merde.
Well you can keep the Stones, actually.
Hey, why has nobody thought of this: maybe the Germans were drowning all the English composers! Aha! Let Mozart weep; Salieri was probably just hoping it would put him off his game.
And really, why must musical glory be considered a zero-sum game? If the English composers were great, well good for them. I, for one, don’t care who they were better than, nor to whom they were inferior. I’m an absolutist. I just want to know if they’re better than that godawful crap you people came out with in the early 20th Century.
By the way, was that a joke or a typo? Nina Hagen’s version of 99 Red Balloons would have been unmissable! As it is, Nena’s version sold several million copies, even though the original (in German) was better. An early lesson in how a pretty video can sell a song.
I winced a bit at second tier Wagner and is Bach really up there with Mozart and Beethoven? I wouldn’t know ( and I passed grade six)
I have to be honest and admit that this isn’t one of the finest of the Borisian genre. Recently the Gerrymandering article and the reply on the Chef scandal have been the highlights. On the other hand it slips down like crème caramel and I like the subject because in the end ,we are best . Elgar pulls off a last minute equaliser you might say.
I have seen the repeats of the Ken Russell docu-drama and I think its the cello Concerto which accompanies a boy tearing across the Malvern Hills on his horse. I occasionally listen to the opening sequence on a Jacqueline du Pré recording and it always gives me goosebumps . You have to book a long time in advance for the Elgar at the Proms and we are justifiably proud of him.
Thank you Boris for pointing the world domination of literature this “little England” has achieved, all on its own. We also invented modern democracy, trade unions, civil law , newspapers , football ( all good games in fact) and let us not forget our sweets. In France when you want a sherbet dib dab they try to palm you off with some awful creamy pastry; ugh. Why then do we need to ally ourselves so closely with our inferiors over the channel? Hmmmm?
And annuver fing…
Why is Boris being so nice to Hefferlump ? He was absolutely vile reviewing the Biography and made some exceedingly unpleasant personal remarks .I like Heeferlump`s writing but personally ,he is an odious mean spirited ugly dwarf who shines and polishes his resentment in a gloomy cave somewhere . Wagner would have been able to write a great opera of about the jealousy of the foul breathed dwarf for the handsome flaxen haired aryan hero whose popularity he cannot understand or emulate.
D’oh. Ignore the above. That’ll teach me to listen to YouTube and not indie radio.
Still, better than Nena.
Complaining about the opinions of someone of whom most of us have never heard, uttered before any of us were born. Yes, this is the stuff of Conservative values.
The only person who shared your views on English music was Mr Ken Russell, in a program on the BBC some years ago.
He was a wild-haired eccentric, with erudite but controversial views. Widely seen as a loose cannon.
Obviously a different person. Unless, that is, you can get Glenda Jackson to utter the immortal lines “Oh my God, Gerald, shall I die?”.
Newmania - “he is an odious mean spirited ugly dwarf who shines and polishes his resentment in a gloomy cave somewhere” oh you mean he’s a columnist. Yes Boris is the exception to every rule isn’t he?
And Bach is most definately up there with the greats. Mind you I’ve always been into maths and beautiful music. Combine the two and I’m fascinated!
I sat through a program billed as “Early English Music” which turned out to be two hours of the poems of Virginia Woolf sung to an increasingly bizarre set of cadences beginning with the tarantella and ending, if memory serves, with an empty house and what appeared to be an epileptic fit from the soloist. I could hardly blame her; felt much the same, myself.
Well, newmania, the only way to get an earworm out of your brain is to replace it with another one that is equally irritating, so try this. Although if you find the idea of Kirk and Spock getting it on to be shocking, you may NEVER get this one out of your head.
Jaq: I will have you know that I was a columnist, dammit. So much for your invitation to sail the Gulf Islands with me. Harumph.
I like columnists ,but as I am pretending to work I cannot play the antidote.99 red balloons..tum tee tum tee…Lord save me from this purgatory
William Schwenk Gilbert (now there’s a fine old Anglo Saxon name to ponder) bet you lot of columnists wish you could write stuff like what he did, part of a duo don’tyouknow.
Sorry Boris,dont fink that Sullivan geezer could do your machinations justice.
We are currently beating the Germans 5-1 in the Eurovision Song Contest.
If we allow them to aunschluss with Austria it’s 5-2 to the UK.
Then let them have the Czech Republic and the score remains 5-2.
We could event let this new, more powerful Germany join forces with Italy and we still remain 5-4 in front.
If one was to lower oneself to consider Messrs Lennon & McCartney or other popular musicians whose work shows musical complexity Brits would lead the field.
You could make a very good case for American lyricists like Cole Porter having provided the mark to which others must aim during the early part of the twentieth century but I think, after the rise of the Beatles & the complete triumph of advertisers image in the US, we were ahead there too.
This is totally off-topic, and we all have a healthy loathing of going off-topic, I know, but can anyone tell me why, when googling the words “Hello Cthulhu” one gets this article about Boris mowing down a Frenchman as a result?
Did the Frenchman not have the Elder Sign on him or something? What are Boris’ plans this Walpurgis?
If you attach a few million Canadians to a few million internet terminals I guess sooner or later one of them will google the words ‘Hello Cthulhu’, but who here wouldn’t have bet that raincoaster would be the one to do it.
raincoaster 6.24, what the blue blazes has that got to do with Boris’s Rendition of ” I’m the very model of a modern Major General” from Gilbert & Sullivans “Sound of Music” at the English Music Festival. not
I have no idea, but can he do the Elements arrangement? And make the Elder Sign?
I can’t find that old “Conservatives for Cthulhu” thread we used to have, and so was forced to put the post here.
Do you suppose it has something to do with The Cambridge University Worshippers of Cthulhu Society? Is Oxford dedicated to the worship of Nodens, populated by changelings from the Great Race, or what?
The public should be told.
Do you have any idea how long I wait between Cthulhu references? I’ve been saving these puppies up for years.
It’s okay, I’ll sign off now.
PS: bottled water. But I did have two of them, neat.
raincoaster 7.32. Dunno! have you tried contacting Dan Brown, you might finish up wealthy, nice link though.
“draco dormiens nunquam tittilandus”
As some day it may happen that a victim must be found,
I’ve got a little list–I’ve got a little list
Of society offenders who might well be underground,
And who never would be missed–who never would be missed!
There’s the pestilential nuisances who write for autographs–
All people who have flabby hands and irritating laughs–
All children who are up in dates, and floor you with ‘em flat–
All persons who in shaking hands, shake hands with you like _that_–
And all third persons who on spoiling tete-a-tetes insist–
They’d none of ‘em be missed–they’d none of ‘em be missed!
He’s got ‘em on the list–he’s got ‘em on the list;
And they’ll none of ‘em be missed–they’ll none of
‘em be missed.
I used to be in little band and we played “Shipbuilding “. I always thought it was Elvis Costello covering Tom Waits but no and au contraire.The only decent song Patty Smith ever did “Because the night” is a Bruce Springsteen song. My favourite Stranglers track was a cover of Burt Baccarach and Hal David`s , Walk on by. Originality is clearly over rated (and the lyricist gets little credit )
I believe Lennon and Mc Cartney are now usually McCartney and Lennon . He is becoming a very silly old man is he not , Sir Paul. I doubt it will ever be Sullivan and Gilbert though.
John Peel used to trail the best song ever to be played later in the show on one occasion it was “Great Balls of Fire ” I thought at the time this was an international agreement. Perhaps it should be.
I think that West side story is the best show there will ever be but in a poll it was soundly beaten by Grease . Why ? Bob Dylan called Smokey Robinson Americas greatest Poet. …..
Outside , I `m masquerading
Inside , my hope is fading.
Less is often more .
I `ll shut up then.
Off topic, this bit of American politics a couple of days ago, via MSNBC’s Keith Olberman:
Olberman discusses the bill with Jonathan Turley, George Washington University Constitutional Law Professor.
Now we must. And people have no idea how significant this is. What, really, a time of shame this is for the American system. What the Congress did and what the president signed today essentially revokes over 200 years of American principles and values.
It couldn’t be more significant. And the strange thing is, we’ve become sort of constitutional couch potatoes. I mean, the Congress just gave the president despotic powers, and you could hear the yawn across the country as people turned to, you know, “Dancing with the Stars.” I mean, it’s otherworldly.
I watch what happens in America, because a few years later the same sort of thing tends to happen in Britain - if it hasn’t already…
OK, you can go back Elgar and Vaughan Williams now.
not to mention that more people voted in the American Idol competition than voted in the last Presidential election. Perhaps they had more faith in the process.
I love Olbermann, and quite often put his monologues on my blog. Crooks and Liars generally has the transcripts within a few hours.
To all: I apologize for my earlier outbursts. It’s not my fault, though, really. It is the waning moon and the influence of the Elgar Gods.
HABEUS CORPUS ( IN DT)
People in Britain do not fully know, but should be told, just how dramatic a change it would be for criminal justice to be run by the EU.
It would mean the introduction of the Corpus Juris, the Commission’s long-cherished project for a “European embryo criminal code”, based entirely and exclusively on continental inquisitorial principles, and completely jettisoning our own safeguards of individual liberty - like habeas corpus and trial by jury.
Google “Miserable failure” …I have a feeling I mentioned this and if so sorry .
I see Lord Phillips . Lord Chief Justice, considers that torture might be forgiveable. His lecture (as far as I can tell)is at a level far below the recent discussion here on the same subject
.
THis was BIG story about a month ago. I still can`t manage to master a link ( I have tried ) , despite the kind help of a glamorous not to say voluptuous assistant. The original article you can find by searching
Torquil Dick-Erikson in DT site , but masses in the press.It is a rather more complex story than the headline and typical of everything I do not like about the EU.It is the inapplicability of different and arguably , equally good systems in different contexts that is the problem
I badly need a trip to Canada to attend the RAINCOASTER school of advanced interconnectedness. Have a look at her blog today.(and every day)Its like a Catherine Wheel of idea sparks shooting of all over the place and heres me plodding along with piles of Newspapers.
My time is past. I shall go far from this place and dwell in the land of Nod.
Sorry
1 Google miserable failure and you get:
President of the United States - George W. Bush
Following Raincoasters wierd links
2Next post answers your query best as I can
Loved your peasant girl post in Fortean. Ho ho. I said ..and Haha.
newmania, I’m assuming you have a job. I have only a great deal of time on my hands. You decide which you’d prefer.
In tangentially-related news, the Canadian Conservative party has thrown out a longstanding member, giving as the reason that he posted things they did not want on his blog. I had a link, but the damn computer blew up on me. It’s been doing that a lot lately.
Newmainia - don’t beat yourself up about raincoasters blog Paul, she presents stuff mostly filched from elsewhere, as we all do, and has had a LOT more practice than…. possibly even Simon so she has to be good at it by now. I only know of Boris that fills a blog by sitting down at a desk with a blank page and pouring brilliance all over it out of his own head. And now that I feel breakfast coming up after that statement, I’ll go away and google later dudes.
Boris does not do that. Boris writes articles for the Torygraph, etc, and Melissa posts them here (or sometimes “Boris Johnson’s Office” does, how mysterious).
But there are referential blogs, issue blogs and personal journals although the lines between the three are often crossed. Still, those are the basic types. newmania, you and Boris have issue blogs, as does Steven. Jaq has a personal journal and I have essentially a referential blog; I’m more of an editor than a writer there, although my word count isn’t insubstantial.
Um right. Kettle’s just boiled. Phew!
(I didn’t realise cricket was an ‘issue’ - shows what I know about the game. It’s all balls and googlies to me. Over.)
Cricket is definitely an issue where I am sitting. See the below exchange which I had not previously passed on to to Steven L .
(Office colleague PAUL CHISHOLM) You can tell your mouthy friend that my prediction has more chance of coming true than his in accurate postings about England’s first game in the champions cup. Flintoff and Bell were the real run makers I do not think!!!
Steven_L said:
Newmania, your little friend is a traitor who recommends his readers back the aussies to win 5-0 this winter. Give him a clip around the ear from me.
Guns at dawn ?
Oh God don’t mention ‘bats’ - I’ve already managed to upset one pundit this week. Mind you with that one my continuing to breathe doesn’t help.
How can Tchaikovsky not be up there in the first tier, waving the flag for mother Russia? Surely he deserves to be in their on grounds of the 1812 overture alone, is there a man in the whole of Europe whose heart does not feigntly stir at vague and imagined former glories the moment this kicks in?
Still, you’re right, the biggest testament to Germanic musical demise is surely David Hasselhoff’s continued popularity there.
Plees Pleeeeese, your all “doin me ead in” !!!!
For starters, is Keith Olberman the same Keith Olberman that plays second fiddle for the New York Symphony Orchestra,have I lost the plot somewhere?.
It wasn’t till newmania started his recitative, “It would mean the introduction of Corpus juris”, Blah,Blah,Blah, from G&S’s Trial By Jury, that I knew I was in the right blog.
When I’ve had a cup of tea and a nice piece of cake, as Aunt Sally would say to Worzel Gummidge, I’m reporting to Boris that these comments “aren’t fit for purpose”. So there!
Oh Good grief - Elgar then!
Take the tour, the hills are lovely this time of year, Cinderella’s on at xmas.
Since this started on a musical theme, you might enjoy this concert review from the Houston Chronicle. It has to be one of the most moving crits you’ll ever read. Hankies out…
On Nov. 18, 1995, Itzhak Perlman, the violinist, came on stage to give a concert at Avery Fisher Hall at Lincoln Center in New York City. If you have ever been to a Perlman concert, you know that getting on stage is no small achievement for him. He was stricken with polio as a child, and so he has braces on both legs and walks with the aid of two crutches. To see him walk across the stage one step at a time, painfully and slowly, is an unforgettable sight. He walks painfully, yet majestically, until he reaches his chair. Then he sits down, slowly, puts his crutches on the floor, undoes the clasps on his legs, tucks one foot back and extends the other foot forward. Then he bends down and picks up the violin, puts it under his chin, nods to the conductor and proceeds to play.
By now, the audience is used to this ritual. They sit quietly while he makes his way across the stage to his chair. They remain reverently silent while he undoes the clasps on his legs. They wait until he is ready to play. But this time, something went wrong. Just as he finished the first few bars, one of the strings on his violin broke. You could hear it snap it went off like gunfire across the room. There was no mistaking what that sound meant. There was no mistaking what he had to do.
People who were there that night thought to themselves: “We figured that he would have to get up, put on the clasps again, pick up the crutches and limp his way off stage — to either find another violin or else find another string for this one.” But he didn’t. Instead, he waited a moment, closed his eyes then signaled the conductor to begin again. The orchestra began, and he played from where he had left off. He played with overwhelming passion and power and purity.
Of course, anyone knows that it is impossible to play a symphonic work with just three strings. I know that, and you know that, but that night Itzhak Perlman refused to know that. You could see him modulating, changing, recomposing the piece in his head. At one point, it sounded like he was de-tuning the strings to get new sounds from them that they had never made before.
When he finished, there was an awesome silence in the room. And then people rose and cheered. There was an extraordinary outburst of applause from every corner of the auditorium. We were all on our feet, screaming and cheering, doing everything we could to show how much we appreciated what he had done.
He smiled, wiped the sweat from this brow, raised his bow to quiet us, and then he said, not boastfully, but in a quiet, pensive, reverent tone, “You know, sometimes it is the artist’s task to find out how much music you can still make with what you have left.”
What a powerful line that is. It has stayed in my mind ever since I heard it. And who knows? Perhaps that is the way of life — not just for artists but for all of us. Here is a man who has prepared all his life to make music on a violin of four strings, who, all of a sudden, in the middle of a concert, finds himself with only three strings. So he makes music with three strings, and the music he made that night with just three strings was more beautiful, more sacred, more memorable, than any that he had ever made before, when he had four strings.
So, perhaps our task in this shaky, fast-changing, bewildering world in which we live is to make music, at first with all that we have, and then, when that is no longer possible, to make music with what we have left.
–Jack Riemer, Houston Chronicle.
‘How can Tchaikovsky not be up there in the first tier, waving the flag for mother Russia? Surely he deserves to be in their on grounds of the 1812 overture alone…’ (Pete)
Swan Lake, The Nutcracker? Yes, I think Boris has shown an appalling lack of taste by putting Bach up there with Mozart and Beethoven. Bach was a composer during the baroque period, as was Vivaldi who receives no mention. If an alien landed tomorrow and asked me to play his something to sum up the baroque period it would have to be one of Vivaldis concertos for the mandolin.
Then there was that notorious German defector, Handel. Georgian England was undoubtedly an influence in his great works, which in turn served as one influence to the great composers of the classical era.
Mozart was undoubtedly the greatest all-round composer of the classical era. Beethoven has to come a close second I’m afraid, although Moonlight Sonata was deeper than anything Mozart ever came up with.
Back to Tchaikovsky, he was of the romantic era, I would play the Nutcracker Suite as an example of the romantic era above anything I’ve heard by Mendelssohn or Brahms.
My first tier would therefore be Vivaldi, Mozart and Tchaikovsky. You have to pick a favourite from each of the three great era’s we generally refer to as ‘classical’ I’m afraid. It’s no use picking one Baroque composer, two classical and then cosigning everyone else to second best. It just doesn’t make sense in my book.
This has been a bit of a knockabout topic but remember the English Music Fesival is now in full swing (not the right metaphor, but you know what I mean). it’s just to far away for me to travel to, but it will be broadcast on the BBC so I will catch it then.
Mmmm…great music, great composers, like beauty, all in the eye, or this case, the ear, of the beholder.
Elgar,Holst,Tallis,Delius,Pucell,Oh! and of course my Favourites Gibert&Sullivan, we English have a lot to admire and be proud of if you love music,as I certainly do.
I’m also a great jazz fan!! Jacques Loussier the French jazz pianist, give yourself a treat and buy his CD “The Best of Bach”, if it is still available, on Music Club MCCD 113.
If you want to sample Jacques Loussier, video clips can be seen and heard on http://www.loussier.com
On home page click on videos
Jazz :Can’t stand it .
Steven L it isn’t many young men that could sweep their compass over the history of Western music with such panache. Mozart is the best all rounder is he? A vital run maker in the “Germanic” team effort then. Haven’t your opinions on all rounders been a bit off key lately ?.
I suppose ,Beethoven is in the classical period but his place as pivotal between the classical and the romantic is what usually gets him the yellow jersey……(ALRIGHT !)
I remember reading that Jane Austen was a literary equivalent of Mozart. She states her theme . Pride and Prejudice for example then she varies modulates , inverts and restates in a minor key. All resolves into the tonic note of a marriage. I adore Jane Austen but like my classical music romantic ,(in as much as I like it at all ). The only thing I can play nowadays would be the Moonlight Sonata so I would fit snugly into the world of Mapp and Lucia …..(YEAH )
Even I have noticed the awkwardness of describing Wagner as “Classical” . . The Japanese refer to all this sort of music as “Heroic” and thereby avoid the problem
In a book on “European” history I once grazed on ,to justify the integrity of ground, the author pointed out that from Stoke to Stockholm from Warsaw to Woking we all have the same piano lessons . Can anything that holds Europe together really be a good thing ? …(YOU SEND ME)
I cannot abide jazz , it seems to me to satisfy cool cerebral pleasures that are better of in poetry or visual art. The wish to reduce the human voice to an instrument is telling. I went to a weeks course at Guildhall where old reprobates like me doing rock/pop , rubbed shoulders with exotic jazz people from all over Europe. The great advantage our side had was that we listened to the music we played every second of every day. They were usually classical types who thought they were roughing it . They had no feel whatsoever ,far to much technique and made a joyless noise. ( DE ZODEO DOI)
The jazz piano tutor told me his parents used to read scores rocking silently to and fro as they recreated the sound imaginatively .Is that possible or were they the aliens who wanted to ask what Baroque music is ?……(I`M SOLID GONE MAN)
At the final concert “I would rather go blind ” containing only C and D minor chords , in C, stole the show. “I would rather go blind , than to see you walk away” beats any amount of diabolical twiddling .
What is the point of Jazz ? It gave Burt Baccarach the major seventh to play with , some runs of 4ths (Elton John in Yellow Brick Road) but otherwise we would-be finer , better people without it .It annoyed Hitler , but the Sex Pistols would have annoyed him a lot more….(SCOO DA BA DA BA DEE).
In conclusion I hope we can all agree that Jazz is rubbish , classical music is better but the creative explosion of popular music in the 20th century relegates both to the second and third tier.
I think the above demonstrates just how tedious aimless riffing can be .
Sorry .some nights it works some nights it doesn’t.
Goodnight cats and thanks to Adolph Hitler on vibes .
(NICE).
In conclusion I hope we can all agree that Jazz is rubbish.
Newmania, that is the most crass statement I have ever heard from you. There’s jazz and jazz and there’s jazz. Some of it is beyond us mortals, some is the most glorious marriage of man and instrument, rhythm and harmony, melody and ingenuity.
In the end, there are only two kinds of music - good and bad.
Mozart was a lightweight. Same notes in a different order, most of them based on nursery rhymes. Pathetic.
Boris, you’re not really going to stand for this load of Fruhromantik tosh from Schmitz, are you?
It would be like history repeating itself and you know what Marx said about that: first time as tragedy, second time as farce.
The Scots did ne stand for it, remember.
‘An’ he’s clappit doun in our gudeman’s chair,
The wee, wee German lairdie;
An’ he’s brocht fouth o’ his foreign trash,
An’ dibbled them in his yairdie.
Come up amang our Hieland. Hills,
Thou wee, wee German lairdie,
An’ see the Stuart’s lang kail thrive,
They hae dibbled in our kail-yairdie.
An’ if a stock ye daur to pu’,
Or haud the yokin’ o’ a plough,
We’ll break your sceptre owre your mou,’
Ye feckless German lairdie.
Auld Scotland, thou’rt ower cauld a hole,
For nursin’ siccan vermin;
But the very dogs in England’s court,
They bark an’ howl in German.’ (Scots folk song 1730s)
And that’s the whole point isn’t it? I can just about tolerate these screeching Fruhr - and later - Romantics, but it’s what they screeched about, isn’t it?
Quick cup of tea etc and I’ll tell you.
Ten words - Sir Malcolm Arnold Scottish Dances and Gilbert and Sullivan ok.
There you have it, enough said
And, of course, some of the 18th century folk music composed on these sceptered isles was stunning:
Speed bonnie boat like a bird on the wing
Onward the sailors cry
Carry the lad that’s born to be king
Over the sea to Skye (Chorus)
Loud the wind howls, loud the waves roar,
Thunderclaps rend the air
Baffled our foes, stand by the shore
Follow they will not dare
Chorus
Many’s the lad fought on that day
Well the claymore did wield
When the night came, silently lain
Dead on Culloden field
Chorus
Though the waves heave, soft will ye sleep
Ocean’s a royal bed
Rocked in the deep, Flora will keep
Watch by your weary head
Chorus
Burned are our homes, exile and death
Scatter the loyal men
Yet e’er the sword cool in the sheath
Charlie will come again.
(Sky Boat Song)
Kettles boiling.
The Welsh have some stunning music too, though I admit the genius lies as much in the singing as the song.
Men of Harlech in the Hollow,
Do ye hear like rushing billow
Wave on wave that surging follow
Battle’s distant sound? Tis the tramp of Saxon foemen,
Saxon spearmen, Saxon bowmen,
Be they knights or hinds or yeomen,
They shall bite the ground! Loose the folds asunder,
Flag we conquer under!
The placid sky now bright on high,
Shall launch its bolts in thunder!
Onward! ’tis the country needs us,
He is bravest, he who leads us
Honor’s self now proudly heads us,
Freedom, God and Right!
Newmania - “I’d rather go blind” is best sung by Ruby Turner, I have both Ruby’s version and the Etta James version and personally I prefer Etta singing more hard edge stuff like ‘In the basement’ or ‘I just wanna make.. lurve to you’. For a sweeter ballad by Etta James it’s got to be ‘Sunday kind of love’.
For something lightweight with a jazzy feel and um an alternative to Ravel’s Bolero, try ’sweet and gentle love’ by the Crusaders. So I’m told.
A haunting tune indeed, Flo, but I wonder how much of it was genuine after Sir Harold Boulton added the lyrics in 1884. The middle section “Loud the wind howls…” always sounded to me like a bolt-on. (Or should that be Boulton?)
Irish folk music is stunning too.
The Star Of the County Down
Near Banbridge town, in the County Down
One morning in July
Down a boreen green came a sweet colleen
And she smiled as she passed me by.
She looked so sweet from her two white feet
To the sheen of her nut-brown hair
Such a coaxing elf, I’d to shake myself
To make sure I was standing there.
From Bantry Bay up to Derry Quay
And from Galway to Dublin town
No maid I’ve seen like the sweet colleen
That I met in the County Down. (chorus)
As she onward sped I shook my head
And I gazed with a feeling rare
And I said, says I, to a passerby
“Who’s the maid with the nut-brown hair?”
He smiled at me, and with pride says he,
“That’s the gem of Ireland’s crown.
She’s young Rosie McCann from the banks of the Bann
She’s the star of the County Down.”
Chorus
I’ve travelled a bit, but never was hit
Since my roving career began
But fair and square I surrendered there
To the charms of young Rose McCann.
I’d a heart to let and no tenant yet
Did I meet with in shawl or gown
But in she went and I asked no rent
From the star of the County Down.
Chorus
At the crossroads fair I’ll be surely there
And I’ll dress in my Sunday clothes
And I’ll try sheep’s eyes, and deludhering lies
On the heart of the nut-brown rose.
No pipe I’ll smoke, no horse I’ll yoke
Though with rust my plow turns brown
Till a smiling bride by my own fireside
Sits the star of the County Down.
PaulD said:
how much of it was genuine after Sir Harold Boulton added the lyrics in 1884.
There are numerous versions, Paul, I personally pefer this one.
I haven’t posted the Welsh version of Men Of Harlech either
But the finest of them all:
Jerusalem
And did those feet in ancient time
Walk upon England’s mountains green?
And was the holy Lamb of God
On England’s pleasant pastures seen?
And did the Countenance Divine
Shine forth upon our clouded hills?
And was Jerusalem builded here
Among those dark Satanic Mills?
Bring me my Bow of burning gold;
Bring me my Arrows of Desire;
Bring me my Spear; O clouds unfold!
Bring me my Chariot of Fire!
I will not cease from Mental Strife,
Nor shall my Sword sleep in my hand,
Till we have built Jerusalem
In England’s green and pleasant Land.
newmania…so you didn’t visit Loussier.com then.
Do you know what gets up my nose, musical snobs, you sound like the epitome of them all.
But the finest of them all: Jerusalem (Flo’)
Strange you should mention that.
When I first read the piece up top by Boris, it rang some bell. And then I remembered that I’d been watching TV Monday or Tuesday night, watching some documentary that had started 5 or 10 minutes earlier. And it was recounting how Parry had been asked during WWI to take the words of Blake’s Jerusalem, and set them to music, for patriotic purposes. And how Elgar, I think, had taken Parry’s tune and written a symphony score for it. And how this was part of a revival of English music.
It took me a while to realise that the documentary was all about this musical Jerusalem, and its almost immediate universal appeal. The Suffragettes used it. Every political party has used it. The Women’s Institute uses it. Nudists sing it. But some churches won’t allow it played, because it’s not a hymn. And how English it is. And should be our national anthem.
I think Boris must have watched the same documentary, and promptly set quill pen to paper, or fingers to keyboard.
Reading some of the earthier posts in this thread, I am reminded of the words of the immortal Tom Lehrer, who said that the reason most folk songs are so atrocious is that they are written by the people.
Beethoven woulda kicked Mozart’s ass. Mozart’s work is more beautiful, but it is far too often merely, if perfectly, beautiful. God has Beethoven on his iPod, along with U2 and a great deal of Pink Floyd.
Keith Olbermann. According to the gossip sites I frequent, he’s horrible in bed, but I’d still be willing to see for myself, based on things like this.
In the terror attacks of September 2001, 3000 people died.
The US government has poured billions into “The War Against Terror” and various related and unrelated enterprises.
In the five years since, roughly 150,000 people have died from gunshots. No “War on Guns”.
200,000 Americans have died on her highways. No “War on Traffic”.In the United States today, one is slightly more likely to be shot by police than killed by terrorists.
Yet no “War on Cops” has been funded. And with the suspension of basic rights, such as that against self-incrimination and the presumption of innocence, none will be neccessary.
“God has Beethoven on his iPod” - I like that, good one raincoaster.
But you’d want to see for yourself if someone’s horrible in bed based on them talking about dead people?? I think it’s not just Steven who has issues!
Yes Churston, I am a musical snob in my own way as you rightly notice. However i was only adopting an attitude for the fun of it .I regretted it the moment I pressed post and will atone by following your link.Iwouldn`t want to cause anyone nasal discomfort.
Yes Paul D , quite right .
What Jazz would you recommend as a favourite and I undertake to buy it and listen ?In fact what a good opportunity .Recommendation ?
(Think I got off lightly there )
Uh, I know Jerusalem. I was not including it in the “folk muzik” category. I know Blake. Blake was a friend of mine…
newmania said:
Jerusalem is William Blake and means excatly the opposite of what many people think it does .
Good point, newmania, I agree that we need to be aware of Blake’s acceptance of the myth that England was the original holy land and of his apparent racist views in relation to that. Some would argue, of course, that the Bible contains some equally repugnant symbolism and stereotypes.
However, that doesn’t alter the figurative, as opposed to the literal, truth of Jerusalem and the Bible for many (non-fundamentalists) who believe in God and who reject such stereotypes.
Phew!!, Thought it was going to be “Trumpets at dawn”, and there’s me, haven’t blown me own trumpet for yonks.
As a classical/jazz start, why not Shostakovich Jazz suites 1 & 2, ok but not jazz in the true sense, bit Art Deco’ey. then there’s Bill Evans,Duke Ellington,Art Tatum,Thelonious Monk, you pay your money and take your choice
The early Black Amaerican jazz pianists were,remember, poor and uneducated,self taught couldn’t read music, probably didn’t know an F#dim from a Gm7(-5), they played from the heart, basic, simple and unadulterated,you may say thats how it sounds, but it still qualifys as music nevertheless.
For what its worth thats my angle.
Just a tiny factual inaccuracy - “our children leave primary school with the vaguest understanding of reading and writing” - should read - “our children leave secondary school barely literate.
Regards
Cathy
In a rush but very briefly,a crossparty group of MPs are are calling for Jerusalem to be adopted as the national anthem . (IN DT today)
“My first tier would therefore be Vivaldi, Mozart and Tchaikovsky. You have to pick a favourite from each of the three great era’s we generally refer to as ‘classical’ I’m afraid. It’s no use picking one Baroque composer, two classical and then cosigning everyone else to second best. It just doesn’t make sense in my book.”
Ahh, but surely we can make it a fouresome and have Beethoven? He’s really rather handy at the whole music lark. A commentator on my blog yesterday also drew my attention to Sibelius who on a first listen to seem quite something, altho I have no idea about the breadth of his works.
What Jazz would you recommend as a favourite and I undertake to buy it and listen. (Newmania)
Gosh, that’s a tough one. If you want your eyes opened - and all power if you do - it’s more a question of what style of jazz you actively dislike. I can’t believe you are hostile to Jacques Loussier, who re-heats Bach in a manner that may well have met with the approval of JSB himself.
At the other extreme, we went to Ronnie Scott’s recently to hear Geri Allen, a “jazz ethnomusicologist”. She plays piano with drum / bass / sax accompaniment. The backing group might as well have been playing in a club up the road to a different pianist. It was dreadful - everyone doing their own thing, no cohesion as a group. The most enjoyable moment was listening to various beardo’s during the interval. “Isn’t she marvellous!… er, technically”.
If this is what you don’t like about jazz, Newmania, I can sympathise deeply. A lot of jazz fans would agree with you.
Well I love music and will give anything a try however I will tell you what my objection to Jazz is . Or , given the vast variety the sort of problems one might have.
1Jazz as a style tends away from emotions and towards patterning of sounds. It is never directly representational never heartfelt or sincere . What piece of Jazz expresses anger , loss love or joy as well as any number of popular songs . None I can think of . I appreciate there are songs with a Jazz influence and so one is being exceedingly rough and ready with boundaries.Nonetheless it is a form that pulls away from the natural heart of music into a sort of audi-picture
2 Quite obviously virtuosity from its own sake is always ugly and Jazz , for obvious reasons suffers from this
3Jazz “Says nothing to me about my life” to quote the well known Conservative and Thatcher supporter Morrissey. This is because no one wants to be a Jazz star . It tends to be imposed from above rather than bubbling out of life.
A bit vague ? In practice then look at the horror that is Jazz Funk. Funk music was invented by the hidden black soul explosion of the 60s and 70s . Hidden because of the racism in America. James Brown , “the King of them all” is still not on the pedestal he should occupy as a right . This music was taken by other musos and turned into “Jazz Funk” . Sexy and dangerous became bland and endless and attained a nasty sort of acceptability.
Jazz had one of its many vogues in the 80s when heroes of British song writing like Paul Weller were lured onto the rocks becoming “The Style Council” . This is the poisonous effect of Jazz “flavours” at second hand.
Aretha Franklin , some peoples choice of best singer ever had a career blighted by attempts to shoe horn her bright gospel cry into the doldrums of Jazz. It was considered more acceptable to a White audience than the raw emotion of “You make me Feel “( written by the very white and professional Carol King of course , another all time favourite)
Miles Davis seems to me to have followed the form to its logical conclusion of incomprehensibility .People say , is he had an operation it would be a “hip” operation and this claim to be “stylish” is also off putting .
I have seen a bit of the Jazzy stuff live and I will admit it can make for good entertainment . It also suffers from a lack of restraint and taste . How infinitely harder to write a good pop song than to take a chord sequence and muck around with it (which even I can manage enough to fool some of the people ).
These then are the complaints
1 A foolish and off-putting association with a rather elitist sort of style .
2 A veneration for classical a music and virtuosity that misses the point of the whole endeavour
3 An absence of emotion
4 A lack of discipline , restraint and and artistic taste
5 An artificiality which comes from it being a “learnt” form not a listened to form (now)
These are of course matters of taste and blues might equally be accused of much of the above . I am also not a great fan of blues , although its fun to play.. It wouldn’t be hard to find exceptions of course and if you included Jazz influenced songs I can think of lots of problems with everything I say myself.
Still there it is .
That’s why I don’t like jazz much and while I could probably listen to re-heated Bach with tolerable enjoyment I don’t think such a project could ever inspire much love from me .I have not entirely dissimilar objections to conceptual art and conceptual performance art above all .
Not exactly a causus bellum though is it , just a point of view.
Churston SAID
“The early Black American jazz pianists were, remember, poor and uneducated, self taught couldn’t read music, probably didn’t know an F#dim from a Gm7(-5), they played from the heart, basic, simple and unadulterated, you may say that’s how it sounds, but it still qualifies as music nevertheless.”
Sounds more my type of thing although there are some attitudes here I wouldn’t be entirely comfortable with myself. ( To say the least)
FLO- I fall on any agreement like a an ice cold beer in Alex but I can’t quaff this one unfortunately . I meant that William Blake was a mystic revolutionary and was saying England was an infernal pit . That’s why the Lamb of god would never have walked among the Satanic Mills and only violent insurrection would save it from its purgatory. An odd anthem for the Conservative party but somehow the music seems to have changed the emphasis so as to suggest this island is uniquely qualified to be a new Jerusalem . I suppose Blake was racist by modern standards but that would be very unfair . What do you think of this : (Blake)
.
Black Boy
My mother bore me in the southern wild,
And I am black, but oh my soul is white!
White as an angel is the English child,
But I am black, as if bereaved of light.
My mother taught me underneath a tree,
And, sitting down before the heat of day,
She took me on her lap and kissed me,
And, pointed to the east, began to say:
“Look on the rising sun: there God does live,
And gives His light, and gives His heat away,
And flowers and trees and beasts and men receive
Comfort in morning, joy in the noonday.
“And we are put on earth a little space,
That we may learn to bear the beams of love
And these black bodies and this sunburnt face
Is but a cloud, and like a shady grove.
“For when our souls have learn’d the heat to bear,
The cloud will vanish, we shall hear His voice,
Saying, ‘Come out from the grove, my love and care
And round my golden tent like lambs rejoice’,”
Thus did my mother say, and kissed me;
And thus I say to little English boy.
When I from black and he from white cloud free,
And round the tent of God like lambs we joy
I’ll shade him from the heat till he can bear
To lean in joy upon our Father’s knee;
And then I’ll stand and stroke his silver hair,
And be like him, and he will then love me.
On the myth of England as Israel the Book “the Chosen people ” is good . It starts with the Coronation and the anthem Zadok the Priest which makes this national myth explicit . I can understand reacting against this but I think you have the wrong foe in Blake. LOVED YOUR FOLK SONGS
Rain coaster , can`t get your reference . The Doors?
As a poet working in visual and written media a revolutionary artist and myth maker , I am not surprised he is Rain Coasters friend.
Far to much of me I think , a period of silence will now ensue
Someone once said that classical music was like the great poets; Keats, Marvell, Donne - and everything else, from jazz to pop was like light verse.
I rather liked that definition.
Well Newmania, there’s some truth in what you say. I admire your tenacity. Let’s take your points
1 A foolish and off-putting association with a rather elitist sort of style.
Isn’t nearly all music elitist to some extent? People have always identified with certain musical styles as part of their “image”. What could be more elitist than Glyndebourne, a paradise for rich posers, many of whom know sweet FA about music. Sid Vicious drew punks wearing dustbin liners. A Sisers of Mercy gig will be packed with Goths in black face-paint. Hip-hop attracts chavs in Burberry and Adidas. A techno-trance disco in Ibiza will pull pissed-up kids wearing very little. Each is elitist in its own way, exclusive to that group. If you listen to jazz sporting beard, knitted pullover and Hush Puppies (forgive the stereotype) it doesn’t make you a bad person, nor does it diminish the music.
2 A veneration for classical a music and virtuosity that misses the point of the whole endeavour
Don’t get it. What’s wrong with a veneration for classical music? Virtuosity has always been admired and can be thrilling in itself (cf Liszt). And what is the “point” of any music, so how can jazz miss it?
3 An absence of emotion… It is never directly representational never heartfelt or sincere. What piece of Jazz expresses anger, loss love or joy as well as any number of popular songs… Jazz “Says nothing to me about my life”
Here we come closer. I sense that many hardcore jazz practitioners play introvertedly for their own enjoyment, not the audience’s. If you’ll forgive the comparison, it can be more like watching somebody masturbate than someone who wants to share their art.
But that is a massive generalisation. A trad jazz band will be delighted to see people tapping their feet and dancing to their music. Miles Davis was able to convey intense emotion - as perceived by his followers. You must also appreciate that people who have studied jazz, or who actually play it, get a thrill from hearing it done extremely well. My other half is a keen knitter who will go into meltdown over a cleverly-designed sock. To me it looks like a sock, and probably not a very comfortable one.
Your comparison with songs is fallacious; they have the added dimension of lyrics.
4 A lack of discipline, restraint and artistic taste.
Artistic freedom doesn’t necessarily equate to lack of discipline. As for taste, one man’s fish is another man’s poisson.
5 An artificiality which comes from it being a “learnt” form not a listened to form (now)
Symphonic and sonata forms are “learnt”. Jazz requires an awful lot of listening, possibly far more than an orchestral player need apply.
I wouldn’t get so worked up about this, Newmania. Not everyone likes jazz, others can’t abide opera, urban garage or doo-wop acappella. Just be glad music exists and that most people find something they enjoy.
Me, I’m inclined to agree that Beethoven was the boy who had it in spades. But some will tell you “there was Mozart and other composers”. How sad.
as a Canadian of German origins, and having spent time in both England (where i lived for a spell) and Germany, i must say that the Germans have less music in their hearts and souls than even the deepest, darkest pits of Russia or Poland or anywhere else that one cannot imagine finding inspiration for music. We’re talking about a country that celebrates the accordian and David Hasselhoff’s pop music, not to mention thinks that dancing automatically means the polka. And as a Boris lover of all types myself and without prejudice, they have their Becker, but he’s no Johnson, now is he? God knows Berlin would be a different place if Oasis or the Streets (or even Keane!!)had come from there.
I meant that William Blake was a mystic revolutionary and was saying England was an infernal pit . That’s why the Lamb of god would never have walked among the Satanic Mills and only violent insurrection would save it from its purgatory. An odd anthem for the Conservative party but somehow the music seems to have changed the emphasis so as to suggest this island is uniquely qualified to be a new Jerusalem . I suppose Blake was racist by modern standards but that would be very unfair (newmania)
I disagree with you, newmania. Blake was a progressive bourgeois ideologist, not an early, nascent Socialist or left wing intellectual. His obscure symbolism conjures a disturbed, romantic bran tub of, apparently conflicting, visions out of which all manner of contradictory views about the man have been drawn. Yet I believe it’s easier to draw the overall conclusion that the visions and voices which haunted Blake and his work are more typical of stifled petty bourgeois ambition - coupled with creative schizophrenia - than of a violent revolutionary.
Blake was a true son of the petty bourgeoisie. A sometimes successful, sometimes failed, small businessman, he put his schizophrenia to remarkably powerful creative and commercial use. In the depth of his schizophrenic soul lay a petty bourgeois craftsman and enlightened Liberal, not a left wing revolutionary. Like old Nolly Cromwell (who was also a schizophrenic, though not enlightened) and Cromwell’s compulsive/obsessive alter egos, Tony Blair and Ali Campbell, Blake didn’t want God to free the masses or the slaves - whom Blake wrote of with either paternalism (the poem you quote) or disparagement, as in Song of Liberty: “O African! Black African! (go winged thought widen his forehead)”. Just like Cromwell, Campbell and Blair, Blake would have recoiled in horror from the thought of a society run by the masses or even on behalf of them, his new Jerusalem would be run by an elitist alliance of the ‘progressive’ bourgeoisie - who would do very nicely out of it, thank you very much.
His dreams and visions were of God ending the rule of the ruthless, elitist, royalist and, still semi-feudal, colonialist regime, which brutally crushed the masses at home and abroad and stifled real enterprise and small beer capitalists like him. Blake would have replaced it with an enlightened bourgeois elite who’d paternalistically care for the poor.
Yes, Blake rightly recognised that England had become an infernal pit and believed that true followers of God should right this abominable state of affairs, but in true elitist, bourgeois fashion. He’d have run a mile from Nulab’s bureacratic repression of religious expression.
Don’t forget, newmania, that the Bourgeoisie were the progressive and revolutionary class in England at that time. They joined forces with the masses to wrestle power from the ruthless wing of the Ancien Regime, just as the French and American Bourgeouise did to win their respective Bourgeois revolutions. Here, in England, despite that abomination Cromwell, we prefer non-violent revolutionary tradition and our then, and *current* revolutions, are essential peaceful revolutions, thank God.
Well Paul D there is something in what you say… I suppose. BUT
PAUL D
Isn’t nearly all music elitist to some extent?
NEWMANIA
Yes , you are tending towards the “So what ?” position. Some elitists are misguided. Jazz suffers from a surfeit of elitism and misguided ness. Yours is a non point.
PAUL D
Don’t get it. What’s wrong with a veneration for classical music?
NEWMANIA
1 Sky . (Remember the awfulness)
2 Virtuosity . If you like that sort of thing I can simply demonstrate the superior virtuosity in the vast world of popular music. Singers , instrumentalists , composers. You name it . Hardly surprising given the disparate scale involved. Try me .
PAUL D
“Here we come closer. I sense that many hardcore jazz practitioners play introvertedly for their own enjoyment, not the audience’s. ”
NEWMANIA
As a player , of an abysmal standard ,I think there is a place for music that is fun , only to play. My belief is that this sort of thing communicates only in a coarse “circus monkey ” way , in jazz. Or is more likely to be in that category because of the comparatively un tutored ears listening. The fact that music is something that happens between a sound and an ear is the truth that worshippers of the past fundamentally fail to understand
PAUL D
“Your comparison with songs is fallacious; they have the added dimension of lyrics.”
NEWMANIA
I find it highly suggestive that Jazz has nothing to offer on lyrics and would suggest that this is not a coincidence. There are in fact plenty of songs Jazz could claim but if you are going to give me this ground you are doomed.
PAUL D
4 A lack of discipline, restraint and artistic taste
NEWMANIA
Yes very good on the fishy poison but again you are saying something along the lines of “Its all a matter of taste” which does not need saying and ultimately , in my view , is wrong.
PAUL D
5 An artificiality which comes from it being a “learnt” form not a listened to form (now)
Symphonic and sonata forms are “learnt”. Jazz requires an awful lot of listening, possibly far more than an orchestral player need apply.
NEWMANIA
Quite and that is why “Classical music as written today is usually a sad waste of time . As , I would suggest , is Jazz. The listening I ma talking about is in the bones and soul where all good music comes from
PAUL D
I wouldn’t get so worked up about this,
Newmania.
Do I seem worked up ? Hardly . I believe that sort of music I like is better than the sort you seem to like and that I have not only a right to say so but do not wish to be defensive or apologetic about it. You are the one asserting the superiority of an obscure disregarded form . I `m just normal and any music lover would say much the same .
JAQ and PAUL D this is the heart of it . Music requires a sophisticated listener as well as player. That is why popular music can express ,achieve and communicate so much more . That is also why it is so hard to do well. The teeniest inclination of the blues note can be harder than adding endless complications because we all know when it is wrong.
I sense that this heading the way of all such discussions and would threfore request that we leave it there with the clear acknowledgement that I am right and paul, D is wrong.Its only fair on everyone else.
I worry about them terribly.
PAUL D . By the way , that all sounds far more aggressive than I intend. This would be a good ball to kick around over a few drinks .Noone ever agrees on this .
All the best
FLO - I think , barring a word here and there ,I agree with most of that. I do not see how this detracts in any way from what I was saying though
You are , I think emphsasising the biographical details too much.I also find much Blake criticism absurd( J Bronowski springs to mind)but you are talking about the unimportant political meaning of Blake and disregarding the important literary meaning.
Still what you say is pretty fair given that we started on the highly political apprehension of the Hymn Jerusalem .
Well done.Consider yourself the happy recipient of a virtual pat on the head.
XXXX
( Bet you`re ever so pleased. I can hardly wait for the thanks)
By the way on problems with authority . I was expelled and in juvenile court by the age of seventeen. Top that .
newmania said:
FLO - I do not see how this detracts in any way from what I was saying
By riding a coach and horses right through your argument, newmania. You see Blake as a violent insurrectionist out to wreck the entire social order, I see him as romantic, reformist, nutcase who couldn’t have pushed the skin off a rice pudding.
No serious revolutionary would have worn that, ‘come and get me copper’, Sans-Culotte red hat, in England, would he?
Newmania said “JAQ and PAUL D this is the heart of it . Music requires a sophisticated listener as well as player. That is why popular music can express ,achieve and communicate so much more”
Hmn, as Mr Darcy said: ‘any Hottentot can dance’
newmania said:
By the way on problems with authority . I was expelled and in juvenile court by the age of seventeen. Top that .
I left home a few weeks after my 16th birthday 
Any Hottentot ? JAQ
Tiscali reference - Hottentot “South African term for a variety of different African peoples; it is non-scientific and considered derogatory by many. The name Khoikhoi is preferred.”
What will Trevor Phillips say ?
FLO
” I see him as romantic, reformist, nutcase who couldn’t have pushed the skin off a rice pudding. ” Like Karl Marx , but what do the words say? I am miraculously unscathed by this phantom coach and horses and as all I suggested was that it was an odd poem to be an anthem for Conservatives , I am likely to remain so.
Left home . Did you? And abused me in such harsh terms that it was deleted. You are obviously a much tougher nut than me. What are you rebelling against Flo ?
I believe the sort of music I like is better than the sort you seem to like and that I have not only a right to say so but do not wish to be defensive or apologetic about it. You are the one asserting the superiority of an obscure disregarded form. (Newmania)
Steady on, old thing. Read me again. Where did I say I like jazz or assert its superiority over other forms of music? I was merely defending other people’s right to enjoy it without being told they are “wrong”. With all forms of music I also try my damnedest to look for the good points in the hope of discovering an element I may have missed through preconception or prejudice.
In these sweeping condemnations, you may have overlooked that the performer is as important as the style, which is probably why I’m a sucker for Emma Kirkby singing John Dowland and Fatboy Slim’s disco mixes when many other performances in those genres leave me cold.
You would probably be horrified by what I enjoy the most. One thing’s for certain: It ain’t hardcore jazz!
Belatedly rejoining the thread after a busy day,(no rest for the wicked).
I won’t even bother to challenge newmania’s ramblings, suffice to say I strongly disagree with some of his comments, but thats OK, life goes on!, in my own mind I wonder if he likes music at all, or does he just like to give an impression that he knows everything about everything.
Sorry, no offence intended.
Me,I off to unwind now, and have a session on my beautiful priceless Hammond B3, which unfortunatly I am unable to play in a way it deserves!
newmania said:
FLO - abused me in such harsh terms that it was deleted.
I used a single, honest, Anglo Saxon, four letter word (not the ‘f’ word), to advise you to go away and micturate. if I’d quoted a piece from Chaucer containing this word it would presumably have been acceptable. I bet this is cut too
… expect fireworks from Wagnerians —-