Happy Birthday Beethoven!

A day late, but Happy Birthday to Beethoven!

Bill Bailey and Cockney Music

Enjoy!

In the Bleak Midwinter

As Christmas inches nearer, Christmas music becomes more vocal, undoing a year's worth of hibernation. Not just the cheery songs creating the soundtrack to your Christmas shopping, but carols with their echoes of the past. Yes, it's time to hark the herald in a royal city while watching the shepherds and their flocks who really would prefer to be away in a manger where three kings of Orient would be wishing them a merry Christmas.

Top of my Christmas playlist this year are two settings of Christina Rosetti's beautiful poem 'In the Bleak Midwinter'. Perhaps neither Gustav Holst's 1906 setting nor Harold Darke's early 20th-century take on this plainly spoken poem are the most upbeat yuletide songs, but somehow both settings stand strong in their heartfelt simplicity. No soaring descants or hammed up harmony here - though where would Christmas be without these? - but quiet musings on the birth of Jesus.And which other carols match so exactly the weather this Christmas? The moaning frosty wind has certainly made the midwinter seem bleak.

The best part of the carol surely lies in the final stanza, the last line. 'What can I give him?' asks the poet. (Or her? Or them? - the three most asked questions of the past month?) Rosetti's answer, made even more powerful by Darke's glorious reach up on the final word, is probably the best to the question: 'give my heart'.

Tree of Light

 

Clifton Down, Bristol

Pinch punch

It's the first of the month, which must mean time blogging time!
In the absence of the internet at home, blogging has had to move onto a monthly basis. More to follow...

Moore at Kew

 

Porridge and poetry

I eat oatmeal for breakfast.
I make it on the hot plate and put skimmed milk on it.
I eat it alone.
I am aware that it is not good to eat oatmeal alone.
Its consistency is such that it is better for your mental health if somebody it eats it with you.
That is why I often think up an imaginary companion to have breakfast with.
Possibly it is even worse to eat oatmeal with an imaginary companion.
Nevertheless, yesterday morning I ate my oatmeal with John Keats.

Extract from Oatmeal by Galway Kinnell.

St Mary Redcliffe, Bristol

 

Flying off the shelves.

Still confused why no newspapers have picked up this remarkable story: Norman Lebrecht's obituary for the classical recording industry has had its own secret life since its publication, culminating in a shameful death in court last week. Naxos founder Klaus Heymann took the provocative critic to court over defamatory remarks made in the book. Funnily enough, the drastic steps that the book's publishers have to take - namely withdrawing the book from the shelves, apologising and paying damages - haven't been reported on Lebrecht's website or blog. Take a look here for more...

Clifton Suspension Bridge

 

Allo?

I'm still pondering the phone-answering etiquette for BBC's Who Do You Think You Are programme and magazine. Envisage the scene. Interested reader decides to call up office: 'Ring, ring.' Worker in office picks up: 'Hello, who do you think you are?'

Heard the news?

In the early 1700s, according to Andrew Marr's addictive account of British journalism, newspapers were pretty weird and wonderful, and often to be found skulking in that nebulous area between private and public news. 'Some, for instance, like Ichabod Dawk's News-Letter made a point of leaving some space blank for personal news, which could then be written in and posted on to friends and relatives in the country.' Imagine if one of the free London Tube papers clamouring for commuters' attention carried a blank page for personal news. A new incentive to read one of the discarded papers lining every Tube carriage? Free news, celebrity gossip oh, and if you want to know why the person sitting opposite is not talking to his next-door neighbour, turn to page 15. Or who third-from-the-left is going out with? Heard the latest about Ichabod Dawk's money-making scam? But then I suppose finding out in public someone's personal news is what loud mobile phone conversations on the train are all about.

Please mind the gap between the timetable and reality.

In London there's a bit of a divide between people who take the bus and those who take the Tube. Tube fans love to hate the quirks of individual tube lines - the distinctly leisurely attitude of the District Line, the headlong rush of Piccadilly trains, the workman like thrum of the Central line or the downright infuriating ever-decreasing circles of the Circle Line. Complaining about free papers thrust at you from all directions, whilst secretly relishing being drip-fed celebrity gossip, is high on the list of tube activities, especially now that the craze for trying to solve your next-door neighbour's Sudoku as you peer over their shoulder has passed. In Bristol the divide is simpler. Those who are on the bus, and those who are still waiting at the bus stop. Yes, that's right. Bristol buses are not the best in the world, and at £2.10 per single and with a free Metro paper, it's easy to kid yourself that you're in London. After just two weeks of Bristol buses I've clocked up several hours of bus-stop waiting in rain, wind and shine due to buses not turning up, sailing right past expectant passengers, and just being plain late. Though bus activities are rather more sociable. People actually talk to each other on the bus, and even offer a helping hand or piece of advice. And one day, for no reason in particular, the bus home was free. Rant over.

Moving house.

'I'm sorry for the long silence, but you can imagine what desperate packings occupied our lives, what desperate unpackings again to retrieve things prematurely packed, what form-fillings and cupboard emptyings, what rendings of the heart, what rentings of the house, what injections and dejections, what forwardings and backwardings, what helpful briefings, what unhelpful longings, what second thoughts and first impressions.'

Michael Frayn
The Trick of It

Perhaps searching over the past two weeks for somewhere to live wasn't quite as dramatic or traumatic as the experience Michael Frayn puts his characters through, but this short paragraph, or rather long sentence, contains the juxtaposition of practical headaches with emotional heartaches that moving house entails.

Service resumes!

Unintentionally, for the past 18 days I appear to have been on a postal strike. The blogging kind of post, that is. Normal blogging postal service will now resume. Let's hope that the Royal Mail strike doesn't last as long as the Becca's Blog strike.

5/32 Short Films about Glenn Gould - Gould Meets Gould

Glenn Gould. An endlessly intriguing character!

Music and Matilda.

Imagine a girl of four years and three months going into a library and telling the librarian that she would like to read a book. To be more precise, ‘a really good one that grown-ups read. A famous one.’ How do you think the librarian might reply? In Roald Dahl’s Matilda, Mrs Phelps considers picking out ‘a young teenager’s romance’ but, to her surprise, finds herself ‘instinctively walking past that particular shelf’. Instead the ever-optimistic librarian chooses Charles Dicken’s Great Expectations. Four and a quarter year old Matilda enjoys the book, and begins to tackle volumes by other classic authors. Wading her way through a formidable array of books, she comes across Ernest Hemingway: ‘Mr Hemingway says a lot of things I don’t understand,’ Matilda comments. Mrs Phelps reassures her literary protégée, ‘ …don’t worry about the bits you can’t understand. Sit back and allow the words to wash around you, like music.’

Seems a pity to waste words. These didn't go into a short interview to celebrate Dahl Day 2007 that I recently did, but I think Mrs Phelps put her finger on the importance of not 'dumbing down'. Being able to approach words and music however you want is one of the best things about both arts.

London

 

Cameo Role

Wigmore Hall, Sunday 9th September 2007. All the Russian greats were there: Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Tchaikovsky and Kissin. Though of course the first three were in musical form, the latter in a rather more tangible incarnation. Kissin played his cameo role to perfection, and who doesn't like a bit of celebrity-in-the-audience spotting? There was also a healthy dollop of Russian superstition. Boris Berezovsky, pianist of the Makhtin/Berezovsky/Kniazev piano trio explained that, just as the repertoire of that night (Rachmaninov, Shostakovich, Rachmaninov) was due to be recorded, their record company went 'spectacularly out of business'. So in order to ward off future bad luck, a change of programme was in order. Out with Rachmaninov and in with Tchaikovsky, who according to Berezovsky is 'another Russian composer'.Well said. Bridget Jones would be proud.

Let's make an opera...

I was excited to read that Ian McEwan, of Atonement fame, is writing a libretto for an opera, with music to be composed by Michael Berkeley. From descriptions of music in certain of his books, Ian McEwan's affinity with music is clear: "[the] guitar starts out alone with a languorous two-bar turnaround, a simple descending line from the fifth fret, tumbling into a thick chord which oozes into a second and remains hanging there, an unresolved fading seventh...." (from Saturday). Browsing McEwan's website, I discovered that he had already collaborated with Michael Berkeley, producing an oratorio entitled "Or Shall We Die?".

Soundtrack.

Currently listening to Joshua Bell's album The Romantic Violin (or should that be the romantic violin?) Oh to be a violinist, tugging away at people's heartstrings.

More Catspaws

Painting of the moment:
Catspaws off the Land , 1885
by Henry Moore



According to the Tate Britain's wall panels the "catspaws of the title are the gentle breezes which move the fishing boats along."

Unpublished post...

"He thought his happiness was complete when, as he meandered aimlessly along, suddenly he stood by the edge of a full-fed river. Never in his life had he seen a river before - this sleek, sinuous, full-bodied animal, chasing and chuckling, gripping things with a gurgle and leaving them with a laugh, to fling itself on fresh playmates that shook themselves free, and were caught and held again. All was a-shake and a-shiver - glints and gleams and sparkles, rustle and swirl, chatter and bubble."

The Mole encounters a river for the first time in Kenneth Grahame's The Wind in the Willows

I spent the Bank Holiday weekend (aka this year's summer) sharing the delights of the River Thames with a Russian friend who's visiting London. Kenneth Grahame's cheerful description of a river captures exactly how the Thames appeared, especially - and aptly - the section of river flowing past the River & Rowing Museum in Henley, which has exhibtions dedicated to both the river and The Wind and the Willows.

Sculptures.

 

Favourite sculptures as seen today in the art gallery of the world.

Paws for thought.

Are black cats lucky or unlucky? Does it make a difference if they cross in front of you? If one follows you for twenty minutes, sits outside your house mewing pitifully, then paces the windowsills - staring through the window panes with piercing eyes - is that luckier or unluckier than just a crossing cat? Or is said cat just hungry?

King's Parade, Cambridge

King's Parade, Cambridge
'Michaelmas Term'

From an original oil painting by Karen Pittaway

A cyclist and a Walker.

On a gentle Sunday afternoon cycle in the London summer drizzle today, I stumbled (so to speak) across a small-but-perfectly formed art allery in a local park. To one side of Pitzhanger-Manor House is the PM Gallery, and since yesterday this peaceful space has been home to the Hayward's touring exhibition entitled Walker Evans: Photographs 1935-36. "Walker Evans", states the exhibition guide, "endures as one of the most influential artists of the twentieth century. ... [He] had the extraordinary ability to see the present as if it were already the past. ... His principal subject was the American vernacular, as found in roadside stalls, cheap cafés, advertisements, simple bedrooms, and in small town main streets." Hung on four white walls, the black and white photos of churches, people, streets, roof-tops and the evidence of daily life speak simply, directly and honestly to the viewer. But at the same time this documentary style of photography - seemingly a simple recording of facts - is carried out with such artistic finesse that the images are imbued with an enigmatic quality making them quite mesmerising. A modern day Mona Lisa, suggests one of the information panels of the image lablled "Allie Mae Burroughs, Wife of a Cotton Sharecropper, Hale County, Alabama".

Double life.

"So what else do you apart from music?"
"Well, in my spare time...."

Tea.

According to an article I have just read, the French "have been perfecting tea since 1636 - it arrived in France 22 years before it got to England". This interesting little nugget of information once again set me off on a tea-based thought trail. I blame my fascination on not having drunk a single drop of the stuff until the age of 20. That's two whole decades without tea. Pretty much the same period of time that the good folk of seventeenth-century England were happily going about their business, unaware of the hedonistic tea-drinking practice being indulged in by their French counterparts. (Though I wouldn't feel too sorry for your ancestors, apparently hot chocolate was the drink du jour at that time. Surely a worthy second to tea.) It seems that across the Channel they eventually became rather carried away by the activity: "In Marie Antoinette's day, the diarist Sévigne wrote that the court princesses drank 12 cups a day." I once drank eleven cups in one day, and am hoping never to again (unless I once again find myself in a Cornish caravan park on a rainy day).

A friend of mine once experimented with the tantalizing idea that tea might be the elusive miracle hangover cure everyone else has missed. Let's be clear about this tea does not mean your usual morning cuppa. Tea means a large pot of tea before going to sleep, followed by a large pot of tea on getting up. I think the theory hinged on the possibility that the tannins in the tea might somehow neutralise the excessive blood in his alcohol stream. Funnily enough, it didn't.

I'm looking forward to the start of an expedition from Calcutta to London entitled "Tracing Tea". Several Cambridge University students will be travelling by tuk-tuk (otherwise known as autorickshaws) along a route designed to cover places integral to the history of tea, passing through India, Pakistan, China, Central Asia, Turkmenistan, Iran, Turkey, Austria, the Czech Republic, Germany, and the Netherlands before finishing up in the UK. From the expedition's smart-looking website it is possible to trace the group's route, as well as to get a flavour of the book and television series that they hope to produce. In addition, it appears that there are plans in the offing to incorporate some kind of community art project. One to watch.

Sorry, just say that again please.

For the next four weeks I'm recapturing the spirit of living abroad with a teaching English as a foreign language course (just in case!). What do I expect to learn? Oh, a few teaching skills and a smattering of English grammar. What have I learnt so far? Hungarian. En Rebecca vagyek, mi a neve?

And now for the weather forecast...

Doctor Foster went to Gloucester
In a shower of rain,
He stepped in a puddle,
Right up to his middle,
And never went there again.

Gypsy Caravan

Violins singing, skirts a-whirling, brass players calling and coach wheels turning.

One of the last films I saw in France was Gypsy Caravan, "le Buena Vista Social Club de la musique Gypsy." Offering a celebration of Romany musical culture -an umbrella larger than you might think and used here to cover flamenco, gyspsy violin, Indian folk music, jazz and brass bands - the film's gentle portraits of memorable characters and bursts of colourful music lodge themselves in the mind. Maybe this film won't change the world, but it warms the heart.

ilovegoodbooks.

It's a funny old world sometimes. On my journey back through France three weeks ago, mounds of luggage in tow, I wondered if England would have changed much since I had last lived there a year before. Would my home country have in fact metamorphosed into a foreign country? In poet Carol Ann Duffy's words: "The other country, is it anticipated or half-remembered?" As if in answer, when I turned on to Radio 4, filling the kitchen with the remembered soundtrack of family weekends, the first item I heard featured my friend's brother's band. Then I opened a discarded Sunday-newspaper magazine to find a picture of my soon-to-be-married friend's fiancee. How often does national media pick up and broadcast particles of your life? Stretcher of the imagination that I am, I like to think this was a funnny old world welcoming me home.
Oh, and yes, the "brother in a band" is a cliche, but this time the band is worth a listen. Even a few of your hard-earned pennies. Buy Passchendaele from today on itunes,a song by Kent based band GoodBooks,who were recently described in The Times as "easy to imagine in the Top 10" and "English eccentrics". And if there's one thing that makes the English English, it's being the world's best eccentrics. Details on the GoodBooks website.

A splash of colour and a dash of conversation.

 





















On a recent exploration-in-minature of England via its railways, taking in Exeter and Dartington, Penzance and Darlington, I was able to indulge in two favourite pastimes: people-watching, and looking at art. Any well-versed people watcher will know that trains offer rich pickings, that the pretty arbitrary seating arrangment juxtaposes people who might never normally talk in the street, and that whilst we are physically in transit, we are often also mentally in transit, creating possibilities for all sorts of unexpected meetings and conversations.Just ask Agatha Christie or Patricia Highsmith. Certainly some of the stranger discussions and encounters I've had in life have taken place whilst on a train: seeing a documentary about family breakdown and reunion being filmed on a train bound for Wales, encountering a mountain rescuer on a train between Grenoble and Lyon, talking to the enterprising teenage girl who taught herself japanese because she didn't want to learn French or German at school. Somehow, apart from those who hide away behind the protective shield of book, people seemed to be compelled to interact when on trains. Perhap it's because of this suspension of normal life that art in stations is such a good idea. Visitors to Penzance are welcomed by bold prints of works by one of Cornwall's shining successes, artist Kurt Jackson. Arguably Jackson's work is ideal for this sort of project: colourful, eye-catching and painted on a large scale, his isn't controversial art and even a cynic couldn't deny that a splash of colour brightens the brickwork up.

Translation gem

4 little wooden golems knoll the passing hours: Jacquemart and his wife Jacquette knock the full hours on the big bell, whereas their children, Jacquelin and Jacqueline knock the quarter of an hour on the two small bells (melted mechanical noise).

From the pen of a professional translator. Although maybe surreal poetry might be more up this wordsmith's street. Does anyone know what melted mechanical noises might sound like?

"Speaking two or more languages is the natural way of life for three-quarters of the human race". How Language works David Crystal

Sketches and manuscripts.

Playing from printed music can sometimes be an anonymous experience. Black and white staves covered with uniformly round circles, neatly arched slurs and pin-point-perfect dots. Enough to make anyone forget that a human being once put pen to paper or that written scores form only a small part of the creation of a musical performance. In the written tradition of classical music, scores are invaluable, if far from infalliable musicological sources. Thus, for both performers and scholars, the unveiling of the Julliard School of Music's swish new web-site that makes a vast store of manuscripts, scores and sketches available for free online, is a noteworthy moment.

p.s. take a look here at The Rest is Noise, a blog by the music critic of The New Yorker for more details.

From Pont de la Guillotiere

 

From Pont de la Guillotiere

 

Lyon, Lugdunum, light, lumière, lune, l'eau.

Into a world of dreams.

A century or so ago (in 1892 to be exact) Belgian born Maurice Maeterlink wrote his symbolist play Pelléas et Mélisande. Maeterlink's work exploring doomed love inspired the "magnifiques pages de Fauré, Sibelius et Schoenberg" and the entire opera's worth of pages by Debussy which in turn shape Lyon auditorium's recently announced 2007-08 season. The season's concert programme is full of colour (Falla and Tchaikosky); nineteenth-century splendour (Wagner, Brahms, Bruckner; the all important pinch of succesful sentimentality (Rachmaninov) and, bien sûr, lots of French offerings (Debussy, Ravel, Faure, Ibert, Offenbach, Dukas,Saint-Saens,Bizet, Poulenc, Messiean, Dalbavie, Dutilluex). Think I'll have to pop back to Lyon once in a while!

Very Important facts, figures, events and equations.

Did you know that in 2006:
1. the comic book was the third best-selling book genre in France?
2. more than 40.5 million comic books were sold here?
3. and 4130 new comic books were published; that's about 11 a day?

Twisted logic: Surely the most famous comic books are the Adventures of Asterix. If you were asked to name a Gaul, Asterix would probably be the first name to trip off the tongue. Under the name of Lugdunum, Lyon used to be the capital of Gaul. Therefore it is completely logical that next weekend Lyon will be host to the second "Festival de la Bande Dessinnee" (aka comic book festival/aka lots of adults bonding with their inner children).

Anything goes: In France, any subject can be turned into a BD... My firm favourite for incongruity between form and content is the comic book version of Marcel Proust's A la recherche du temps perdu...

 

Storms on the rampage

Forget crying, last night Lyon was throwing a full-blown temper tantrum. Storms have been rumbling up and down the two rivers for the last few weeks, but yesterday the thick clouds hurled out lightning bolts and explosions of thunder almost every few seconds. Sulking, crying, slamming doors, turning lights on and off, hammering fists against brick walls, throwing things around, shouting and screaming: this 5am fit ticked all the temper tantrum boxes. You've honestly never heard anthing like it.

Place des Jacobins

 

A city kaleidoscope.

Extraordinary Voyages

"Travel enables us to enrich our lives with new experiences, to enjoy and to be educated, to learn respect for foreign cultures, to establish friendships, and above all to contribute to international cooperation and peace throughout the world.”

Thought for the day from Jules Verne.

From under the umbrella

Last night, I saw the City crying
Cracked windows poured falling stars
And the streets were paved with mirrors.
















The penultimate stanza from "Last night, I saw the City breathing" by Andrew Fusek Peters, who is apparently the tallest poet in Britain. For what seems like weeks now my current city, Lyon, has been crying with droplets and spoonfuls and bucketfuls of rain. No cracked windows, but car headlights reflected and fragmented by the thin sheets of water covering the road suggest streets paved with mirrors; or canvases spattered with paint distilled from glass.

If you can't beat'em, join'em.

A while ago I posted a link to Tommy Hewitt Jones's latest YouTube organ stunt, promising to follow up the post with a few more choice details about his crazy musical antics. One pet project that's been in the pipelines for a while goes by the name of 'On the Facebook' (ofen referred to as the Facebook Song), a song currently sitting at no. 10 in the iTunes pop album chart, and at no. 55 in the iTunes pop singles chart. Not bad for a morsel created over a year ago by two Cambridge muso students filling time between (or, how shocking, maybe even during) lectures and supervisions. A light-hearted poke at the social-networking site that has swept through universities in the West, the song is short and sweet and the video runs rampage around Cambridge, featuring famous landmarks and students not quite managing to lip-synch. Already, tenth place on iTunes is pretty impressive, but only complete domination will do, and Tommy HJ and Pete Foggitt (co-creator) are egging people on to download themselves a copy of this boppy little number so that (and I quote Tommy) it can become "the SILLIEST NUMBER ONE EVER". And let's be honest, it wouldn't be a number one for any other reason (apart from maybe manipulation/management of online resources). Sitting here in my room in France, silliness suddenly seems like a peculiarly English quality. Monty Python; Green Wing; jelly: all united by the English tendency to take delight in doing silly things, saying silly words and eating silly food. Previously a facebook-song sceptic, this new advertising twist has done the trick for me and I've forked out my 79p in aid of the promotion of general silliness. Why not do the same?



A direct link to the iTunes store can be found here.

You can watch the highly amusing Anglia TV feature on the song here.

Join our Facebook Song group here.

If music be the food of love, play on.

Some friends and I are giving an informal concert tonight. Beethoven, Piazolla, Quilter, Purcell and Brahms. You can't get much more mismatched than that, but sometimes unprogrammed concert programmes work surprisingly well. In any case, as Purcell's song says (which we are performing), if music be the food of love, sing on till I am fill'd with joy. Music and food on a summer evening in France. Sing on.

Public faces

 

 

Saw this in Lyon the other day. Seems some politicians never learn when to stop campaigning.

Musical names...

Recently I read an article discussing the motives that compel people to legally change their names. Many reasons were listed, often variations on a theme of trying to fit in to or stand out from a new culture, but there were of course those who wished to change their name because it was simply too silly to live with. I started to think about all those names I have encountered which one might well be tempted to dispense with. Dougal McDougal wins the prize for ridiculousness as a result of repetition; I'm still wondering what opinion of their child's character Joanna Lumley's parents had (non-celebrity version) and someone clearly didn't think through giving Master Hamburger the first name of Andrew. Nineteenth-century English organist Reginald Goss-Custard is a firm favourite, as is Verdi Waddington (also an organist, and presumably a wannabee Italian opera composer). For sheer style, the prize has to go to I. F. Brilliant (first name Ira, founder of a invaluable centre for Beethoven scholarship). After cogitating, ruminating and digesting (cue Lloyd Grossman) this gourmet feast of names, what have I concluded? Unusual names, well I'm all for them. Unfortunate names? Well, quotationspage.com helpfully informs me that American humorist Evan Esar (?!) once said: "A signature always reveals a man's character - and sometimes even his name." So for those blighted with overly-meaningful names, all I can say, is better get working on that illegible signature.

G8 summit 2007 - N.Sarkozy drunk

The French president after a long discussion with Vladimir Putin. I guess they weren't drinking water...

Richly coloured skeins of silk...

 

From Stevens's moody costumes "of blue and yellow, sky and sun"; from his belts, knots, sashes and seams; from his "half pales of red" and "half pales of green", from all these words now to colour itself: to glowing skeins of silk wound, then woven; to the weft and warp of radiant squares and squarves. To Lyon's hidden opulence.

Credences of Summer

The personae of summer play the characters
Of an inhuman author, who meditates
With the gold bugs, in blue meadows, late at night.
He does not hear his characters talk. He sees
Them mottled, in the moodiest costumes,

Of blue and yellow, sky and sun, belted
And knotted, sashed and seamed, half pales of red,
Half pales of green, appropriate habit for
The huge decorum, the manner of the time,
Part of the mottled mood of summer's whole,

In which the characters speak because they want
To speak, the fat, the roseate characters,
Free, for a moment, from malice and sudden cry,
Complete in a completed scene, speaking
Their parts as in a youthful happiness.

The closing stanzas of Wallace Steven's Credences of Summer. John Banville began his reading for the Villa Gillet's Assises Internationales du Roman with this poem. Thought I'd share.

Being Jim Inconnu...

For the past five days I've been living a double life. In body I'm still Becca, but in mobile phone spirit, I'm known as Jim. Jim is a young Frenchman, blessed with at least two friends (Jessica and Kentin), and is a master of a mind-boggling species of French texting lingo. (If by a bizarre twist of fate you are reading this Jim, "CC Jim sa va alor koi 2 neuf?") What else can I tell you about Jim? Well, his mobile sim card gave up the ghost recently, perhaps as a result of carelessly letting his phone fall into a puddle. Several of his friends are probably still pacing their rooms urgently, trying to fathom the recent un-breaking of Jim's voice, his sudden alteration of accent, and his demonstration of a complete lack of knowledge of any of the weekend's complicated social plans laid by the means of intricate coded messages sent on Friday: "Kes ce ke tu fé?", "tu v vendredi soir", "sllt jimmy c mar jo comen vat u?". Ever since I read Daphne Du Maurier's The Scapegoat, in which an unsuspecting English traveller meets his French doppleganger (Let's add in a drop of German to spice things up further) and swaps his cold English life for that of a French aristocrat-with-a-chateau (don't be too jealous of him, there are of course Dark Secrets awaiting), I've been fascinated by the idea of swapping identities and by the possibilities of becoming someone else or of bumping into my exact likeness. Luckily, given that I'm female and English, Jim Inconnu is not my long-lost identical other, and rest assured I didn't attempt to steal his identity. Nevertheless finding myself looking through an inadvertantly opened window into someone else's life, as a result of the uniquely twenty-first century occurence of a phone company sending out two sim cards to the wrong addresses, reminds me of those more implausible situations. As if by magic, I had a new set of friends and a new phone number. After five days I started to become strangely attached to all these unknown people. Reality TV by mobile phone? Sadly, my window into someone else's world has closed now. A shame, as I'd very much like to know (as my Latin teacher used to say) the meaning of "C gus i fo" and "Alor ma geul y remarche". Answers accepted by text only.

Hi Mum :)

The blogging equivalent of being on stage and waving at someone you know in the audience: Happy Mother's Day Mum! (N.B. This is neither a belated nor scarily early greeting: today is Mother's Day in France.) And very appropriately, earlier today I rehearsed Ravel's Mother Goose Suite (Ma Mère l'oye) for a concert on Wednesday. To misquote the Royal Mail, I played this and thought of you.... (All say "ah".) OK, I'll stop waving now and get on with the performance.

The Rake's Progress

Off to see Stravinsky's The Rake's Progress tonight at Lyon's Opera House. Producer Robert Lepage's idea to set the opera in 1950s America sounds promising (Stravinsky composed this, his final opera, between 1947-51 around a decade after he arrived in America); am already intrigued by the comic strip version of the plot, created by Denis Chapon and published by the Opera de Lyon, and indeed am equally intrigued (and slightly bemused) by the website for the production: (http://www.opera-lyon.
com/rakesprogress/index.html - you can also find the pdf version of the comic book (BD) here). Reviews so far have been glowing - Le Monde described the production as "virtuose, poetique", Le Soir as "Éblouissant". I'll make sure to choose an equally good expand-your-French-vocabulary adjective to sum up what I think of it. Watch this space.

Widor Toccata duet stunt

Makes you tired just watching it! Watch this space for more on Mr Hewitt Jones's latest project - making No. 1 with the Facebook Song (all will be explained)...

Theme and Variations

Sometimes I find that weeks or days seem to be shaped by a particular theme, often for no apparent reason. Slipping back in time for a brief moment, last Monday's theme was most definitely the "String Quartet". Against the background of news from my old home, King's College, that their newly instated quartet in residence, the Dante Quartet, had been awarded the Royal Philharmonic Society's Chamber Music Award came two wonderful (and wonderfully different) quartet concerts in my current home. First up was the Quatuor Leonis's long awaited (well, by me at least) lunchtime performance of Schubert's Death and the Maiden Quartet. The intense moods conjured by this masterpiece never fail to astound: throughout a turbulent wildness seems to bubble beneath the surface, and because often restrained by the repetition of rhythmic motifs, a sense of real emotional depth and power is created (Think of the cumulative effect of the melodic reticence, harmonic pacing and rhythmic insistence of the second movement Theme and Variations). Hot on the heels of this concert came that of another French string quartet, the internationally known Quatuor Ysaÿe. Given in Lyon's auditorium as part of a wider series of concerts entitled "Les Grands Interprètes" which has welcomed a range of artists including Alfred Brendel (and I would have to be in England for that concert!), the twenty-three year old quartet performed Haydn's "Seven Last Words of Christ from the Cross". Not the easiest of musical worlds to enter into (Haydn himself confessed that "it was no easy task to compose seven adagios lasting ten minutes each, and to succeed one another without fatiguing the listeners; indeed, I found it quite impossible to confine myself to the appointed limits", the work combines spoken texts (performed here by the intriguing French philosopher Michel Serres) with music (originally for orchestra, then transcribed for string quartet). Despite the incongruous setting of a vast contemporary concert hall, the combination of the exquisitely articulated sonorities of French with the mellifluous string sonority of the quartet seemed to match the meditative aim of the work. And funnily enough, in a neat tying up of loose ends, because after all writing lets you tie up the loose ends that life can't, it turns out that the Quatuor Leonis are often coached/mentored by the Quatuor Ysaÿe, and that the last work performed by the Dante Quartet in King's was none other than Haydn's "Seven Last Words".

l'AIR

Throughout my year in Lyon, countless festivals for dance, music, cinema, theatre and art have taken place. In almost my very first week several streets were roped off and filled with people whirling, swirling and jumping in all directions as part of Lyon's biennale de la danse (my unexplained profile pic is, as you might have surmised, not me but a colourfully costumed dancer from this very festival). Via festivals of light and festivals of music both ancient and electronic, it's now Literature's turn. Beginning with a reading by Russel Banks on Monday night, Lyon's bookshops, libraries and a venue called Les Subsistances, will be home to an international cast of authors taking part in round table discussions, readings, and public meetings. Hosted by the Villa Gillet, the Assises Internationales du Roman is billed as an event for all and promises to be thought-provoking and enjoyable. Round table themes include "Littérature et engagement: le pouvoir des mots", "Le roman: un miroir social" and "Le romancier face à la réalité de ses personnages", and four authors will be tackling each theme. Big British names include John Banville, A.S.Byatt and Tobias Hill.

Here's a link for more info: http://www.villagillet.net/

Words and scenes

After a week of blogging silence, prepare yourselves for a flurry of posts (silence and a cup of coffee make for an interesting combination - hopefully I won't come across as too hyperactive and nonsensical!) So what's been going on this week? Well, apart from me becoming slightly worried about the power of words - I wrote about tea, the next morning our kettle broke; I wrote about shipwrecks, the next day the Cutty Sark went up in flames - Lyon has been quite the hive of activity. Classic French scenes of the past week or two have included swathes of people congregating in Place Bellecour to play la boule lyonnaise (From what I can glean, la boule lyonnaise - recently renamed sport-boule - isn't exactly the same as pétanques, but is very similar); a parade of protesters 'manifesting', followed by a considerably larger number of police officers in vans and unmarked cars; people dashing through torrential rain clutching baguettes and for a final cliché, workmen preparing Lyon's Roman amphitheatre for summer concerts lunching VERY leisurely under a gleaming white marquee erected on the stage. (Instating long lunches in England is high on my list of priorities). So as to avoid gargantuan posts (I'm always told off for writing mammoth sentences and paragraphs), I'll split up everything else into separate nuggets. Keep reading...

Treasure!

Ah-har! Well, shiver me timbers, tis a shipwreck I spy!

Me beauty, ye can't beat a good old-fashioned shipwreck really, especially one which be claimed t' be the "World's Largest Historical Shipwreck" with "Record 17 Tons o' Silver Currency". Dark an' stormy nights, jagged rocks, quests for treasure, secret locations, ulterior motives ... more at BBC News.

N! Avast!! B!. This post be "translated" from English t' Pirate-ish by "The Voices o' Many" website. Strange but true.

The Runaway Train or Maggaly the Metro

Don't all laugh at once, but one of my childhood ambitions - or so I seem to remember - was to be a train driver. Funny then, that one of my favourite things in Lyon - here speaks my inner-(or not so inner) child - should be the driver-less train. Between Gare de Vaise and Gare de Venisseux, (surely Lyon metro's answer to Tweedledee and Tweedledum), which top and tail the thread of green winding its way across the Lyonnaise metroscape, there runs a two-carriaged, bright orange, completely-automated shuttle train. Day and night (well until at least 00:19 ) this little train dashes about Lyon, slipping underneath both the Rhone and the Saone, joining East to West, and all without a single driver. Metro line D's homage to the Stansted terminal shuttle bus? The result of a thwarted train designer's desire to build roller coasters? Perhaps said train designer played too many Star Wars computer games late at night and became confused? Just as, when seated at the very front or very back of Maggaly the Metro*, the dark underground tunnel, lit only by faintly glowing blue lights, spirals away into the distance; an endless list of explanations for the driver-less train suggests itself. Who knows where the idea came from? Well, this fan doesn't really mind. Let the origins of the brilliant train remain lost in the mists of time, leaving us fans free to take up our seats in front of the glass bubble windows at either end of each carriage, and to enjoy whizzing about in underground tunnels, pretending to drive the train.

*Maggaly the Metro, Thomas the Tank Engine's French girlfriend. For a few factual titbits about Maggaly, see her personal page at wikipedia.

How to cook frog's legs...

Garlic (lots of). Check.
Parsley. Check.
Butter (for frying). Check.
Red wine (mostly for drinking).Check.
Huge pile of frog's legs flown in from Thailand becase, according to the chef, there aren't enough frogs left in France. Check. (Then take a deep breath).

And yes, I did try them. And yes, they were quite nice. And no, I probably won't be eating them again in a hurry because, try as I might, I can't forget that the platter of small white bows of meat, glistening with parsley and smelling of garlic, was once thirty green little frogs, sitting in a row.


 

Britannia rules the waves

The river banks of the Rhone have never looked so good. Under the current mayor of Lyon, the riverside has been transformed from a vast car park into a country playground for city dwellers with a wooden promenade, benches, swathes of wild flowers, moored boats with bars and tables spilling out onto the land, as well as a real playground for children that includes a wooden shipwreck. And back in England you might be proud, and perhaps surprised, to find out that one of the twelve namesakes of the riverbank areas is Ellen MacArthur. Yes, in Lyon there is now a "Berge Dame Ellen MacArthur". The sailing heroine's "berge" sits alongside those of eleven women from all over the world, from all walks of life: Marlene Dietrich (German-American), Clara Campoamor (Spanish), Renata Tebaldi (Italian), Amalia Rodrigues (Portugese), Reine Astrid (Belgian), Aletta Jacobs (?!), Melina Mercouri (Greek), Marie Sklodowska Curie (French-Polish), Karen Blixen (Danish), Anna Lindh (Swedish), Bertha Von Suttner (Austrian). Oh, and there are two weekends of parties to celebrate coming up. I'm particularly fascinated by the event described as "jazz de legumes". Any ideas what this might be?

So English...

One of the best things about being English in France, and by the same coin I imagine one of the best things about being French in England, is that France and England are just similar enough that you don't feel completely at sea, and just different enough that you feel like you are in a foreign country. A classic example: tea versus coffee. It's easy to find tea here, but drinking more than one cup every two or three days, especially if -quelle horreur- you add milk, is an instant giveaway. (I'm reading Agatha Christie in French at the moment: the first sentence is "C'était à Miss Somers de faire le thé." A paragraph later the lucky Miss Somers has managed to boil the water for the tea, two and half pages later "Votre thé, monsieur Fortescue", NINE pages later and the tea seems to be more important than any of the characters in the book- "C'est vous qui avez prepare le thé de Mr. Fortescue ... Et le thé, d'où venait-il? ... un thé de Chine special ... "etc. etc.. Talk about lost in translation.) Of course, it helps that a few years back the English pinched a whole lot of words from the French (only the good ones mind) and now the French are getting their revenge by stealing some back (though not evocative or quintessentially English words like "pitter-patter" or "hodge-podge", but words like "stop" (making the strange verb "stopper") and "looking" (as in "re-looking", for a make-over), as well as the more obvious ones like "internet" or "le weekend". So, seeing as I can't think of a good way to end this post, I'll sign off now, go and drink my cup of tea, read my Agatha Christie, and contemplate whether I can bring myself to eat the bowl of frog's legs currently sitting in my fridge (more of which another time)...

A conversation?

"That's the opera house?"
"Yup."
"That sort of black road hump thing?"
"Yup."
"In the distance? that looks like the station?"
"Yes."
"The opera house?!"

My guests weren't convinced. Admittedly, from a distance, looking across at Lyon's opera house from next to the basilica at Fourviere, the rooftop doesn't immediately shout out "opera house"; its message is more along the lines of "train anoraks this way" or "keep your jumbo jet here". Perhaps I exaggerate, but when standing opposite the nineteenth century neo-classical front entrance, looking at the neat rows of arches, it's hard to believe that roof and facade belong to the same brick walls. Yet those four outside walls are the largest part of what survived the opera house revamp in the early 90s. Revamp is a mild way of putting it, the opera house was gutted head to toe leaving only the external shell. Described by its architect Jean Nouvel as establishing a dialogue between history and modernity, Lyon Opera now sports an auditorium dressed entirely in black, stainless steel staircases straight out of the Crystal Maze's future zone, a Escher-like foyer with single-file escalators sprouting at unexpected angles, huge red lights and red padded walls, with just a smattering of history in the form of mirrors and chandeliers. Not so much a dialogue as a full on slanging match.

No riots then...

but an hour or so after that post, Place Bellecour was filled by people protesting against Sarko. Take a look at Annie's blog for a few close up photos, or for a short video (which seems to be more noise than anything else) swing by trusty old YouTube.

All change

Up-to-date news bulletins are not exactly part of this blog's stamping ground, but I don't think being in France on the day that a new president is elected and not mentioning this fact is allowable. So it's Sarkozy in, Royal left out, Chirac out. No riots here yet, though given that on Thursday night 92.6% of students (well 92.6% of the handful of students at a 'soiree') at the ENS-LSH in Lyon said that they would vote for Royal I don't think champagne-all-round is order of the day. All change, please.

Just a reminder.

If you are at a loose end in Lyon tomorrow at lunchtime, here's something to do.

Les pensionnaires scientifiques étrangers de l'ENS vous invitent tous ce jeudi 3 mai à 12h30, au théâtre Kantor, à leur représentation de la pièce de Boris Vian "Un Radical barbu", une comédie farfelue qui épingle les us et coutumes de la politique française ... des années 1940 et 1950. De quoi détendre l'atmosphère entre les deux tours ! L'entrée est libre et la durée du spectacle, préparé dans le cadre d'un projet pédagogique du Centre de ressources en langues/Français Langue Etrangère et de la section Lettres et Arts/Etudes théâtrales, est d'environ 1/2 heure.

That's at the ENS in the septieme (Debourg), 12.30, free entry.

Hommage a Van Gogh

Un rasoir decoupe la haie ou barricade
Des dents l'oreille guette un souffle criminel
La lanterne du tournesol sous les arcades
Affronte deux yeux blancs ainsi louche un tunnel.

Au bord de ce combat de coqs des mains exquises
Caressent le sang gras de l'estrade feu d'or
Tirfice furieux sur les places assises
Solennel ouragan des plumages de l'art

Que dire a ce bandeau si le bois de la pipe
S'avere incombustible et si le champ de ble
N'oppose aucune serpe aux siestes d'une equipe
De moissonneurs dormant un sommeil accable.

Jean Cocteau

Just to finish the Arles/Van Gogh theme :)

In case of writer's block

Prenez un mot, prenez en deux
faites cuire comme des oeufs
prenez un petit bout de sens
puis un grand morceau d'innocence
faites chauffer a petit feu
au petit feu de la technique
versez la sauce enigmatique
saupoudrez de quelques etoiles
poivrez et puis mettez les voiles

Ou voulez-vous donc en venir?
A ecrire
Vraiment? a ecrire??

Pour un art poetique (Raymond Queneau)

Concert trail

Have been sampling some of Lyon's finest recently:

Choeur d'Oratorio de Lyon's lovely concert including a suitably quicksilver Hebridean Overture; a new work by a contemporary Lyonnaise composer, Pascal de Montaigne (unfortunately the effect was slightly spoiled by the conductor's explanation of the piece that went on for longer than the piece for itself. I'm sure there's a rule against this) and Beethoven's op. 86, the Mass in C major with glorious soprano solos by a French singer, Virginie Pochon. Funnily enough, because the latter was in Latin, it almost sounded if it was in English. Latin versus French rather than English versus French(if that makes any sense at all?!)

Quatuor Leonis (formerly Esteves) lunchtime concert at the Ecole Normale Superieure, Lyon. Schubert's Quartettsatz ... happy mmmm. Lalo's string quartet in E flat from 1859 ... not so sure mmmm. Fantastic playing though, and an upcoming concert will include some of the BEST SCHUBERT EVER (no, really, they will be playing the Death and the Maiden Quartet).

Suspicious...

Yet another reason to watch Derren Brown. Channel 4 describes the programme thus:

"Episode 5:
This week Yshani, a young Sri-Lankan woman, is taught how to play the piano to
concert standard and perform a recital at the Wigmore Hall after only two weeks
of lessons with Derren."

Strange description, given that Yshani's played the piano for longer than a very long piece of string. Is Derren Brown faking it? Could he be the world's best piano teacher? Could he be the biggest disappointment in magic today? Or will there be a twist in the TV tale?

UPDATE: Programme going out on May 11th not 4th :)

Look into my eyes .... you're feeling sleepy...

Free publicity seems to be a bit of a theme at the moment: make sure that this Friday evening you are in couch potato gear, planted firmly in front of Channel Four at ten o'clock. Why? Because at Ten O'clock psychological illusionist Derren Brown is set to play with your mind on his new show Trick or Treat. And this Friday, May 4th, Derren's victim/subject/hypnotee is a good friend of mine, Yshani, - a fantastic pianist currently studying at the Guildhall School of Music and Drama, and fellow Derren Brown fanatic (she's definitely winning in the fan stakes!) The show's theme is "Trick or Treat": each week a participant picks a card, either trick or treat, and a series of events based on this choice subsequently unfolds. Without giving away anything in advance, Yshani ends up playing in the Wigmore Hall. So I'm doubly jealous now :) Meeting Derren Brown and playing in the Wigmore Hall. What else is there left to do?!

Hot off the press...

http://www.classicalmusic.org.uk/

Classical Musical UK describes itself as "the Online Guide for Classical Music in the United Kingdom" and if all goes to plan looks set to reorganise (revolutionize seems a bit strong) the online face of classical music, making it one of the only sites offering up-to-date jobs; quick guides to composers, UK orchestras and opera houses and most importantly exciting interviews with contemporary musicians. Now I realise that this sounds like a publicity plug and it is, because I have a vested interest in this site :) One of CMUK's features is that before each interview a group of performers/composers/people interested in classical music brainstorm questions for the interviewees. So as a member of this group, it's a given that I'd say it's worth taking a look! An interview with the Allegri String Quartet has just been published, and next up are the results of meetings with conductor-speaker-teacher Benjamin Zander and violinist, recently turned temporary busker, Tasmin Little.

Thought for the day.

You know, it's always useful to remember that in Lyon there's not one, but two rivers. Otherwise you might find yourself cycling up the wrong river for a good twenty minutes before you realise you want the Saone, not the Rhone. Not that I'd be stupid enough to do that... ehem.

Art in Arles

Following Van Gogh's footsteps to Arles doesn't, unfortunately, result in finding a treasure trove of his canvases. Quite the opposite: not a single one of the 200 paintings he completed during his 15 month stay in Arles remains there today. What you do find though is a gem of a museum full of art created to pay hommage to Van Gogh. Over fifty different artists-that the roll call includes David Hockney and Roy Lichtenstein gives you an idea of the scale of the project-contributed an assortment of art works in all shapes and sizes. Van Gogh's face and the iconic chair haunt the exhibition: his eyes follow you round each room; in one canvas the familiar face looms out from under his bed. The chair is transplanted into new settings, the seat sometimes filled - with shoes; with a man, despairing,-head in hands-; with paint pots or a wine glass. The cumulative effect is almost startling, certainly unexpected. In the place of coming away knowing more about Van Gogh, of learning by seeing him through other artists' eyes, the recurrent images-face, chair and dismembered ear- seem to distance him, as if somewhere behind these bold images hides another, more vulnerable, Van Gogh. Absolutely fascinating.

Take a look: http://www.fondationvangogh-arles.org/fran/index.htm

Arles: Part Two

 

Roman amphitheatre, roof-tops, Roman ruins, view out of the cloisters.

Arles

Did you get it? All of the pictures were in fact taken in Arles, the southern French town famous for Van Gogh and bull fighting, but the bottom right picture is the odd one out being as it is the only one not related to the hot topic of the moment: the French election. In the others we have the French flag, the Arles Hotel de Ville where voting took place, and my paparazzi photograph, subtly edited, of a real-life French voter. Moving on.

To be continued...

Have I Got News For You

 

Here are your four pictures for this week's game (we're starting at beginner's level!) Which picture is the odd one out and why?