Saturday 25 July 2020

At the end of the tunnel

Two years ago I wrote about a Voices Now  survey of choral singing in the UK.
The census estimates (conservatively) that over 2 million people sing regularly across the UK. This is similar to the number of Britons who go swimming on a weekly basis, and 300,00010 more than those playing amateur football each week.11 However these two sports receive considerable public funding, in part because of the widely recognised benefits of regular12 sports practice for mental and physical well-being and their role in local communities.
  10  2.52M swimming once a week (source: Active People Survey 10)
11 1.84M playing football once a week (source: Active People Survey 10)

12  Football - £30 million per year (source: Full Fact.org).
    Swimming
-  £10 million(source: Sport England)
Aha I interjected but sport has physical and psychological benefits. Doesn't that explain the difference in government support? The Voices Now survey again:
Professor Graham Welch, Chair of Music Education at the Institute of Education, University of London, found that the health benefits of singing are both physical and psychological. “Singing has physical benefits because it is anaerobic activity that increases oxygenation in the blood stream and exercises major muscle groups in the upperbody, even when sitting. Singing has psychological benefits because of its normally positive effect in reducing stress levels.

Psychological benefits are also evident because of the increased sense of community, belonging and shared endeavour. 

6 Heart Research UK, Singing  is Good for You, 2017
That was then and this is now. Choral singing has a new enemy that uses biological warfare, despite the fact that, as a recent study says, "[T]here is no secure, peer-reviewed data on the dangers of singing itself – taken in isolation, that is, from other potential contributors to outbreaks...". It goes on to list examples: "...close contact, shared drinks and snacks, as well as poor ventilation", all of which can be managed – some, admittedly, with more difficulty than others.

The study investigates
...how dangerous singing and playing woodwind and brass instruments are in the spread of Covid-19. Serious outbreaks of the virus were linked to choirs from countries including South Korea and the Netherlands this spring. Most notable was the terrible case of a choir rehearsal in Skagit County, Washington state, on 10 March. Out of 61 attending practice, 52 people fell ill. Two died.
<parenthesis expertise="0">
Part of a test. For the full picture,
see the original article
"...playing woodwind and brass instruments"?  Singing I can understand – despite the lack of peer-reviewed evidence against it.  But it seems to me that a woodwind or brass instrument is as good (as far as the mouth is concerned, and I'm not sure why a player of a wind instrument would want to waste air by breathing out through the nose – which leaves only sneezes...
<meta-parenthesis> 
[and surely, isn't sneezing nature's way of telling you not to go to a rehearsal?]
</meta-parenthesis>
...) as  any cloth mask (if not more effective) in the inhibition of aerosols. For bio-secure rehearsals I imagine there would have to be protocols for  disposing of the condensate (that's a euphemism for "spit"), but the air coming out of the instruments themselves is surely not a possible vector for the virus – not that the air moves that vigorously anyhow (a professional trombonist speaking in a BBC news interview observed that it was next to impossible to blow out a candle placed by  the bell of the instrument).
</parenthesis>
But this is getting dangerously close to gloomy rumination, which – despite evidence to the contrary  – I'm trying to avoid.

The report of the recent research continues:
The study that Costello has set up with Reid and other colleagues – funded by the Department of Digital, Culture, Media and Sport and sponsored by Public Health England – aims to insert some facts into the discussion. The researchers hope to publish their findings in a matter of weeks – incredibly fast by the usual standards of peer-reviewed academic publishing. 
Here's hoping.

b

PS My latest nomination for a FOGGY (recognizing bad writing - see here, and here's a taste):
The idea for the name derives from Robert Gunning's FOG index, although these awards don't restrict themselves only to obstacles to readability measured by that index.
Here it is:

Is this a recall notice? It claims to be, but the text doesn't say anything like 'Take this back for a full refund. You really really ought to do this ASAP". It's more as though some official department or other has said 'Recall this" and B&Q have decided to save money by falling back on bad writing.

The word "advise" works to ways in English (at least two ways, but these two are the relevant ones):
  • advise + to-infinitive [that's ESOL-speak for what many  language learners know  as 'the infinitive"]
    Meaning: It would be wise to do this
    Example: He advised me to forget it
  • advise + that + indicative
    Meaning: Here's some information. Act on it or not – it's up to you
    Example: Transport for London advises passengers that engineering work will...
But B&Q have conflated these two. They are saying 'Here's some information: do with it what you will.' (the second sort of advise), but disguising it as the first sort (with a subtext of "Anyone with any sense would take care with this jerry-built rubbish. The Health and Safety people say we've got to recall it, but we're not going to waste money like that.")

Update: 2020.07.27.09:30 – Added saxophone picture

Sunday 19 July 2020

Mute-you-all benefits

Four years ago, I wrote (here)
A choral singer knows he's getting on when, as for me this term, the next concert includes three choral pieces all of which he's sung before with another choir or choirs.
Well, in this brave new (lockdown)  world it's happened again. Earlier this month our multi-talented accompanist, Ben,  has taken advantage of this opportunity to use Zoom to hold a series of virtual rehearsals on the last 3 Fridays of July...
<stop-press>
(and the series goes on now, as he's holding further such rehearsals: details here)
</stop-press>
...The first was Parry's I Was Glad, which I've written about more than once (here and here, and possibly elsewhere). This was the first in the series, and I hadn't done any preparatory note-bashing...

<weasel-words reason="He would say that, wouldn't he?">
Ben was at pains to say this wasn't necessary. But we lesser mortals need to do some prep. I thought, having sung the piece many times before, I could busk it; but it's just as well that in Zoom rehearsals no one can hear anything...
<zoom-pun>
Whenever a Zoom host says "I'll mute you all" it strikes me that it's to our mutual [geddit?] benefit that we can't hear each other.
</zoom-pun>
...(except in the final sing-through, when we've got a recording to sing along to).
</weasel-words >
Next up is the dum-dee-dum bit from the Vivaldi Gloria. I've sung this more often than the Parry, but still need to do some note-bashing,  Fortunately it's in F, so I have a good chance of picking out the notes.


<autobiographical-note>

My least prepared rendition of this was towards the end of last century. One of my son's colleagues in Berkshire Youth Choir (and in a barbershop quartet it spawned) was also organist at his local church in Finchampstead. He was organizing a performance of parts of the Gloria.

As I was on taxi-duty that day, and knew the piece well, I became a singing chauffeur.

</autobiographical-note>
The last Friday session is the Hallelujah chorus, which will be in most amateur choir members' repertoire. Although I must have sung this more often than any other piece, I will still need to do some preparatory note-bashing. One stretch of repeated "Hallelujahs" always catches me out however often I rehearse it.

The swan-song of Ben's mini-season is also, as happens, a piece I've sung before, as it was one of the pieces featured in a WCS workshop some years ago (10-ish?) held by another Ben. I'm not sure I can make these sessions (and admittedly my enthusiasm for the music is not great), We'll see.

But I must put in an appearance in the land of the living. (Having been away in Norfolk for a week, I felt the need to show that the blog still has a pulse.)

b


Saturday 4 July 2020

Up the Gunners

Writing here back in 2013, initially about "magazine", I moved on to 
Another perfectly innocent storage word from Arabic has been... bellicosified (don't bother looking that up; it means 'given a martial meaning' ). The word in question derives from what looks to me like a phrase in Arabic: dār as-şinā‘ah (maybe Arabic can create composite nouns by joining smaller words together –  as indeed English does: Etymonline tells me dāmeans 'house' and as-şinā‘ah means 'art/craft/skill' –  a rather up-market sort of 'workshop'; come to think of it, English has borrowed from French le mot justean 'atelier').  
This spawned various words in Italian and its many dialects. In standard Italian the word is darsena – 'wet dock'. Moving north, the Venetian equivalent was arsenal, which was applied to a complex of naval dockyards and armouries, the Arsenale di Venezia. Various other languages got their foot in the door and borrowed that word, but shorn of its peaceable storage-and-work-related meaning. It wasn't until some workers from the Royal Arsenal at Woolwich formed a football team ('The Gunners') that  swords were beaten into ploughshares and the word was rehabilitated.

So  the Venetian dialect has given us the word "arsenal". which referred originally to a particular complex of buildings devoted to war at sea but has come to be used to refer to any store of weaponry.

Venetian also gives us (and many other languages) the word "quarantine", mentioned in passing (I was talking about dozen at the time) here:
In French -aine is a suffix that can make any number approximate; in English, though, dozen is the only ...
<digression>
I was hoping that, in recognition of the fact that flowers are sold in 10s and 5s, the word dizen would evolve (French dixaine). Sadly. it hasn't happened.
<digression>
...such word we have; quarantine is related, but came via Italian quarantina giorni – the period that ships from plague-ridden countries had to wait in the offing [never thought I'd use that one, except in the song "Blow the Wind Southerly"] before putting in at 17TH-century Venice.
That reference to Venice agrees with the received etymological wisdom (Susie Dent mentioned it in a recent Radio Times). But more recently (here) I mentioned Dubrovnik as a possible locus for the coining – though the Venetian dialect would have been influential there at one time, as Dubrovnik was under Venetian rule at the time.

Another Venetian word that, like "arsenal" gave English a word with a general application based on a particular usage in Venice is that place where Shakespeare housed Shylock – in the ghetto:
The term was originally used for the Venetian Ghetto in Venice, Italy, as early as 1516, to describe the part of the city where Jews were restricted to live and thus segregated from other people.
Source
But when Elvis used those words "in the ghetto" referred to 'a cold and grey ...
<parenthesis>
(Come to think of it, it was probably gray)
</parenthesis>
... Chicago morn'. In fact, many cities now have ghettos.

Another legacy of Venetian will have to wait for an update. It's time for tea.


Update – 2020.07.06.13:55: Added  PS and fixed date in first line. 

PS
And here it is:

Another word that has come to us from Venice is "gazette". Here's what Etymonline has to say:

gazette (n.)


"newspaper," c. 1600, from French gazette (16c.), from Italian gazzetta, Venetian dialectal gazeta "newspaper," also the name of a small copper coin, literally "little magpie," from gazza; applied to the monthly newspaper (gazeta de la novità) published in Venice by the government, either from its price or its association with the bird (typical of false chatter), or both. First used in English 1665 for the paper issued at Oxford, whither the court had fled from the plague.
The coin may have been so called for its marking; ...The general story of the origin of the word is broadly accepted, but there are many variations:...
That page goes on to give details, which are many and varied, but the common threads are the bird (although one of them adds the rather sniffy "but it does not appear on any of the oldest Venetian specimens preserved at Florence") and the idea of idle chatter (Twitter comes to mind, a little anachronistically)...
<tangent subj="translation">
Speaking of anachronism, I am still fuming at the award-winning World's Classics translation of Os Lusíadas which sidesteps a rather tricky translation point by ignoring the original and inventing a 'heavy anchor chain' on a sixteenth century caravel, when the anchor chain was not invented until the nineteenth century – when ships started getting too heavy for hemp hawsers. And even then, a ship as light as a caravel wouldn't...
<inline-PPS>
This made sense when I wrote it, but probably needs a bit of explanation. I'm entering for the Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry in Translation, as mentioned in a recent post. Part of my preparation involved looking at another translation, which
  • Won an international prize 
  • Is rubbish
</inline-PPS> 
But I must let it go.
</tangent>
...England had just such a coin , the farthing (a quarter of an old penny, so a 960th of a pound, about 00.01 oops, correction: .1 new pence, but the bird was not a gazza (thieving or otherwise). It was a wren:



Update – 2020.07.07.09:55:  Added inline PPS.