Once bittern, twice shrike.

Boom boom. That is all.

Nearly 7 years ago, with the chutzpah of a fairly sprightly (at the time) recent-notcher-up of the big 60, I wrote this:

I had a difference of opinion with MrsK the other day. We were in the seventh circle of la città dolente, or PC World as it is more commonly known, looking for a new laptop. In defence of one I pointed out that it did not have Windows 8 (which to me made it preferable). She wanted to know why this was an advantage, and I said that with any new operating system there's more to go wrong; tried and trusted software is no longer supported. 

This was further evidence of my defeatism, she said. Why expect things to go wrong? She asked a passing school-leaver if there were any known support issues with application software (I'm paraphrasing here, you understand) and the answer was, surprisingly enough, that everything was hotsy-totsy with Windows 8. 

Well, twenty years of working with software engineers (actually, 19¾ - HP took the penny-pinching precaution of shafting me 3 months before they would have had to fork out for a 20-year award) has taught me that if anything can go wrong with new software it will. This was true of Windows 95, and with everything since. Working in 'Support', which I did for many years, involved me almost daily in fixes and workarounds and you-just-can't-do-that-any-more when people tried to get existing application software to play nice with a new operating system. 

So everything, I feared, was not hotsy-totsy. To quote Ogden  Nash it was coldsy-toldsy (and Google, incidentally, has just asked me whether I mean 'cold toddy'). New operating systems are great when all the dependencies work, but with each new operating system there are more dependencies; there's more to go wrong. I hold no candle for Windows 7; give me Windows NT 4.1 any day. But for me it's preferable to Windows 8 (just as Windows 8 will be preferable to - saints preserve us - Windows 9).

My fear in the last line was ill-founded. For reasons best known to the Microsoft marketing department, 'Windows 9' is The Operating System that Never Was. I wonder why... It's not as if it were Windows 13, or Windows 666 (due in some future century, perhaps)..

But earlier in 2019, Microsoft decided to pull the plug on Windows 7 (the home, at the moment, of Knowles family computing – although there are outposts of more recent operating systems on various less benighted devices). On some date in mid-January 2020 support will be withdrawn. This could be relatively painless, if things just stop being fixed. I suppose Anti-Virus software could be a problem. But, realistically, what are the odds against  hackers bothering with a ten-year-old system? We revert to the old tried and tested system: Security-by-Obscurity – as they used to say in the world of VMS.

<OpenVMS>
Not that that was the whole story. OpenVMS was a much more robust system than some I could name, and not a prey to nearly as many viruses as we have become inured to in the M$ world. But the fact remains that being surrounded by lower-hanging fruit, malware-wise, is a fairly good guarantee against infection.
</OpenVMS>

A less benign outcome seems possible though, in the light of the behaviour of tech firms in recent years, punishing users who are content with things as they are. For the TEMERITY of not upgrading, they are deprived of even what they had; that'll teach them not to genuflect at the altar of Perpetual Upgrades. Per me si va nella città d' aggiornamenti perpetui (which is the way I imagine Dante might have said perpetual upgrades).

<digression>
Hmm. What a charming way Italian has with the word for 'upgrade': aggiornare. Think of giorno. A bit like the Creation, in Haydn's version: And there was [wait for it] light.
</digression>

Still. Sufficient unto the day is the evil thereof. Perhaps everything will be hotsy-totsy, as St Matthew might have put it.  And I have two weeks to find out.

<seasonal_novelty>
I'll sign off with something that came to me recently. It may have been the most middle-class of cracker jokes, remembered from Christmas 2018, or it may be original (not to say meaningless to most):

Q. What sort of hair conditioner does Santa Claus use?
A. Ho-ho-ho-ba. [Bou-boum and indeed tsh].

Like I said, meaningless to users of the – possibly more common,  – /ʤә'ʤәʊbә/ version (which is fine by me if that's what fleauts your beaut  – I'm not going to kick off the new year by laying down the law about talking proper (although  I haven't found a dictionary that recognizes the /ʤ/ version – just saying).
</seasonal_novelty>

Frohes thingummy.

b

But what does "original" mean?

This term's concert...

<lest-you-forget>

</lest-you-forget>

... has made me return to the problems of verse translation (which, as I said here, in the very early days of this blog, is something I have actually done [and actually in the French/Spanish/Italian/etc sense of happening right now {as my entry for the Stephen Spender Prize for Poetry in Translation, which I mentioned here, is in the hands of the judges right now}]).

In some cases I think there's a clear case for the original language. Of one of my favourite pieces I wrote this:

In my subject line, both here and on the occasion of my Cambridge rendition, I said Johannes-Passion. This isn't because of snobbery (though elitism does come into it – so bite me, as I believe they say in some parts of the world). It's because the German is part of the music 

There are, in the piece, two choruses with more-or-less identical settings. But what is matched is not just the notes. In one the mocking words are

Sei gegrüßet, lieber Jüden König!

In the other, the corresponding words are

Schreibe nicht der Jüden König!

The last two words are (trivially, of course) a perfect match, but consider the vowel sounds in the first three syllables: two are identical (Sei/schrei-, ge-/-be) and the third is similar: nicht has a front vowel and grüßet has a vowel that, though not strictly a front vowel, is fronted (the lips are forward); the same applies to König. All the stressed vowels are either front, or fronted,  or in the case of the first diphthong the tongue position is moving forwards (from [a] to [ɪ]. 

The first version, which I sang (in  English) with a previous choir about 30 years ago, had "Write thou not..." for Schreibe nicht... The first syllable is a close match  [2019: for the German]; not so the others. My present edition has both German and English and goes for a strangled and outlandish version: "Write Him not as our king"; how glad I am that we're not singing that... :-) 

There's more to be said, but tempus is fugendum (or whatever). My point is that the original language adds to the drama of the original, forcing facial antics in the singers to indicate mockery/anger/hatred... as appropriate. And the sounds are part of the musical picture.

But this is an unusually clear case. Bach thought and wrote in German, and the German sounds are an intrinsic part of the work. There are, naturally, difficulties for an amateur choir in England to do justice to the German...

<autobiographical_ note>
Some years ago I  sang this piece in a choir with a German-born bass (who I tried to sit next to as often as possible). Having studied German at school, and used it in the course  of my studies in Romance Philology (as discussed here), I was reasonably confident in my accent. But I often found that the  "German" sounds coming out of my mouth were noticeably different from sounds produced by a native speaker.
</autobiographical_ note>

... but in theory at least I think a German performance of a piece originally written in German. is best  (although a confident and accurate English performance is preferable to a "German" version  that sounds like  'Allo 'Allo's Herr Flick).

In some cases a German composer has written a piece originally with an English text. Mendelssohn's Elijah, for example, was written for the Birmingham Music Festival in 1846 and only later translated into German. There are cases where the text of the two versions do not tally...

<case_in_point>
The story of Elijah proceeds from a curse, which I described here:

The original curse, mentioned in the opening bars, is these years there shall not be dew nor rain but according to my word – that is, it was up to Jehova when the water supply was to be reconnected.

In an attempt to break the drought Elijah sings

As God the Lord of Sabaoth liveth, before whom I stand: three years this day fulfilled [HD: my emphasis], I will show myself unto Ahab; and the Lord will then send rain again upon the earth.

In other words this is precisely (to the day) the third anniversary of the beginning of the drought. In the German version the words Three years this day fulfilled have become  Heute im dritten Jahre – which isn't nearly so specific. (Perhaps the translator was nudging the text towards making sense; a drought is unlikely to last a precise number of years: assuming, for simplicity, an English climate,  say the drought starts on 31 May. It's not going to break on 1 June in some later year.) 

</case_in_point>

... but I don't feel the original English is in some sense "better".

There is another case (of German composers' oratorios), exemplified by the piece I mentioned in my opening words: Haydn wrote The Creation/Die Schöpfung with both languages simultaneously in mind. In the absence of a reliable English hand on the tiller (hmm, that could have done with a mixed metaphor alert) this makes for some pretty strangled syntax. But I'll keep my powder dry on that until I hear the pre-concert talk on 16 November.

Nearer at hand is another concert at Reading Great Hall,  Trinity Concert Band's Classical Spectacular which includes a piece with particular local significance: Jupiter,  from The Planets by  Holst. But I'll leave it to Paul Speed (the band's MD, who always gives very detailed notes) to say more about that link: the clue is in the photograph that Trinity have used to publicize this concert:

But I must make the most of this break in the weather. Things to do..

b

Update:  2019.09.30.10:15 – Added PS

PS We didn't get the expected local  background last night (which, BTW, was great fun), so here it is. That rather dapper Edwardian gentleman in the photo is (I suppose) Holst himself., and in the background you see the organ and wood panelling of the Great Hall. Wikipedia says:

At a concert in Reading in 1923, Holst slipped and fell, suffering concussion. He seemed to make a good recovery, and he felt up to accepting an invitation to the US... 

More here

<autobiographical_note>
When I was told of this accident when I was  singing with one of the university choirs my informant said that the fall didn't kill him outright but that he died later as a result. I'm inclined to think that this is nonsense, as Holst enjoyed a further 10 years and more of productive life after the fall.
</autobiographical_note>

He saw that it was good|bad|neither good nor bad

I didn't know – until I heard Simon Schama's excellent Schama on Blake on Radio 4 the other day – that Blake was a poet only in his spare time.

<AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL_NOTE type="Introduction">
My introduction to William Blake, the poet, was a whole-class detention (back when teachers could do that sort of thing) during which we were required to learn The Tyger by heart. Ma Griffiths (the teacher, so dubbed because she insisted on being addressed as "Ma'am") can't have tested us very stringently, as only the first 4 lines  stuck – and even then I have to check whether the symmetry is fearless or fearful. And I have vague structural (gist) memories: the second stanza is a series of questions asking what...?;  the last revisits the first (though how accurately I don't know).

<inline_PS>
I underestimated the power of that rote learning. Although this memory was not strong enough to interfere with my singing in the 2019 Christmas concert, it's strong enough to make me expect the words of Rutter's Star Carol 'See the star, shining bright' to continue 'In the forests of the night'.
</inline_PS>

</AUTOBIOGRAPHICAL_NOTE>

The programme was tied to an exhibition at Tate Britain

With over 300 original works, including his watercolours, paintings and prints, this is the largest show of Blake’s work for almost 20 years. It will rediscover him as a visual artist for the 21st century. 

More here

I'm not sure what "rediscover[ing] him as an artist for the 21st century" involves exactly, but I mean to find out.

One of Blake's most famous artistic works  is Europe, a prophecy, which Wikipedia uses to illustrate its entry  on Haydn's Creation (I'm not sure why...

<CHOICE_OF_ILLUSTRATION>

Newton by William Blake -
The William Blake Archive, Public Domain,
 https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=198284

(in my view his work Newton would have been  more appropriate. Wikipedia, like Schama, describes the implement he is wielding as "compasses", but I'm not so sure. Compasses, as any schoolchild knows, are used in construction. But in this case I think what we can see are dividers (used to measure). A mighty creator would have used compasses.

Europe, a Prophecy - The William Blake Archive, Public Domain
https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=27197029,

This  puny geometer, though, is just measuring. Blake‘s "Art is the Tree of Life. Science is the Tree of Death." suggests that he wasn't a fan of Newton and his  ilk.) 

I don't see what makes  Europe, a Prophecy relevant to The Creation. The dividers are still there, but the geometer is older.  Did Blake know something we don't?

</CHOICE_OF_ILLUSTRATION>

... though).

<COINCIDENCE> 

On 20 November 2010 at Wellington College Newsome Sports Hall Wokingham Choral Society last sang Haydn's Creation. Reading Chronicle's review called it "this most satisfying evening". The Wokingham Times reported possible misgivings about the venue, but in the end said

While it is true that there was a slight vibration in some of the louder sections, the performance was so well prepared and polished that this did not interfere with the power of the music.

Fortunately,  when the choir sings this marvellous piece again (just under 9 years later, on 16 November 2019) it will be at the University of Reading's Great Hall – with better acoustics and nearer to home. 

And the relevance of this – albeit tenuous and coincidental (hallmark of Harmless Drudgery, the "snapper up of unconsidered trifles") is that the tenor soloist at the concert will be "William Blake". 

<TEXTUAL_INFO type="plug"> 

For further  details on Haydn's  score for The Creation  (particularly the translation), if you're  feeling strong, you could  read this (a 68 page document, though only the first 55 are the  main text). You might prefer, though, to come to James Morley Potter's free introductory talk at 6.30 pm on the day of the performance.

</TEXTUAL_INFO>

</COINCIDENCE>

b

Update: 2019.11.12.15:30 – Added PS

PS

Correction: the tenor at our Creation concert next Saturday will not be "William Blake" (as originally announced). The tenor will be the young Dutch soloist Stefan Kennedy.

Update: 2020.01.02.15:00 – Added inline PPS.

Confounded diphthongs

On Saturday evening, at Reading's Great Hall, listening to Trinity Concert Band, I was reminded of the power of music in stimulating memory (much greater, I'd say, than the overrated Madeleine Effect). Earlier this year I wrote here about my thespian debut:

My own 42nd Street dream centred on the Sergeant-at-Arms in Iolanthe. I was a peer, but I dreamt of  standing in at the last minute for the fellow bass who had that part – not a huge one (I wasn't that ambitious –  he had one song, at the beginning of Act Two [in that YouTube clip the song starts after about 1 min.], as I remember: "the ice-cream slot", as it was archly referred to among the wiseacres of the Cecilian Players [not the chamber ensemble, an amateur operatic society based in SW London in the 1960s and '70s] – the first turn after the interval, when the audience are at their least attentive).  I was going to "Go out there an unknown and come back a st... well, a bit-part player".

And on Saturday, when the band played the opening chords of the Peers' March, I was back in the Questors Theatre, at the back of the audience, ready to process down to the stage. The words of the chorus came back to me:

Bow, Bow ye lower-middle classes

Bow, Bow ye tradesmen, bow ye masses

And with that memory came a memory of the MD ...

<autobiographical_note>
..."Budgie" Byrne, my music teacher (though it wasn't a school production) who, in the days when teachers were allowed to write what they thought in school reports, wrote of me "C+ – has ability but is disinclined to use it musically"...
</autobiographical_note>

...warning us not to enunciate the /ʊ/ of /bɑʊ/ until the last moment (a warning repeated by countless MDs over the next 50 years in other contexts).

One of those MDs warned me about another diphthong (tricky chap, Johnny Diphthong), rehearsing Haydn's Te Deum. This time, it was a diphthong to be avoided; the opening word was not /teɪ/ but /tɛ/:  not having the resources of the International Phonetic Association, she told us to imagine it was spelt teh (at the risk of anachronism I suppose she might have said it rhymed with meh). And that warning too has been repeated by my present MD (as we will be singing the piece, inter alia, at the Great Hall [where I started this post]).

I have mentioned word painting several times before; but one particular instance has caught my attention in the Te Deum. The tritone ....

<autobiographical_note>
(bane of a child violinist's life, especially in the key of Bb if memory serves*, not that I stuck at it for more than a year or two; couldn't stand the noise)
</autobiographical_note>

... is known as diabolus in musica. I don't expect Haydn was ignorant of this. An entry in the Guardian's Notes and Queries section summarises:

...the augmented fourth was the only augmented interval that appeared in the modes used before the emergence of the major and minor scales. Using only the white keys on a piano, the interval of F natural to B natural is the only augmented one (also known as the tri-tone) and was considered so unnatural and discordant in pre-tonal times as to be known as the Devil in Music

There's much more there, of varying  quality and accuracy. Caveat emptor ; I for one don't buy

THIS chord was banned because it was very hard to sing.

The devil's interval

Near the end of the Te Deum, the basses sing  Non confundar – "Let me not be damned" – ending on a B. And there, in the soprano line^P4S , is an F.  F  to B – "the devil's interval". The sopranos' F is a good few octaves above the basses' B, but the devil is hiding there. Sneaky.

Aunty Katy (mentioned many times before) was right: he was always lurking where a good Christian least expected it.

Idle hands, though. I must be getting on.

b

PS: A couple of political clues:

• Regurgitated nasty brioche that he left to make left-winger. (10)
• Not 'ard Brexit – no way; after haggling, very costly. (10)

Update 2016.10.04:14:15 – Added footnote

* Close, but no cigar. I was thinking of the key of F major (which involves a tritone stretch on the A string. (It all comes flooding back: An inch boy, an inch. Don't you know what an INCH looks like? My teacher, a dreadful old woman, was a fan of neither Galileo nor Pythagoras.)

Update 2016.10.16.22:15  – Added snippet of Te Deum score.

Update 2016.12.30.11:45  – Added PPS

PPS: Crossword answers: CORBYNISTA and  EXORBITANT

Update 2017.03.02.16:15  – Added PPPS

PPPS Fixed the link in the footnote, having initially got my Galileos mixed up. I was referring to the father,  lutenist and music theory pioneer – although I can't imagine that the boy didn't assist in his father's investigation of string-lengths.

Update 2017.10.16.15:55  – Added P⁴S footnote

^P4S It's not only the sopranos with that distant F. The bass accompaniment is marching relentlessly towards an F, and gets there in the fourth beat of the bar.