Nascent, adolescent, dehiscent, and crepuscular

Nearly eight years ago here in the first months of this blog (when this blog was nascent [before  its adolescence and – some would say – senescence]) I first visited the idea of inchoative infixes. Etymonline skates over them, rather missing the point, I would suggest, by calling -escent a suffix...

<weasel-words>
(in case anyone actually bothers to follow that link, I'd better admit that Etymonline doesn't actually use the word "suffix"; but it does call -escent a "word-forming element", showing a cavalier disregard for Occam's razor and ignoring all the -asc, -isc, and -usc- cases hinted at in my subject line.

<FFS> 

<order-order scurrility-quotient="0"> 

And no, the  S doesn't  stand for "sake". FFS means "For Further Study". 

</order-order> 

There may well be an -osc- word to complete the picture, but I can't think of it off-hand. Maybe "osculate" is all about puckering up before you O someone. Or "proboscis"...? But what's starting or growing about a proboscis, except in a special case such as Pinocchio? (That's not a serious suggestion, although some research into whatever preceded Latin might be interesting.... Probably not though.)
</FFS>

...What Latin did with an inchoative infix was take a verb like florere (="to flower") and add an  -esc-   before the ending to make it mean "start flowering"/"burst into flower": florescere. 

<road-not-followed> 

(Which, incidentally, is where our verb "flourish" comes from [ultimately].) 

</road-not-followed> 

And while I'm in the realms of full disclosure, I should admit that experts say infixation only happened with -esc- and -isc-; I'm not so sure, although those two infixes are by far the most common.
</weasel-words>

But this coining of new inchoative words by using an infix was not what linguists call "a productive mechanism" in the forming of Romance languages; they simply took the verb form and did what suited their needs. As I wrote in  that old post

In fact Elcock, in The Romance Languages says 'of all the innovations in the active verb of Vulgar Latin, perhaps the most noteworthy is the extension of the -ESC/ISC infix'...[which was] more influential as a basis for the formation of Romance language verbs [Fr.  finissons/finissez/finissent/etc from  finir, etc] – where there is no sense of 'inchoateness', and the infix just introduces this 'regular irregularity' to French -ir verbs;... 

<INLINE_PS> 

This one took me a while to work out after eight years. I suppose readers at the time just dismissed it as further evidence of a confused mind. What I meant by "regular irregularity" was just that "-ss-" suddenly appears from nowhere in the new verb paradigm. 

<INLINE_PS>

...in Spanish and Portuguese they didn't use it as an infix at all, and used -ESCERE as a rather long suffix. to create verbs such a aparecer – 'appear' – presumably distantly related to Latin aperire   'to open' (as in French, careful readers will notice that it happens only to –IRE verbs). 

And this all started with a harmless reflection on the word "opalescent".  Like "fluorescent" and "iridescent"  the idea of inchoateness (="beginning/becoming", roughly) is here only in the sense that the image is always becoming something else. It is, to use a word coined by the wearer of the opal in question many years ago, sprickly. 

b

 

 

PS A chance observation. There exists in English the word flatty. Its primary meaning (among several) is a sort of shoe:

But it's not that common a word. Collins gives this usage graph:

It was quite popular (with some meaning) in the eighteenth century, went downhill in the nineteenth, and has been next to moribund since then (but not so moribund as to escape my attention: I first met it when such footwear was prescribed for my oldest sister when she played a pirate in HMS Pinafore).

Now good old M&S  has resurrected it, and not without effrontery they have even slapped a trademark on it. Flatties^TM  are escalopes of chicken tenderized/marinaded in various ways. They are quite pleasant to eat; I'm not sure what makes them trademarkable though.

 

And this is not the first time a shoe name has been used to refer to a foodstuff. In 1982 "a baker in Adria, province of Rovigo, Veneto, Italy [created them]  in response to the popularity of French baguettes", says Wikipedia. Whereas the French called their sort of bread "drumsticks" (which takes us in a coincidental circle back to chickens) he called his new loaf a ciabatta (which means slipper). And don't talk to me about choux buns [Bou-boum]

 

But there is an ongoing biomass crisis in the garden that I must attend to. 

 

b

To his coy mistress

The idea for this  post has been bubbling away on the back-burner for some time, but something  struck me today – or more probably the day before yesterday by the time I hit Publish – that has brought it to the fore.  And "Something" is an appropriate choice of words, as it relates to the song Something's Coming at the beginning of West Side Story; specifically the introductory words, when Tony's still stacking bottles of pop ...

Could be,

Who knows?

... before deciding to sing.  Each ...

<inline_pps>

Correction: only the second – I misremembered.

</inline_pps>

of these lines includes a tritone (mentioned before here with this note:

<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) 

<footnote repositioning-rationale="for 2020 post"> 

*  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 ... 

<clarification>  

(the father, that is, though doubtlesss the son "helped" with his father‘s experiments on string lengths and pitch) 

</clarification>

...nor Pythagoras.) 

</footnote> 

</autobiographical_note>

...).

In the later song Maria (and Maria transpires to be that something)  the same tritone is there, but spelt differently (it's a rising diminished fifth this time, rather than a falling  augmented fourth). Bernstein is telling the audience something, and it's only taken me sixty-odd years ...

<autobiographical_note>
The film (which the older of my brothers saw in the West End) premiered in 1961, but I heard the original Broadway cast recording in the late '50s.
</autobiographical_note>

...to notice it. I wrote "later song Maria", though Something‘s Coming was an afterthought (as explained here), so Bernstein knew de antemano as they say in Spanish...,

<tangent>
And there's another thing that I've no time to pursue: calques, or "loan translations". Which came first, de antemano or beforehand? ante = before, and mano = hand (where those "=" signs have a fairly loose sense of equivalence).
</tangent>

...what the "Something" was, and what it would lead to – the song Cool (after the rumble) opens with a tritone. I'm sure there are many more, underlining the story; I just haven't noticed them yet.

All of which, belatedly, brings me to the order of the day – theme tunes that hold hidden musical messages. I notice these from time to time. The four that have stuck in my mind are:

• Mr Bean                               
  This is not a hidden message in the music, so much as words hiding in plain sight, cloaked by the music accompanying them. Howard Goodall has used a musical setting reminiscent of the many other settings of (Christ's) Ecce homo. It's plaintive and reflective. But listen to the words:  
  
  Ecce homo qui est faba 
  ("Behold the man who is Bean")
  

  <tangent>
  If you have time to kill, dip into the comments on that YouTube clip and another hymn beloved of Richard Curtis will spring to mind: "Forgive our foolish ways".
  </tangent>

• Mission Impossible             
  This theme music has a more clear message, using Morse code. The rhythm spells out dash dash dot dot ...
  

  <autobiographical_note>
  Like most English speakers I don't know much Morse code apart from S and O (Because of "SOS"), H (because it's so unwieldy: dot dot dot dot)), and RK (which appealed to me because of their symmetry – dot-dash-dot, dash-dot-dash [which I noticed only because they're my initials])
  </autobiographical_note>

  ..."IM". The idea of hiding Morse in music goes one step further in the theme music to the TV series Morse, which spells out not only the title character's name but also (in incidental music) clues to the action.
   
• Charlie Wilson's War           
  In this film, based on a true story (of a US politician lobbying [and more] to equip the Mujahideen in their struggle against the Russians [or was it Soviets? – one forgets so much...].), the retaliation of the Mujahideen purifying their country...
  

  <inline_ps>
  (casting out the Infidel)
  </inline_ps>

  was accompanied by some strangely familiar music. After a while I recognized it: it was an up-tempo version of Handel's And He Shall Purify.
  
  
• Sherlock Holmes                
  When the steam launch is passing the Palace of Westminster ...
  

  <inline_ppps>
  (in the 2009 Robert Downey Junior film)
  </inline_ppps>

  ...the music has a bass line that chimes out the Westminster jingle (the one that everyone knows and most people – including me – can't reproduce).

No time for more. I'm sure there's much more to notice,

Had I but world enough and time

(but this particular coy mistress [music] is one that I've sadly not pursued [with any vigour]).

Ho hum.

b

Update: 2021.10.15.11.35 – Added  <inline_ps />.

Update: 2021.10.18.15.5 – Added  <inline_pps /> and <inline_ppps />.

 

 

Who's who in that setting?

Among the many things that a composer needs to think about when setting a text is the internal clues about who's singing what. If they get it wrong it may involve the audience and/or performers in some unnecessary mental gymnastics.

One example is That Lovely Weekend, which once  was a regular part of the repertoire for BYC's male-voice sub-choir. It starts "I haven't said Thanks for that lovely weekend" and the song recounts the two young lovers' doings on the weekend in question, followed by a tearful parting: "I'm sorry I cried, I just felt that way".

This was a song made popular by Vera Lynn in 1942 . It was a wartime song. The lovely weekend in question was – to use the British English – leave (short for 'leave of absence'); the American English equivalent would be furlough...

<parenthesis>

(a word that has a less recreational sense in British English in 2020...

<amuse-cervelle>

What English word is spelt with these consonants in this  order: CRNVRS and includes these vowels (in another order): OOAIU, but has nothing to do with respiratory infection?

</amuse-cervelle>

...If the usage trends graph provided by Collins extended beyond 2008 it might show an upturn starting in March 2020 rather than this faintly embarrassing ... 

<IknowIknow> 

(not that any document can ever be up to date – I just feel that with data at least 12 years out of date [and counting], they ought to 'fess up)

</IknowIknow> 

...slow dwindling:

) 

</parenthesis>

.... But in the setting that used to be in the repertoire of the Berkshire Youth Choir in the early noughties it featured a baritone and only male voices. Of course, the tearful man might have been a conscientious objector being visited by a Wren whose "kit to be packed" (lyrics courtesy of genius.com) included an evening dress, but – expecting (at the sound of galloping hooves) horses rather than zebras – I found it rather odd.

Similarly, but with the full forces of an SATB choir, I felt the version of "Goodnight Sweetheart" performed two or three times by Wokingham Choral Society under our one-time MD Alex Chaplin (and more often by the WCS Chamber Choir...

<plug>

(available at reasonable rates for weddings and bar mitzvahs)

</plug>

...) was inappropriately set. The socio-historic (rather than musical) setting was an American Graffiti sort of thing: an adolescent couple in a borrowed car outside the young lady's home at the end of a date:

sings the young ma... but no; it's the sopranos. I always felt confused at this stage (not that anyone in the audience would have shared my feeling.

That's all for today; things to do (even if it rains at Southampton :-)).

b

 

Update: 2020.08.26.12:25 – A few typo-fixes and other corrections

What goes around...

In the early weeks of the present little local difficulty ("Nice and damp treatment [and catching] (8)") I wrote here

[Ed: In September 1985] I had my audition for Wokingham Choral Society with their new MD Paul Daniel. I persuaded him to take me on, despite my limitations when it came to reading music (and at the time I didn't even have a keyboard of any kind at home to help with note-bashing) on the strength of my having "recently" sung Beethoven's Mass in C (WCS's concert piece that term) with MagSoc's choir. That recently was something of an exaggeration, but it sounded more persuasive than the more accurate 'about 12 years ago when I was looking for an unauditioned choir having been kicked out of the chapel choir').

<peccadillo>
After three years with that choir (three years that coincided with Paul Daniel's tenure, before he went on to greater things) I left WCS, to return in the early noughties, under Aidan Oliver. On the strength of being a returning member I escaped without audition. (This may have had something to with the maestro's attitude to red tape.)
</peccadillo>

The post the other morning brought the music for next term's offering ...

<parenthesis>
(if that's the mot juste – as there is no offeree, "so shaken as we are, so wan with care" as wossname put it). We'll be having virtual rehearsals. So individual choir members will hear themselves, but there won't be an audience. 
</parenthesis> 

And the main piece for our Zoom rehearsals was the same mass. So my introduction to SATB choral singing...

<autobiographical_note>
There had been "the sixth form choir", but that was just a (transparent?) ruse to flesh out our UCCA forms ("UCCA" being the fore-runner of UCAS) in the Lower VIth. Our repertoire extended to "Jesu, Joy of Man's Desiring" set for two parts, in Latin  (it was a Catholic school after all) For years this was a party piece for me and my brother.

Before that there had been a primary school choir (back before the philistines rewrote the curriculum), and a Gang Show (from which I can still see the Banda'd ...

<parenthesis>
A Banda was a sort of pre-Xerox duplicating system (Wikipedia calls it a spirit duplicator), involving smudges and a strong whiff of meths. It's a wonder to me that there was not a rash of Banda-sniffing among school children (perhaps there was though; we had a very sheltered childhood)
</parenthesis>

... copies, complete with a baffling typo at the end of "Steamboat Bill". The widow's words addressed to her children should have been "bless each honey lamb"; but our copies said "bless each honey bole" a mistake that my memory can't shake whenever I think of the tune. (We had no idea what a "bole" was at the time, but much of the socio-historic environment was foreign to us anyway: What was a steamboat?, what did "Crêpe on every steamboat" signify? What was a "honey lamb" and did it differ in any meaningful way from a "honey bole"?

</autobiographical_note>

... was Beethoven's Mass in C. And I can't wait to hear what our MD makes of the first movement's less than decisive tempo marking. But what do I know? Far from indecisive it might just be extremely persnickety (and if I was feeling stronger I'd've stuck to my guns when the Autocorrect monster told me to break that last word up with an S). 

"Andante, but moving on a bit, in fact fairly vivace, come to think of it almost Allegretto. But don't overdo it."

The other piece is Brahms' Schicksalslied – a piece that's new to me. But one critic is quoted ...

<dodgy_reference>
Wikipedia gives only a secondary source, so I'm not naming either the quoter or the quotee. More'n my job's worth.
</dodgy_reference>

...as saying "Had Brahms never written anything but this one work, it would alone have sufficed to rank him with the best masters." 

That's all for now.

b

Two bites of the cherry

Some years ago on this blog I devoted a post to sporting metaphors, mentioning in passing a couple of expressions that have to do with cricket. But  I'm returning to it because it's a particularly fruitful source.

And fruit is relevant I've never  heard a football commentator say 'That was a peach of a ball'. But for a cricket commentator a whole range of fruit is available. A ball (that is, the delivery of a ball rather than the ball itself) can be either "a peach" or "a Jaffa" (a kind of orange, named after its home area)...

<tangent>
(The normal pronunciation today is with an /ʌ / [as in "apple"] in the stressed syllable. But in a version of a comical song based on "the 'phonetic' alphabet" [whatever that is, but you know the sort of thing A for 'orses, B for mutton, C for yourself {a more niche variation, learnt from my mother [whom saints preserve, and they better had] had "C for th'Highlanders"} ...] I once read "J for oranges" – which suggests a pronunciation with /eɪ/ [as in "cake"]. I wonder if this was ever a normal pronunciation of "Jaffa", or if was just a rather strained [and unsuccessful] part of the joke. In its earliest form – that is, the earliest form I know – it had the wartime "Q for rations", but this was later given the less time-sensitive "Q for the cinema" [though this is itself time-sensitive in that it refers back to a time when queues outside cinemas were a commonplace ].)
</tangent>

.... The ball itself can be either "a cherry" or "a nut", and the word cherry can be recycled in the expression "two bites of the cherry". I haven't played much cricket (only two semi-serious games, involving whites and a hard ball, that is...

<autobiographical-note>
Both were at  Cambridge – one for the chapel choir, and one for Cambridge University Ladies (I did say semi-serious). The latter was a social fixture between a Corpus XI (not the Corpus XI, though it included one or two serious players) and the CU Ladies (or was it "Women"?). As I, an intended spectator (it being a Sunday afternoon affair), had made the dual mistakes of wearing white and having long hair, I made up the numbers.

In deference to the social nature of the event, the men were allowed only a short run-up. But no such allowance was made for me, and the pent-up hostility of their fast bowlers was unleashed. They were no doubt disappointed that I lasted for so few (I think 3 balls – my memory is mercifully sketchy on this traumatic episode). The first missed everything, the second hit my bat (with little or no direction on my part) and went to the boundary. The third reduced my wicket to match... 

<parenthesis> 

(Does a cricket ball – making a direct hit – ever reduce stumps to anything other than matchwood, I wonder? If not, and the groundsman has done his job with the watering can, the ball knocks a stump cartwheeling out of the ground.  If there is no direct hit, the metaphor is different. The ball misses the wicket by a coat of varnish.

</parenthesis> 

</autobiographical-note>

)... but I've heard and watched a  lot.

There are arguments for and against the exercising of the option (after a number of overs depending on the match conditions – typically 90) that the fielding side has with regard to the use of a new ball. A new one is harder, and adds to a fast bowler's fierceness. On the other hand, whereas a soft old ball is harder to score off, a new ball flies readily to the boundary.

<parenthesis>
(It is also more likely to carry to a fielder's hands...

<tangent>
(Yet more metaphorical foodstuff: unless he or she has "butterfingers")
</tangent>

...and here the figure of speech is a metonym (part for whole) with added synechdoche I think (though the naming of parts in figurative speech was never my strong point): a catch is achieved if the bowler "finds the edge".
</parenthesis>

Now then, that "two bites..." thing. Towards the end of a session, the fielding captain may take the new ball, so that the bowlers can use it before play ends (for a day or playing session) and then again, when it's still relatively new, after a rest.

 If a ball is not a "peach" or a "Jaffa", but rather the reverse, it is either "filth" or a "pie" .

<parenthesis>
(I don't have an authoritative explanation of this one, though it might have something to with such balls being "as easy as pie" to hit [though that just shifts the question away from the cricket pitch: what is so easy about pie? ] One popular "explanation" involves clowns, and the inexact throwing of custard pies; I'm not convinced.)
</parenthesis>

It is a sad but inevitable fact that most good cricketers have a Public School background ...

<rant>
(and regular readers of this blog will be used to this convention (ils sont fous ces Bretons, as Astérix would say). In the UK a Public School is not [as in  many less linguistically deceitful parts of the world] a state school. A UK Public School is a fee-paying school (public to the extent that anyone with money can go...

<meta-rant counter="scholarships"type="autobiographical">
But what about scholarships? some people ask. Scholarships schmolarships. At age 11 I won a "free" place to such a school in the street where we lived, but couldn't take it up because my mother (WSPATBH [see above]), a young widow with five children and an ailing father to look after, couldn't afford the uniform.
</meta-rant>

...). Such schools can afford not to sell their playing fields [as increasing numbers of state schools must, in order to pay for little luxuries like pencils and paper, or coursebooks published relatively recently – say this century. They can also afford a groundsman, equipment, a teacher with first-class experience...
</rant>

and such schools often have a "CCF" (or some similar cadet force). So many cricketing metaphors refer to the military. 

But those must wait for an update.

b

Update: 2020.08.14.10:50 – Added PS

PS on military metaphors:

• Military 
  The word "military" itself is used in cricket of inoffensive bowling: "military medium". The reference is to military displays, where extremes are avoided.
• Ram-rod straight
  This is another example of the persistence of old technologies in metaphorical language, mentioned not infrequently in this blog. A ram-rod was used to load a muzzle-loading firearm.
• Gun-barrel straight
• Shoulder arms
  When a batsman "shoulders arms" he doesn't play a shot and makes a flamboyant display of not doing so by resting his bat on his shoulder. The expression "shoulder arms", in its original context, was a command issued to soldiers on parade
  
  Shouldering arms – from
  https://www.trentbridge.co.uk/assets/images/32/1507549656_chris-broad.png

"Nesciens" - know what I mean?

... 'having no [carnal] knowledge of'.

Nearly 7 years ago, having mentioned german-ness (that is, I suppose, if you'll excuse the neologism (come to think of it, whether you excuse it or not) teutonicity, I remembered something I heard in a Golden Age lecture ...

<parenthesis>
Everyone in the Spanish Department seemed to assume I'd know what 'Golden Age' meant in the context of Spanish literature. With most of my colleagues (who'd been studying Spanish literature for 2 or 3 years) this was a reasonable assumption. As I was starting from scratch, without the benefit of Wikipedia, I didn't know that

[t]he Spanish Golden Age (Spanish: Siglo de Oro [ˈsiɣlo ðe ˈoɾo], "Golden Century") is a period of flourishing in arts and literature in Spain, coinciding with the political rise of the Spanish Empire under the Catholic Monarchs of Spain and the Spanish Habsburgs. It started in 1492, with the end of the Reconquista, the Spanish voyages of Christopher Columbus to the New World, and the publication of Antonio de Nebrija's Grammar of the Castilian Language. It ended with the Treaty of the Pyrenees in 1659 or in 1681 with the death of the Pedro Calderón de la Barca, the last great writer of the age.
Source 

</parenthesis>

...in my first year as a student (or "gentleman in statu pupillari" as we were known by the powers that ... were?  might be?)

I added this clarification:

<digression theme="germaneness(sic)">
That's germanness. But while we're in Spain, I'm reminded of various Romance words for brother. In Italy (fratello), French (frère) (and I'm sure many others, which I can't recall off-hand) they used the Latin FRATRE(M) [and you really should recognize this convention by now; if you don't, have a look here]. But in the Iberian peninsula, this wasn't enough. As I remember (but don't have chapter and verse) according to one estimate there was a time when it was said that 1 in 3 adult males were in holy orders of some kind^PPPS; for this sort of 'brother' they used Spanish fray, Portuguese frade, Catalan frare.... A brother by blood, or a germane brother became in Spanish hermano, in Portuguese irmão, in Catalan   germã  .... As we've seen before (here again) an adjective in a Noun Phrase often comes to be a noun.
</digression>

And in that PPPS I added (years later):

I have long felt, in a Wikipaediesque sort of way, that this needs further citation. I don't have it from a book, as I heard it from the mouth of Professor E. M. Wilson, dedicatee of the snappily-titled...

<digression>
This compound escapes my hostility to "titled" in a literary context, expressed in the rant here.
</digression>

...Studies in Spanish Literature of the Golden Age: Presented to Edward M. Wilson (30) (Coleccion Tamesis: Serie A, Monografias) 

[He was] author of the Calderón chapter in the standard work on Golden Age Drama. In  fact, now I think of it, his influence may have been behind the CU Hispanic Society's choice of the play that marked my only outing as a tragedian, mentioned  here. Anyway,  whether the statistic (1 in 3 men in Holy Orders) was from his own (or one of his students') research or that of some other scholar, he regarded it as authoritative – good enough for me.

Now then (getting to the point at last ;-)), if you will refer back to that Wikipedia snippet, the Golden Age is known among Spanish students (and Spanish people in general if truth be told) as "el siglo de oro"; which brings me to my main reason (excuse?) for writing: a virtual performance of  Mouton's ...

<inline-PS>
Revenons?
</inline-PS>

...Nesciens mater given by the choir Siglo de Oro

To hear the piece, click here.

It's a lovely piece, and brilliant in its intricate structure. To quote the note provided by their MD (and formerly Wokingham Choral Society's MD):

It's ... a quadruple canon at the fifth, at a distance of two measures. What that means is: the singers who start on the left of the screen are singing exactly the same music as those on the right of the screen, except a perfect fifth higher, and two bars later.

Sublime. Out of this world. But I must return to the land of lawn mowers, hedge-trimmers, and curtain rails (don't ask, but that sorry tale made me forget... [no, I won't go there; time for my walk]).

b

Update 2020.08.04.11:55 – Added inline PS (a bit of esprit d'escalier)

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