Music for Remembrance Day

Although - as I pointed out earlier - I won't wear a poppy for a host of reasons, I'm not opposed to publicly remembering the victims of war, which I see as very different to the triumphalist, self-deceiving jingoism of the armchair generals and politicians who go on about freedom, sacrifice and the Glorious Dead.

War for many combatants was not voluntary, heroic or admirable. It was savage, vicious and a mark of social failure. Harry Partch, the WW1 veteran who died recently aged 111 described it as 'organised murder'. I'm no pacifist - I'm proud of my ancestors who fought against the British in the Boer War and the Easter Rising, for instance, and those who opposed Nazism, but I'm deeply suspicious of those who romanticise military service, and use it as cover to justify war. We forget that millions of soldiers came home determined to create a better, peaceful world rather than boast about their deeds.

One of my final-year students is writing her dissertation on poetic responses to the First World War (hopefully not the overly-familiar texts we all know too well), so my thoughts drifted to Ralph Vaughan Williams, the composer who volunteered for service even though he was 41. Perhaps he was caught up in the patriotic fervour of the moment - though in many ways he was a critical thinker - but the effect didn't last. He survived the war and responded to the horror by composing music which expressed disquiet about the myths of the 'Great' war, especially in his Pastoral Symphony, which uses a military bugler's false note as a key motif through which to explore the nature of war and the hoped-for peace, under the deceptive prettiness of the work's other themes.



His 'Dirge for Veterans' refuses to glorify war either - it's a serious-minded elegy for the victims of those comfortably sitting far behind the lines sending men out to die.



The other war-related piece VW produced was his 1946 Symphony No. 6: a surprise from a man popularly associated with contemplative nostalgia: it's often interpreted as a vision of the horrors of the 1939-45 conflict, and dread at what seemed to be the imminent nuclear war.

Heavenly Harmonies

Something soothing today - from the melodic side of Vaughan Williams. Namely, his The Lark Ascending, Violin Concerto and Serenade to Music. None of them are my favourites - I prefer his more angsty stuff and for string virtuosity, I favour Flos Campi, but they're all wonderful.

I have a difficult relationship with The Lark Ascending. It's transcendently beautiful, but I struggled for years to play it, and never succeeded. More widely, it's been stolen by Classic FM and allied types as 'easy', 'smooth' and ultimately English, none of which are true (VW was a lefty troublemaker to some extent). Strip away the crap and you have an astonishing piece of work: the halcyon days of an idyllic country before World War One ended the Edwardian paradise. The Violin Concerto has a bit more grunt to it - there's misery and passion in there all right.

Music what I like

I'm going through my collection in order, so it's lumpy: sometimes there'll be one type of music for days, sometimes different things every day. Yesterday was weird modernist American stuff, today is rather traditional English music from the same period.

Ralph Vaughan Williams was a funny onion. Liberal and atheist, he collected the hymns which form the backbone of the main Anglican hymnbook. Sometimes he dived into lost folk music (think Greensleeves, on which he based a Fantasia), at others he wrote symphonies reflecting the trauma and loss of World War One which sounded as modern as Stravinsky and the other continental experimentalists.

Today's CD is on the traditional side: some of VW's folk song arrangements. No, wait, come back, they're brilliant. Classical music doesn't often do folk very well: it sucks the life out of it and puts silly posh voices on. It depends on the recording as much as the composer. VW usually treats his sources with respect.

These are from 'On Wenlock Edge', which is a beautiful place near Wolverhampton, and 'Five Mystical Songs'. There's a version on Youtube including an interview with the singer of my recording, but he will singlehandedly put you off classical music for ever by fulfilling every stereotype. Try to listen past the 'operatic' voice: it's thankfully going out of fashion.

The second track is Full Fathom Five, one of his Shakespearean songs which I think is creepily wonderful.

Cultural vole

I'm teaching 6-8 this evening. I usually stay in the office all day, but I've decided to take the afternoon off this time: there's a fantastic concert over at Birmingham's Symphony Hall.

I'm really going for Vaughan Williams's dark, brooding Fourth Symphony, but the Tchaikovsky (Romeo and Juliet) and Chopin (Piano Concerto No 2) will be excellent too.

After teaching - Comedy Night at the new Little Civic. I always like a good laugh after teaching…

Dreaming of Gerontius

I went to a performance of Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius on Saturday, at Birmingham's stunningly-restored Town Hall. The performance was by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, and the Ex Cathedra Choir. Jeffrey Skidmore conducted and the soloists were Anna Stéphany, Adrian Thompson and Roderick Williams ('welease Wodewick!').

Gerontius was premiered at the Town Hall in 1900 - disastrously. This massive oratorio - a weird but moving take on Christian spirituality - was delivered late to the choir, who didn't rehearse properly, and whose director died four months before the first night.

This performance, however, went more than smoothly. Despite not having the slightest trace of religious or spiritual sentiment in my mean and crabby body, I was profoundly affected both by the music and its performance. The choir and orchestra - a 'period instrument' outfit which is for a piece only a century old - played with a lightness of touch which brought out all the sublety thought not to exist in Elgar, whose crusty 'Victorianness' hides (like Tennyson before him and Vaughan Williams later) a more radical core.

Mark's already told me that classical music is dead, but he's an ignorant poseur on this matter. It was disappointing that I was basically the youngest person there by several decades, barring some unwilling or precocious kids. There's a terrible air of smugness in UK classical music which sees a lot of bow tie wearers resentful of all efforts to popularise the art form - unlike Italy, for instance, where it's cheaper and equally acceptable to see an opera as it is to watch Juventus.

Anyway: Saturday's performance was an absolute triumph.

Bravo, maestro

Morning. Chained to your workstations again? I'm feeling rather sunnily-disposed today.

Saturday saw me, neatly attired in a decent suit, attend a very dull but useful fencing meeting (a whole region's AGM with 7 people present…) during which we picked the teams for the competition I'm managing. It dragged on so long that I missed the first few minutes of the concert I tootled off to - Vaughan Williams's A Sea Symphony and Delius's Sea Drift. Luckily, they started with the Delius and the man was right - it really did drift, interminably, so missing a few minutes wasn't too terrible.

The performance of A Sea Symphony was something else entirely. It's a dramatic piece, drawing on Walt Whitman's poetry and using a full choir as well as orchestra. At times the sea is a sparkling, friendly place, busy with trade and international encounters - at others, it's a dark, uncontrollable threat to lives. The piece swings between these views, with periods of prettiness, of sadness and of dread.

The performers were the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra, the CB Choir, Julie Cooper on Soprano, James Rutherford on Baritone and Adrian Lucas conducting. It was, I think, amongst the best couple of concerts I've ever attended, up there with Philip Glass in Lichfield Cathedral. The choir, after a slightly blurry start, showed how sensitive they could be, as did the orchestra and soloists. They wrung every drop of emotion from the piece - in parts of the second and third movements I was genuinely on the verge of tears.

Special mention too for the leader of the viola section. Vaughan Williams knew how to write for viola, which many composers don't - the solos were beautifully judged and the tone was exquisite.

I knew from the first ten minutes of this performance that a standing ovation was required. Unfortunately, the rest of the (sparse) crowd were either too cynical or too physically incapable to join me. I was certainly, apart from the children dragged along, the youngest in the crowd by several decades - and I'm 34. Sad, isn't it? They did engage in prolonged applause and multiple curtain calls, so justice was done.

Then home, for a solitary curry at the place by my flat. Actually, I wasn't lonely at all. I had most of the newspaper to get through and my head was still full of music.

Perfect Harmonium

This is an extract from John Adams's Harmonium, one of my favourite pieces of music of all time, one of the pieces that provides solace, excitement or passion whenever I need it.

This second piece is the first of three extracts from Vaughan Williams's Flos Campi, basically a viola concerto. I've a huge soft spot for V-W, but some of his work has been played to death - such as The Lark Ascending - and sounds a bit saccharine. Not this. It's dark, mysterious and strangely beautiful.

It's OK, I'm not grumpy any more

Well, apparently the antidote to feeling miserably ill is to go to a union negotiating committee. I don't feel physically better, but my spirits have lightened considerably. We've got a clear strategy and a solid plan of action which will discomfit the idiots who claim to manage us.

Meanwhile, here's some of the music I'll be hearing next month: one of the recitatives from Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony and an extract from Elgar's The Dream of Gerontius

Yet more culture

I've just received Tove Jansson's novel for adults (not an 'adult novel'), The True Deceiver, and my ticket for The Dream of Gerontius, Elgar's massive oratorio, performed at Birmingham's wonderful Town Hall. Thus inspired, I've just bought a ticket for Symphony Hall's performance of Vaughan Williams' A Sea Symphony. It's a monstrous work, scored for full orchestra and a massive choir, with settings of Walt Whitman's poetry: not avant-garde or atonal but emotionally powerful and with thoughtful, even profound settings of unsettling poems. Cheap tickets for students and young people (though not for me…).

This is da bomb!

Good morning (or evening or afternoon for my far-flung readers). How are you all today? Here the sun's breaking through the clouds, a Test match is being played 19 miles away (weather permitting), and I've received a pile of CDs in the post (I have a new card, but no PIN, so can only shop online for now).

What has Postman Pat brought me today? John Adams' Doctor Atomic Symphony and three CDs of Vaughan Williams: 'Sancta Civitas' and 'Dona nobis pacem' (VW was a cheerful agnostic or atheist and liberal to left - 'Sancta Civitas' is an interesting exploration of the fate of the soul while 'Dona Nobis Pacem' is a warning against war), Folksong Arrangements and Choral Folksong Arrangements (which also has some Holst). Normally my tastes are a little more modernist, but I've a soft spot for VW, and he's on the classical wing of the peace and socialism movement - folk songs were (like the 1960s) a way to demonstrated solidarity and to reconnect with culture unadulterated by bourgeois atomisation - though not always successfully. The Adams is a symphonic version of his latest opera, which follows Robert Oppenheimer as he builds the first nuclear weapon - I can't afford the actual opera recording yet, but it'll come.

Meanwhile, Steve Reich, when's Double Sextet being released? It won prizes ages ago and it still isn't commercially available. Boo!

Books will keep me warm

Dan, great-nephew of Radford Sallow, is the latest refugee in my office, seeking a quiet corner in which to complete his PhD on pigeons/urban seagulls, entitled 'Flying Rats: Can Man and Pigeons Co-Exist?'. No, it isn't really, and I'm traducing his fine work.

However, he's here and comes bearing books to take the edge off my fiscal isolation. He's given me Sebastian Haffner's Germany: Jekyll and Hyde, an eye-witness account of the 1930s in that country. I've also received in the post Tim Lebbon's Bar None, a post-apocalyptic novel set in Wales and mostly about beer ('a novel of chilling suspense, apocalyptic beauty, and fine ales' - sounds like a night in Wolverhampton). It's the last book I'll receive for a while. I've already had a stroppy automatic e-mail from Amazon pointing out that they can't take any payment for some fine Vaughan Williams choral works I've ordered. This is horrible. I'm as consumerist as Paris Hilton, just with books. Noooooooooooooooooo!

Soothing the savage breast

I was listening to Tosca earlier. Despite its passion, I decided it was the wrong material for marking - wild, bloody and furious as it is in places. Now I'm listening to the Tortelier recording on Bach's Cello Suites and I'm feeling much more generous. Up next - probably Flos Campi (my favourite Vaughan Williams) or some plainchant.

The moral is: if you want better marks, buy me the right kind of music.

Feldman

Alex Ross over at Therestisnoise has posted a few moments of Morton Feldman's Rothko Chapel. If this doesn't convince you of the joy of modern music, nothing ever will. The first instrument is a viola, that underestimated but noble plank. 

I can't help thinking that in this snippet, it sounds very like the opening theme of Vaughan Williams's Flos Campi, a far more beautiful piece than The Lark Ascending, although perhaps that's because the former hasn't been done to death by Classic FM (soporifically stealing your soul with music from bourgeois commercials: all your M+S favourites). I hate that station. It's the Daily Mail of classical music.