Yankee Classics

Album of the Day is Benjamin Lees' Symphony No. 4: Memorial Candles, part of Naxos Records' brilliant project of selling cheap CDs of every American composer (though Lees was born in China of Russian parentage) who hummed a line. It's a patchy affair: some of the composers are lost geniuses (genii?), others are fairly humdrum. Yet there's something brilliantly democratic about giving everyone a chance to be heard, at £6 per CD.

Lees is still alive, in his 80s, and his music is firmly in the classical tradition, rather than part of the experimental (i.e. largely tune-free) movements of the twentieth century. This isn't to say that he's old-fashioned or derivative - he draws on the more interesting of the late Classical and Romantic composers like Prokofiev and Bartok, whose music is brilliant and challenging, and does interesting things with rhythm and sound, influenced by his maverick teacher, George Antheil.

Symphony No 4: Memorial Candles was commissioned to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the Holocaust, specifically its Jewish victims, and features a solo female voice and violinist. It's utterly terrifying, saddening and finally resigned. As it should be.

Here's the melancholy 3rd movement. Ignore the sunshine.

Powered by Podbean.com

Man hands on misery to man…

Two things have happened today which encapsulate the extremes of the human condition.

The first is the theft of the 'Arbeit Macht Frei' ironwork sign spanning the entrance to Auschwitz. Some things are sacred: a camp preserved as a memorial to man's endless capability for cruelty to man is surely on of them (not that it's had much of a restraining effect). What might the motivation be? Plain theft? Surely not, unless the thieves are totally free of all morality and sense of proportion. Memorabilia collection? There is a market for Nazi items, and this must rank high on the list of desirable pieces, but even amongst those freaks, some sense of place must prevail.

The only motivation I can think of is that it's a fascist statement - to desecrate a place where millions died, and which represent the places where more millions died (Jews, communists, trade unionists, Roma, homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses and others identified as somehow not fitting into the pure society) is a shocking rejection of morality, history and, ultimately, humanity. The action makes light of what went on behind those gates.

Meanwhile, from the bottom of a mine in Minnesota amongst other places, dark matter appears to have been found. It's a testimony to our (sometimes grudging) commitment to purest research - something now under attack in my education system and country. Dark matter is the substance which makes up 75% of the universe. It's never been detected before, only theorised as filling the spaces in gravitational theories of the universe: from dark matter comes matter, which includes us. Additionally, dark matter may even hold the key to time itself. At this point my brain dribbles out of my lugholes, looking for the nearest pub.

Godwin's law proved again

The US healthcare debate is becoming stunningly offensive. Thrill! As a woman shouts 'Heil Hitler' at an Israeli who points out that his former country has a good national health service, tells him that Obama hates Jews and Israel, and yells 'Boo Hoo' when he mentions the Holocaust. Thanks to Jadedj for the original post - he also has a clip of her claiming to live by 'biblical values'.

UKIP's poor relations also caught cheating

Merciless Public picks up on the story that the BNP's latest leaflet turns out to feature lots of happy smiling white people who aren't, well, British - or even British resident. 'Why we're all voting BNP' headlines some headshots of, amongst others, an Italian photographer's parents - and they aren't fascists. The images were from a stock photography site. Presumably the BNP couldn't find any supporters proud enough to pose - or any without a swastika tattoo on their foreheads. Two Americans feature, as well as an unfortunate British soldier who told the press that the BNP are 'scumbags' and 'I wouldn't vote for them in a million years'.

A few weeks ago, I objected to UKIP using Churchill to oppose the EU, despite Winston's keen support for a United States of Europe. Now, a BNP campaign seems similarly deceitful. It claims, much to the fury of religious leaders, that Jesus would vote BNP and quotes this legendary figure: 'If they have persecuted me, they will also persecute you' (John 15:20). Presumably they couldn't find a biblical reference for 'wogs out'.

Are they really claiming that a Jewish asylum seeker (his parents fled to Egypt as soon as he was born, if you believe all this stuff) would identify with the BNP, who seem to me to be the likely persecutors? Clearly this Jesus bloke didn't have a problem with Arabs (unlike Israel now) and would no doubt be defending Muslim families from the BNP in Stoke, Blackburn, Gaza and elsewhere. I seem to remember that Jesus's people didn't exactly thrive in various countries in which the BNP's friends came to power.

I note that they've chosen a horrible sentimental Caucasian-style image of Jesus, of the kind that abounded in my Catholic schools. Perhaps they don't know where he was allegedly from.