Listening to Bach in the pub

One of the strongest memories I have of my schooldays at my town grammar-school is of Wednesday mornings when the whole school (that was about 360 of us, plus staff) trooped through the adjoining graveyard to St Nicolas Church for service. At the time, in the mid 1960s I thought this was a drag, but endured it like a spoonful of cod-liver oil. I probably sniggered away with my pals as the music master, a quaintly-dressed cove we called Clem, was invited by the Head, an imposing figure in his gown, to play a piece on the organ. This would have been the first time I ever heard Bach.

In retrospect, Clem was not the most accomplished organist, not even on the staff, but he was the music master, this was his raison d’être and I can remember now the nerves in his voice as he introduced the piece, which across the mists of time, always seemed to be the magisterial Toccata and Fugue in D minor.

Bach has stayed quietly by my side since then. For years, quietly hidden, but from time to time tugging away at my musical memory and popping up with manifestations such as The Brandenburg Concertos, The Prelude from the Cello Suite No 1 and latterly and I must confess only latterly, St Matthew’s Passion.

I had bought the boxed set of CDs, plus a CDROM (!), libretto in German, English and French of Matthäus-Passion by the Collegium Vocale of Ghent, directed by Philippe Herreweghe published by Harmonia Mundi, years ago from a music shop in Lichfield, but it had lain unused since. It was now in fact Easter Monday, so only a day or so late by the church calendar, when I actually started to listen to it. From the beautiful chorus opening in 3:4 time in which woodwind and strings gently rock one into a state of meditation, I was absorbed and moved. For those of you not familiar with this masterpiece, it is a long listen at one sitting and naturally tells the story of the crucifixion and resurrection of Jesus through arias, recitative and choruses. Until listening to this, I had never thought how much like the human voice is the oboe and time after time, Bach gently rocks us with the interplay of voice and woodwind, piercing angelic voices uplifting our spirits to what can only be described as the sublime.

So, I thought, I’ll download this onto my i-Phone. Well, why not? Then I can listen to it on holiday, in the car etc. So, after an hour or so spent fiddling around, between the computer, the dreaded i-Tunes and the device, I finally had the piece in its entirety on my playlist, or something like that. However, it then took me another week before I worked out how to turn off Apple’s curse: the shuffle. For those of you unfamiliar with this mode, it seems to be designed for people with the attention span of a gnat, who have to mix up their listening with tracks randomly selected, so St Matthew’s Passion was treated like a list of tracks on a Dizee Rascal album. Anyway, eventually I found how to turn the stupid thing off and was able to listen uninterruptedly to the sections of the work as they were written and meant to be heard and, joy for a linguist, to be able to follow the German while looking at the libretto in English!

Then everyday necessities crept in and we decided to have a Chinese take-away for dinner, so I was dispatched to the pub, wherein sitteth said Chinese, ordered the meal, bought a pint while it was cooking and sat in the corner of the busy bar listening through the ear pieces on my i-Phone to the familiar tune of:

Erkenne mich, mein Hüter
Mein Hirte, nimm mich an!

shortly before Christ tells Peter that before the cocks crows, he will deny him thrice. I was in heaven, well……. almost. I did get a few funny looks however, but personally I couldn’t see what was odd about some old geezer sitting alone in the pub with a pint of Marston’s in front of him listening to music on his headphones with a smile on his face. Try it.

Un Misanthrope

"Il faut parmi le monde une vertu traitable;
A force de sagesse on peut être blamable;
La parfaite raison fuit toute extremité
Et veut que l'on soit sage avec sobriété."

Philinte from Le Misanthrope: Molière, Acte 1, Scène 1.

I can hardly believe that it's forty five years ago when I first opened the pages on Molière's Le Misanthrope. At that time, as a grammar school sixthformer studying A level French (before we threw the towel in completely on reading great European literature in the original in schools) it seemed a million years away from my experience. Nevertheless, even then I could see the wry elevated humour in this classical comédie "qui fait rire dans l'âme."

For those of you who don't know the play, the original is a comedy of manners written in 1666, poking gentle fun at Alceste who perpetually rails against what he sees as the hypocrisy, lying and appalling flattery endemic in and around the court of Louis XIV. Alceste's personal problem however, is that he is hopelessly in love, against his better judgement, with the beautiful Célimène, the emodiment of everything he despises in other people.

What an experience then to see recently The Misanthrope in a version by Martin Crimp at The Comedy Theatre in London. Despite the vertiginous seating, the exceptional performance by Damian Lewis as Alceste and a good show by Keira Knightley as Jennifer (Célimène) carried by the witty updated script gave a memorable evening. In fact the script is superb, much of it written in rhyme with a nod to the original alexandrines and so faithful at times that I could actually remember snatches of the French. Martin Crimp places his Misanthrope in the modern London world of movies, script writers and actresses, full of luvvies and air kisses.

Two things struck me as strange though. Firstly, that while keeping so close to Molière's play, Alceste should be the only character to retain his original name and perhaps more fundamentally that Martin Crimp should have changed the ending subtly. The updated version has Alceste offering Jennifer a way out of the embarassing mess by fleeing society and sharing a life with him out of the media glare in quiet suburbia. This is a passably faithful play on Alceste's entreaties to Célimène to join him in his désert. However, in the updated version, Alceste is allowed to stomp off looking ridiculous and seems gone forever, pursued by Ellen's remark to John "Don't you see we're better off without him". Molière on the other hand has Philinte say to Eliante right at the end

"Allons, madame, allons employer toute chose,
Pour rompre le dessein que son coeur se propose."

In the one he is condemned, in the other there is a hope of salvation for the man who has taken virtue and a moral sensibility to ridiculous extremes.

These points aside, the script itself published by Faber is worth a read, even if you have missed the enjoyable theatrical experience.

Crash

“In LA no-one touches you……………..
We’re always behind metal and glass.
Think we miss that touch so much, we crash into each other just to feel something.”

With nearly a year left, it may be reckless, but surely Crash by Paul Haggis (2004) is the best film of this century’s first decade.

As one who stumbles clumsily through attempts to write film scripts following the Syd Field school of plot construction, it came as a refreshing revelation the other night, flicking through the channels, to watch this film again with its complexity, its ten sub plots held together by the crash, its humanity, its tragedy and its humour.

There are some outstandingly natural performances from: Shaun Toub as Farhad the Iranian shopkeeper whose anger and frustration are palpable and come from having very little; Sandra Bullock as Jean Cabot, wife of Rick the DA, whose anger and frustration arise from having too much; Michael Pena as Daniel the Hispanic locksmith who is trying to move his family up in the world; Terrence Howard as Cameron, the black film director whose wife is humiliated in front of his eyes by Officer Ryan (Matt Dillon) whose own anger comes from the frustration of trying to fight through bureaucracy to get better medical care for his father, and one could go on.

Crash shows us, all too painfully at times, that we are all human; that people mainly good can have weaknesses; that people mainly bad can have redeeming features, but that ultimately we all share the same space and the need for human contact. Prejudice and ignorance are shown towards the “Chinaman” (really Korean) who is knocked down by the young black hoods while dealing with trafficked immigrants. They overwhelm the unfortunate Iranian shopkeeper assumed to be an Arab. They even get under the sheets between the detectives Graham and Ria. The same qualities are given a subtle twist by Anthony and his constant complaining about how black people are stereotyped but who conforms exactly to the stereotype Jean feared when she saw him and Peter on the pavement after the meal.

While there is tension and argument inherent in almost every relationship in the film, the tenderness between Daniel the locksmith and his daughter Lara (the magic cloak) is beautifully done and in case any reader has not seen the film, I shall not give the plot away further on this point. But while there is tension everywhere, there is also compassion and redemption as Officer Ryan heroically rescues Christine, the woman he had earlier spitefully molested, from the burning car. Tenderness too breaks through in the filial devotion shown by Detective Graham towards his alcoholic and unforgiving mother. Even Anthony gives a handful of money to the poor trafficked Chinese as they are liberated.

Crash is my vote for Film of the Decade. It is tense, uncomfortable, at times funny, but never dull and above all it is made for people willing to think. Not to be missed.

(Feb 2009)

On the death of my parents

Why can’t I sleep any more? Why do I keep waking up at 4.30 and then after the inevitable pee, am unable to settle back to sleep? Is it something that comes with age? Is it my prostatic hyperplasia waking me (I have now started to take the tablets again) or is there something else? Pressure on the urinary tract may well wake me, but once relieved, can hardly keep me awake. There must be something else.

It may be because I feel alone and a little scared. Within the last 4 months I have lost both my parents. They were wonderful, remarkable people and I was fortunate to have had them for so long. Dad was 96 when he died this January and Mum was 90 when she passed away last week. They had lived together, albeit with care visits up to four times a day supplemented by me, in their own house, a little bungalow, until their deterioration took them on different paths to hospital and inevitably care homes. In retrospect, it was always impossible to conceive of either one of them without the other and my hope now is that wherever they are, they are together.

It feels strange, aged 62 ½ to find myself, an only child, without parents. It is as though I have been in an extended period of adolescence, with that certainty always there, shielding me from absolute responsibility and now that has gone.

Both parents were born in times very different to the present day. My dad, one year before The Great War, towards the end of that period of calm and certainty soon to be cruelly shattered across Europe. They both grew up in large, poor working class families with many elder brothers and sisters and for years prior to their deaths, had been the only surviving members of their families. They met during the Second World War, in Coventry, both working for Armstrong Siddley on war work. My mother had moved up from South Wales to the Midlands following her elder sister and looking for work and a way out of the domestic slavery which was the lot of young women in the valleys. Whether it was their joint experience of growing up in difficult circumstances in large families, or the precarious position they found themselves in after the war, I don’t know, but they only had one child: yours truly.

The one thing they both took from their separate but similar upbringings, was a resolution to better themselves through work and sobriety. I don’t mean they were social climbers, but they were both determined to live differently and to create a better life for themselves and I, than they had known as children. Theirs was the generation of make do and mend, of thrift and a lack of ostentation which saw them through the late forties and fifties until the explosion of the 1960s which must have seemed very strange to them indeed. It was the decade when I, a classic baby boomer, came of age.

Almost constant work in the factories of Coventry for my dad meant a gradual rise in living standards and a succession of houses, always owned, with some help from the Building Society until the last family home we all lived in was bought with no mortgage at all. We looked after my mother’s father, my granddad, until his death in 1968 and so as an only child, I was used to the stability of older people around me which cemented that total self-confidence that male only children seem to have yet which now I wonder about.

As I prepare for my mother’s funeral, with that of my dad still very fresh in my mind, I am more than ever convinced of one or two things. Firstly that the only thing that really matters in life is love and love is most unconditionally expressed through the family, between its members and generations. Secondly, that life after death is a metaphor for the enduring power of love, for the memory of one’s parents and grandparents that stays in the heart. I only hope that in my own stumbling, imperfect way, I can eventually be even half as good in that respect as my mum and dad.