I’m So Good at My Job

Posted on February 11, 2022 by leslie

René Magritte, Mysteries of the Horizon, credit Wikipedia

I’m So Good at My Job

Bill Hartley looks at Linkedin

Linkedin is described by some sources as social media but others see it differently. Whatever the definition, the idea is that users can post their profile and someone looking for people with their skills may get in touch. Further, those working in the same field can use the site to connect; possibly a more effective method than a chance encounter at a conference. In short, this electronic version of networking is intended to provide job opportunities or sources of help and advice. How well it works in practice is hard to say, though the membership statistics are impressive. The marketplace is huge and worldwide. It’s said that Human Resources departments routinely use the site both to seek candidates for a vacancy and to cross check job applications against a profile, before short listing for interviews. Clearly, for some, it is a powerful tool.

On the other hand it is also well used by people in the Civil Service. There might be a case for those working in specialist areas of the public sector, such as tax, for showcasing themselves on Linkedin. Otherwise and more appropriately, there are internal lines of communication throughout government departments. Why then is Linkedin of such interest? After all, once they attain a certain level of seniority, Civil Servants seldom enter the jobs market. They have pensions to protect and there are obscure rules which can adversely affect those who leave and re-enter the public sector. Unsurprisingly cultural differences exist between those who hazard themselves in the private sector jobs market and people in a form of employment where redundancy is rarely an issue. In the internal Civil Service jobs market they don’t routinely resort to Linkedin. HR ‘professionals’ in the public sector are the least adventurous of civil servants and seldom make decisions if they can kick the problem upstairs and have senior management solve it for them. Internal appointments follow a strict formula, even if questions are often asked about the honesty of the outcomes.

Continue reading →

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , | Leave a comment

ENDNOTES, February 2022

Posted on February 2, 2022 by leslie

Gabriel Dupont, 1901, credit Wikipedia

ENDNOTES, February 2022

In this edition: Chopin, Schumann, Tchaikovsky and Dupont, performed by Severin von Eckardstein, Second Symphony by Thomas Larcher, played by the Finnish Radio Symphony Orchestra, reviewed by Stuart Millson

The German pianist, Severin von Eckardstein, has enjoyed much acclaim across Europe, particularly among audiences in Paris and Biarritz. Not only has the pianist given his own interpretation of well-loved repertoire, such as Chopin and Schumann, but he has also revived the name of the French composer, Gabriel Dupont (1878-1914), a supremely gentle, lyrical scene-painter, known chiefly for an atmospheric sequence entitled La maison dans les dunes – four movements from which appear on a new CD from the Artalinna label. Entitled: Dans les dunes, par un clair matin; Voiles sur l’eau; Le soir dans les pins; Clair d’étoiles – each element seems to bring with it a breeze of summer, as clouds hang like veils in the sky.

Debussy, of course, comes to mind whenever such impressionist-type works are mentioned, yet Dupont’s style exudes, perhaps, more of a directness of style; a feeling of vignettes, or short “watercolours” in music, which the composer manages to pull back from the dazzling, dizzying heights of late-romanticism, or full-blown impressionism. Instead, we are content to wander quietly with Dupont, by pleasing landscapes – on a coast with a wide horizon, but where in the solitude, mysteries can also exist.
Continue reading →

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Black Lives Matters

Posted on February 2, 2022 by leslie

Statue of Robert Milligan, credit Wikipedia

Black Lives Matters

David Horowitz, I Can’t Breathe: How a Racial Hoax is Killing America, Regnery, 2021, Notes, Index, 256 pp, ISBN 9781684512188, reviewed by David Ashton

During enslavement and then segregation, Afro-Americans suffered ill-treatment and occasionally horrific murders, while in recent years individual atrocities have been committed not only by “blacks” against one another but also by “blacks” against “whites”. The US and UK differ in relevant respects, though in both countries “victims of colour” have been publicised more than others.

An especially instructive example of the killing of an allegedly helpless black man was that of George Floyd, which not only condemned a white Minneapolis policeman to 22 years in prison, but sparked the “Black Lives Matter” movement into further incendiary and far greater long-lasting damage around the world. Across America itself, during the first 103 days of the ensuing unrest alone, 633 violent “protests” in 2,400 locations were recorded.  The numbers killed during the disturbances are disputed, but there is no doubt about the subsequent escalation of crime.

Continue reading →

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Time’s Sequestered Treasure

Posted on January 31, 2022 by leslie

Teatro San Carlo, 1830, credit Wikipedia

Time’s Sequestered Treasure

Donizetti in the 1830’s, 7-CD Box set, £32, from Opera Rara, reviewed by David Truslove

Founded in 1970, Opera Rara is a goldmine for anyone wanting to explore the remoter corners of 19th and early 20th century opera. Donizetti, in particular, has been a long-term favourite with the company which aims to document all his music through recordings and performing editions. This limited edition boxed set, released in September 2021 to mark Opera Rara’s 50th anniversary, comprises three seldom performed works (spread over seven discs) spanning Donizetti’s career-defining decade of the 1830s. Made from recordings between 1977 and 2005, this significant release, remastered with exceptionally fine sound, includes a specially commissioned essay by Roger Parker and a synopsis for each opera. Complete libretti are also available as downloads. As usual with Opera Rara, these rarities on the company’s own label enjoy outstanding singing, playing and conducting.

Gustave Doré, The Deluge, credit Wikipedia

Il diluvio universale (The Great Flood) is the second of four operas Donizetti composed in 1830. It’s something of an oddity and belongs to a vogue for biblical epics bearing kinship with Rossini’s Mosè in Egitto and Verdi’s Nabucco. Determined to stage a work during Lent, Donizetti combines the sacred and profane and peoples Il diluvio with a collection of imagined characters in which the unwavering faith of Noah (named Noè) is pitched against the hedonistic Babylonian court of Cadmo. His wife Sela shares in Noè’s belief of an impending flood, whilst also embracing the fleshly delights of Babylon. But at the close, when she renounces God, the first thunderclap erupts. Built onto this framework is Sela’s rival Ada whose efforts to ensnare Cadmo are doomed when Sela attempts to salvage her marriage.
Continue reading →

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , | Leave a comment

Abigaille’s Party

Posted on January 26, 2022 by leslie

Jerusalem Falls, credit Wikipedia

Abigaille’s Party

Nabucco, dramma lirico in four parts, music by Giuseppe Verdi, libretto by Temistocle Solera, conductor Daniel Oren, director Daniele Abbado, Royal Opera 23rd January 2022, reviewed by Leslie Jones

According to the Metopera guide ‘What to Expect from Nabucco’, the score demonstrates “…Verdi’s ability to innovate operatic convention in the service of character development and psychological depth”. The writer, however, overstates his/her/their case. As Professor of Music Francesco Izzo notes in ‘The ‘Biblical Grandeur’ of Nabucco’ (Official Programme), one contemporary critic, writing in the Gazzetta musicale di Milano in 1843, complained about “the more conventional formal features of the opera”, such as Nabucco’s aria [a cabaletta] at the beginning of Part IV, arguing that “… Verdi…had indulged in the ‘usual forms’ at the expense of the drama”. (The cabaletta was “particularly favoured for arias…in the bel canto era”, see Wikipedia). Professor Izzo, for one, respectfully concludes that Nabucco was “…solidly grounded in the conventions and practices of early 19th century Italian opera”, although Verdi gave the chorus, which hitherto had a subordinate role in bel canto, a more prominent position (see ‘Nabucco, the online opera guide and synopsis’).

This revival of Daniele Abbado’s 2013 production of Nabucco is replete with iconography from Judaism and the Holocaust. The piles  of clothes that litter the floor are reminiscent of photographs of the massacres at Babi Yar in 1941 and the stone blocks evoke the tombs on the Mount of Olives and Berlin’s Holocaust memorial. Claire Seymour, in ‘A stirring Nabucco at Covent Garden’ (Opera Today, December 2021) and Katy Long, in ‘Experiences of Exile’ (Official Programme), also detect topical references to other exiled communities, such as Syrian and Afghan refugees.
Continue reading →

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

Manilius – Three Caesars in one Text?

Posted on January 18, 2022 by leslie

    Portrait of Tiberius

MANILIUS – Three Caesars in one Text?(i)

By Darrell Sutton

Imperial titles in the ancient Roman Republic had diverse origins. They appeared on coins and in the prose and poetry of Latin writers. Caesar, at first a surname of the Julian gens, ultimately came to denote several emperors (cf. Mason Hammond, ‘Imperial Elements in the Formula of the Roman Emperors during the First Two and a Half Centuries of the Empire’, Mem. Am. Acad. Rome, 1957). In due course, the use of Imperator or Augustus within the populace was utilized as a derogatory or complimentary term, depending on the party using them. Bards therefore needed to be perspicacious with their poetic illustrations.

Latin poets of the Late Roman Republic and early Roman Imperial period unveiled fine distinctions in their metrical compositions. In arrangements of verse, even though their systems disclosed overt shades of meaning, here and there they betrayed subtexts whose connotations were not easy to grasp, especially in astronomical lyrics. One widespread principle which preoccupied its devotees was the assumption that fixed objects in the heavens determined human destiny and governed events in the sub-lunar sphere. Manilius’ Astronomica confirms the existence somewhere of that general belief (e.g., II.603-607). In its structure, hexameter lines that are original and complex ascribe supremacy to planetary configurations, making clear to the reader the prevailing power of ‘fate’.

In what follows, an attempt is made to clarify one of the many ambiguities in Manilius’ Latin poem. It will be argued that the use of the imperial title, Caesar, in IV.776 does not apply exclusively to Tiberius Caesar Augustus since Manilius alludes to more than one sovereign.
Continue reading →

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , , | Leave a comment

Brief Encounter

Posted on January 12, 2022 by leslie

Haus der Wannsee Konferenz, credit Wikipedia

Brief Encounter

Peter Longerich, Wannsee: The Road to the Final Solution, first published as Wannseekonferenz: Der Weg zur Endlösung (2016), translated by Lesley Sharpe and Jeremy Noakes, Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2021, Notes, Bibliography, Appendix, Index, ISBN 978-0-19-883404-5, reviewed by Frank Ellis

The twentieth century may well come to be known as the age of genocide, not because what was formally defined as such in the mid 1940’s represented something new in man’s affairs – humans have always engaged and even revelled in mass slaughter and enslavement of the “other” – but because of the frequency and severity of the slaughter. What made the genocides of the twentieth century unique (so far) was the fateful combination of technology (rail, telephones and radio), powerful, centralised government bureaucracies with access to huge amounts of personal information, dedicated enforcement and extermination agencies, vastly improved methods of efficient mass killing and, above all, exceptionally aggressive ideological worldviews – Marxism-Leninism-Stalinism, National Socialism and Maoism – that sought to justify mass extermination (genocide) as necessary and desirable, the mandate of History.

The Holocaust (the Jewish Catastrophe) was a process. Victims were demonised, defamed, dehumanised, dispossessed, deported and then destroyed. Their suffering and deaths were then denied, something that has continued in various forms since 1945. The Wannsee Conference, the subject of Peter Longerich’s book, was a critical event in the process of the genocide. Here, in this lakeside villa, a small group of NS-Germany’s top administrative functionaries, invited by Reinhard Heydrich, head of the Reichssicherheitshauptamt (RSHA), discussed how to resolve what was called the Jewish question.

Reinhard Heydrich, credit Wikipedia

Continue reading →

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , , , , | 5 Comments

Res Publica

Posted on January 9, 2022 by leslie

 

Res Publica

Bill Hartley, on community assets

A recent newspaper report claimed that more than 11,000 pubs, restaurants and hotels have closed in Britain over the past two years. Clearly lockdown will have played a part, though doubtless some were teetering on the edge before the pandemic hit. Rural pubs have been particularly affected and often it’s the location. Hidden away up a country lane or in an isolated village may have been fine back when the  labour force trudged in from nearby fields but the demographics of villages has changed and if the locals won’t use the place then passing trade may not be enough.

A fight back began some years ago with the growth of community pubs. Of course pubs were always about community but the idea is that the place is seen as a broader resource. Even government began to recognise this with the passing of the Localism Act (2012). The Act gives people the right to step in and save what is recognised as a community asset. When it comes to pubs there is plenty of advice available and many success stories. Both CAMRA and the Plunkett Foundation offer information, to assist those who may be considering this approach. Continue reading →

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , | Leave a comment

ENDNOTES, January 2022

Posted on January 5, 2022 by leslie

Samuel Coleridge-Taylor, credit Wikipedia

ENDNOTES, January 2022

In this edition; Stuart Millson on composer Samuel Coleridge-Taylor

When one thinks of English music, one thinks immediately of Edward Elgar, or Ralph Vaughan Williams: figures who represent a very rooted, ancestrally-determined Englishness. Few people realise, however, that during the turn-of-the-century period, a composer was at work in Britain whose single-minded pursuit of excellence and the romantic spirit in our musical tradition placed him at the pinnacle of the profession. Most famous for his great choral-orchestral work, Hiawatha’s Wedding Feast, this artist also produced dozens of other beautifully-written works, including chamber quintets and sonatas, an orchestral Ballade, and a Violin Concerto – recorded by both the Chandos and Lyrita labels.

The composer was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor (not to be confused with Samuel Taylor Coleridge, the poet) and, at first glance, he could be considered a musical outsider. Samuel was born in London in the August of 1875, the son of a doctor from Sierra Leone and an Englishwoman. His talent was marked out from a very early age: in 1890, at the age of just 15, he entered the prestigious Royal College of Music, that powerhouse which sought to establish an English, or British national school of music. The violin was his instrument, and by 1892 the gifted young student joined the composition classes of the great and somewhat forbidding Sir Charles Villiers Stanford, an Irishman and a disciple of Brahms. Continue reading →

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , , | 1 Comment

Canon, to the Right of Them

Posted on January 3, 2022 by leslie

W E B Du Bois

Canon, to the Right of Them

Colonialism and Modern Social Theory, Gurminder K Bhambra & John Holmwood, Polity, 2021, 257 pp, hb, reviewed by Leslie Jones

The toxic legacy of European colonialism and imperialism underpins the “populist ressentiment and rejection of multiculturalism” of the white working class in Europe and the USA [i],  according to Bhambra and Holmwood. Assumptions of racial superiority drive “populism and zenophobic hostility to minorities and immigrants”.[ii] The authors dismiss the notion of a threat to European identity, which they attribute to “the loss of an advantage over people who were previously excluded and dominated”.[iii] In short, ‘white privilege’ is key to understanding contemporary politics. Indicatively, Black Lives Matter is described herein as “…the self-organisation of African-American communities and the necessary protection of their lives”.[iv] And Alexis de Tocqueville is credited for acknowledging, in Democracy in America, that whites were more prejudiced about blacks in states which had never known slavery.

Race, Bhambra and Holmwood contend, has been neglected by social theory, witness the exclusion until recently of W. E. B. Du Bois from the sociological canon. The authors, accordingly, undertake an immanent critique of the latter, in particular of Marx’s analysis of capitalist society. His predictions of immiseration, proletarianization and social boulversement, as they remind us, were confounded by the construction, pioneered by Bismarck, of national welfare states. Certain citizens, to wit, the indigenous populations, benefitted from the distribution of a ‘colonial patrimony’. Racialised hierarchies emerged, contingent on the latter. A ‘caste-like relation’ was thereby superimposed on the supposedly universal class relations posited by Marx – witness the stark contrast between nominally free labour in Europe and the various forms of slave labour in the colonies and empires.
Continue reading →

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , , , , | 3 Comments