Our Tailor-Made Parliament

Posted on October 4, 2024 by leslie

Sir Henry ‘Chips’ Channon, dapper diarist &  MP for Southend West, credit Wikipedia

Our Tailor-Made Parliament

Richard Wendorf

There has been much gnashing of teeth about the clothing allowance that has recently been bestowed upon members of the Labour cabinet, but the real outrage is not that Lord Alli and others have quietly (and literally) padded the wardrobes of our leading politicians, but that the recipients of this largess continue to dress as badly as they used to. Who in the world chose the Emperor’s (strike that! the Prime Minister’s) new clothes? Why does he look no better after tens of thousands of pounds sterling have been splashed out on his behalf? Is there no alternative to the uniform that almost all of our male politicians wear?  The answer is yes, as I will suggest below, but that may not strike some as an appealing sartorial alternative.

So first, the uniform. A two-piece suit, almost invariably dark navy except when it occasionally transforms itself into a somewhat lighter, iridescent shade of blue. A white shirt, usually without cufflinks, and with the points of the collar so short that they don’t quite make it to the suit’s lapels. Ignoring the sage advice that a gentleman should button his suit jacket when he stands, most of our Parliamentarians choose to display even more of their shirt front – and often their bulging abdomens. And the ties! Usually dull; sometimes navy or black; rarely colourful; only occasionally striped or patterned. And, the worst part of all, rarely tied so that they actually cover the buckle on an MP’s belt. Ah, yes: those large black belts. Rarely a pair of trousers without them, and rarely a pair of trousers that doesn’t dramatically pool on top of the de rigueur black cap toe shoes. Westminster lies only a few metres from Jermyn Street and Savile Row, and yet these baggy suit jackets and seemingly unhemmed trousers look as if they’ve been pulled off the rack at M&S with nary a thought about suitable alterations.

This is not to say that our politicians dress uniformly, even if they usually wear the same uniform. I suggest that there are at least four variations on our central theme. First, ‘The Ragamuffin,’ an intentional effort to accentuate everything that is already amiss in Parliamentary dress. Think, at the extreme end of the spectrum, of Boris Johnson, unleashed: the knot of the tie hanging in the neighbourhood of (but not close to) the top button of the shirt, the shirt bursting at its seams and with its tails occasionally visible beneath the vents of the jacket, trousers spilling onto scuffed shoes, hair immaculately tousled. I think that the right word for this affront to the tradition of British tailoring is ‘bedraggled.’

Second, and at the other end of the spectrum, ‘The Undertaker.’ And not just he with the double-barreled name, for there is a tendency, especially among the few Tories left on the green benches, to dress as if they have just attended a funeral. Dark suit, sometimes double-breasted; white shirt – or sometimes with a delicate blue or back stripe; sombre tie, largely hidden by a suit jacket that is rarely unbuttoned; black shoes, polished, but still hard to detect under the cascade of trouser fabric. A po-faced countenance to complete the look, unless our Member has decided to show his discontent with the arch of a furry eyebrow.

Third, borrowing from feminine culture, what I would describe as ‘Mutton Dressed as Lamb.’ Forget almost everything I have said so far. The suit is still dark blue but it is worn as tightly as possible – and several inches too short in front and back. The points of the shirt have almost disappeared.  The tie is not only short, it is half the width of a normal tie. The trousers are also worn tight, ending more than a few inches above the obligatory black shoes. (Trousers this short are called ‘floods’ in America.) The overall effect is intended, one supposes, to suggest discipline, tidiness, and even youthfulness. A pair of dazzlingly white Adidas could be substituted outside the corridors of power, although cartoons and headlines will quickly follow.

Finally, what I would call the ‘In Your Face’ wardrobe. It will be interesting to see if it makes its way into the Palace of Westminster, but it is now ubiquitous in the walk-about, on the doorsteps, at the hustings. Think chunky country clothing that has been pushed to the limit: pattern upon pattern, tweed upon suede, heavy cotton tattersalls, ties that take no prisoners.  Reddish-brown brogues and gaudy socks. Add a pint and a fag and you know what (and whom) I mean.

But wait! There is a chameleon-like sea change to this get-up from the Cotswolds (or, more precisely, Essex). Our crusader on behalf of Reform, when city push comes to rural shove, is arguably the best-dressed politician in the country today. Consider his choice of suit, shirt, and tie when he is not rubbing shoulders with his adoring followers. If his political tastes were as sure-footed as his sartorial ones, we would indeed be in good hands.

It has been said, and perhaps with some justice, that the British are supremely good at four things: acting, soldiering, tailoring, and being sick in public. Perhaps we will soon need to strike out one of those encomia, at least in the halls of Westminster.

Professor Richard Wendorf began selling men’s clothing the day he turned sixteen. His most recent book is ‘Chesterfield: The Perils of Politeness’ (forthcoming).

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , | 2 Comments

Deconstruction Time

Posted on September 30, 2024 by leslie

Napoleon 111, by Jean Hippolyte Flandrin, credit wikipedia

Deconstruction Time

Don H Doyle, The Age of Reconstruction; How Lincoln’s New Birth of Freedom Remade the World, Don H Doyle, Princeton University Press, Princeton & Oxford, 2024, hb, 369pp, reviewed by Leslie Jones

In Garibaldi, Invention of a Hero, Lucy Riall recalls how nuns in a Sicilian convent in 1860 became so excited by Garibaldi’s “resemblance to ‘our Lord’ that they queued up to kiss him on the lips”.[i] As Professor Doyle observes, “secular heroes in the nineteenth century”, especially those who were ‘martyred’, attracted a quasi- religious devotion and sense of obligation from their admirers.[ii] Thus, news of Lincoln’s assassination (quickly spread by telegraph networks, “the internet of its day”) turned him into “a global hero and martyr to the cause of human freedom”.[iii] In due course, messages of condolence poured into US diplomatic outposts from around the world. Secretary of State William H Seward subsequently published a selection of these missives in Tributes of the Nations to Abraham Lincoln (1867), “a handsome large-format leather-bound volume” sent to  members of Congress and various foreign governments. Seward considered this document a useful adjunct of American foreign policy.

One of the letters in the State Department’s Tributes was signed by Parisian journalist Sainte-Suzanne Melvil-Bloncourt and 150 of his fellow Guadeloupeans. Melvil-Bloncourt was of mixed-race and a veteran abolitionist. The Emancipation Proclamation of 1863 and the subsequent Union victory in the Civil War revived the anti-slavery movement. The Comité Français d’émancipation was established in early 1865. Its target now was “the remaining bastions of slavery in the empires of Brazil and Spain”. [iv] In Cuba, which had remained loyal to Spain, “white fears of black domination sustained slavery”, [v] the basis of the lucrative sugar plantation system. Enslaved Afro-Cubans looked to Lincoln as a potential liberator. The Emancipation Declaration and the defeat of the Confederacy “cast a heavy shadow”[vi] over slavery in Cuba. Seward’s adhesion in 1862 to Britain’s campaign to suppress the slave trade led inexorably to its extinction.

The American Civil War enabled Napoleon 111 to conquer Mexico and install Maximilian as Emperor as part of his Grand Design (or gran pensée) to promote French military and commercial influence in central America. In an 1864 article ‘The Key of a Continent’, Massachusetts clergyman Joshua Leavitt (author of The Monroe Doctrine) surmised that Napoleon’s ultimate objective was “to make France the master of global commerce by building a canal across Mexico or central America…” Opposing republicanism and upholding the influence of the Catholic Church and of conservative landed interests was central to this policy. But the victory of the North sealed the fate of these ambitious plans.

Napoleon’s ultimately abortive intervention in Mexico was a godsend for the French left. Maximilian, a member of the House of Habsburg-Lorraine and the brother of Emperor Franz Joseph 1 of Austria, was executed on June 19th,1867. Many of Europe’s reigning princes were related to Maximilian and had gathered in Paris at the Exposition Universelle, intended as a showcase of the revival of Bonapartism. The New York Times reported that the execution of Maximilian “hangs like a black cloud over all these splendours of royalty”.

Execution of Maximilian, Edouard Manet, credit Wikipedia

The French Empire’s internal critics, such as Adolphe Thiers, attributed Maximilian’s downfall to Napoleon 111’s “personal government”. The introduction of the ‘Liberal Empire’ was a belated attempt to buy time for the dynasty. But the new press law engendered a plethora of often critical new journals like Rappel, Tribune and Réforme. Public meetings were now permitted and at one such meeting, Édouard Laboulaye made invidious comparisons between the American republic and the Second Empire. Américomanie, eulogising Lincoln, was prevalent in French republican circles at this juncture. The radical journalist Edouard Portalis, author of Les États Unis, le self-governement et le césarisme, who had travelled extensively in the US, depicted  democracy as a motor of progress. Georges Clemenceau, likewise, wrote a pseudonymous column entitled Nouvelles des États-Unis for the republican Parisian paper Le Temps. Clemenceau had participated in a demonstration in Paris following Lincoln’s demise. The demonstrators presented an address to John Bigelow, US minister to France, at the US legation. It called for the establishment of a “true democracy”. Clemenceau considered the impeachment of President Andrew Johnson, in 1868, as “unimaginable in France at that time” and a model for how to deal with “a tyrannical head of state”. [vii] Historian Jules Michelet, in similar vein, saw America as “…the pride, the hope, the salvation of the world…”. [viii]

If, in death, Lincoln was the “unimpeachable embodiment of government elected by the common people and the prophet of world democracy”,[ix] Pope Pius IX, conversely, was for American Protestant opinion the inveterate enemy of the US republic. He had reportedly sympathised with the South and supported France’s Mexican adventure. Mary Surratt and her son John were devout Catholics and allegedly Lincoln assassination conspirators. When the Pope banned American Protestant Church services in Rome, the New York Times denounced this “corrupt, dying remnant of despotic rulership…’. [x]

Professor Emeritus of History at South Carolina, Doyle contends that Lincoln’s assassination rejuvenated the democratic movement not only in France but also in Great Britain.[xi] Although the author acknowledges that Lincoln’s death “…did not cause the wave of democratic reforms…” [xii] after 1865, the sub-title of his book belies this contention. In an article for the Fortnightly Review in October 1870, entitled ‘England and the War’ , the distinguished Liberal statesman John Morley averred that the North’s victory in the Civil War “was the force that made English liberalism powerful enough to enfranchise the workmen”. (In fact, the Conservative Party enfranchised the workers, in 1867). At a mass meeting at St James Hall, in London, in March 1863, leading Liberals, notably John Stuart Mill and John Bright, lambasted the Tories for supporting the slaveocracy. Another speaker, the historian and leading Positivist Edward Beesly, compared the British proletariat to black slaves, a Marxist trope. Professor Doyle makes the dubious claim that “British workers admired Lincoln” not just for winning the war and ending slavery but because, in the words of The Bee-Hive, “he was the first President elected from the working classes…” He also endorses Marx’ assertion that the British workers stopped the “ruling classes” from supporting the Confederacy. Professor Doyle evidently has a stereotypical view of Britain’s governing classes in the 19th century.

On February 12, 1866, Lincoln’s birthday, the distinguished Harvard historian and diplomat George Bancroft addressed Congress. Author of the History of the United States of America (1834-1874), Bancroft had studied at Heidelberg, Göttingen and Berlin. He approached history, accordingly, from a nationalist perspective à la Treitschke. Bancroft  considered slavery incompatible with the republican tradition and an adjunct of aristocracy. He trenchantly criticised Britain’s ‘aristocratic’ government and Napoleon 111 for granting belligerent rights to the southern states. Ditto the latter’s attempt to install a monarchy in Mexico. For Bancroft, America was “the advance guard of democracy and republicanism”. [xiii]

In 1865, the US had a standing army of one million men. In July of that year, Seward sent a veiled threat of the use of force to Foreign Minister Drouyn de Lhuys unless France withdrew its troops from Mexico. The French duly departed in early 1867. It transpired, however, that Seward’s goal after the Civil war was “national security and peace, not territorial aggrandizement or imperialist conquest”. [xiv] The Union, accordingly, disarmed. The author highlights Seward’s “Pan-American commitment to independent republics in solidarity against European imperialism”.[xv] Yet United States Minister to France John Bigelow put it to Seward that because the population of Mexico were of a different race and religion, they were incapable of self-government. Napoleon 111, in similar vein, regarded republicanism as a unique product of Anglo-Saxon culture. The ‘Latin Race’, in his estimation, required hereditary monarchy and Catholic discipline. Note also that, republican principles notwithstanding, cordial relations with autocratic Russia facilitated Seward’s purchase of Alaska in 1867. Unlike France and Britain, Russia posed no threat. Alexander 11’s emancipation of the serfs in February 1861 was naively depicted by the American press as a step towards modern democracy.

The Age of Reconstruction is ambitious and wide-ranging and the author skilfully combines the history of ideas with that of international relations. Dr Doyle is clearly a supporter of democracy and equality. He implicitly criticises President Trump for “…undoing…the civil rights gains accorded blacks and other minorities” and views this as part of “a more ominous international movement against racial equality and democracy”. Unlike such luminaries as Marx, Michels and Mosca, Professor Doyle takes western democracy at face value. This caveat aside, we commend his labours.

William H Seward, 1849, credit Wikipedia

ENDNOTES

[i]  Garibaldi…Yale University Press, 2007, p282
[ii] Doyle,p16
[iii]Ibid., p17, 15
[iv] Doyle,p 233
[v] Doyle, p152
[vi] Doyle, p155
[vii] Doyle, p243
[viii] Ibid., p243
[ix] Doyle, p16
[x] Doyle, p272
[xi] Doyle, chapter 7
[xii] Doyle, p16
[xiii] Doyle, p45
[xiv] Doyle, p61
[xv] Doyle, p98

Dr Leslie Jones is Editor of QR

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

Endnotes, October 2024

Posted on September 27, 2024 by leslie

St Mary Harrington, Lincolnshire, credit Wikipedia

Endnotes, October 2024

In this edition: more Bruckner from the archives * Dvorak from the Czech homeland * contemporary music from England and America, reviewed by Stuart Millson

SOMM Records continues to open its vast treasury of vintage Bruckner recordings, in this, the 200th anniversary year of the great Austrian composer’s birth. And our thanks must go to SOMM, not just for championing Bruckner, but for bringing into the limelight almost-forgotten (or, at least, neglected) conductors, such as Hans Schmidt- Isserstedt, a supreme interpreter of Beethoven, as those who know his Decca cycle of the nine symphonies will testify. For Beethoven, Schmidt-Isserstedt had the Vienna Philharmonic under his baton, but here in SOMM’s Bruckner (the Third Symphony in the 1878 Oeser Edition) we are treated to the equally magnificent playing of German Radio’s NDR Symphony Orchestra.

Originally recorded at the Musikhalle Hamburg in the December of 1966, the NDR players give us a version of a Bruckner symphony that many view as the first of the truly mature part of his cycle (which, like Beethoven, consisted of nine symphonies). The misterioso atmosphere of the opening movement — underpinned by a tense, Wagnerian forest-murmur feel in the NDR strings — sets the stage for the great panorama of struggle, action and nostalgia that is to come. And what must already have been a clear, ahead-of-its-time radio archive recording has now transferred to CD (thanks to sound restoration and remastering by recording specialist, Lani Spahr) to give dazzling, full-blooded Brucknerian sound.

The scherzo movement of the Third brings us out of the mainly gentle reflection of the Adagio, gripping the listener with a torrent of agitation, often verging on terror, as an intense, attacking volley of sound from the strings and battering brass cascades onward. Again, the NDR players capture the authentic Teutonic tread of Bruckner, bringing the symphony to a glorious conclusion with a radiant, unstoppable affirmation of earlier themes from the work.

Also on Somm’s CD is a 1958 Bavarian Radio ‘tape’ of the Munich Philharmonic conducted by Volkmar Andreae in Bruckner’s Symphony No. 4, ‘Romantic’ — possibly the most often played of the cycle, due, no doubt, to its more simple pastoral atmosphere and fairytale hunting-horn scherzo. A fine, bracing performance of the work awaits the listener, especially in the stormy, fiery interpretation of the first movement; and in a dreamy approach to the gentle heartbeats of the second — ending, with pizzicato and delicate timpani, as if a distant country procession has just disappeared out of view.

Still in the glades of Middle Europe, Pentatone has just issued a stunning set of the last three Dvorak symphonies, the partnership of Semyon Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic proving itself as among the greatest in the world today. The seventh, eighth and ninth symphonies (again — nine — that hallowed number for composers) are performed with a sense of utter conviction: a love for every note, a passion for every great tune, as if the Czech players are carefully setting down on record for posterity their personal family history. This recording is a testament to Bohemian romanticism; and to the patriot, Antonin Dvorak, the architect of that soulful, yet ebullient style, the musical magus of the Czech people.

The folkish, dance-like romp of colour that is the Eighth Symphony works well on this recording — almost like a 40-minute-long Slavonic dance. The more famous Ninth, subtitled ‘From the New World’, is a glorious fusion of the Czech homeland and the wide-open spaces of North America (surely the composer expresses a home-sickness in this work?) a land where Dvorak found himself feted at the end of the 19th century. But what is particularly interesting is the performance of the Symphony No. 7 (arguably the best, and the more enigmatic of the three) — a work that echoes Bruckner in its sense of struggle, of venturing forth into a dark landscape; allusions and feelings that are suggested in the mighty monoliths, ‘clenched-fist’ brass and grand gestures of the first movement, the rushing third-movement scherzo and the noble, brass-dominated, chorale-like ending. A real affirmation in music, but somehow not glorious, but firm, serious, stoical. Whatever your own personal response to Dvorak’s music, you probably won’t find a better-recorded set than by Bychkov and the Czech Philharmonic.

Contemporary British composer, Peter Seabourne — a musician who rejected the extreme atonalism of many of his peers and immersed himself in a personal quest for artistic individuality and integrity — has issued an eighth volume of his Steps piano pieces. Subtitled, ‘Nineteen Album Leaves Caught by the Wind’, this latest chapter in Seabourne’s odyssey takes the listener into an almost freeze-framed autumnal sequence — a meditation of memories and impressions, sometimes hazy and valedictory, at other times with an intensity brewing just beneath the surface.

With titles such as: Oh, lift me as a wave, a leaf, a cloud — and After Autumn, Winter — the composer has created a new landscape of English pastoral music; but not an England of Edwardian twilight, instead the slanting light and chilly winds blowing across his own Lincolnshire horizon, interwoven with the deepest personal responses to the seasons of his own life.

Anyone seeking something of our own time, distilled into sound and made immediately relevant to life today, should listen to Peter Seabourne’s surprising and atmospheric music. Another recommendation for the CD is the quality of the piano-playing and recording: Michael Bell gives a masterclass for the instrument, while the Sheva contemporary label captures the piano at a perfect autumnal ‘temperature’ — always just a little less in the foreground, the piano never stark or clanging. The remainder of the album is given over to Seabourne’s settings of Emily Dickinson, with soprano, Karen Radcliffe, joining Michael Bell in a wonderfully woven cycle that, again, brings the listener into that lonely fenland.

Finally, to the work of two United States composers, not well known in Britain, but whose compositions deserve the attention of all who seek concert programmes enlivened by music that has something to say. Randall Svane continues to carve a reputation in the churches of the East Coast with a religious fervour not usually found in our nihilistic times. Although not yet appearing on CD, Quarterly Review has been fortunate to hear his Gloria — a setting that could easily be used as an alternative to similar works by Walton, Britten or Rutter — and which record producers, church music directors or those planning concert programmes should consider.

Likewise, New York composer Stanley Grill, offers music that continues where Britten’s War Requiem and other pacifist works left off. The composer writes of his own youthful anti-war zeal, and how with the onset of the years the radical tends to become the mellower sage, looking with the eye of a seasoned outsider on the vicissitudes of our turbulent times. Nonetheless, Grill remains loyal (as Walt Whitman would have put it) — ‘to thee, old cause…’ and informs us that his work may be found on the following platform:

https://stanleygrill.bandcamp.com/album/against-war

CD details: Bruckner from the Archives, Vol. 3. SOMM ARIADNE 5029-2.
Dvorak, Symphonies 7, 8, 9. PENTATONE, PTC 5187 216.
Peter Seabourne, Steps, vol. 8, Sheeva contemporary SH 326.

Stuart Millson is Classical Music Editor of Quarterly Review

 

Posted in QR Home | 1 Comment

An Arbitrary Colourist

Posted on September 19, 2024 by leslie

An Arbitrary Colourist, Van Gogh, Poets & Lovers

Exhibition at the National Gallery, 14 September 2024 – 19 January 2025, press preview 11 September; Catalogue of the exhibition, Cornelia Homburg, featuring the essay ‘Art of the Future’; reviewed by Leslie Jones

Le Christ sur le lac de Génésareth, Delacroix, credit Wikipedia

The art critic Paul Mantz described how Eugène Delacroix, in Christ Asleep during the Tempest (1853), achieved a “terrifying” symbolic effect by using blue paint to distinguish Christ’s raiment. In ‘Art of the Future’, likewise, Cornelia Homburg, the curator of this exhibition, observes how Van Gogh used “heightened colour” to “express the intensity, imagination and emotion he wanted to convey in his art”*. “The Provençal landscape, with its intense light and beautiful weather”, was ideally suited to this end and in February 1888, he moved from Paris to Arles. Van Gogh’s objective in moving to the south of France was to set up a studio in the Midi. Other sympatico artists, such as Bernard, Signac and Seurat, would hopefully follow. However, his dream of a “Studio of the South”, a colony of like-minded artists, remained just that.

Gauguin, The Wine Harvest. Human Misery, credit Wikipedia

From 23rd October to 23rd December 1888, Gauguin and Van Gogh lived and worked together in the ‘Yellow House’, the afore mentioned “Studio of the South”, with a guest room decorated with The Sunflowers (1888). Van Gogh agonised at this time how to incorporate memory and imagination into his art rather than merely observe or copy nature. Something of a philosopher manqué, he wrote to Émile Bernard, “imagination is a capacity that must be developed … that enables us to create a more exalting and consoling nature than what just a glance at reality … allows us to perceive” (letter 596, Vangoghletters.org)). Gauguin, who had contemporaneously created The Wine Harvest. Human Misery (1888) entirely from memory, urged Van Gogh to follow suit. In The Sower, accordingly, although he incorporated sketch work of the walled fields visible from his room in the private Maison de Santé in Saint-Rémy-de-Provence (which he entered voluntarily in May 1889), the figure of the sower (indebted to Jean-François Millet, like Delacroix another painter he admired) was drawn from imagination/memory in the studio. And in Memory of the Garden of Etten (Ladies of Arles) (1888), the figures are his mother and sister Willemien, whom he had not seen for years but transposed to a Provençal landscape.

Van Gogh, The Sower, credit Wikipedia

Collaboration with Gauguin evidently helped to free Vincent from the thumb of “vulgar resemblance”. He said of The Sower, “There are many touches of yellow in the soil…but I couldn’t care less what the colours are in reality” (June 1888, quoted in The Guardian, Jonathan Jones, ‘Poets and Lovers review, a riveting rollercoaster ride from Arles to the stars’). As Jones contends, his transformative art tore up the Impressionist rulebook

This is the “first major exhibition devoted to Van Gogh in the National Gallery’s history”. As such, it bears comparison with the 2010 exhibition at the Royal Academy, entitled The Real Van Gogh; the Artist and his Letters (see Quarterly Review, spring 2010, ‘Van Gogh, by himself’, Leslie Jones). Notwithstanding a “bleak narrative”, involving his notorious act of self-mutilation and the falling out with Gauguin, and repeated mental breakdowns requiring hospitalisation, paradoxically Van Gogh’s “southern sojourn” produced “some of the most astonishing paintings of the modern era” (Rachel Spencer, Financial Times, ‘Poets and Lovers review, burning visions from beyond reality’).

Van Gogh, Sunflowers (1888), credit Wikipedia

Each stage of Van Gogh’s chequered career before becoming an artist in 1880, to wit, junior apprentice at international art dealer Goupil & Cie, trainee teacher, would be evangelist etc was a search for his god given calling or Beruf, as posited by Luther and subsequently analysed by Weber in The Protestant Ethic & the Spirit of Capitalism. Ernest Renan maintained that “Man is not placed on the earth merely to be happy…he is here to accomplish great things through society, to arrive at nobleness and to outgrow the vulgarity in which the existence of almost all individuals drags on”. Van Gogh concurred. (Quotation from Renan, letter to Theo dated 8 May 1875,  vangoghletters.org, letter 33).

In Wheat Field with Reaper at Sunrise (September 1889), Van Gogh saw “the image of death, in the sense that humanity would be the wheat being reaped…But in this death nothing sad” (letter 800, to Theo 5 & 6 September 1889). Although the suffering and transience bound up in human existence are recurrent themes in Van Gogh’s mature work, he also offered “something consoling, like a piece of music” (letter 673).

______________________________________________________________

[* (as in Portrait of a Peasant (Patience Escalier) (1888), with its enhanced colours of gold and orange to suggest harvest time). The “painter of the future”, Van Gogh proclaimed, “is a colourist such as there hasn’t been before”, quoted by Emily LaBarge, ‘A New perspective on Van Gogh’s Final Flowering’, New York Times, Sept 13]

Dr Leslie Jones is Editor of Quarterly Review

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

Endnotes, September 2024

Posted on August 31, 2024 by leslie

Nude statue of Mars, wall painting, Pompeii, credit Wikipedia

Endnotes, September 2024

In this edition: The Man from the Sky; orchestral music by Gerard Schurmann; wood nymphs, country songs and planets at the Proms; two ‘lost’ works by Vaughan Williams, reviewed by Stuart Millson

British composer Gerard Schurmann (1924-2020) was known chiefly for his richly orchestrated and exciting film scores, such as those which accompanied the WW2 commando story, Attack on the Iron Coast, and the historical drama, starring Patrick McGoohan, as the Napoleonic era Kent parson-turned-smuggler, Dr. Syn – Alias The Scarecrow. Schurmann also composed the score for the 1957 film, The Man in the Sky, with the much loved actor Jack Hawkins (often cast in war films) as a peacetime era test-pilot charged with flying a new type of aircraft — the music perfectly complementing the theme of the noble, obsessive aviator soaring to high altitudes; culminating in a decisive orchestral fortissimo, evoking the sheer force of human application and will. Captured on a new Chandos CD, with the BBC Philharmonic and conductor Ben Gernon in technicolor form at their state-of-the-art recording centre at MediaCity, Salford, the full power of film music — presented in its own right — gives us an opportunity to re-appraise the scintillating, sharp-edged scores of Gerard Schurmann.

Another dimension to this overlooked composer is displayed on his disc: the early 1970s’ Piano Concerto, originally written for that other ‘man of the sky’ — the brilliant John Ogdon, an artist who achieved not just a huge reputation for his playing, alone, but for the tribulations of this obsessive, psychologically tortured artist.

This season at the Proms, that other John Ogdon speciality, the half-romantic, half-20th-century Busoni Piano Concerto, was given a rare Royal Albert Hall outing. How fitting to hear the Ogdon dedicated Schurmann concerto; a work only about half the length of the Busoni, but which stands in the category of quirky concerto pieces. From its curiously, shadow-filled, slow and understated opening solo (beautifully played by Xiayin Wang — who champions this score) the work seems to function, in part and at times, as a spiky piano sonata with orchestral interventions. Judging by a remarkable photograph in the CD booklet, capturing Schurmann and Ogdon poring over the manuscript, both composer and soloist took particular pleasure in bringing the piece to life. And now that we have this fine new recording on CD, let us hope that orchestras in this country and abroad bring the Schurmann concerto into their programmes.

Meanwhile, at the Proms, unfamiliar music (‘novelties’ as the season’s founder conductor, Sir Henry Wood, described them) continue to make an appearance. Alongside the Nordic supernaturalism of Sibelius’s infrequently heard The Wood Nymph (1894-95) – a composition evoking not just the shimmering play of water that you find in The Oceanides and the forest murmurs of En Saga, but also the most delicate, dreamy orchestral cello solo – the Royal Albert Hall audience on the 25th August enjoyed Songs from the Countryside (Laulat maaseudulta) by the young Finnish-American composer, Lara Poe. Her new piece continues the Sibelian-Mahlerian tradition of rural evocation in music (in this case, the spirits and characters of farm animals as remembered by the composer’s grandmother and transcribed by Lara Poe into a completely original ‘libretto’). But it is a work conjuring a peculiar atmosphere, tinged with a surrealism every bit as beguiling and elusive as the Northern Lights, and made all the more poignant by a sharp-lined, Schoenberg like 21st-century, but completely accessible style. There is a countryside storm (an echo of Sibelius’s The Tempest) and a deeply-affecting portrait of a horse, afraid to cross bridges – a reaction caused by the animal’s reaction to seeing a bridge being destroyed in war. Sung with elemental force by Anu Komsi, soprano, it was played with total commitment and sensitivity by the combined forces of the Royal College of Music and Sibelius Academy Symphony orchestras conducted by Sakari Oramo. [Editorial note: re ‘Songs from the Countryside’, your po-faced editor begs to differ].

This super-ensemble returned in part two for Holst’s great astrological pageant, The Planets, a piece composed on the eve of the Great War. The snarl and menace of Mars, The Bringer of War brought us to the very frontline wire on the Western Front, but the orchestra then returned to the dreamy purity associated with serene Sibelian country landscapes, in Venus, The Bringer of Peace. Echoing through the great spaces of the Royal Albert Hall, the monumental, infectious rhythms of Jupiter, The Bringer of Jollity gave the orchestra a chance to show off its youth and elan, before slowly bowing out into the mysteries of distant realms and constellations in the offstage-voice-accompanied dreamscape that is Neptune, The Mystic. A ghostly, almost icy contribution here from high up in the Hall’s Gallery, sending us on our way into outer space, from the superb RCM Choir. A memorable night at the Proms – and how magnificent it was to hear the Royal Albert Hall organ – sheer granite power and weight deployed in Uranus, The Magician – played by Ben Collyer.

In concert programme notes and Vaughan Williams record sleeves of old, there were often tantalising mentions of a lost, or discarded fifth movement intended for A Sea Symphony — RVW’s first symphony. Now, thanks to the Dutton Epoch record label and the painstaking musicological restoration work of conductor, Martin Yates, that movement has emerged from the shadows and now stands as a newly-revealed section of the great English composer’s seascape. Except that the music isn’t quite a depiction of the ocean, but rather a symbol of the great quest which mankind finds himself on.

In The Steersman, Vaughan Williams again sets the North American romantic poet, Walt Whitman, whose themes of transcendence give the listener a sense of the soul breaking free above the tides and attaining glory in some unconjectured region:

‘But O ship, the immortal ship! O ship aboard the ship! Ship of the body, ship of the soul, voyaging, voyaging, voyaging.’

However, it is unlikely that this movement (sung on the CD by Jacques Imbrailo, baritone) will ever be played as part of A Sea Symphony. As Dutton Epoch’s fascinating CD booklet notes suggest, The Steersman is, in part, stylistically different from the rest of the symphony, the composer sensing, perhaps, that it was not a true part of the whole. It represents a meditation, much akin to the symphony’s second movement, On the Beach at Night Alone.

Just as we disappear into eternity at the end of Holst’s The Planets, so we find a similar escape in this ‘new’ music by Vaughan Williams, which is given that deep, dark orchestral and choral sound so necessary to its life by the BBC Symphony Orchestra and Chorus conducted by Martin Yates — among the foremost interpreters of our time of English music. With a particularly apocalyptic cover picture, and which also features a Matthew Arnold setting from 1908, The Future (with soprano, Lucy Crowe) and Andrew von Oeyen playing the solo part in the Fantasia for Piano and Orchestra, this is a CD for anyone questing for the soul of English music.

CD details:
Gerard Schurmann, orchestral works, CHAN 20341.
Vaughan Williams, The Steersman, The Future etc. Dutton Epoch. CDLX 7411

Stuart Millson is the Classical Music Editor of The Quarterly Review

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

Flying Blind

Posted on August 16, 2024 by leslie

Flying Blind

Challenger: A True Story of Heroism and Disaster, Adam Higginbotham, Simon and Shuster, pp 576, reviewed by Bill Hartley

Governments can’t resist projects on a gargantuan scale and when they go wrong the disaster is of a magnitude to match the distorted ambition. Author Adam Higginbotham has already covered this ground to great effect with his 2019 book Midnight in Chernobyl. In Challenger, Higginbotham turns his attention to the Space Shuttle disaster of 1986. The image of the booster rockets separating from the craft is one of the indelible pictures of the last century. Told at a rapid pace, the reader is taken inexorably to the awful conclusion. Despite the story being well known, there is no sense of anti climax.

People of a certain age will recall the US – Soviet battle for supremacy in space. With the USSR being first to get a man into orbit, President Kennedy laid down the challenge (and the budget) to reach the moon before the end of the decade. NASA had been used to gobbling up huge sums of American taxpayer’s money but following the moon landing the public grew tired of space travel and TV networks were no longer routinely covering launches. NASA needed something (and someone) to recapture the imagination of the public.

With politicians beginning to wonder if space travel involving humans was worth the money, NASA came up with its new idea, the reusable spacecraft or shuttle. Unfortunately, the concept was born amidst something the organisation had never dealt with before, a limited budget. Higginbotham humanises the story. Space travel is inherently dangerous and the job was originally entrusted to dashing former test pilots like Colonel John Glenn. These men were put through all the rigours of pre-flight training, such as sensory deprivation tanks which involved hours underwater and the ghastly centrifuge which treated them like ingredients in a blender.

Amidst the wealth of technical detail presented in a readable way, what stands out is the development of the booster rockets, essential for getting the shuttle off the launch pad and into orbit. Budget cuts meant they were to be powered by solid fuel. Wehrner Von Braun, no less, had considered them too dangerous to be used for putting humans into space but they were cheaper than liquid fuelled rockets. The downside was that they couldn’t be turned off. This is the thread which runs through the story: cost cutting whilst working at the frontiers of technology. For example, the rockets were never tested vertically, again to save money. Crammed with volatile fuel they weighed 590 tons and presented incredible engineering challenges.

The author juxtaposes the engineering problems with the public relations aspect. Inevitably what captured the interest of the media was the crew. Previous NASA astronauts were from much the same background. Now word went out that the Shuttle’s crew would be more diverse. Higginbotham effectively sketches in the back stories of the people chosen. These are individuals the reader gets to know; the minutiae of their lives and relationships add a special poignancy to the story. They weren’t earning much either. An estate agent told one house hunting astronaut ‘a welder makes more than that’.

The Shuttle was the most complex machine ever built and perhaps chief among the many problems faced by its designers was the question of the heat shield tiles, there to protect the ship from the high temperatures to be encountered on re-entry. Each was unique, since flat tiles wouldn’t stick to the curved surfaces of the Shuttle. Failure of only one could have led to the immolation of the ship.

With talk of space travel now being within reach of ordinary people, the task of recruiting a new breed of astronaut sought to reflect this. The author describes the selection process and how, in a PR coup, schoolteacher Christa McAuliffe was chosen. The NASA test pilot old guard had their doubts about a woman among the crew with no special qualifications. She had been chosen to live out the daydreams of the many people who’d written to NASA. Kids love space travel, so what could be better than having a teacher present lessons from up there?

As NASA moved towards launch, delays and cancellations prompted media scepticism. With an eye on the political paymasters, management pressure from the top began to override the concerns of engineers. A Germanic hierarchical management structure bequeathed by Von Braun made it difficult for them to be heard. Arrogance, bullying and mismanagement weren’t the exclusive province of a Soviet totalitarian regime, revealed after Chernobyl. Ultimately the decision to launch was a dangerous compromise. As a NASA boss said, ‘otherwise we’re going to lose the programme’.

The author’s description of the final days before launch unfolds like a tragedy. Engineers from the company which built the booster rockets bravely opposed the decision to launch, often against the wishes of their own senior management, anxious to keep the contract. NASA officials applied further pressure to secure an agreement that it was possible to go ahead in icy temperatures (a supposedly once in a 100 year meteorological phenomenon which had nearly destroyed a mission the previous year). Higginbotham succeeds in creating an emotional experience, despite the reader being aware of what is to come.

Ultimately technical failures caused the loss of the Shuttle but Christa McAuliffe and her crew mates were sacrificed by flawed management and bad decision making. The final part of the book covers the aftermath and there is much to tell. Higginbotham maintains the interest post disaster, as the reader discovers what happened to the families of the crew and the engineers who had to live with the guilt. As someone noted after the inquiry, ‘reality must take precedence over public relations’.

William Hartley is a Social Historian

 

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

The Knot of Human Death and Fate

Posted on August 7, 2024 by leslie

Marc Chagall, Calvary (Golgotha), 1912, credit Wikipedia

The Knot of Human Death and Fate

Dan Stone, Psychoanalysis, Historiography, and the Nazi Camps: Accounting for Survival, Palgrave Macmillan, electronic version, 2024, reviewed by Leslie Jones

In From Death-Camp to Existentialism: A Psychiatrist’s Path to a New Therapy (1946), (subsequently re-published as Man’s Search for Meaning), Viktor Frankl considered the factors supposedly conducive to survival in the Nazi concentration camps. Paradoxically, certain prisoners “of a less hardy make-up” survived better, in his estimation, than those of “a robust nature’, if the former were blessed with a life of “inner riches and spiritual freedom”. Bruno Bettelheim, in similar vein, conceded that although accident was the primary reason for survival, those endowed with “a rich inner life”, were ipso factor better fitted to survive. As Lawrence L Langer pithily remarked, Frankl and Bettelheim made “physical survival a matter of mental health”. Stone contends that “wishful thinking about the human spirit” vitiated the writings of Frankl and Bettelheim.

Dan Stone is Professor of History and Director of the Holocaust Research Institute, Royal Holloway College. He discerns in the “canonical writings” of Frankl and Bettelheim a classical Freudian perspective in which psychological problems in later life stem primarily from traumatic events in childhood, i.e. from unresolved Oedipal conflicts. In his opinion, the field of psychoanalysis was thereby restricted to what Werner Bohleber calls “the inner world of the human being – [to] the unconscious and unconscious phantasies”. The psychoanalytic notion of “identification with the aggressor”, which Bettelheim borrowed from Anna Freud and Sándor Ferenczi, likewise, entailed regression to an infantile state. In the 1950’s, West German assessors of survivor’s restitution claims doubtless welcomed the conclusion that their psychological suffering was not ultimately attributable to Nazi persecution.

Eindstation Auschwitz, written in 1945, was republished in 2020 and entitled Last Stop Auschwitz: My Story of Survival from within the Camp. The author, Eddy de Wind, was an assistant to the admissions doctor in Block 9 of Auschwitz. After its liberation, he worked as a physician. In contrast to Bettelheim and Frankl, de Wind elaborated a theory of survival based on the concept of “stupor”, which anticipated the concept of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. In ‘Confrontation with Death’ (1949), de Wind contended that to survive in the camp, the inmate must neither surrender nor resist. An “inner acceptance  of death” was essential. There are uncanny echoes here of the “death drive”, posited by Freud in Beyond the Pleasure Principle.

For Stone, the “more nuanced” theory of survival elaborated by de Wind (and by Elie Cohen, whose notions of “resignation” and “depersonalisation” complement de Wind’s analysis) unhappily gained “little purchase or resonance until recently”. Contra Bettelheim and Frankl, in his later articles, de Wind attributed survivors’ ongoing psychological problems to the massive psychic trauma engendered by Nazi oppression.

In How Did They Survive? Mechanisms of Defence in Nazi Concentration Camps (1948), psychoanalyst Hilde O. Bluhm reviewed twelve books pertaining to this subject for the American Journal of Psychotherapy. Have Bluhm’s ideas stood the test of time? Dr Stone regrets the fact that “the concepts of her profession at that time”, notably the questionable notion that “psychological illnesses relate solely to suppressed problems of childhood” and that “victims of the Holocaust reverted to childhood or identified with their aggressors”, informed her analysis. Nonetheless, Stone rates Bluhm’s concept of “estrangement”, a special mechanism of defence developed by the ego, whereby experiences were depersonalised and “turned into an object of …intellectual interests”, as it prefigures de Wind’s idea of “stupor”. Indicatively, Ernst Wiechert, in The Forest of the Dead (1947), one of the twelve books reviewed by Bluhm, referred to “an ever-growing coldness… that filled his entire being” during his imprisonment in Buchenwald. Dr Stone notes that by virtue of when they were written, none of the twelve books in question addressed the concentration camp qua factory of death.

In our review of Frederick Crew’s Freud, the Making of an illusion (2017), we concluded that “For all his failings, Freud surely deserved a more appreciative and generous biographer” (see ‘White Lines’, Leslie Jones, QR, June 7th 2017). Like Dominick LaCapra, Dan Stone is “one of the few historians who values psychoanalytic vocabulary and insights for understanding history” (quotation, Stone, Psychoanalysis etc p. 94). We unreservedly commend his eloquent and thought-provoking exegesis.

The Charnel House, Picasso, credit Wikipedia

Dr Leslie Jones is the Editor of Quarterly Review

“The Knot of Human Death and Fate” is a phrase taken from Rubáiyát of Omar Khayyám

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , | 7 Comments

Endnotes, August 2024

Posted on July 31, 2024 by leslie

Brightest London is best reached by Underground, subway poster 1924, credit Wikipedia

Endnotes, August 2024

In this edition: Bruckner’s String Quintet; From Meadow to Mayfair, with Eric Coates, reviewed by Stuart Millson

200 years ago this year, Anton Bruckner was born — a boy who would be shaped by his rural environment in Upper Austria; a young man preoccupied with church music and his work as an organist; a middle-aged figure, destined to be celebrated as one of the greatest symphonists in the European canon, and yet each step of this ascent, fraught with self-doubt and the criticism of those around him. All the great orchestras of the continent, Britain and the United States now play and record his symphonies — the radiant Seventh and magnificent Eighth guaranteed to fill the Philharmonie, Berlin, the Royal Albert Hall, or Orchestra Hall, Chicago. But we know less about the tiny number of Bruckner’s equally masterful chamber pieces, especially the String Quintet, written when the composer was 54 years of age. Chamber music tends to be something of a passion for a smaller number of concertgoers, but even so, the programmes of our leading chamber venues rarely seem to include Bruckner; and this is a pity, because it would enable listeners who might not yet have warmed to the huge symphonic scores to find a point of entry. And Bruckner’s chamber music can even be a revelation to the devotees of his symphonies: indeed, it is surprising that so many individuals who think that they know the composer are unaware of such works as the Quintet.

Cast in four movements, this work for quartet and additional viola, begins with what can only be described as a deep sigh; a world-weary moment, so soon, but shaping a movement of utter beauty; and one as ‘symphonic’ in scale to please any Brucknerian. In fact, listening to the opening movement, marked by the composer as Gemassigt, brings to mind the hush, the expectation at the beginning of the Second Symphony, or the slow movement of the Third. The massive climb then begins, Bruckner testing his players with long spans of taut time as they follow his paths from foothills to higher altitudes.

We catch our breath in a second movement which has the typical touch of this most Austrian of composers: a trio, marked Scherzo, but with a gentle, jolly, unhurried (‘Langsamer’) feel — as if we have just found a small country inn where someone has struck up a simple country serenade on an old fiddle. Yet we seem to be watching and hearing it from just beyond the village garden: this section, for all its lighter spirit, has a peculiar, dreamy quality. Deeper thoughts, though, overcome the structure and spirit of the Adagio movement: this is the Bruckner of those mighty slow-motion symphonic meditations, often tragic and Wagnerian in character. However, Bruckner in his chamber mode offers us a gentle route out from the intensity, the movement ending in a quiet repetition of the main musical idea; the composer almost saying reassuringly, ‘All will be well, all will be well…’

All these great ideas come together in the Finale: Lebhaft bewegt — nearly nine minutes of purposeful flow for the players, and a peroration for musician and listener, alike, that — if scored for full orchestra — would make for a great ovation in a large concert hall. Our CD recommendation for Bruckner’s Quintet is a classic 1993 rendition, recorded at St. George’s, Brandon Hill, Bristol, and captured on the Helios (Hyperion) label by producers Tony Faulkner and Andrew Keener. Performed by the Raphael Ensemble, the work is three quarters of an hour in length.

Finally, and in complete contrast, Chandos records — with John Wilson at the helm of the BBC Philharmonic — take us to the glittering London ballrooms (and rustic copses of 1930s’ ‘olde England’) in Eric Coates’s Suite, From Meadow to Mayfair. Hearing such dazzling, modern full symphonic sound on this recording immediately takes such pieces for light orchestra out of the crackly world of old radio archives; investing the music, instead, with a grace and style that will put a swing in your step. Coates was the master of great, singable tunes (and deliciously romantic wallows).

The curtain-raiser on the album is the 1948 Rediffusion March — Music Everywhere, a piece that brings to mind that semi-mythical golden age of impeccable pronunciation from radio announcers, and summer days in St. James’s Park. Well done to the art department at Chandos for matching the musical mood in their choice for the album’s cover: a 1927 illustration of Buckingham Palace from a poster issued by the Southern Railway. A perfect production for Eric Coates, ‘the uncrowned king of light music’.

Stuart Millson is the Classical Music Editor of The Quarterly Review

CD details:
Bruckner, String Quintet (with Intermezzo) — Helios, CDH55372.
Eric Coates, Orchestral Works (Vol. 4) — BBC Philharmonic, John Wilson, Chandos, CHAN 20292.

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

Mea Culpa

Posted on July 19, 2024 by leslie

York Minster, credit Wikipedia

Mea Culpa, by Bill Hartley

The City of York and County of North Yorkshire now has an elected mayor. The fact that this was going to happen may have come as a surprise to many in the local electorate. Judging by the modest response at the poll, held in May of this year, voters have been underwhelmed by the idea. The total turnout was 29.89 % and around 450,000 people didn’t bother to vote.

The idea isn’t new having first been considered in 2004. Although Tony Blair’s government was big on devolution, North Yorkshire, for sound geographical reasons, didn’t get the treatment; the conclusion being that it was too large an area to be governed by a single authority. This is hardly surprising since England’s biggest county stretches 116 miles from the Lancashire border to the North Sea. Then, in 2022, unnoticed by many, a devolution deal was done between York City Council and North Yorkshire County Council. It seems there is nothing that politicians like better than more political posts. Judging by the recent turnout this is not a view shared by the electorate.

Six candidates put themselves forward for the post. Their manifesto statements might have been written by the same person. They spoke of ‘sustainable economic growth’, ‘building communities’ and ‘people first’. Clichés of remarkable similarity and of course the word ‘strategic’ was also used.

There isn’t anything inherently wrong with an elected official having strategic oversight but in the case of York and North Yorkshire geography plays an important part in defeating the idea. Conveniently forgotten at the dawn of the brave new era is the reason why the idea was abandoned a couple of decades ago. Some mayoral fiefdoms, usually city regions, are reasonably cohesive: Greater Manchester for example. In Teesside, too, an elected mayor is thought by many to be doing a decent job.

To create a mayoral post covering such a vast area defies logic as does gluing the county to the city of York. One of the favourite subjects found on the candidates’ election material is a good point to begin considering why. Candidates usually talk about public transport. No-one is likely to challenge the idea that it can be improved. A good way to avoid going into detail about this is to stress the need to make it ‘interconnected’. Presumably none of them bothered to look at a map of the county. A geographer would point out that human interaction is shaped by a hierarchy of services. For example, a village in deepest North Yorkshire may posses such basic amenities as a shop, pub and perhaps a filling station. Should a resident wish for access to more services, for example a supermarket, then they are likely to visit a town. More services equal the need for a larger town and herein lies the problem. Whatever the mayor’s strategy it is unlikely to fit conveniently within the borders of his fiefdom. There is, for example, a long coastal strip in the county with Whitby in the north and Scarborough at the south end. Anyone from these towns wishing to access a greater range of services is likely to head for Middlesbrough. Transport links by road and rail reflect this. Middlesbrough of course has its own mayor. Further west the same applies. The nearest large town is Darlington, which has a main line railway station. It happens to be the largest town in County Durham.

The significance of York to most citizens of North Yorkshire is negligible beyond its immediate hinterland. Even within its own postcode area this is doubtful, since to the west is the more accessible town of Harrogate. The main road linking Leeds, York and Scarborough is the A64, one of the reasons why the city is so awkward to reach. It is an accident black spot and at weekends in the summer can be overloaded with traffic heading for the coast. The new mayor, incidentally, has no powers to upgrade the stretch which badly needs to be turned into a dual carriageway.

Further south the map of the county forms a panhandle. This is the district of Selby, the most southerly part of North Yorkshire. A glance at the map will reveal that though York is closer, most of the main lines of communication run east to west between the two cities of Leeds and Hull. The draw of the largest city in West Yorkshire is likely to overwhelm anything York has to offer.

In the run up to the mayoral election the Conservative candidate set himself the task of visiting all the York and North Yorkshire communities, said to number around a thousand. In contrast, the Labour candidate (who won) didn’t trouble to campaign outside the city. If so, then he showed a greater understanding of political realities than his opponent. York has always been a Labour city, whereas the county leans towards Conservative. This was reflected in the vote. Without the York vote going mainly to Labour, the Conservative candidate would have won.

There are now two administrative centres as announced on the new authorities’ website. One is the county town of Northallerton, the other is York. The former, incidentally, has good transport links by road and rail to …Middlesbrough.

An article in the Yorkshire Post, reflecting on the low turnout at the election, expressed concern about the effect on democracy. Equally it might have been a measure of the distain shown by voters who had no say in the creation of the mayoral post. The new mayor’s role is also combined with that of police and fire commissioner. Just in case anyone was worried that this would prove burdensome, he is empowered to create the post of deputy. Doubtless each will have an office with administrative support. That is not all; eight senior managers at North Yorkshire Council are set to receive salaries of over £100,000 a year to reflect their increased responsibilities. Predictably the council defends this with the usual talk about the need to retain talent. Local government lifers presumably are in short supply and therefore much sought after. The chief executive, for instance, is now paid more than the Chancellor of the Exchequer.

One thing that villages are good at is creating a sense of community. It’s one of the reasons why people like living in them. Most have a village hall which hosts various activities and there are sports teams. The new authority still sees the need for a helping hand to show villagers how to do it. There is to be a post of Director of Community Development on a salary of £139,215. Presumably this figure has been set to reduce the risk of candidates being lured away to direct community development elsewhere.

The people behind this new tier of administration evidently see no reason to let logic get in the way as it goes to work to meet the needs of a largely uninterested citizenry. York (the only city in the county) is to be the flag ship even though its draw is more to do with tourism than as a service provider. People will continue to go elsewhere for their needs; not that this is likely trouble the authority. No matter how effective the new mayor tries to be, he will ultimately be defeated by the realities of geography.

William Hartley is a Social Historian

Posted in QR Home | Tagged , , | 1 Comment

A Curate’s Egg; review of Edgar

Posted on July 10, 2024 by leslie

The Woodman’s Daughter, John Everett Millais, credit Wikimedia Commons

A Curate’s Egg; review of Edgar

Edgar, drama lirico by Giacomo Puccini in three acts (1905 version), libretto by Ferdinando Fontana, director Ruth Knight, City of London Sinfonia and the Opera Holland Park Chorus conducted by Naomi Woo, Opera Holland Park 6 July 2024, reviewed by Leslie Jones

Director Ruth Knight’s new production of Edgar has polarised opinion. Whereas Culture Whisper was excited to see another Puccini rarity being aired (following Opera Holland Park’s 2022 staging of Le Villi), Jessica Duchen was scathing and dismissive. Notwithstanding what Knight in the programme calls Puccini’s “profound impact on western culture…”, Edgar is rarely staged. “Back in the box with it”, Duchen adjures  (Inews, ‘Edgar, Opera Holland Park review; so bad the audience were chortling’).

For the premiere at La Scala in Milan, in 1889, the much-maligned librettist Ferdinando Fontana moved the location of the drama from the mountains of the Tyrol to lowland Flanders. Ms Knight, in turn, has transferred it from medieval Flanders (specifically Bruges, The Dead City evoked in Erich Korngold’s opera) to 19th century England, presumably because it embodies bourgeois religious and sexual hypocrisy, as documented in WT Stead’s The Maiden Tribute of Modern Babylon. In Knight’s reworking of Edgar, Tigrana (played by Gweneth Ann Rand), was abandoned by her parents and forced to become a sex worker. We see her briefly in the Prelude as a child, in the company of a youthful Edgar. Although this is a semi-staged production, there was evidently room for a theatrical prop which presumably represents passport control and the “othering” of illegal immigrants. “It’s become all about racism and misogyny”, complains Duchen. And she is correct if not politically correct – “relevance” cannot redeem it.

Mixing his metaphors, Gary Naylor thinks that Ferdinando Fontana “sold Puccini something of a hospital pass, and [that] no amount of repairs or revisions could get him off that hook”. Edgar was “the difficult child of the canon” (BroadwayWorld.com). Dominic Lowe agrees that there is little evidence here of Puccini’s eventual “… theatrical flair and innate faculty for character development” (Backtrack). But holes in the plot, such as the reconciliation of Frank and Edgar (performed by Julien Van Mellaerts and Peter Auty, respectively), are hardly unusual in opera. The denouement of Rigoletto springs immediately to mind. The audience are invariably forgiving, providing there are what Naylor nicely calls arias “so pleasing on the air…[which] even when expressing the darkest of thoughts, lift one’s soul”. And there is general agreement that although “Puccini’s greatest music was yet to come”, the score is replete with “soaring moments” which “glisten” (Culture Whisper). Opera Holland Park chorus and the City of London Sinfonia, conducted by Naomi Woo, evidently found “the passion and the beauty in the score” (Naylor).

Some reviews of Edgar beg the question “what exactly is the role of the critic?” Is it to help “excavate” obscure lost works that arguably throw light on Puccini’s development? “Without hearing this,” his second opera, Colin Clarke demands, “how can we “know” Puccini?” But Clarke also acknowledges that this is hardly “top-rank” material (Seen and Heard International, ‘Edgar, Opera Holland park’s recent excavation, is a revelation’). Puccini himself eventually concluded that it was “warmed-up soup”, and that its subject was “rubbish” (see Flora Willson, the Guardian, ‘Edgar review-Puccini was right, his biggest flop is a dud’). Let the composer have the last word.

Editorial endnote; indicatively, there were only three performances of Edgar, on the 3rd, 4th and 6th of July

Dr Leslie Jones is the Editor of Quarterly Review

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