Transportation

As everyone is aware, I am a cellist.  Inevitably, a frequent question I am asked is 'how do I transport the thing around'. Well...

...Oh, I should really tell you about the 'cello case itself, because it makes all this possible. It is called a Hiscox.  It is intentionally very tough. It needs to be, because inside is a very old and valuable possession that I rely on for part of my livelihood. Tower Bridge and Camilla Parker-Bowles aside, most objects more than a century and a half old are not called into regular working use, and that's because they risk being knocked about whilst in service. So it's made from carbon-honeycomb, with an impact-absorbent space between the core and the shell, and thus offers a significant degree of protection to the instrument...

The case has both handles and shoulder-straps. It's not an ideal shape to carry, but it is light enough (small instrument with carbon-fibre/plastic instead of metal bits, fairly lightweight case) that I can do about a mile with it with little discomfort.  You can also run a little if the train is late / large lorry is coming up fast.

A considerable proportion of my driving career (and before that, the parents') has been spent transporting the thing and its associated paraphernalia around the highways of southern England.  Naturally, it makes the purchase of any new vehicle an elaborate process, and I have many reliable accounts of lately overly-confident car salesmen being silenced when presented with the question 'ah, but will it fit the 'cello in the boot?*'.  My parents' usual strategy was to buy Vauxhalls, because the general consensus was that their larger models had a huge carrying capacity, and that this benevolence towards bearers of stringed instruments, antiques dealers and such like was a core tenet of the UK arm of General Motors' purpose on earth.  There are, of course, many other suitable vehicles - several Volvos, the estate VW Passat, and a Skoda have been championed by cellist friends and acquaintances in the past but we stuck bravely to the griffin-with-a-flag.  Obviously the commencement of my own driving lessons posed something of a problem, as there was no way on earth I'd get insured on the huge estate that was the family car of the time, and in any case I would need independent transport post-test.  But gadzooks! - a facelifted Corsa B turned out to be almost perfectly suited to carrying the cello, albeit across the back seat. This is one of two ways to carry the instrument in an undersized motor; the other is upright like a passenger.  Both are problematic methods in two-door models, yet many manage. Use of the seatbelt through suitable points on the case is advised.

However, I've just got rid of the Corsa, because I've think I've found possibly the most cello-friendly car in the world.  I suppose I must conclude that I am indebted to the chance actions of some anonymous designer - frameless glasses and all - for making the thing end up the way it is.  My guess is that automotive engineers probably start with the dimensions of the chassis, then come up with what would look good on top, then work out how everything fits inside.  With the exception of the Ford Transit van (surely one of the greatest pieces of design in the history of humanity) they seldom base the entire vehicle on a specific item that it has to contain. 

This makes all the more utterly remarkable the nigh-perfect match of a Hiscox cello case and the luggage compartment of a Mk.II Renault Megane Sport Tourer#.  The one goes flawlessly into the other.  And yes, I know there are plenty of cars with even more space at the back, but the problem then is that you have to start strategically positioning handy objects in order to stop the cello from crashing around through the bends. The Meg actually fits the cello, not just the other way round. The floor is also level with the tailgate, so you don't have to nurse it through some arcanely-shaped opening as if trying to steer an airship full of Ming vases under the Forth Bridge.  I should probably add that it looks stunning in gloss black, goes like a frog out of a frying pan and that, crucially, all the electrics seem to work. Lest my readership begin to suspect this is some kind of astro-turfing publicity on behalf of Renault (- for a model not produced for two years?) the quality of the interior plastics is noticeably inferior to the old Vauxhall, and it lacks the diesel's torque.

Trains aren't great, although I took the instrument at rush hour to central London for three years. Other passengers, trying to stand on one leg wedged against the window (you think I'm joking, but British trains can be that crowded - cheers for privatising them, Tories) are less than happy that you appear to be carrying what is a needless piece of luggage and thus taking up twice the amount of floor space you 'deserve' (because the British are very possessive and judgemental like that, mm).  Even on empty trains I feel conscious that putting it against the empty seat next to me may incur the ire of the conductor (and I've heard third-hand stories of bullying jobsworths trying to fine musicians for this, which we hope are fictitious) mostly because I'm young and don't have the right to do anything anyone older than me might not want me to.  I was shown pretty early on by a friend that the best thing to do is to unclip one of the shoulder straps, wind it round a hand-pole and clip it back before tightening it as much as possible. This will keep the flat-bottomed case upright in all but the most severe pointwork-induced turbulence. I recall this to be less effective on Jubilee, Metropolitan and Northern Line trains due to the relative lack of vertical poles in the carriages.

And now we come to the most entertaining part - air travel.  Various world powers from time to time feel the need to impress on citizens that 'something is being done about something' and, in a classic case of life imitating The Thick of It, find new things to ban from the cabin of commercial airliners. Musical instruments have been on the list, notably in 2007 after some nutters drove a Jeep into Glasgow airport in the deluded belief that the entire population of Western Europe would instantly convert to radical Islam as a result.  Clearly this was caused by professional musicians wanting to take their instruments to countries lacking a direct train service from Southampton Central, so cellos were instantly banned from planes. (This is the level of logic that helped the British conquer a third of the world and invent the hovercraft and the Thermos flask).  The British government soon discovered that picking a fight with militant intellectuals is unwise and under pressure from the MU and a mention in Mark Elder's Last Night speech at the years' Proms, backed down. That reset the alert level for taking the instrument on an airline from 'impossible' back down to 'bloody awkward'. If I don't wish to risk it in the hold - and I certainly don't - I have to book a seat in the cabin. Some airlines - and I will name Virgin Atlantic for setting a good example - will allow you a reduced fare for this, but Ryanair et al won't (in fact they will try and charge you for a violin).  Obviously a few of the check-in staff and many of the security goons don't realise this is not only possible, but allowed, and have to be sternly told so in order to maintain progress through the airport.  (This somehow always seems to work).  Some idiots also think that the strings are a possible weapon, so if this happens I lie and say that I cannot take them off the instrument until they break, which the cretin is invariably too ignorant to refute (I put spare strings in my luggage - they're too expensive to risk some security **** nicking them off me as his personal contribution to the War on Normal People).  Obviously the aisle of an Airbus is not wide enough to carry the thing down without bashing shins. And I spend the whole flight worrying about it going out of tune. And then it has to go through the airport at the other side so I get asked in Slovak what it is and how do I transport it. Also, try holding it whilst getting your bag off the carousel...


* That's the 'trunk' to my American readers.
# Pedants, it is spelt correctly. Renault, possibly in a move to internationalise the car, dropped the acute accent over the first 'e' on the second-generation Meg. Also, 'Sport Tourer' is just marketing-speak for an estate/station wagon - it's not a breathtakingly quick car.

Mahler and me

Today, May 18th, is precisely 100 years to the day since Gustav Mahler breathed his last.  This has chiefly been commemorated by musos through smart-arse Facebook statuses, something that I have wholeheartedly participated in. Top marks appear to have been taken by my former conducting teacher and doyen of Sunday-cricket , Levon Parikian (who maintains a superb blog, Runny Thoughts) for numerous witty gems.

But I'd like to talk seriously for a bit, if I may. I am, unashamedly, a Mahlerian. The core of his music contains a philosophy I agree with wholeheartedly (whilst still being just about able to appreciate why unenlightened people do not share my passion).  For a start, Mahler's famous exchange with Sibelius (whom I equally admire) about the symphony 'being like the world' is at the heart of his conception of music, their very reason for existence. His symphonies don't last for an hour and a half or more just because they can, it's because they need such a time-scale in order to contain the hugely important and transcendent ideas he is trying to articulate. A Mahler symphony really is a world of its own, and possesses both an 'architectural' quality of form and an emotional range that journeys over a huge expanse of space.  Interestingly, the equally lengthy symphonies of Anton Bruckner (who taught Mahler for a time) work in a completely different way, unfolding a concentrated nucleus gradually within a tight structural and colouristic scheme, rather than exploiting rapid changes from one particular extreme to the other as we are propelled through so many landscapes.

This last characteristic of Mahler's writing has been the cause of criticism, apparently too reliant on over-the-top, flashily orchestrated histrionics and 'ironic' symbolism within the musical material.  My response is that; firstly, every note of his output is carefully crafted and coloured with exceptionally skillful deployment of the instrumental or vocal resources used; and secondly, Mahler's heart-on-sleeve approach to - well, everything in his music - is both provider of the individuality in his voice and the reason he is able to compare to the pantheon of great composers, for to play or listen to his music is to be utterly drawn into something that cannot help but have a compelling and profound effect, and it is the greatest music which creates the greatest effect. The hammer blows in the Sixth Symphony are not cheap film-music clichés, nor are they merely colouristic effects like the wind and thunder machines in Strauss' Alpine Symphony, they are the actual force the composer wished to depict, the mighty blows of fate striking down defenceless mortals.

I am a little uncertain as to when I first heard, and then really fell under the spell of, Mahler. I knew the Adagietto from the Fifth Symphony - probably the piece most people hear first - from when I was a teenager, but it was later before I became aware of the youthful exuberance and sweeping turbulence contained in the First Symphony, the Titan.  Later still I discovered the rest of the Fifth, and then in my first year at university ULSO, the intercollegiate orchestra which I would soon join, played the Third, a concert I shall never forget. Aside from the sheer length of the work, I was completely possessed by the music, music that was more epic and more encompassing of everything than any piece I had heard before. I was lucky enough to hear the Third live again at last year's Proms, and relived everything I had felt the first time - from the doom-laden opening march, to the night-world of the fourth movement, the chorus of angels in the fifth and the almost unbearable depiction of complete resolution in the finale. But I think my most compelling Mahler experience was earlier in that year, when ULSO performed the Sixth in Cadogan Hall. Even after the read-through there was a feeling that we had been possessed by some strange dream, that we had lived the sound that was being lifted from the page. There is a moment in the finale where the turbulence suddenly subsides and the violins, harp and celeste leap up an octave out of the storm.  It is as if one is suddenly lifted into the night sky and transported to a hillside under the stars, with cowbells and a solo horn glinting in the distance. I cannot think of any other composer who can paint so vivid a picture without the slightest mention of any actual programme in the score. 

Earlier this year, I was lucky enough to take part in a performance of the Ninth Symphony, so like and yet so unlike any of the others.  There was over a minute of silence after the last, faltering note in my section had died, the culmination (nearly) of not only eighty minutes of music, but a lifetime of vision as lofty as the mountains over the Attersee.

Topical referencery

'Welch ein törichtes Verlangen

Treibt mich in die Wüstenein?' *

(Die Winterreise)

With twin clouds of post-election doom now hanging over his party, now might be an opportune time to remind ourselves that Nick Clegg likes Schubert. 

*What is this foolish desire 
that drives me into the wilderness?'