The staff of ITM will be taking a short break for the next week as I travel to Hungary for what I hope will be a most worthwhile trip. Naturally, I have given much thought to entertainment for the thirty-hour bus journey there and back, and have already half-filled my MP3 player with music. However I am going to suggest, briefly, something both for my stimulation and for that of my readership during this hiatus - the broadcasts of the Reith Lectures.
If you are unaware of the existence of the RL, their format is simple: an expert records a series of talks, some with an audience present, on a pertinent and stimulating subject. They are then broadcast on Radio 4 and the World Service. Bertrand Russell was the first, setting the mark pretty high with 1948's Authority and the Individual, but there have been many great figures and as many interesting topics since. My personal favourite, for obvious reasons, is Daniel Barenboim's In The Beginning was Sound from 2006, memorable for his devastating attack on piped muzak in public.
Back to the first paragraph. For the former purpose, an enormous archive of programmes from the very first Lectures to those of 2010 are available for download, and from these I shall select one or two sets to listen to as I travel in the coming week. For the latter, the 2011 Lectures are now being broadcast and transcribed (for those outside the UK unable to access the audio) and are possibly the most extraordinary yet. For a start, they have not been recorded in a London studio, but in a secret location 6000 miles away. Also, they are illegal - or at least, they are in the country where they were produced.
That country is Burma, and the lecturer Aung San Suu Kyi (along with contributions from a former head of MI5) which explains the previous two caveats. The tapes were smuggled out of a country with one of the most oppressive governments in the world (and one where the BBC is banned from reporting) and, appropriately enough, are on the subject of 'Securing Freedom'. The BBC's production team have written a quietly uplifting blog entry on how they actually got the videos made (all of which can be viewed on YouTube if you are outside the UK), including, incredibly, a live satellite link to Kyi after the audience showing. The quality and hypnotically engaging content of the talks are both superb.
I appreciate that a coach full of students, most younger than myself, is not the ideal environment to hang on every word spoken on such learned subjects, but there are far worse ways to fill the time. The Reith Lectures also provide further evidence for my belief in the considerable superiority of radio over television. When I return: what happens in Hungary, the myth of elitism, and more in support of the previous sentence.
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
Saturday, June 18, 2011
My hovercraft is full of eels
I'm going to Hungary in approximately two weeks. This I intend to be a fun, educational and valuable trip, a concert tour with my old university's student-run chamber orchestra to be precise, and one that may well be documented on-the-fly via this blog as long as Internet access is forthcoming. You may or may not know that I often turn into a prolific scribbler when on expeditions or adventures, and as around forty per cent of the entire operation will be spent travelling on a bus, I plan to spend at least some of this time writing an account of it, something which will probably end up half-way between a diary and a novelisation. Don't worry, it won't be too frank, and there may be funny bits too.
Following the 'remember to pack a Thermos flask and a change of socks' philosophy, I like to prepare thoroughly for any adventure, a strategy which usually pays dividends (we will brush aside the unfortunate incidents of that misread signpost in Kent, and accidentally driving up Harlesden High St with some dodgy characters about). I have borrowed a Lonely Planet from the library, located our hotel and the transport links, and made an approximate plan for independent sightseeing. I'm slightly miffed that an extra concert on our 'free day' has now appeared on the schedule, scuppering my plans to go in completely the opposite direction (and, frankly, have much better views and much fewer German sunbathers) but it will enable my swanny-whistle to see some service in concert.
Now I should add that I've been to at least some of our planned destinations before, and as a result already posses a map (bus and tram route numbers slightly out of date; could be interesting) alongside the tour itinerary. With so many details and interesting factoids already deliberated, cogitated and digested, really the most useful way I could prepare was by improving my Hungarian, starting from a baseline of next-to-nothing. And as they say on a popular Sunday-night messing-about-in-cars show - how hard can it be?
Now, arguably, I have understood a form of 'Hungarian' since I was 14, as until 1844 Latin was the country's official language (stop being a smart-arse, Simon - ed). But with the dizzy heights of an Italian A-level amongst my past achievements, and armed with a Berlitz phrasebook, Central Library's copy of Complete Hungarian (+MP3 compatible double CD) and occasional reference to Wikipedia, I was naturally confident about mastering at least the rudiments of the vernacular. I find that the logical path is to start with basic expressions (yes, no, please, thank you, beer, wine, taxi) before doing numbers (I can now count to egy milliard, oh yes) and then swearwords. Lest this seem vulgar, I should clarify that these will be swearwords in English, declaimed after one has tried and failed to pronounce a word such as hangversenytarem*.
Hungarian - Magyarul - is part of the exotic-sounding Finno-Ugric language family and has little in common with English other than the concept of manipulating lips, tongue and epiglottis to make noises happen. The alphabet, in particular, seems to have been carefully contrived to trick unwary English speakers, for practically none of the vowels are pronounced as they appear to be written. 'A' is closer to 'o'; 'i' is more like 'ee'; whilst the eight combined variants of 'o' and 'u' (namely o, ó, ö, ő, u, ú, ü and ű) sound closer to the lower registers of a contrabassoon than to any Latin syllable. 'C' and 'dzs' are relatively straightforward: they simply do not make anything like the noises you expect. In a further blow for well-meaning English speakers, the differences between vowel sounds are in many cases subtle but vital. Hú and hű mean completely different things despite the 'u' being just different lengths of the same sound. The words for 'I would like' and 'I love you' are only a single consonant different (Hungarian has a very logical system of word roots, so this is perhaps not as foolish as it may appear) making the simple action of purchasing a train ticket (the word for which just happens to have an irregular, archaic, pronunciation) into a very real danger zone for the visitor. Further on, there is the terrifying arrangement of 'vowel harmony', meaning that prepositions (which are always expressed through suffixes) have to be chosen from several possible options based on the proportion of 'open' or 'closed' vowels in the word. At least all other nationalities will share these same difficulties too...
Speaking of Wikipedia, the erstwhile source of (mis)information has a nearly hilarious story of several Hungarian phrasebooks from the nineteenth century containing the phrase 'My postilion has been struck by lightning'. Naturally, I have already committed to memory this most useful of phrases, never knowing when I might find myself in command of a stagecoach in rural Transdanubia during an electrical storm. On reflection, it may prove more useful in the real world to substitute in the Hungarian terms for 'Renault Megane' or 'English tourist coach'; 'heat shield' and 'come unstuck'.
Anyway, if at any time this post appears to have facilitated humour at the expense of the noble Magyar language, I am doubtless that it will be reciprocated in mirth at my own attempts to express myself once in the country.
*'Concert hall' - a word which I might, realistically, need to utter, and which certainly wasn't just picked at random because it looked impressively long. It's pronounced something approximating to 'hongversheneetorem'.
Following the 'remember to pack a Thermos flask and a change of socks' philosophy, I like to prepare thoroughly for any adventure, a strategy which usually pays dividends (we will brush aside the unfortunate incidents of that misread signpost in Kent, and accidentally driving up Harlesden High St with some dodgy characters about). I have borrowed a Lonely Planet from the library, located our hotel and the transport links, and made an approximate plan for independent sightseeing. I'm slightly miffed that an extra concert on our 'free day' has now appeared on the schedule, scuppering my plans to go in completely the opposite direction (and, frankly, have much better views and much fewer German sunbathers) but it will enable my swanny-whistle to see some service in concert.
Now I should add that I've been to at least some of our planned destinations before, and as a result already posses a map (bus and tram route numbers slightly out of date; could be interesting) alongside the tour itinerary. With so many details and interesting factoids already deliberated, cogitated and digested, really the most useful way I could prepare was by improving my Hungarian, starting from a baseline of next-to-nothing. And as they say on a popular Sunday-night messing-about-in-cars show - how hard can it be?
Now, arguably, I have understood a form of 'Hungarian' since I was 14, as until 1844 Latin was the country's official language (stop being a smart-arse, Simon - ed). But with the dizzy heights of an Italian A-level amongst my past achievements, and armed with a Berlitz phrasebook, Central Library's copy of Complete Hungarian (+MP3 compatible double CD) and occasional reference to Wikipedia, I was naturally confident about mastering at least the rudiments of the vernacular. I find that the logical path is to start with basic expressions (yes, no, please, thank you, beer, wine, taxi) before doing numbers (I can now count to egy milliard, oh yes) and then swearwords. Lest this seem vulgar, I should clarify that these will be swearwords in English, declaimed after one has tried and failed to pronounce a word such as hangversenytarem*.
Hungarian - Magyarul - is part of the exotic-sounding Finno-Ugric language family and has little in common with English other than the concept of manipulating lips, tongue and epiglottis to make noises happen. The alphabet, in particular, seems to have been carefully contrived to trick unwary English speakers, for practically none of the vowels are pronounced as they appear to be written. 'A' is closer to 'o'; 'i' is more like 'ee'; whilst the eight combined variants of 'o' and 'u' (namely o, ó, ö, ő, u, ú, ü and ű) sound closer to the lower registers of a contrabassoon than to any Latin syllable. 'C' and 'dzs' are relatively straightforward: they simply do not make anything like the noises you expect. In a further blow for well-meaning English speakers, the differences between vowel sounds are in many cases subtle but vital. Hú and hű mean completely different things despite the 'u' being just different lengths of the same sound. The words for 'I would like' and 'I love you' are only a single consonant different (Hungarian has a very logical system of word roots, so this is perhaps not as foolish as it may appear) making the simple action of purchasing a train ticket (the word for which just happens to have an irregular, archaic, pronunciation) into a very real danger zone for the visitor. Further on, there is the terrifying arrangement of 'vowel harmony', meaning that prepositions (which are always expressed through suffixes) have to be chosen from several possible options based on the proportion of 'open' or 'closed' vowels in the word. At least all other nationalities will share these same difficulties too...
Speaking of Wikipedia, the erstwhile source of (mis)information has a nearly hilarious story of several Hungarian phrasebooks from the nineteenth century containing the phrase 'My postilion has been struck by lightning'. Naturally, I have already committed to memory this most useful of phrases, never knowing when I might find myself in command of a stagecoach in rural Transdanubia during an electrical storm. On reflection, it may prove more useful in the real world to substitute in the Hungarian terms for 'Renault Megane' or 'English tourist coach'; 'heat shield' and 'come unstuck'.
Anyway, if at any time this post appears to have facilitated humour at the expense of the noble Magyar language, I am doubtless that it will be reciprocated in mirth at my own attempts to express myself once in the country.
*'Concert hall' - a word which I might, realistically, need to utter, and which certainly wasn't just picked at random because it looked impressively long. It's pronounced something approximating to 'hongversheneetorem'.
Thursday, June 16, 2011
What is hip
(Part one of a proposed series in which I discuss the mechanics, techniques, joys and frustrations of composition)
Lets' start with a deceptively simple question. Establishing a tentative trend for opening blog posts with the line: 'I sometimes get asked...';
And the question is almost always 'know', not 'decide' or 'find'. The questioner implies that I will have an absolute conviction in the 'correctness' of anything I write. This is striking because, to be blunt, I often don't. The experience of composition is like a process of engineered serendipity - not groping in the dark, but more like mining one's consciousness close to what we know in the past has been a fruitful seam. The precious mineral is there somewhere, but it is still an uncertain process as to how much of it we can get out, and what we can make with it having done so.
The hard part is when it comes to judging what is worth keeping. In this respect, one of the essential skills of composition is to be able to step outside from oneself and try to judge the work from an observer's perspective. This is difficult, because it's nigh-on impossible to be truly objective about what is good in your work, and even, to a lesser degree, about others'. But we can at least attempt to define what constitutes accomplishment in a chosen artistic field, and not just in music. (We are assuming here that all artists aim to create works that they feel are accomplished in some purpose - not necessarily a noble one - and that they strive to improve the effectiveness with each successive work). It seems to me that there are five primary criteria that all 'accomplished' artistic figures fulfil:
1. Originality of style: The majority of the artist's output is readily recognisable as theirs, and contains a number of stylistic 'fingerprints' which enable us to identify it as such. This does not mean that every feature of the work is unique to them alone, nor that every work exhibits the same recognisable motifs, but neither will it be blatantly derivative of another's style.
2. Originality of works: The artist does not repeatedly produce the same basic work with minor variations. An underlying template may be used, even one commonly found in the output of others, but this will allow sufficient scope for individuality that the observer does not consider differences between works to be merely superficial.
3. Technique: The artist will have a highly developed technical ability in his chosen field. This is to some extent an exchange process with the development of individual style (Stravinsky is technically very competent at being Stravinsky, because he has defined and subsequently refined what Stravinsky's style consists of) but it also confirms to wider cultural expectations and historical precedents within their discipline. There are several aspects to this:
3a. Quality of material: The artist is judicious in devising and refining their materials, such that even an observer with a similar level of knowledge cannot identify any significant flaws in the basic ideas or how they are carried through the work, other than personal taste.
3b. Suitability for the chosen medium: The artist does not attempt anything patently impossible or unsuitable for the medium they are working in. In addition, any inherent weaknesses are either avoided as best as possible or even used to some advantage.
3c. Control of material: Aside from possessing a mastery of fundamental techniques and existing conventions in their field, the artist will also have perfect control of their own innovations and original ideas for which no exact model exists.
4. Prolific-ness: The artist must produce a significant number of works. 'Significant' need not mean the thousands of works by Bach or Picasso, or even hundreds, but enough to demonstrate an ability to develop their style through time, and a sufficient diversity of creative ideas.
5. Recognition: Note that 'popularity' is an inadequate term for this aspect. 'Recognition' constitutes the interest and respect of peers, if not the wider populace. This need not be universally acknowledged, nor forthcoming within the artist's lifespan. Criticism will generally reinforce fulfilment of the criteria already discussed.
There are, of course, several factors which are more difficult to quantify. The precise degree of 'originality', in particular, because maximum does not equal optimum in this discipline. Even allowing for the varying degrees of 'experience' in any particular style that an observer has, there is a fairly consistent level of relation to 'known' works which helps us judge how far between yawningly derivative or discombobulatingly novel something is. The best artists have an innate feeling for where this point of balance lies.
I intend in the future to discuss a related question; whether composition can really be taught. I am fairly certain, however, that it can be learned.
Lets' start with a deceptively simple question. Establishing a tentative trend for opening blog posts with the line: 'I sometimes get asked...';
'...how do you know what notes to write?'
And the question is almost always 'know', not 'decide' or 'find'. The questioner implies that I will have an absolute conviction in the 'correctness' of anything I write. This is striking because, to be blunt, I often don't. The experience of composition is like a process of engineered serendipity - not groping in the dark, but more like mining one's consciousness close to what we know in the past has been a fruitful seam. The precious mineral is there somewhere, but it is still an uncertain process as to how much of it we can get out, and what we can make with it having done so.
The hard part is when it comes to judging what is worth keeping. In this respect, one of the essential skills of composition is to be able to step outside from oneself and try to judge the work from an observer's perspective. This is difficult, because it's nigh-on impossible to be truly objective about what is good in your work, and even, to a lesser degree, about others'. But we can at least attempt to define what constitutes accomplishment in a chosen artistic field, and not just in music. (We are assuming here that all artists aim to create works that they feel are accomplished in some purpose - not necessarily a noble one - and that they strive to improve the effectiveness with each successive work). It seems to me that there are five primary criteria that all 'accomplished' artistic figures fulfil:
1. Originality of style: The majority of the artist's output is readily recognisable as theirs, and contains a number of stylistic 'fingerprints' which enable us to identify it as such. This does not mean that every feature of the work is unique to them alone, nor that every work exhibits the same recognisable motifs, but neither will it be blatantly derivative of another's style.
2. Originality of works: The artist does not repeatedly produce the same basic work with minor variations. An underlying template may be used, even one commonly found in the output of others, but this will allow sufficient scope for individuality that the observer does not consider differences between works to be merely superficial.
3. Technique: The artist will have a highly developed technical ability in his chosen field. This is to some extent an exchange process with the development of individual style (Stravinsky is technically very competent at being Stravinsky, because he has defined and subsequently refined what Stravinsky's style consists of) but it also confirms to wider cultural expectations and historical precedents within their discipline. There are several aspects to this:
3b. Suitability for the chosen medium: The artist does not attempt anything patently impossible or unsuitable for the medium they are working in. In addition, any inherent weaknesses are either avoided as best as possible or even used to some advantage.
3c. Control of material: Aside from possessing a mastery of fundamental techniques and existing conventions in their field, the artist will also have perfect control of their own innovations and original ideas for which no exact model exists.
There are, of course, several factors which are more difficult to quantify. The precise degree of 'originality', in particular, because maximum does not equal optimum in this discipline. Even allowing for the varying degrees of 'experience' in any particular style that an observer has, there is a fairly consistent level of relation to 'known' works which helps us judge how far between yawningly derivative or discombobulatingly novel something is. The best artists have an innate feeling for where this point of balance lies.
I intend in the future to discuss a related question; whether composition can really be taught. I am fairly certain, however, that it can be learned.
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