tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-65523387838409882482024-02-08T01:56:40.240+00:00In the MistsRambling through the backwoods of music, composition and other esotericaSimon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.comBlogger74125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-68839484407421744982012-12-18T17:53:00.002+00:002012-12-18T17:53:54.991+00:00Und Gott sprach...<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/>
<w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/>
<w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/>
<w:Word11KerningPairs/>
<w:CachedColBalance/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><br />
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="267">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0cm;
mso-para-margin-right:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0cm;
line-height:115%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Her way in her may
jour-</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">-nal quiff or a bear</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The<span style="mso-spacerun: yes;"> </span>litter large ease us</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Ladle hiss wheated</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Thirst Tarzan herb
right Skye </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Lurk dowry lay</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Early tiller cheeses</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">As lee ponder hey</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">The cat all a Lerwick</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Herb a beer wake</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Spud Lidl orgies us</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Oak Ryan emails</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">I’ll have veal or
cheeses</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Look doubt Prommers
guide </i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Anne stay buy my cider
</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Till more ninnies nej*</i></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="color: #9fc5e8;"><span style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">*That's 'no' in Danish, for non-viewers of <i>Forbrydelsen</i> and<i> Borgen</i></span></span><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;"><span style="color: #9fc5e8;">.</span></i></div>
Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-40223056154607200722012-12-02T12:55:00.001+00:002012-12-02T12:55:56.716+00:00The view from the (organ) bench<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:WordDocument>
<w:View>Normal</w:View>
<w:Zoom>0</w:Zoom>
<w:TrackMoves/>
<w:TrackFormatting/>
<w:PunctuationKerning/>
<w:ValidateAgainstSchemas/>
<w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>false</w:SaveIfXMLInvalid>
<w:IgnoreMixedContent>false</w:IgnoreMixedContent>
<w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>false</w:AlwaysShowPlaceholderText>
<w:DoNotPromoteQF/>
<w:LidThemeOther>EN-GB</w:LidThemeOther>
<w:LidThemeAsian>X-NONE</w:LidThemeAsian>
<w:LidThemeComplexScript>X-NONE</w:LidThemeComplexScript>
<w:Compatibility>
<w:BreakWrappedTables/>
<w:SnapToGridInCell/>
<w:WrapTextWithPunct/>
<w:UseAsianBreakRules/>
<w:DontGrowAutofit/>
<w:SplitPgBreakAndParaMark/>
<w:DontVertAlignCellWithSp/>
<w:DontBreakConstrainedForcedTables/>
<w:DontVertAlignInTxbx/>
<w:Word11KerningPairs/>
<w:CachedColBalance/>
</w:Compatibility>
<m:mathPr>
<m:mathFont m:val="Cambria Math"/>
<m:brkBin m:val="before"/>
<m:brkBinSub m:val="--"/>
<m:smallFrac m:val="off"/>
<m:dispDef/>
<m:lMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:rMargin m:val="0"/>
<m:defJc m:val="centerGroup"/>
<m:wrapIndent m:val="1440"/>
<m:intLim m:val="subSup"/>
<m:naryLim m:val="undOvr"/>
</m:mathPr></w:WordDocument>
</xml><![endif]--><br />
<!--[if gte mso 9]><xml>
<w:LatentStyles DefLockedState="false" DefUnhideWhenUsed="true"
DefSemiHidden="true" DefQFormat="false" DefPriority="99"
LatentStyleCount="267">
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="0" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Normal"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="heading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="9" QFormat="true" Name="heading 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 7"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 8"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" Name="toc 9"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="35" QFormat="true" Name="caption"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="10" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" Name="Default Paragraph Font"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="11" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtitle"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="22" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Strong"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="20" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="59" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Table Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Placeholder Text"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="1" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="No Spacing"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Revision"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="34" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="List Paragraph"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="29" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="30" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Quote"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 1"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 2"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 3"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 4"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 5"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="60" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="61" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="62" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Light Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="63" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="64" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Shading 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="65" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="66" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium List 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="67" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 1 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="68" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 2 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="69" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Medium Grid 3 Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="70" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Dark List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="71" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Shading Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="72" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful List Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="73" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" Name="Colorful Grid Accent 6"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="19" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="21" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Emphasis"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="31" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Subtle Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="32" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Intense Reference"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="33" SemiHidden="false"
UnhideWhenUsed="false" QFormat="true" Name="Book Title"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="37" Name="Bibliography"/>
<w:LsdException Locked="false" Priority="39" QFormat="true" Name="TOC Heading"/>
</w:LatentStyles>
</xml><![endif]--><!--[if gte mso 10]>
<style>
/* Style Definitions */
table.MsoNormalTable
{mso-style-name:"Table Normal";
mso-tstyle-rowband-size:0;
mso-tstyle-colband-size:0;
mso-style-noshow:yes;
mso-style-priority:99;
mso-style-qformat:yes;
mso-style-parent:"";
mso-padding-alt:0cm 5.4pt 0cm 5.4pt;
mso-para-margin-top:0cm;
mso-para-margin-right:0cm;
mso-para-margin-bottom:10.0pt;
mso-para-margin-left:0cm;
line-height:115%;
mso-pagination:widow-orphan;
font-size:11.0pt;
font-family:"Calibri","sans-serif";
mso-ascii-font-family:Calibri;
mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin;
mso-fareast-font-family:"Times New Roman";
mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast;
mso-hansi-font-family:Calibri;
mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin;}
</style>
<![endif]-->
<br />
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">One zen Roy or Davy’s
settee</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Stood alone leak at a
shed</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Wear another later bay
be</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Inner major forest bed</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Mare he was some other
mile</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Gee sirs cry stir
litter chai</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<br /></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And a rise alas
chassis him</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Who whisk gotten law
doff ore</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Handy shell to wash a
stay bull</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">And degrade all rozzers
door</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Andy leads is chill
dremmon</i></span></div>
<div class="MsoNormal">
<span style="font-family: inherit;"><i style="mso-bidi-font-style: normal;">Tudor play swear he a
scone</i></span></div>
Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-86340513074605154762012-11-10T17:23:00.000+00:002012-11-10T17:30:42.245+00:00The Solent Way: Part Three<h3>
<span style="color: #9fc5e8;">Portsmouth to Emsworth (16 miles)</span></h3>
It's some time since we last visited the Solent Way, the footpath that traverses a fairly diverse stretch of the coastline of southern England, so a two-post special dealing with two sections of the trail seems in order. This time, we're going to finish off the eastern end, from Portsmouth to Emsworth. I've put together a map of the route <a href="https://maps.google.co.uk/maps/ms?msid=210417175720307131505.0004ce23a1d2bcd99470d&msa=0&ll=50.833372,-1.044388&spn=0.014013,0.038581">here</a>.<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY2PG6JwclhXOMkNFZDKvfzBiRMc9Y5P-vJfWM6ILxO6cHmTAmD8kRxqQaH2uqRmcSJ23KGuc4aITZ3n26CcXmWn68vzIBhCzAu1mcccu4xxd8OVCiZYC2YxXPMP4O461l5yrb9PK0Qy-o/s1600/P6041789.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM6lThPPWgocUh3gTme_I6ydy1IjTyZoK5yyyLZl_dd10wlXydNNUbY3ct6AkrRtFe2YoRIWgqvCffHBmm9wyHh7bRNdXsW6FIkrHts7rePSsOv8tfv-1Hhe9_4lUexM2Wip2BSx8bUCMP/s1600/P6041777.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="480" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiM6lThPPWgocUh3gTme_I6ydy1IjTyZoK5yyyLZl_dd10wlXydNNUbY3ct6AkrRtFe2YoRIWgqvCffHBmm9wyHh7bRNdXsW6FIkrHts7rePSsOv8tfv-1Hhe9_4lUexM2Wip2BSx8bUCMP/s640/P6041777.JPG" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghaF97JZk4w8bqQ5KED7eddfy0KoZgggAXCEqV9zyzCFtgyUsDMHjuqScGZgK7NjweYijaG33O6xsInRO49WvAIfB7AGEoyqvDBhzwaktCuZLvf9IcN4mH_kxmsBq8qGEmygn8HLxYEgAk/s1600/P6041808.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<br />
It was not a particularly bright sort of day when I set out, the kind that suggests rain is moderately likely but may hold off long enough to avoid serious drenching, and presents the dilemma of whether to take the light raincoat or the serious monsoon-proof ski one that will end up being needless extra weight for most of the day. Happily, the journey by rail from nearby <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bitterne_railway_station">Bitterne</a> station is one I was looking forward to, not so much for the landscape (brief glimpse of the river, bland suburbia, trees, River Hamble, some fields, nearly a coastal view, dirty suburbia, city) but because I used to make this journey on several memorable occasions in order to get to the Isle of Wight. This was for the Boys' Brigade Solent region summer jamboree-outing-thing (it wasn't called that really), a fun-filled day on the Isle of Wight involving building sandcastles and games such as trying to knock down piles of tin cans with a sandbag. The railway has changed a bit since then, not least with the withdrawal of the old <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slam_door_trains">slam-door rolling stock</a> (and 'Please - shut the door!' notices) but also because it's no longer possible to go direct from Bitterne to Portsmouth Harbour on the hourly train without a change at <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_and_Southsea_railway_station">Portsmouth and Southsea</a>, a <a href="http://discoverportsmouth.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/portsmouth-southsea-station.jpg">good-looking</a> but strange split-level construction with the <a href="http://www.geograph.org.uk/photo/2487738">raised through tracks</a> under a canopy, looking rather like the older elevated stations in Berlin. Trundling out of the other end along the viaduct takes us past the Guildhall and two parks, a shopping centre and into the harbour station. Portsmouth Harbour is a curious construction, for upon exiting the building one realises that it is actually a pier held up by wooden piles, with the sea lapping underneath the trains. There's HMS Warrior and the entrance to the historic dockyard, <a href="http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/gallery/v/hampshire/portsmouth/HMSVictoryAerial-cb05093.jpg.html">the masts of HMS Victory</a> and the grey turrets of modern warships further inside, and the Gosport ferry still trundling across the harbour as when I came over last time. <br />
<br />
The route of the Solent Way is a little vague (for which read 'completely and mercilessly unwaymarked') through the city, as paths often are in large conurbations, so I adopt the general principle of keeping as close to the shoreline as possible. This involves going under the railway and being carried along in a crowd to Gunwharf Quays, the shopping mall which was visible from the train. It's unusual in being open rather than a monolithic chamber like Southampton's effort, with shops arranged in 'streets' on the site and a <a href="http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/gallery/v/hampshire/portsmouth/portsmouth-cb04978.jpg.html">large expanse of waterfront beyond</a>. Here was at the base of the Spinnaker Tower, Portsmouth's landmark sail-like white pillar, observation levels glazed between the upper ribs. I'd been up it some years ago on a better day than today (there's a glass floor to titillate the nervous) and, as on the last outing, intended to use it as a yardstick to see how far I'd come. Setting off past what was surely an 'if you need to ask the price, you can't afford it' category of ocean-going motor yacht (and we mean it, the thing was bigger than most ships sailing to America in the fifteenth century) I passed by a sunken pond which was being used as a boating lake for children. If your little ones have ever dreamed of piloting a somewhat unconvincing six-foot replica of a Type 42 destroyer, this is the place to come.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAQPKeMNiAbQLPoozxAT1Dqz4zvGgzaRPKZX20dbpE_oIB6RIEbF6rgBXe4ce6m1E44XuMmVOIb1l0F8XsVwj2FC0g9AdG4Zg9hTG2EHqvEok2GI9bkdMeiCvR73iKd-k9R84g8C7Afjcj/s1600/P6041769.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAQPKeMNiAbQLPoozxAT1Dqz4zvGgzaRPKZX20dbpE_oIB6RIEbF6rgBXe4ce6m1E44XuMmVOIb1l0F8XsVwj2FC0g9AdG4Zg9hTG2EHqvEok2GI9bkdMeiCvR73iKd-k9R84g8C7Afjcj/s320/P6041769.JPG" width="320" /></a>Immediately to the side of the shopping centre were some modern apartments in a parallel avenue, with an equally contemporary glazed tower a short distance away, attempting to be a skyscraper. I spotted what seemed like a likely route onwards to the right, which took me between blocks and past the entrance to the Isle of Wight ferry terminal. Portsmouth's service, operated by WightLink, is shorter than Southampton's and more frequent, but is compromised by limited space both here and at Fishbourne on the island, where a river estuary in a village is the only water deep enough to land a car ferry. The Portsmouth berth is tucked between two promontories and necessitates a sharp turn to access the landing ramp, both factors which limit the size of the vessels. Still, traffic seemed to be healthy - at least judging by the length of time it took me to cross the access road. Next door is the home of a maritime activity one does not most readily associate with Portsmouth: fishing. Yes, the town has a modest fishing fleet, almost all decorated blue with unique rust areas and mostly concerned with the Solent's oyster and clam stocks. The boats are moored in an inlet to the side of the ferry port (using the same harbour entrance) which I walked along the edge of to reach the spit known as <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_Point">Portsmouth Point</a>. Classical music aficionados (that's most of my readership, then) will most readily associate this place with the <a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wikpK_L0aq8">jaunty overture</a> <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portsmouth_Point_%28Walton%29">composed by William Walton</a> in 1925, which is quite appropriate given the history of the area. Also known as Spice Island, it was the oldest port area in the town and handled a swift trade in imported goods, sailors on leave and all the paraphernalia necessary for these articles to flourish. Although it's today an estate-agent's Christmas list, the character of the promontory has been pretty well preserved as the eighteenth-century, and the pubs are the same as the two depicted in the famous cartoon of the town. (It's also the very start/end of the A3, should you ever need to know that for a pub quiz).<br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="350" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=Portsmouth&aq=0&oq=portsmouth&sll=52.8382,-2.327815&sspn=6.863409,19.753418&t=h&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Portsmouth,+United+Kingdom&ll=50.816667,-1.083333&spn=0.007013,0.01929&z=14&layer=c&cbll=50.792473,-1.108846&panoid=hC07nNTSeTMJphgFfGTXlA&cbp=12,303.05,,0,0&output=svembed" width="425"></iframe><br /><small><a href="https://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=Portsmouth&aq=0&oq=portsmouth&sll=52.8382,-2.327815&sspn=6.863409,19.753418&t=h&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Portsmouth,+United+Kingdom&ll=50.816667,-1.083333&spn=0.007013,0.01929&z=14&layer=c&cbll=50.792473,-1.108846&panoid=hC07nNTSeTMJphgFfGTXlA&cbp=12,303.05,,0,0" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">View Larger Map</a></small><br />
<br />
Doubling back past all the pubs and finally pointing eastwards brought me to another notable feature of Portsmouth's history - the town walls. They're not quite as unique as Southampton's but just as extensive, enclosing public parks that were once the site of gun emplacements and parade grounds, and you can climb over most of the towers and promenades on top. There are various other points of interest along the way including a half-ruined church as a memorial to the armed forces and a view back across the harbour mouth to Gosport, as well as all the marine traffic steaming in and out. The Isle of Wight ferries mentioned earlier were the most numerous in this respect, but there was also a huge cross-channel ferry bound for Spain (I know this because it was the exact vessel my family sailed on a year ago) and a multitude of yachts. A little further along is Clarence Pier, which is a somewhat creative use of the term given that the 'pier' is little more than a funfair on some decking, <a href="http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/gallery/v/hampshire/portsmouth/amusementpark-cb05241.jpg.html">reaching only a few yards out over the water</a>.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDnhKdKzG02QgIGR9efm9hLSP7o7IEPqT_zWxIXlAg28wgqZ5eGgHUQBd7zeYIySr7CQ3NJTh6dzOogbdFoVynO2OggdB2woWG5_d3vstESmhR407TDXYVQ3fJs8IYMeVzZARf3q8ldM5H/s1600/P6041826.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe4JovEFVOW1agNmeyHpDZlVSocFmKryQGsd1L47JU3IlZr1Pjtulk1luAA7YQkx6j4oMoUCilJmZh5zCVRgOBG1pLJfhlhB7ZEKG5vl5jSaAfhtKCjacqBPjWQBMmT4kIGgnAq9EibQga/s1600/P6041787.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhe4JovEFVOW1agNmeyHpDZlVSocFmKryQGsd1L47JU3IlZr1Pjtulk1luAA7YQkx6j4oMoUCilJmZh5zCVRgOBG1pLJfhlhB7ZEKG5vl5jSaAfhtKCjacqBPjWQBMmT4kIGgnAq9EibQga/s200/P6041787.JPG" width="200" /></a>Trade didn't seem particularly brisk despite this being a public holiday, with only the minority of the cars on the <i>Sky Ways</i> coaster containing any screaming patrons and most of the carousels at standstill, owners stood around looking bored. Next to the funfair is another 'ride' of sorts - the Southsea hoverport. This is one end of the <a href="http://www.hovertravel.co.uk/">only commercial hovercraft service in the UK</a>, which in combination with a bus service to the station manages to maintain a trade in zipping across to the island every half-hour on an 'air-cushion vehicle'. I stood on the shingle next to the ramp eating a sandwich but couldn't yet see the craft promised on the arrivals board. My patience was eventually rewarded when I spotted a small area of spray several hundred yards out, closer observation picking out the flashing beacon light and then the blue and red superstructure.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig9f7_bdH2fmXwegs-Ytt94p5m3s-qLXsPPYVRwLvnLooVaMyboCY-8KEdJHIL0kg290zDU6MN1H5kzej99lMTrIbbq4eTRYamWUc78mJ3IKIINhvXCpa57HEkwARS8n7tjYNJorX4lxP0/s1600/Hovercraft+sequence.png" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="96" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEig9f7_bdH2fmXwegs-Ytt94p5m3s-qLXsPPYVRwLvnLooVaMyboCY-8KEdJHIL0kg290zDU6MN1H5kzej99lMTrIbbq4eTRYamWUc78mJ3IKIINhvXCpa57HEkwARS8n7tjYNJorX4lxP0/s640/Hovercraft+sequence.png" width="640" /></a>Another clear indication a hovercraft is approaching is the considerable noise of the twin engines as the thing flies at you across the waves, not really braking at all until the last moment when the thing theatrically drives up the beach, flinging spray everywhere, and rolls to a halt by pointing the jet thrusters in the opposite direction. The skirts then deflate as the fans power down and staff push a set of aircraft steps up to the doors. I must get round to travelling on this thing...<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBzerK6ek1U8yzP4ZZVA4cniG4YP4A2niJKOAr4WddfdzgJ5aK5wE7OypN-3NpTxOV8abvONHVL08eeaNtrn8ug68Cm09RSTejER3Ck6URb3BOz_n9F4PMBIHjX3BhrgJ5RpxGnEVgC8_G/s1600/P6041803.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhBzerK6ek1U8yzP4ZZVA4cniG4YP4A2niJKOAr4WddfdzgJ5aK5wE7OypN-3NpTxOV8abvONHVL08eeaNtrn8ug68Cm09RSTejER3Ck6URb3BOz_n9F4PMBIHjX3BhrgJ5RpxGnEVgC8_G/s320/P6041803.JPG" width="320" /></a><br />
Moving along the shoreline opposite Southsea Common come more attractions: the <a href="http://www.ddaymuseum.co.uk/">D-Day Museum</a> complete with 360" cinema and the Overlord Embroidery, which is intended to compliment to Bayeux Tapestry; the Pyramids swimming pool (you guessed it, it's in the shape of said cuboid, 80's plastic looking just a bit in need of refurbishment) and <a href="http://www.southseacastle.co.uk/">Southsea Castle</a>, which dates back to Tudor times, although not the <a href="http://www.webbaviation.co.uk/gallery/v/hampshire/portsmouth/SouthseaCastle-cb05261.jpg.html">black-and-white lighthouse</a>. I happened to look back here and see that steaming out of port was a huge grey warship, which I was later able to identify by its markings as HMS Daring, a new destroyer. I presumed it was off to the Indian Ocean, either as support for the war in Afghanistan or else fighting Somali pirates, but the reality may have been more mundane, just a training exercise or official visit. It swept past, as much as several thousand tonnes of vessel can sweep past, and headed down the side of the Island.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghaF97JZk4w8bqQ5KED7eddfy0KoZgggAXCEqV9zyzCFtgyUsDMHjuqScGZgK7NjweYijaG33O6xsInRO49WvAIfB7AGEoyqvDBhzwaktCuZLvf9IcN4mH_kxmsBq8qGEmygn8HLxYEgAk/s1600/P6041808.JPG" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEghaF97JZk4w8bqQ5KED7eddfy0KoZgggAXCEqV9zyzCFtgyUsDMHjuqScGZgK7NjweYijaG33O6xsInRO49WvAIfB7AGEoyqvDBhzwaktCuZLvf9IcN4mH_kxmsBq8qGEmygn8HLxYEgAk/s320/P6041808.JPG" width="320" /></a>Once Southsea Pier has been passed (more plasticky sideshows, but at least a proper pier) the shore becomes less interesting, shingle and hardy grasses on one side and apartments on the other, and presently the path has to turn off altogether to avoid a fort at the mouth of the bay. We now have to start heading north up the other side of the peninsula (technically an island, but only by virtue of the small channel cutting across the top) to get round Langstone Harbour, which is the tidal area cutting Hayling Island off from Portsea and the mainland.<br />
<br />
The ten minutes it takes to walk between one shore and the other do not sufficiently convey the contrast between them. The broad shingle beach is left behind to traverse a park (nice tree-lined path, not-so-nice blocks of flats) and suburban residential streets before the Way rejoins the shore just next to a pub. Now the sea is in a shallow natural harbour between Portsea and Hayling Island, full of sandbanks and mud and all sorts of submarine features that the Coastguard would prefer you didn't get stuck in. The boating culture has changed from car ferries and warships to moored yachts and small fishing vessels, including further down the road the small passenger ferry across the harbour mouth to Hayling Island. I now have to walk all the way back up the side of Portsea Island, cross a road bridge at the top and briefly traverse a narrow waterside path by the A27 and A3M, which is not particularly interesting territory, the mud flats of Langstone Harbour to one side and marsh beds to the other with a skyline of flats, industrial units and scrubby plants. At one point I have to backtrack and divert along a parallel driveway to avoid mud pools on a grassy path, such is the proximity to the water. The road bridge, one of only two fully accessible entry points to the island (the others are a motorway and a railway) is windy indeed, being positioned over an open channel of water. It's then half a mile walking along the precariously narrow harbour wall, sans railings, until one reaches <a href="http://www.hwt.org.uk/pages/farlington-marshes-r.html">Farlington Marshes</a>.<br />
<br />
On the map, this area looks like an annoyance, two miles going round the edge of a peninsula to end up only slightly further down the path from where you started. It actually provides a fairly diverting change of scenery, an open landscape more like the flats of Norfolk or the Netherlands, with <a href="https://maps.google.co.uk/?ll=50.830093,-1.035182&spn=0.007061,0.01929&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.830093,-1.035182&cbp=12,0,,0,0&photoid=po-77245588">a sunken wetland</a> at the centre and a path going round the edge on the sea dyke. Wading birds dip at the pools and reeds, or flock overhead, and even the noise of the motorway is lost to the fresh sea breezes. The area was also used a decoy for German bombing raids in WWII, by blacking out Portsmouth and putting lights on the peninsula in order to fool pilots they were aiming at the city. All this must offer some great photo opportunities given great patience, a good lens and a sunset, but none of these were forthcoming at the current moment. It is at about this point on a long walk - ten, eleven miles - when things start to get a bit achy and one has to force oneself to have a break and drink more, especially given my pace and the wind around here. I could just make out in the distance the arch of the Hayling Island bridge, and tried to estimate the distance to it, reckoning if I could get there in 1 hour that would be achievable and would be sufficient motivation to get to the end and not cop out at one of the nearby stations. Looking the other way, Spinnaker Tower was a distant needle, appearing as far away as it had been at Lee-on Solent on the last leg.<br />
<br />
The path now reaches the edge of Havant and takes on a rhombus-shaped detour that actually <i>is</i> genuinely annoying; up a dirty creek, over a road bridge and along the road past various industrial yards, through some woods and past a cement works to arrive twenty minutes later only a short way across the creek where this sentence started. Thankfully, from this point onwards it's a pretty straight line to the Hayling Island bridge road across some more shingle and marshes. The next signpost, stating that Emsworth is a mere two miles away (which I don't believe) happens to sit on the path of a long-gone railway to the island, now a cycle track Actually, there <a href="http://siskinbob.files.wordpress.com/2012/11/img_7692_tweeked.jpg">still remain the stumps</a> of <a href="http://www.runela.net/local/billy/_images/railway/hayling-billy-train-langstone-viaduct-9jun1963-50k.jpg">the bridge</a> that carried the '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hayling_Island_Branch_Line">Hayling Billy</a>' across the strait parallel to the road bridge, which is not too unpleasing a construction either. At the other side of the Hayling road are some old-looking buildings including what was obviously once a windmill, and a duckpond. Fairly desirable area, this. A little further on is a curious section of footpath so far unique on my travels - one which is only accessible at low tide. It traverses the shingle in front of a sea wall and as a result the ground cover is an expanse of damp pebbles rather than real footpath, although I had been fortunate to have arrived here when the tide was ages away. Hopping back onto terra firma takes one through a graveyard and some fields before a last bit of expensive real-estate seafront.<br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="350" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="https://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&ll=50.843535,-0.937099&spn=0.007005,0.01929&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.843069,-0.937598&panoid=aPSIzah6xPSUP4cKkZz7Zg&cbp=12,17.97,,0,-0.4&source=embed&output=svembed" width="425"></iframe><br />
<small><a href="https://maps.google.co.uk/?ie=UTF8&ll=50.843535,-0.937099&spn=0.007005,0.01929&t=h&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.843069,-0.937598&panoid=aPSIzah6xPSUP4cKkZz7Zg&cbp=12,17.97,,0,-0.4&source=embed" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">View Larger
Map</a></small> <br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDnhKdKzG02QgIGR9efm9hLSP7o7IEPqT_zWxIXlAg28wgqZ5eGgHUQBd7zeYIySr7CQ3NJTh6dzOogbdFoVynO2OggdB2woWG5_d3vstESmhR407TDXYVQ3fJs8IYMeVzZARf3q8ldM5H/s1600/P6041826.JPG" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDnhKdKzG02QgIGR9efm9hLSP7o7IEPqT_zWxIXlAg28wgqZ5eGgHUQBd7zeYIySr7CQ3NJTh6dzOogbdFoVynO2OggdB2woWG5_d3vstESmhR407TDXYVQ3fJs8IYMeVzZARf3q8ldM5H/s320/P6041826.JPG" width="320" /></a>By the time I arrived in Emsworth the sun was out - isn't that nice? The town has a curved harbour wall around an area known as the mill pond which is wide enough to serve as a promenade, with little information panels about the history of the town (mostly relating to fishing and boats). The exact end point of the Solent Way is a little vague as the waymarking finishes before the promenade, so I chose the little information hut (a pleasant Victorian civic construction with a tiled roof, I should add, not some plastic horror) as the very eastern terminus, only a few yards inside Hampshire . One could easily continue walking from this point, for the Wayfarer's Walk and Staunton Way to the north and the Sussex Border Path to the east join here, and the E9 coastal path continues on to Dover via the South Downs. I, however, had done seventeen miles already and headed for the station with the eastern half of the trail completed. Next time, the forest.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwHXR0BBZSZVvdeY2GZemKXePdfxtS5EmGxwCQszf1EHxG04eXzTesfHgQFFqSOCEazcswQJktdjcK7iTyyny7XQdq5qLD83y3Xgdqq2Mfy9W2FdIufMGd7Qf4K0R15eiI58WohH6aTWWb/s1600/P6041815.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="150" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjwHXR0BBZSZVvdeY2GZemKXePdfxtS5EmGxwCQszf1EHxG04eXzTesfHgQFFqSOCEazcswQJktdjcK7iTyyny7XQdq5qLD83y3Xgdqq2Mfy9W2FdIufMGd7Qf4K0R15eiI58WohH6aTWWb/s200/P6041815.JPG" width="200" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Langstone harbour and Portsdown</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Gallery<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj7-G73I9WoRg09Q9Uc_UkcFCHwI953MamczxCkBQxa2WXCpsNi19SCqStnb4F4lghD7UxOT33UAMfaUOU9fKahPotwvPL1d_ZHTUHLaANCdKjsSALXWmlx8a8OWzPKwcq7uPj83BpN1W-4/s320/P6041788.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;" width="320" /></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Ryde, on the Isle of Wight</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<div class="separator" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em; text-align: center;">
</div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf7CVkCofsZZ-CaO72uwrWKjXl5aA2iySrFZgz4AlQg-HSxdycbv0zT_95RB9KYiHAXNhzB9CFn3kku5gtjRqzaY8Ktm-q8hX9CoNGmhM7pWtXWXAsL0KKqZynTlmT4asREXtPOBxAyX1w/s1600/P6041783.JPG" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgf7CVkCofsZZ-CaO72uwrWKjXl5aA2iySrFZgz4AlQg-HSxdycbv0zT_95RB9KYiHAXNhzB9CFn3kku5gtjRqzaY8Ktm-q8hX9CoNGmhM7pWtXWXAsL0KKqZynTlmT4asREXtPOBxAyX1w/s320/P6041783.JPG" width="240" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Portsmouth Point</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY2PG6JwclhXOMkNFZDKvfzBiRMc9Y5P-vJfWM6ILxO6cHmTAmD8kRxqQaH2uqRmcSJ23KGuc4aITZ3n26CcXmWn68vzIBhCzAu1mcccu4xxd8OVCiZYC2YxXPMP4O461l5yrb9PK0Qy-o/s1600/P6041789.JPG" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY2PG6JwclhXOMkNFZDKvfzBiRMc9Y5P-vJfWM6ILxO6cHmTAmD8kRxqQaH2uqRmcSJ23KGuc4aITZ3n26CcXmWn68vzIBhCzAu1mcccu4xxd8OVCiZYC2YxXPMP4O461l5yrb9PK0Qy-o/s320/P6041789.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Isle of Wight ferries </td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji9R_dVWEtym7JTwJMgDBa1o8lrBJ0tbiZTmRNdg7f0aix1eHfhSP9MgHBvCQ4rAalS0WusWlAwspu7E5fFpOpAif6A4P13oC5KumFffMpnTBGwHJImGPOkGSZEn3AlpVJ8V53R72kLqKb/s1600/P6041775.JPG" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEji9R_dVWEtym7JTwJMgDBa1o8lrBJ0tbiZTmRNdg7f0aix1eHfhSP9MgHBvCQ4rAalS0WusWlAwspu7E5fFpOpAif6A4P13oC5KumFffMpnTBGwHJImGPOkGSZEn3AlpVJ8V53R72kLqKb/s320/P6041775.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Portsmouth fishing fleet</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<a name='more'></a><br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgY2PG6JwclhXOMkNFZDKvfzBiRMc9Y5P-vJfWM6ILxO6cHmTAmD8kRxqQaH2uqRmcSJ23KGuc4aITZ3n26CcXmWn68vzIBhCzAu1mcccu4xxd8OVCiZYC2YxXPMP4O461l5yrb9PK0Qy-o/s1600/P6041789.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><br /></a></div>
<br />Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-63789994892303113042012-10-24T23:24:00.003+01:002012-10-24T23:52:23.052+01:00Regina coeli<i>Regina coeli</i> is complete (that's the new choral work I was harping on about last month, remember?) and as such I feel it might be a useful exercise to provide some kind of walkthrough for the work. I've never done any kind of formal analysis of my music, and don't intend to start now, but a few references to the more comprehensible aspects of motivic development will play a part in the following piece.<br />
<br />
So, some basic information to begin with: the piece is in four movements running to approximately thirteen minutes of music in total (maintaining the healthy tradition of slightly overrunning the briefed length), with the third and fourth played <i>attacca</i>. Scoring is on the light side: chamber choir barely dividing beyond four voices, solo soprano and string orchestra with no divisi in order to enable a solo quintet to perform the work. The piece can be categorised as 'tonal' by virtue of the fact it uses key signatures (although pays scant attention to the idea of a tonic-dominant hierarchy), beginning and ending in A major via F major/D minor, E major and C minor.<br />
<br />
The formal plan for the work, as explained in an earlier post, was to follow Mozart's example in K.108. To this extent the text is divided between the four movements at exactly the same segments as Mozart (with one important caveat, which we will come to later), and the piece as a whole corresponds (somewhat) to the proportions of a classical symphony, particularly the first movement, which is in a sonata form. Obviously it is <i>not</i> a classical symphony, tentatively a neo-classical cantata, however such a model provides a stimulating point of departure for the composition process.<br />
<br />
Although the orchestration for this version exists as keyboard reduction in the vocal score and string quintet in the full, I ought to point out that at some point in the
future I intend to produce an 'expanded orchestration' version of this
work; not for a full symphony orchestra but for a decent-sized chamber
orchestra with winds and percussion, excluding perhaps heavy brass and timps. It only remains to say that the first performance of the work will take place in Andover, Hampshire on December 8th 2012, given by Andover Choral Society.<br />
<br />
In the following analysis the musical examples referred to can be found at the foot of the page. <br />
<br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="color: #9fc5e8;">Mvt 1. <i>Regina coeli</i>; A major; 202 bars; crotchet = 120</span></h4>
I couldn't decide whether to mark this movement 'Allegro', Vivace' 'Presto' or 'Maestoso' so decided to leave just the metronome mark. I trust the appropriate character should make itself apparent when performed. The chorus does the majority of the work in this movement, with the soprano making a few interjections and providing more florid versions of choral material (including a couple of top C#s). As mentioned, the movement is cast in a sonata form, with a first subject area consisting of a rising motif which we will call (A), very close to that with which Mozart opens K.108, and a dotted-rhythm idea (B), both very short but ripe for development into longer phrases. Without really being conscious of it, I have ended up structuring this section as a series of different ways to proceed from this motif, with quite a lot of shuffling the order of phrases taking place to make this sequence convincing. I have also ended up obscuring the tonality a little by introducing F# minor to the first chord of all these ideas in A major. The second subject (C), by contrast, is a more drawn-out and tonally stable melody, one which was originally going to open the work. Later I considered it better to deploy this more stable idea as a contrast to the more changeable character of the opening, which once settled upon made the movement considerably easier to structure around it. The choir make a few antiphonal exchanges before entering the development. This is opened by the soprano with a falling motif (D) and features a more extensive passage of counterpoint for the chorus to lead back the recapitulation. I'm particularly pleased with two things in my string writing here, firstly a passage of rich parallel chords, and secondly a somewhat Sibelian series of rising lines in quavers during the climax. The recap itself revisits most of the opening material with a few new passages and ends up neatly in the home key. It took a few drafts to work out how to end the movement at the right point without either 'closing' the tonality too soon (and so spending bars circling around the same notes) or moving to a key area that would have necessitated an over-long transition back to finish.<br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="color: #9fc5e8;">Mvt 2. <i>Quia quem meruisti</i>; F major/D minor and E major; 133 bars; Con moto (crotchet = 110)</span></h4>
The 'minuet and trio' movement of the work is in ternary form, but again eschews a traditional pairing of keys. The material consists initially of falling fourths (E) and another dotted rhythm (F). (E) is then taken up by the choir in unison and then drawn out into a longer melody with a certain plainchant quality, before moving towards the 'trio'. I went through several aborted drafts for a middle Alleluia section (G) before hitting upon a solution to this problem that delighted me - female chorus in close harmony at a pacy 195 beats per minute (effectively one-in-a-bar) with antiphonal exchanges and increasing counterpoint before reaching a firm E major climax. The transition into this also took a little working, but I am satisfied it links the two parts of the movement convincingly utilising as it does the previously heard rhythms. As tradition dictates, there is a shortened da capo repeat and an <i>a capella</i> coda.<br />
<br />
One aspect of this movement which might need explaining is the omission of the third line 'Resurexit, sicut dixit, alleluia' - 'He was resurrected as promised, alleluia'. There are several reasons for this, chiefly that the piece is intended as a concert Christmas work and not for liturgical use. More pertinent to this purpose was the previous line 'Quia quem meruisti portare' - 'He whom you deserved to bear in the womb'. Dramatically, to include the third stanza would have required a contrasting sub-section of the movement which would been highly problematic to the entire piece - even Mozart relegates the line to a relatively brief sequence of melismas by the solo soprano. I have no qualms about leaving sections out of secular poetry should they not assist the composition (A Child of the Snows misses out an entire verse of the Field poem) and feel the same can be applied to a religious text in this situation. In any case, the word 'resurrexit; appears encoded in as the falling fourths which spell 'Re(D)-So(A)' twice, musically including the phrase through this motif. <br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="color: #9fc5e8;">Mvt 3. <i>Ora pro nobis</i>; C minor; 49 bars; Andante (crotchet = 66)</span></h4>
The chorus hardly sing a note in this movement in order to give them some rest, for instead the whole construction is an extended soprano aria. Again in roughly ternary form with coda, this is the most expressive movement of the cantata and makes use of a falling motif (D) first heard in the development of the first movement. The strings provide an accompaniment consisting of flowing quavers (again reminiscent of the first movement development) and off-beat chord tones. After the recapitulation, the climax of the movement is followed by a cadenza for the soprano. The chorus are used for only four bars towards the end and are doubled by the orchestra meaning that the movement could be used as a stand-alone work for soprano - albeit with an alternative ending, for the line dissolves into fourth-based chords in the strings that facilitate an <i>attacca</i> into the next movement.<br />
<span style="color: #9fc5e8;"><br /></span>
<br />
<h4>
<span style="color: #9fc5e8;">
Mvt 4. <i>Alleluia</i>; A major; 63 bars; Allegro marziale (crotchet = 128)</span></h4>
A comparatively brief summing-up of previously heard material, barely two minutes in length. The basic tempo remains the same throughout the work, but as the opening section features much longer note values the effect is of two different speeds. Initially, the chorus and orchestra use chords based around different inversions of the tonic but introducing a few other harmonies in similar character to the first movement. This then gives way to rapid string figuration and in succession, melody (C), the falling motif (D) for the soprano and (C) again at full volume, followed by (A) and a brief return to the chords for the coda.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhahGkfFA13pOwoAvzr9L8TJdWhg-KGWZIAO8__EpU1GUfXY-MBoQETG6wJXhjDH94v6q75H-6dEvTZZzSD58esdvRdzztAlc1sVUjwj4w5gRmBfZixmLscWh8vKQYBaOvdM5aauAR2KZFh/s1600/Regina+coeli+music+examples.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="448" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhahGkfFA13pOwoAvzr9L8TJdWhg-KGWZIAO8__EpU1GUfXY-MBoQETG6wJXhjDH94v6q75H-6dEvTZZzSD58esdvRdzztAlc1sVUjwj4w5gRmBfZixmLscWh8vKQYBaOvdM5aauAR2KZFh/s640/Regina+coeli+music+examples.png" width="640" /></a></div>
<br />
<br />Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-4821914264512965332012-09-29T22:39:00.000+01:002012-09-29T22:39:17.715+01:00The MuseumBack in April, the <a href="http://inthemistsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/titanic-proportions.html">centennial anniversary</a> of the ill-fated voyage of <i>S.S.</i> <i>Titanic</i> put Southampton, if temporarily, at the centre of the world's attention. Unsurprisingly, myself and other friends and family members were most readily involved in musical contributions to the commemorations, not least the <a href="http://inthemistsblog.blogspot.co.uk/2012/04/concert.html">massive performance</a> of <i>A Sea Symphony</i> in the docks on the actual anniversary of the sailing. A more lasting result of all this was that the much-awaited <a href="http://www.seacitymuseum.co.uk/">SeaCity Museum</a> opened its doors to visitors, finally furnishing the city with a maritime museum of suitable dimensions for it's historical significance. And today, I finally got around to making a visit - with the intention of publishing a review here, of course.<br />
<br />
As much as anything else, the creation of such an attraction
represents the city council finally getting off their backsides and
actually making something happen with regards to getting some tourist
footfall (and income) into the town, although it's a pity that, as has
happened before, the (now defunct) Tory administration were claiming credit for it all when
in fact the project was initiated during the years of a hung council.
There was a debacle on a national scale during the planning stage when the council tried to sell paintings and a sculpture from the city art gallery to fund the project, and only backed down when the Tate found some legal clause forbidding them from doing so (massive public opposition is much easier to ignore these days). An added contrivance is that all Southampton addresses are generously
being sent a free ticket, except that to use it you have to visit
together as a household, can only visit outside school holidays in 2012
and not during the first six days of opening. In other words, if you
want to take your whole family, you have to have a free Saturday or Sunday or else an inset day which you take off work, and you won't be the first to get in. Typically for the ID Era, they'll also want proof of residence, so if you have a family of three and were hoping to sneak in Aunty Mabel from Whitstable when she came to visit, sorry, forget it; she'll have to pay. <br />
<br />
Still, it's a huge leap forward from the little maritime museum that preceded it, housed in a medieval wool house opposite the ferry terminal. It was interesting, filled with models of ships and bits of anchors and compasses and other delightful nautical clutter, but hopelessly outdated and greatly under-representing the port. Although the inside of the new museum is bespoke, only a little actual new building needed to take place. The building housing the galleries was built in the 1930s as part of the Civic Centre, and used to contain the law courts and the police station as well as an elegantly thin tower with a four-face clock at the top. In a wonderful gesture towards the city's heritage, the clock bells chime the first phrase of Southampton resident Isaac Watts' hymn <i>O God, Our Help In Ages Past</i> on the hour. The coppers moved out into a rather Orwellian monolith overlooking the docks in 2010 and since then the entire East Wing has been refreshed and refitted to contain the exhibition halls. The only bit of construction needed was a rather more angular gallery at the north end, replacing some flowerbeds with a series of triangular sections concertinaed into one another, presumably to suggest waves, sails or the bow of an ocean liner. This also forms the shape of the museum's logo, which looks like an upside-down factory with a chimney. They've at least tried a little to blend it into the existing structure with a nice façade of Portland Stone and some smoked glass.<br />
<br />
Let's go inside...<br />
<br />
The entrance lobby sets out the tone of the museum. It's not huge, with today just a single attendant behind the ticket desk and a single staircase and lift to the first floor. The wing is listed, and a lot of interest is in seeing how they've managed to change the building's function whilst maintaining the heritage features, something which has been done rather well. Other than the contemporary block-colour and sans serif style of inserted walls, the original Portland stone and marble is the main interior texture of the building. The ceiling vaults of the upstairs atrium have a pleasing decorative pattern to them, and the signs directing entrances to the courtrooms have been retained. One side of the floor, formerly Court Three, is on the general history of Southampton, and seems like a sensible place to begin. The false roof has been left open in places to show the ornate painted wood panelling of the original court, and one can see the coat of arms at the far end too. Space does not permit a full description of every exhibit in the room, suffice to say there were sections on most periods of history from neolithic to modern, and appropriate artifacts. Beyond this room was a smaller one containing a huge model of the <i>Queen Mary</i> (from the old museum) and a series of displays on various immigrations to and through the city - more artistic than informative, it has to be said, preferring representative objects over things like statistics.<br />
<br />
Unsurprisingly, the other half of the exhibition space is given over to the <i>Titanic</i>. There was an immediate focus on the actual people on the ship rather than the vessel itself - it wasn't built or registered here, after all - and especially the crew, who were mostly Southamptoners. This was done through following the situation of five individuals on the ship, from Captain Smith to a fireman, through the various stages of the voyage and sinking. Notable were the wall listing all the items taken on board the ship at Southampton (did you know they carried horse hair and opium?) and the wireless operator's room. The main part of local interest was the room dealing with the survivors. The floor was the now-famous map of 1912 Southampton with every residence that lost a crew member marked in red. I also liked that the other courtroom had been used as a space explaining the <i>Titanic</i> disaster enquiry, still left as a court with jury benches, dock and judge's seat. Downstairs, in the new pointy-roofed bit was a special exhibition (presumably the first of many) on the legacy of the <i>Titanic</i> and the public's lasting fascination with it. There was an interesting wall comparing five films from the 20th century about the ship, and another with a huge variety of objects essentially cashing in on the name, from beer to dolls. Other areas dealt with the unanswered questions about the voyage - was the ship going too fast, could the lookouts see enough, and the morality of exploring the wreck. One wonders what future exhibitions might occupy this space.<br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #f1c232;">Things to like:</span></h3>
<h3>
<span style="color: #cfe2f3;"> </span></h3>
<h4>
<span style="color: #d0e0e3;">The interactive stuff </span></h4>
<h4>
<br /></h4>
This was all very well-done, chiefly because all the touchscreens and videos were generally used for the most appropriate purpose, showing and explaining things that couldn't be done so well using static displays and information panels. Some were more child-orientated than others (<strike>drive</strike> sail the <i>Titanic</i> using a real wheel and telegraph! Rub the screen to 'dig' for buried Saxon treasure!) but all were educational. There were some other nice touches too, like the 'stained glass window' that was actually a subtly moving projection (watch long enough and you could see the bird dislodge an apple from the tree which fell on the medieval trader's foot) and the Roman video. I personally liked the circular table with an overview map, which cycled round every period of the city's history every ten minutes and allowed several different people at a time to zoom into the relevant areas and read little hotspots of information.<br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="color: #cfe2f3;">Size and content</span></h4>
<h4>
</h4>
I ended up spending about as much time in there as I wanted to spend (in fact I could have stayed longer but it was closing), which I count as a success bearing in mind I'm the sort of visitor who sets out intending to read <i>all</i> the information and look at <i>all</i> the objects. Everything in there was also interesting, relevant and objectively presented (although interestingly, a companion on this visit noted perhaps a slight left-of-centre tone, particularly the focus on ordinary working people and several mentions of trade union involvement, both of which accurately reflect the town's political direction for most of its modern history). That said, see criticisms below.<br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="color: #cfe2f3;">Looks </span></h4>
<h4>
</h4>
The conversion from law courts to museum has been carried out with great sensitivity to the building and as a result the whole place looks great. One of the interesting features, which the architects may or may not have been aware of is the feeling, of being in a transient space, as if one is able to observe the different stages of history just by being there, and there is certainly no sense of having hidden or thrown out the previous function of the building - indeed, it is purposely left on show in places. Full marks to the builders.<br />
<br />
<h3>
<span style="color: #ffd966;">And a few things for improvement:</span></h3>
<h3>
</h3>
<h4>
<span style="color: #cfe2f3;">A bit perfunctory in places.</span></h4>
<h4>
</h4>
Although the exhibits manage to cover a fair chunk of Southampton's history, there are some significant omissions. At no point was it actually explained why the area became a port in the first place, nothing on the actual operation of the docks or the liner trade, nothing on other aspects of transport (the railway, the airport and flying boats), and nothing on important periods such as the Georgian spa industry or the Blitz. One appreciates that space was a little limited, and that the conservators had to pick and choose, but with the potential of interactive features physical room need not have been a hindrance in this respect. In particular, the business of the port operations would surely have been a publicity opportunity that an organisation such as ABP would have seized upon, yet there was no mention of the modern container port. In a similar vein, several things that were featured were inadequately explained. Had I not some knowledge of early modern history I feel I would have been mystified as to who the Huguenots were and why they were fleeing from France - and even then it would have been nice to read more than a single excerpt from the digitised account book belonging to the businesswoman named Judith. Why the Romans and Saxons actually settled in this area was also barely explained. Some of the <i>Titanic</i> section also felt a bit padded-out - display cases spaced just a bit further apart than they might have been, not quite enough detail. The only exception was the economic background to the era and its crew, which I didn't know about previously.<br />
<br />
It's tempting to say that this was solely due to budget constraints: this is all we could afford; is a museum worth it when we have to cut front-line services, that sort of thing; but it is also perhaps symptomatic of a more general modern tendency to assume that people have short attention spans and won't appreciate detailed descriptions or masses of stuff to look at. I don't think that's a good way of setting out on an entity like this - surely a good museum is one which caters for many people with different levels of interest about different things, each one of whom who will want to see some things in great detail but skip over others? A museum should also be a starting-point for further private research into areas of particular interest, and as such ought to at least <i>introduce</i> as much as possible to the visitor.<br />
<br />
<h4>
<span style="color: #cfe2f3;">English only</span></h4>
<h4>
<span style="color: #cfe2f3;"> </span></h4>
Given the international nature of the city - and the fact that this is a key feature of all the bits about immigration - it seems surprising that there was not a single sign, map, or other piece of information in anything other than English. The city council publish documents in nearly every tongue under the sun, and rightly so when there are so many languages being spoken here, but not at the museum. One would at least have expected French and Polish. <br />
<br />
Would I recommend a visit? I would say yes, but not to expect the experience to be on same scale as the maritime museums in Liverpool or Belfast. It is more of an afternoon visit than a whole day's attraction. One thing I can't really judge is how interesting a non-Southampton visitor would find it - I was not particularly impressed by Bristol's municipal museum recently due to finding it too 'localist' - and in fact also thought many of the same other criticisms about that as I have with SeaCity. The general impression of the place was that it was more concerned with people than systems or physical things, which might be less appealing to the outside visitor. However, the widespread appeal of the <i>Titanic</i> should at least provide a good level of familiarity.<br />
<br />
<br />Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-45136107044261738962012-09-09T23:47:00.004+01:002012-09-09T23:47:49.390+01:00CompositionI'm fully aware I've not been doing much blogging recently. And I've also left in limbo how A Child of the Snows turned out. The two are related:<br />
<br />
Well, it is at least finished. Why was this not announced in a blaze of fireworks and publicity? Because it's also sort-of not finished. It's probably going to need re-orchestrating or arranging for a smaller chorus and the baritone part possibly to become a tenor one. To cut a long story short, it's not the piece that's going to be performed this Christmas. There are various reasons for this, chief amongst which it's turned out rather difficult for an amateur choral society, even a good one, and it's also a bit on the long side, nudging twenty-seven minutes when the brief was for around twenty. Happily, I have had guarantees that it will be performed next year, but only when a group of experienced singers and an ensemble that can rehearse in advance (that was the other thing: the instrumental parts just weren't something you could put together in an afternoon) are recruited. <br />
<br />
This left the Andover choir in a bit of a fix - they suddenly didn't have half their concert programme. Obviously the entirely sensible thing for me to do was to write something else in less than a month, which, considering it would have to be as long as ACOTS should have been, and I have a day job, is a perfectly reasonable undertaking and not at all a ridiculously short timescale to do this in.<br />
<br />
So I cheated. Five minutes could be taken up with a Christmas carol I'd written last year for a competition. Conductor likes it, few minor revisions, sorted. It's also unaccompanied, so no messing around arranging an organ or orchestra part either. The rest of the time would involve an entirely new piece, a setting of the <i>Regina coeli</i>, which is what I'm working on now. Again here I cheat a little. The model for the work is Mozart's noted setting (made at the precocious age of sixteen...), using his division of the text into four movements, similar length and forces (sop solo and chorus) and imitating several of the melodic shapes he uses. With the mantra '<i>amateur</i> choir, not much orchestral rehearsal' impressed on me, I decided to model the four sections broadly on the structure of a classical symphony. It's a little more complicated than that in practice, as the first movement is a sonatina form but which does not use the usual 18th-century key plan; the second a 'Beethoven scherzo' with alternating fast and slow sections, the third most like a Handel aria for solo soprano and the finale short and frenetic, like the end of the Ravel piano concerto. Added to the mix is my 'public style' of harmonic writing which is completely unlike most of ACOTS - tonal with some fourths-based stuff, short sections rather than long wandering evolutions, and sounding somewhere between Poulenc, Prokofiev and contemporary post-minimalist composers (Jonathan Dove, John Adams, possibly MacMillan). My aim, as usual, is to reinvent old forms into something a little more inventive and contemporary whilst not being particularly difficult to sing. The choral writing sets out to be tonal and traditional in the use of voice-leading and harmony most of the time, with a few more interesting twists remaining, I hope, within the bounds of practicality. The result is a work that I hope can be described as 'likeable' - it is certainly very conservative for my output and is designed to appeal to those it is being written for, as well as fitting into the other works in the concert.<br />
<br />
At the time of writing I've completed seven minutes in three weeks (all of the first and third movements, including string orchestra parts) and have the other two fairly well thought out. To be honest, I quite like the pressure of having to get something done in a short space of time, and one can hardly protest at the effort required given the historical precedents. Handel and Mozart could write whole operas and oratorios in a few weeks, and even a more individual piece such as Shostakovich's Fifth was completed in less than two months. Ten minutes for choir and strings shouldn't actually be a lengthy process, given sufficient motivation and experience.<br />
<br />
As a closing thought, I often think about trying to record precisely how long it takes to compose a piece. When I set a benchmark (generally seven minutes a month for a full orchestral score: this is based on The Sun Rising taking 3-4 months and ACOTS 5-6) this doesn't really represent working flat out, but rather the amount of spare time set aside from doing other jobs. Of course, thinking about a piece away from the piano and the computer is part of the process and, as Stravinsky claimed, 'the real composer thinks about work the whole time; he is not always conscious of it, but he is aware of it later when he knows what to do'; time which is hard to record. A stopwatch kept on the desk for weeks and set going whenever a musical thought presents itself would be a difficult thing to maintain, so I have to estimate.Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-55571846334353087462012-08-15T20:39:00.001+01:002012-08-15T20:39:32.331+01:00A pleaPlease don't bother to practice.<br />
<br />
That envelope that
you were handed the other day, you know, the brown one with your name
and instrument written on the outside? Or perhaps it was posted and you
found it on the doormat? It must be the music for that concert you were
asked to play in next month. Beethoven - or perhaps it was Brahms?
Anyway, it was only sent because the librarian needed to clear some
space on his table and didn't want to have to carry all the parts with
him on the day. You're just looking after it for him, no need to open it
until you get there. It's an easy fifty quid gig; just roll up, play a
bit and get home in time for last orders. You'll able to sight-read it
on the day, you're good at that.<br />
<br />
Please don't bother to
practice. You've played this particular piece before, even if it was a
couple of years ago when you were one of the older ones in the youth
orchestra, and, well, there wasn't much that seemed hard in it then.
Saturday after Saturday you would play through it, slowly at first to
give the new players a chance to learn the notes, stopping and starting.
It was a bit boring really, but it went alright in the concert, you all
got to the end without stopping and your grandparents said how good you
all were. Anyway, you've heard this since on the radio (well, that
famous slow movement), so you know how it goes.<br />
<br />
Please
don't bother to practice. You're far too busy - working or writing
essays or whatever else you need time to do. You literally don't have a
minute of free time, especially with orchestra taking up a whole evening
every week. Obviously you've got to catch Jeremy Kyle and Eastenders on
iPlayer once in a while, and 'go out' on Friday, but nobody likes a
Johnny-no-mates who locks himself in a practice room every evening
instead of having fun. You certainly haven't got time to go all the way
through this symphony, that's what rehearsals are for.<br />
<br />
Please
don't bother to practice. It's only a contemporary piece by some bloke
you've never heard of and probably never will again, and it sounds
awful. This guy - oh no, wait, it's actually by a woman composer -
doesn't deserve any time spent getting his work right (that's if what
clearly are random bashings on the piano actually count as work), she
only writes like this because she can't think of any nice tunes.
Besides, how could anyone expect you to count all those weird rhythms
and funny bars? Not like Beethoven and Mozart, now they're proper
composers, they wouldn't change time signature every three seconds or
write all those high notes, would they? The audience won't notice
whether it's right or wrong anyway, it's just a load of noise. Honestly,
just not worth wasting your time on.<br />
<br />
Please don't
bother to practice. You're stuck at the back of the section, nobody
cares what you do really, it's just a bit of a laugh this orchestra
thing. And if there's any hard bits, well, just make it up or miss it
out. Everyone else seems to be able to do it, they can cover for you
when it gets high up or there's lots of fast notes. Admittedly, it
sometimes feels like the conductor's looking at you when he shouts
'Don't rush!' or 'I can't hear the solo!' but, well, he's got to look
like he's taking this seriously, hasn't he?' Sometimes you wish you
could play all the twiddly bits perfectly like the leader can, but if
you'd wanted to be as good as him you'd have got there by now, wouldn't
you?Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-65146094109406986082012-07-15T22:39:00.000+01:002012-07-15T22:41:39.785+01:00To the ends of the earthYesterday I was able to travel to London and go to the Science Museum. Whilst such an undertaking may seem ill-advised on a Saturday in school holidays, I needed to visit now because it was my only chance to see <a href="http://www.sciencemuseum.org.uk/visitmuseum/galleries/Universe_of_Sound.aspx"><i>Universe of Sound: The Planets</i></a>, an exhibition featuring Esa-Pekka Salonen and the Philharmonia performing Holst's eponymous suite, as well as a new commission from Joby Talbot entitled <i>Stars, Systems, Worlds, Infinity</i>. All this was intended to demonstrate the workings of the symphony orchestra and its constituent instruments, and as such each section of the orchestra has its own curtained 'chamber' with the surround sound and video matched to give the impression of sitting amongst the players at that location. <br />
<br />
I'd initially been alerted to its existence by a friend who is working as a guide at the exhibition, and who was very pleased to see me there. It turned out I'd fortuitously arrived during a lull in visitors (apparently it can become quite busy with families, and indeed the installation was extended by a month to cope with visitor numbers) and was able to try my hand at percussion in <i>Mars</i> and <i>Venus</i>, playing along to the suite. This is harder than it might seem even for a seasoned performer, not least counting tens of bars in rests or held rolls and then coming off at the right moment (snare drum technique is also not nearly as intuitive as it looks). Anticipating that many visitors will not necessarily read music, there are helpful video screens in which players from the orchestra explain what you need to do and guide you in with the help of some Guitar Hero-style graphics. I gave the tam-tam a resounding whack and then played some gentle glockenspiel notes before my guide showed me over to the conducting pods. 'These are really cool' he explained, demonstrating how the motion sensors would detect my hand movements as I followed the beats on the 'conductors-eye' screen. The simulator is limited to controlling volume and showing accuracy of beating; the music will continue even if you stop and there is no way to control tempo or interpretation. (I suspect no current technology is sophisticated enough to interpret the nuances of a conductor's direction in the way human players do, and indeed the facial and non-beating gestures I made were pointless). But it is a good way of demonstrating what the conductor must do.<br />
<br />
Even as somebody who regularly plays in several orchestras there was a great deal of interest in walking round to a different section to my own, and hearing the sound of the orchestra from another point - wind, brass, organ. The curators had helpfully put out the instrumental parts in their respective chambers for those who could read them, so I would spend each <i>Planet </i>following what I though was most interesting - harps in <i>Saturn</i>, upper strings in <i>Uranus</i>, horns in the Talbot piece. Possibly the most interesting part was a split-screen showing variously the horn, bassoon, trumpet, violin and timpanist. Below them was a continuous commentary of their thoughts as they were playing the piece (presumably transcribed from listening through afterwards). This included a little banter over virtuosic passages, but also fascinating insights into the actual business of performing the music - the trumpeter explaining how the repeated notes in <i>Mars</i> became uncomfortable to play by the end, the violinist explaining how he watches both the conductor and the leader at once, the timpanist counting rests and the conductor watching his stick. The most touching was the principal horn trying to articulate what it was like to play the solo that opens <i>Venus</i>, how she just let herself play it and trusted she had judged the acoustic of the room and the other players that followed her. It was a wonderfully intimate moment to see the other players responding appreciatively and her satisfaction at performing what was essentially just four notes, but notes of such significance which had been entrusted to her. Next to this screen was another showing Esa-Pekka Salonen conducting and, in a similar vein, his thoughts on the music and its merits. 'In two minutes he has changed the character utterly' he mused, a little after the aforementioned horn solos in <i>The Bringer of Peace</i>. Also insights into the business of conducting: 'Muti used to watch for the brass players' embouchure to place the downbeat - sometimes the conductor is led by the orchestra'; 'what makes the rhythm avoid becoming repetitive is that he is always changing what is happening around it...sometimes it's 3+2 and sometimes 2+3...you have to be very controlled and not get carried away by the excitement of the music'. Best of all; 'the sound of the symphony orchestra...something you cannot get from anything else' and 'People who don't really listen to classical music, don't know much about the orchestra - they still know <i>The Planets</i>'. <br />
<br />
I must have spent nearly two hours - two complete performances of all the music - in the gallery and eventually left back through the clocks and hourglasses to eat lunch. I was very pleased to discover that although a little out of the way on the first floor, the installation is right above the main ground floor gallery which is open to the roof, and so Holst was being broadcast right over all the cars and steam locomotives and rockets where most of the museum's visitors were. Whilst one might, being critical, wonder what a piece of music based on astrology is doing in a science museum, I am tempted to include this brief summary of the exhibition in my 'myth of elitism' series, as it is yet another laudable method of opening up to the public the joy and wonder of classical music and the amazing worlds of sound created by the orchestra. <i>The Planets</i>, although overplayed in parts (I'm thinking especially <i>Mars</i> and <i>Jupiter</i>), deserves the fame it has achieved, and has always been a favourite piece of mine, particularly <i>Neptune </i>with its glittering textures, chilling dissonances and that extraordinary use of voices (something I pay homage to in <i>A Child of the Snows</i>, and which also featured in the Talbot piece). I hope Holst's music, for all his later misgivings about its popularity, will continue to bring many more souls under the spell of the orchestra.<br />
<br />
<i style="color: #9fc5e8;">Having picked up some reduced-price chamber music from Chappells (I wanted a score of Holst, but they only had big ones which were overpriced) I then raced home and got back in enough time to see the Olympic Torch being carried through my city. Yes, it was historic. Yes, we all briefly felt part of something big, proud that our largely unremarkable town was a small part of a huge event. But I have to say I will remember the exhibition with more affection than the minutes spent on a street corner</i><span style="color: #9fc5e8;">, </span><i style="color: #9fc5e8;">with all the vapid sponsors' stooges faking a party in the drizzle and finally a man with a surprisingly small gold stick running past in few seconds. For all its ceremony, the Olympic relay felt ordinary and mundane; Holst, by contrast, seemed otherworldly and transcendental, filled with wonder and fascination.</i><span style="color: #9fc5e8;"> </span><i style="color: #9fc5e8;">Better still, it is more accessible. One does not have to wait in the rain or fight through a crowd to experience the music, it is available to anyone as long as there are ears to hear it.</i> <i style="color: #9fc5e8;">That, surely, is </i><i style="color: #9fc5e8;">the more lasting and generous legacy?</i>Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-715045165182547692012-07-11T23:46:00.003+01:002012-07-11T23:46:48.828+01:00A Child of the Snows: Between the beginning of the end and the endI have allowed myself two indulgences on this project in the past week:<br />
<br />
The first was to purchase a new laptop, a ThinkPad Z60t. I say new, it was reconditioned because the things are about £1500 off the shelf and tend only to go to business users. But besides being durable and having the genius little red tracking button (like a second track pad, but better), it has the most important feature of being able to run Sibelius and associated peripherals without breaking sweat. It's also a widescreen dimension monitor which suits Panorama view very well. What this means practically is that I can now write wherever I have space to sit down, and can also take my work to the piano instead of having to make trips back and forth to try things out. Another advantage is the ability to flip open the screen and demonstrate or edit my work for another party at an instant, without having to hope their version of Sib is compatible or create a pdf on a pen drive. Admittedly working on the laptop is slightly slower due to the lack of a numeric keypad and mouse, but it's still going to speed things up overall.<br />
<br />
The second is that's I've started on the vocal score's piano reduction. The main reasons for this are that the cantata is so close to completion anyway that I might as well do it as a form of proofreading, a phone call from the director to check on progress impressed on me that the vocal score was more urgent than the full score (still a month before the deadline though) and shoudl time get very short the remaining instrumental passages can be written as piano score and copied out into orchestration later. Despite the relative complexity of the score (there are some places where every string line has a different rhythm, although others are as simple as held chords) progress seems to be very quick, indeed in less than three hours today (an average evening's work) I have done over 100 bars, one sixth of the piece. This too is being done in Sibelius, based on some earlier sketches and hand-written 'tryouts' to allow copy-pasting of lines into the piano staves, then each section tested and revised at the piano.<br />
<br />
All that remains to write now is to link up the fragments of oboe solo, three small linking passages between sections and to decide how the piece ends. The overture is done and refined, the link between verses 1 and 2 is finally sorted (I think) and so is the climax of the piece. As things stand the piece is now 622 bars and 25 minutes long - perhaps another 20 bars left to write?Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-4276850752825350142012-06-21T23:42:00.002+01:002012-06-21T23:42:18.080+01:00A Child of the Snows: progress updateIt's getting there. This week I have made several important 'links' between sub-sections and revised them accordingly as well as working toward the very end. It's becoming increasingly clear to me that one of the most important skills for a composer is being able to leave things out or cast them aside. Berlioz sums this up exactly: 'it is wonderfully easy to compose, but it is so hard to let the crumbs fall under the table'. One writes bars that sound fantastic on their own but cannot be integrated into the work without compromising it. Mostly this is due to misdirection or tautology. One example stands out in the last few days' work. I'd written a very tense climax in part of the cantata where the Field poem talks of Calvary, with the 'French Overture' dotted rhythms to the fore, but however I tried to tweak it, it somehow didn't seem right - the potential seemed to be being hampered by something. I must have played around with different notes for half an hour and abandoned it to work on another passage before later on the solution became apparent - chop something out. Lo and behold, when I played it back I could see immediately what was wrong: two bars were both providing exactly the same function and by 'stepping back down the mountain' in this way were destroying the tension leading to the full outburst. With two bars removed the orchestra now bursts out of the choir's peak to rush downwards in near-unison and into a winding-down passage introducing the next verse. Solved.<br />
<br />
More of the orchestral accompaniment is getting written too. I had a slight reality-check when I made an experimental passage of piano reduction and realised that I've put a somewhat greater degree of both counterpoint and dissonance into the parts than I'd anticipated. It's not a <i>problem</i> as such; I just surprised myself given that I'd always intended this to piece be on the conservative side stylistically. <br />
<br />
It's about now that I also start getting into strange mind games about the finished article. Will it work? - will it be too difficult? - will there be bars I hate but can't see any other way of doing? - does it all sound coherent? One starts analysing the work trying to find positive points as if one is preparing a defence of a thesis: look, here's a chord combining two motifs, here's an interesting bit of counterpoint, that verse is just the right length, isn't it? Often a thought that turns away excessive self-criticism is that I am still in the early stages of my output, there will be other, greater pieces to come, so don't worry too much if this one isn't a consulate masterpiece. But still, try to make it good. But don't try and do everything in it at once, there will be other opportunities. <br />
<br />
Anyway, I think I'm still on course to finish the cantata by the end of the next month. Just the last few lines of text to go, the introduction, the solo and some linking passages to go now. Oh, and work out how to end it...Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-11673322369599621312012-06-03T15:40:00.003+01:002012-06-03T15:48:18.427+01:00WallpaperingI tend to change my PC's desktop background (known colloquially as 'wallpaper') about every month. Almost always the image is a picture I've snapped on a recent trip, having got into the habit of trying to take a shot or two that contains a large area of the same colour suitable for displaying icons and a calender on top of. However, recently I had the nice idea to create a series of Great Composer wallpapers which could be easily made from 'found' objects on the internet (a la Berio) and knocked up in an hour or two using fairly simple tools in a graphics programme. Here I'm going to show you how it's done, should you wish to copy the concept yourself or just are curious.<br />
<br />
The basic idea consists of using a portrait of the composer, their signature and a suitable excerpt of their music. All of these objects could be found from open-source websites, chiefly Wikipedia and IMSLP, and then with a little bit of experimentation arranged to fill the screen space. Depending on the images used and direction the portrait faces, there is scope for some variation with the composition. The program I used for the project was <a href="http://www.paint.net/">Paint.NET</a>, a free open-source raster graphics program that was initially developed by Microsoft as a replacement for the standard Windows Paint but then dropped and left in the hands of a community of internet users. It would be an excellent program even if it were payware - it does nearly everything that Photoshop or Coral Draw will, although if you want vector graphics you'll have to get the equally excellent <a href="http://inkscape.org/">Inkscape</a>. The reason for not using this instead (vector graphics, should you be curious, are a system whereby the pixels become infinitely small as you zoom in and so images don't get blurred) is partly that file sizes will be much larger and that I have a much greater level of proficiency on Paint.NET. Also, it has a number of plugins included that we will be using for this project.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="color: #9fc5e8;">Setting up/Portrait: </b></span><br />
<br />
The first stage is to set up the canvas for the wallpaper. As I'm creating this background for a standard 17" flatscreen monitor, I will be using a resolution of 1024x468 pixels, so I create a new document in Paint.NET and alter the canvas size to these dimensions (choose Image - Canvas Size). (If you are unsure how big your screen is, right click on your desktop, choose 'Properties' and look at the 'Settings' tab. There will be a slider half-way down which will show your current resolution - most likely this is already at 1024x468). The next thing is to choose a subject for our wallpaper. The composer I settled on was Haydn: definitely one of the 'greats'; and with several portraits to choose from available in high-resolution. As we need to show both the portrait and some music, I intended to divide the space about half-and-half. This also means that when our background is 'in situ', desktop icons can all fit over one side or the other depending on what offers the best contrast and visibility. A little searching on Wikipedia Commons brought me to the Thomas Hardy portrait which I copied and pasted into Paint, and then resized to fit just the head into the frame.<br />
<br />
At this point we need to introduce a new concept which is one of the best features of Paint.NET and similar programs: layers. In ordinary MS Paint, everything is on the same layer and only one colour can be displayed as 'on top'. If you draw over something, it disappears. Cut an area out and you cut down to the background. But with Paint.NET, we can have <i>multiple</i> layers of a drawing superimposed on top of each other. This means you can draw a background and then create another layer (or several) on top, on which you can draw, move, cut, paste and alter anything without affecting the layer(s) below or above. We're going to exploit this feature in making our wallpaper.<br />
<br />
The Haydn portrait I've just copy-pasted will sit on top of a background layer, which we'll create in a minute. What we need to do first is to 'cut out' his head so we can add a background to avoid an untidy difference between the square portrait and the rest of the screen (I experimented with stretching the painting's background to fill the space, and the result was some way from satisfactory). There is no easy way of doing this other than to get out the eraser tool and carefully go round the edge of the wig and features with a small tip size. My tip is to release the mouse frequently; this means if you make a mistake and have to hit 'undo' you'll only lose a small amount of correct erasing.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDwXU0GOACq0Ie08GLZnompi_h8QbWI5RwLsXdX94QW8P4RJRDy9QNmpl8AuokUlpX_gcXU6YfmDtpoWtnSkm7-E7dp4gvb_E_Tyx3-ISEr5zr61Bew-_gm5ksKAo5AnlEUag6RWliNllL/s1600/Haydn+stage+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhDwXU0GOACq0Ie08GLZnompi_h8QbWI5RwLsXdX94QW8P4RJRDy9QNmpl8AuokUlpX_gcXU6YfmDtpoWtnSkm7-E7dp4gvb_E_Tyx3-ISEr5zr61Bew-_gm5ksKAo5AnlEUag6RWliNllL/s320/Haydn+stage+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The result of somewhat painstaking work with the Eraser tool.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I decided to leave 'Papa' Haydn's hand and pen in, as it makes a nice touch and would have looked a little odd otherwise. I have also left in the painted background behind him as this serves our purpose quite well already. Once all this is complete, I name the layer 'Portrait' or something similar for clarity (select the layer and choose 'Layer Properties' from the small menu at the bottom of the Layers window) and save. We're not quite finished with this layer yet, but for now let's move on to creating the background.<br />
<br />
<span style="color: #9fc5e8; font-size: large;"><b>Background: </b></span><br />
<br />
Create a new layer from the window and name it 'Background'. Then - and this is important - move it down using the arrows to below the portrait layer we already have. Anything we draw in this new layer will be visible only where the portrait layer is transparent - the chequered space in the screenshot above. (This is possible due to the file having something called an 'alpha layer', but we don't need to worry too much about the workings of this for our current project). Rather than a single colour background, I wanted something slightly mottled that matched the oil paint of the portrait. To get this, in the background layer I stretched a rectangle over the entire canvas (make sure it's set to 'Draw filled shape' at the top when the polygon tool is selected) and then in the visible area scribbled a load of wiggles over it in green, brown and tan. Making sure only this background layer was selected, I then used the Gaussian Blur tool (Effects-Blurs-Gaussian Blur) on this layer in two separate passes, turning up the blur radius until the wiggles were very subtle. I also ran the 'Oil Painting' effect on this layer, although I'm not sure how much difference this actually made after all the blurring. The finished effect is very subtle but looks much more classy than a plain colour.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0sAJ8LVAeqY7hFDA9cFhyphenhyphenMBWuroeJEpPRixEQkgBTEU44NK-CCh5aDG19agEtkOMePSlknpbKnFebz0FdFEesPyrb1jk18BV39tMxYyR0FvgIM0STR5sxNxTa8oWq0dIWMC2KY8l5jQmZ/s1600/Haydn+stage+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi0sAJ8LVAeqY7hFDA9cFhyphenhyphenMBWuroeJEpPRixEQkgBTEU44NK-CCh5aDG19agEtkOMePSlknpbKnFebz0FdFEesPyrb1jk18BV39tMxYyR0FvgIM0STR5sxNxTa8oWq0dIWMC2KY8l5jQmZ/s320/Haydn+stage+2.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The next thing to do is to return to the portrait layer and run another plugin from the Blurs tab called 'Feather'. It may appear at first glance that this has done nothing, but look again at the edges with the background layer displayed. They will have been blurred outwards a little, removing the 'hard' join between layers. We're done with the portrait layer now.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="color: #9fc5e8;">Music: </b></span><br />
<br />
Create another new layer and name it 'Music'. It needs to be moved down between the two existing layers - it will be on top of the background but beneath the portrait. At this point I needed to choose a suitable excerpt form the literature to represent the composer. I settled on a passage almost immediately - <i>The Heavens are Telling</i> from <i>The Creation</i>, which is possibly his most famous and masterly work. I decided just to use the vocal lines rather than including the orchestral accompaniment, but this is a personal judgement. The staves can be captured by taking a screen shot of the vocal score from IMSLP and pasting it into a new document. To get the music to sit on top of the background we're going to need to cut out all the spaces. Trim using the 'Crop to selection' tool and then get to work with the Magic Wand tool to remove anything that isn't ink. The Wand selects any area bounded by the same colour and will allow us to erase the 'holes' between ledger lines and notes far neater than we could ever do by hand. Again, there is no quick way of doing this: we're going to have to just keep clicking until all the white on the page is removed and we can see the chequers of the alpha layer.<br />
<br />
Having done this, there was one little addition I wanted to make: the score only showed the words in English, and I rather wanted to have the German text as well. Apart from personal satisfaction and an acknowledgement of Haydn's nationality, this would also better make the staves fill the space. The German text was copied from another score and then typed in Paint.NET using the text tool, getting the font as close as possible to the existing type. I also put it into italics just to be on the safe side. Unfortunately the program's text editor does not not seem to have any provision for special characters, so to get the umlauts in 'erzählen' and 'Hände' I had to manually draw pairs of dots and position them over the letters. They've come out rather faint but they're there. I also had to move the existing staves to fit the new lines of text in. This was done by moving all the text to a new drawing, then very carefully selecting each part with the lasso tool and copy-pasting it into a new layer. I then moved this selection up a few pixels and copy-pasted the German text (already aligned with the notes) into the layer before manoeuvring the whole lot in position so it was aligned above the rest of the staves. This was done separately for each voice until I had four layers which could be merged back into one (we'll cover merging at the end). The only problem that now remained was to fill in the gaps in the stave brace: this was done by selecting the existing area and stretching it over the gap from each side like elastic. Done!<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_1lmuiHhm6bQNBwWlVnZTBOmvpq5T25NjrIQqwiWRqlnuKGrgFEZczCrQDVQDQzERgUIeaZxIt8em4b_Jv8-sgTIhjhjdFg7y0Ch74RccoKBmH9wf4WtYWUubB3M17r2KfJW0qLhVugwl/s1600/Haydn+stage+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj_1lmuiHhm6bQNBwWlVnZTBOmvpq5T25NjrIQqwiWRqlnuKGrgFEZczCrQDVQDQzERgUIeaZxIt8em4b_Jv8-sgTIhjhjdFg7y0Ch74RccoKBmH9wf4WtYWUubB3M17r2KfJW0qLhVugwl/s320/Haydn+stage+4.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Having added the additional text, the lines of the staves were manoeuvred back into position.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
As the wallpaper has a dark background we need a light image on top. To do this for the music I selected the image and used the 'Invert colours' tool to turn the black to white, then copy-pasted the whole lot back over to the 'Music' layer of the original file. I also reduced the transparency of this layer a little and added a very slight blur to avoid the harsh contrast created by sharp pure white. It serves as a sort of 'semi-background' and also seems to match the colour of Haydn's wig...<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidR1OHYLi9m66Vvb10gxGjhzg53b-wzMfUoRSlU1Kwc9tM0ZiyNqEFwkwvErI00veyKDuSGKy027ZTG1BjJ6K1n2jerUkDUaN7DcufdMx3NdMXL3Xy79l8NnTCXrJjej9m1GyTcsItJSgm/s1600/Haydn+stage+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEidR1OHYLi9m66Vvb10gxGjhzg53b-wzMfUoRSlU1Kwc9tM0ZiyNqEFwkwvErI00veyKDuSGKy027ZTG1BjJ6K1n2jerUkDUaN7DcufdMx3NdMXL3Xy79l8NnTCXrJjej9m1GyTcsItJSgm/s320/Haydn+stage+5.jpg" width="320" /></a></div>
<br />
The result is very satisfactory. I enlarged the layer and moved it across to position the music tucked slightly behind the portrait - again personal taste. The inclusion of the line 'The wonder of his work/displays the firmament' seems particularly fitting, and I would like to think this could be seen as alluding to the mastery of Haydn's music as well as the creation text. All that remains now is to place Haydn's signature and dates in a new 'Text' layer. The signature (there are two different Haydn signatures, I chose the one with his initials in) was found on IMSLP and adapted in much the same way as the music: white background cut out using Magic Wand, then the colours inverted and moved into position at the bottom left on Joe's shoulder . The name and dates were done in Paint.NET's own text tool and positioned top right.<br />
<br />
<span style="font-size: large;"><b style="color: #9fc5e8;">Finishing: </b></span><br />
<br />
The final stage is to make this into a usable picture file by flattening it. If we've been saving our work regularly, as wise precautions advise, the default file type will be one with a .pdn extension. This is Paint.NET's own file format, one which supports the layering we've been using. However, we can't use a file like this as a normal picture because no other program can actually display a Paint. NET file with layers, so we need to change it into a .png, .jpeg, .gif or similar format. To do so, we need to merge all the layers together into one. Paint.NET makes this easy for us by including a 'Merge layers down' tool in the Layers window, but first we need to double-check what goes on top of what and move them up or down if necessary. The order of layers in the window should be Text- Portrait- Music-Background. Starting with the top layer, hit the 'Merge down' button and the two layers will combine into one. When you've finished, the drawing will be a single-layer image that can be saved in any picture format. I would recommend using a png or a jpeg to keep the file size down, but check the quality is turned up to maximum. I saved it as 'Haydn desktop'.<br />
<br />
All that remains is to navigate to the new file, right-click and choose 'Set as Desktop Background'. Give the cogs a moment or two to whirr and you should have Haydn sitting as your background screen.<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqDfHustbrY8Cz3zdVgZF_c0idXHxrKruWrZ8aogZi2LloG5kPBMSX3fDTAZVmIBbxpfZ8sRGeTLNNljDcF2CL1DI3HvWzr0_KTBAkMdpxklL9rjC0MYDljp0jwP6OhWnfShCC-dytDFvo/s1600/Haydn+desktop.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgqDfHustbrY8Cz3zdVgZF_c0idXHxrKruWrZ8aogZi2LloG5kPBMSX3fDTAZVmIBbxpfZ8sRGeTLNNljDcF2CL1DI3HvWzr0_KTBAkMdpxklL9rjC0MYDljp0jwP6OhWnfShCC-dytDFvo/s320/Haydn+desktop.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The finished article in use.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<div style="color: #9fc5e8;">
<b>A few concluding thoughts:</b></div>
<br />
<ul>
<li>This concept is highly versatile as long as one has a portrait image and another work example to use. It could easily be adapted for any figure or object of history. As mentioned, there is scope for variation of the basic idea: the portrait could be bigger, smaller, face the other way, the signature could be elsewhere, different fonts, etc.</li>
<li>Oil paintings will probably produce a more satisfactory result than colour photographs, as they are easier to merge with other colours and avoid overly sharp edges when cut around. </li>
<li>Using a fairly dark colour scheme seems to have worked well with the bright icons and calendar that sit on top of it. All are still legible and easy to locate, one of the design principles of desktop wallpaper.</li>
<li>Be aware that with a system tray at the bottom of the screen, some of the image will be obscured. Luckily, this doesn't seem to create any adverse effect in this case.</li>
<li>The next one of these will probably be Mozart. I plan to offer these as free downloads from this blog once I have a small collection.</li>
</ul>Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-65635805747205678012012-05-25T22:47:00.003+01:002012-05-25T22:49:14.641+01:00A Child of the Snows: ProgressYou'll be wanting an update, no doubt, on how my cantata <i>A Child of The Snows</i> is progressing. I'm currently just over half way through getting the notes down on paper/Sibelius, and have only a few small corners to decide what to do with. As I've been trying to convey in this series, the composition process is one of working from both the 'inside outwards' and the 'outside inwards', by which I mean that the surface of the music, that which the listener actually hears, is meant to be the logical meeting point of the overall grand structure and the small detail.<br />
<br />
I've reached a point where work starts to pick up as things fall into place (despite taking a little time out to write another piece in the last two weeks). My (quite achievable) aim is now to write two fairly finalised minutes every week, meaning that potentially the work could be done by the end of June. This allows two months for polishing, finishing orchestral parts, proofreading, making a piano reduction and printing before rehearsals starts. I'm boosted by the fact that most of the sections left to write are the most lively and optimistic ones, which are rather easier to spin out that the chromatic angst that makes up the rest of the music.<br />
<br />
In brief:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>The opening 6-7 minutes of the piece, apart from the introduction, are pretty much complete and now 'run' together, at least in draft form. </li>
<li>The above included, almost all of the choral passages in the outer sections are complete or nearly complete.</li>
<li>I have either written or have a clear idea for the important transitions in the piece: linking the entries of the chorus and the baritone, and moving into the faster section and out again.</li>
</ul>
What remains to be written is thus:<br />
<br />
<ul>
<li>The instrumental introduction, which I intend to be an under-the-breath re-imagining of a baroque 'French overture' with trills, grace notes and the short-long rhythm that will permeate the piece. This will last perhaps 3-4 minutes at fairly moderate tempo.</li>
<li>About half of the central fast section. I've got the end of the first stanza, an instrumental passage and most of the darker second stanza (in which the baritone makes a brief appearance) down. What will be really crucial is a convincing central peak, for this will form the climax of the entire work.</li>
<li>I propose to include an extended violin solo between the faster section and the last two stanzas. It makes sense both musically (a texture not yet fully exploited, a mirror to the instrumental introduction at the opening, and a convincing transition between sections) and practically (the choir get some recovery time after a lot of loud and vigorous singing)</li>
<li>The ending. Probably fading away into the ether to bring us back to where the piece started from.</li>
</ul>
Two interesting phenomena occur around this stage in the composition process. The first is that enough of the piece now exists that when even casually thinking about the music, it becomes much easier to imagine new evolutions from the existing material. Many theoreticians have proposed that all through-composed music is essentially a version of 'variations on a theme', even if the 'theme' is as small as a motif or even a gradual harmonic progression. I don't usually have to try very hard to come up with new material that fits its intended function or within the overall landscape of the piece, nor do I have to consciously try and use the motifs already present. The second is a related activity: already-composed passages start to get moved around as better uses for them start to become apparent. One example is a quiet but tense little figure for semi-chorus, leading into an instrumental passage, which was originally to finish the big climax at the end of the second stanza. I have now considered it to be much more effective after the first stanza, leading into the already-written second entry of the baritone, as the choral lines match up to what precedes it and the string texture leads nicely into what follows. Similarly, certain ideas begin to be discarded for various reasons - a better solution becomes apparent, using the passage would be too unwealdly or tautological, or too difficult to integrate.<br />
<br />
As an afterthought, I'm still surprised even after writing a number of choral pieces how much music it actually takes to set a text, even one that seems apparently short. My original target of 20-25 minutes of music is probably going to be accurate, and indeed, consciously or not, the cantata has suggested itself in such a way to fit this length. This may partly be the result of using at least a moderate amount of counterpoint, as a canonic series of entries will obviously last for a longer duration than a homophonic texture. But I think it is also evidence that I am going about the business of writing for singers in an effective way; supplying sufficient places to breathe, allowing the voices to contrast with the orchestra, repeating words and lines where appropriate, writing a mixture of fast and slow music.In the end this all contributes towards the pacing and detail of the music at the listener's level that determines how engaging the experience is.Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-81277969836009350352012-05-12T23:41:00.000+01:002012-05-12T23:41:16.134+01:00Small print<br />
<div style="color: #fff2cc;">
<i>Dear customer,</i></div>
<div style="color: #fff2cc;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: #fff2cc;">
<i>Thank you for your booking. Please note that a surcharge will be added to your bill for any of the following requirements:</i></div>
<br />
Performance of Pachelbel's <i>Canon in D</i>...........£20<br />
Performance of Pachelbel's <i>Canon in D</i> truncated due to length of piece significantly exceeding time required to process down aisle and stand before alter, sparing couple and minister of religion present from having to twiddle thumbs whilst dry counterpoint works itself through................£30<br />
Performance of Boccherini's <i>Minuet</i> <i>in F</i>..............£20 <br />
Performance of Beethoven's <i>'Fur Elise'</i> bagatelle............£20<br />
Performance of (usually unfamiliar) pop song completely unsuited to ensemble/instrument(s) available, and which must be arranged prior to performance, making the best of a bad job........................£30<br />
Piece/name of performer(s) spelt incorrectly or otherwise erroneously in programme/order of service............£10<br />
Performance of <i>All Things Bright and Beautiful</i> as first hymn, as this shows a distinct lack of imagination.............£10<br />
Venue's piano out of tune................£30<br />
Venue's organ out of tune................£30<br />
Use of recorded music for a piece I blatantly could have played...............£20<br />
Accompanying of singer convinced their voice charms the birds from the trees, who in reality has only ever received feedback from close family members or other individuals too polite to break it to them that the death rattle of a chain-smoking porcupine is more melodious than their ill-tuned bellowing..............£40<br />
Provision of seating too high/low/with arms/ otherwise unsuitable for a violoncello player...............£30<br />
Provision of parking in muddy field resulting in inevitable application of soil to formerly spotless black car...................£20<br />
Door locked after assurance via recent telephone call that it would be open..............£10<br />
Timely invention of verbal response to comment(s) on how good/brave I am/we were, managing to avoid outright impoliteness whilst making it clear that I/we kind of do this sort of thing for a living...............£20<br />
Conversation with complete stranger on subject vaguely related to music.............£10<br />
Conversation with complete stranger on subject not even vaguely related to music........£20<br />
Either of the above when I really want to get home and consume steak and chips/watch <i>The Killing</i>/Southampton Football Club are leading Pompey 3-0..............................£35<br />
<br />
<i style="color: #fff2cc;">Thank you for your custom.</i><br />
<br />Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-65944335611804168852012-04-29T23:21:00.001+01:002012-05-01T23:13:17.664+01:00The Solent Way: Part 2<h2>
Hamble to Portsmouth (14 miles)</h2>
After deciding that it was too nice a weekend to waste indoors, I set out on the Solent Way again. Continuing down the eastern side of Southampton Water, this stage will take us from where we finished last time in Hamble right into the city of Portsmouth. Having prepared a packed lunch, I was duly down at the station at 9.45 to catch the slow train a few stops down the line to Hamble.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-JWGCoDBdZe4usmJgThD-Hp2T9nbx8ZdKd9f4S2D4axL2zH9PKX_Ej7FSnExHtK2MfQARXlAryJFIXWuMPkTc7haGrGAicPJbXqLk5VvOlvwBJOlXcP6ebk7q1biSZjkJvDNzQCOurV-v/s1600/P3241651.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi-JWGCoDBdZe4usmJgThD-Hp2T9nbx8ZdKd9f4S2D4axL2zH9PKX_Ej7FSnExHtK2MfQARXlAryJFIXWuMPkTc7haGrGAicPJbXqLk5VvOlvwBJOlXcP6ebk7q1biSZjkJvDNzQCOurV-v/s320/P3241651.JPG" width="320" /></a>Hamble station (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=hamble&hl=en&ll=50.871375,-1.328164&spn=0.028978,0.055189&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=13.909932,28.256836&hnear=Hamble,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=14&layer=c&cbll=50.871375,-1.328164&panoid=x-Zql_ZIwX_OxGxyMlY7tA&cbp=12,256.94,,1,0.77" target="_blank">Street View</a>) has the charming attribute of being in the middle of a field. It's pretty basic, to be honest, just a pair of concrete platforms and a ticket machine next to the road bridge leading into the village. This will mean I have to walk about a mile to reach the quayside and pick up the Solent Way, but I don't particularly mind as there's enough of interest along the main street. Hamble has plenty of history before <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Howards%27_Way" target="_blank">new-money sailing businesses</a> came along, and was for most of the last century an important area in the development of aviation. There were not one, but two, airfields in the town; one which just about clings on as a plant for General Electric aviation, and another which is buried under an 80's up-market housing estate. There's plenty of evidence about though, firstly the <a href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo/21852125" target="_blank">Folland Gnat replica</a> serving as a gate guard to the GE site, then further on some information panels with pictorial histories of the various planes and seaplanes built and tested here, and finally a silver miniature Spitfire mounted on swoopy poles as if turning a steep bank over the road.<br />
<br />
The rest of the architecture bar the church is typical Georgian brick houses lining the steep lane down to the water (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=hamble&hl=en&ll=50.858339,-1.313218&spn=0.000411,0.001725&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=13.909932,28.256836&hnear=Hamble,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=19&layer=c&cbll=50.858322,-1.313123&panoid=P0y7p1PGw4zqz2NsLqqp_A&cbp=12,58.29,,0,-4.34" target="_blank">Street View</a>). The town of Hamble today (or, properly, Hamble-le-Rice, (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=hamble&hl=en&ll=50.85893,-1.314832&spn=0.000411,0.001725&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=13.909932,28.256836&hnear=Hamble,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=19&layer=c&cbll=50.858965,-1.315014&panoid=uif5717Qi8fxOwLE19qWJg&cbp=12,119.18,,0,-5.04" target="_blank">Street View</a>)) is largely concerned with the construction, maintenance and excise of boats and their accessories. All kinds, although on the basis of the many vessels moored in the river, it's mostly private yachts that are most at home here. The Hamble River is only about half a mile from ending its modest course into the Solent, so it's fairly deep and allows a convenient base from which to launch one's forty-foot status symbol for a jaunt around the island. Appropriately enough, I'm heading for a boat trip right now, but not one involving hoisting sails or leaning backwards over the side. Instead I'm going to take one of the non-walking bits of the Solent Way, the ferry.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVt5MorJA_XvNQVKwbnxBKXubUTwfN8DiORz15WEOIB8SPjFwnYQkc3EoOU45FKOYArMae8emloErDofS79qE9mOO_BikoEvUDD9npzELlgKUGqzuKdHvsWxJUXLKX7O_Lt8KrCg1xENRE/s1600/P3241656.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjVt5MorJA_XvNQVKwbnxBKXubUTwfN8DiORz15WEOIB8SPjFwnYQkc3EoOU45FKOYArMae8emloErDofS79qE9mOO_BikoEvUDD9npzELlgKUGqzuKdHvsWxJUXLKX7O_Lt8KrCg1xENRE/s320/P3241656.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On the Hamble-Warsash ferry</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I like the Hamble-Warsash ferry. It has a pleasing feeling of being a service rather than just a business enterprise. To reach it you have to go down onto a gated jetty which looks a tiny bit not-public (with walking boots and a bag I got a funny look from four muscular waterproofed blokes leaving the pontoon), step onto the ferry via an ungated 'people scoop' opening at the front, and give the ferryman £1.50. The boat is pink (apart from the rusty bits) whereas the last time I rode on it, which must have been at least fifteen years ago, it was a more sober white. The captain, though, looks like a real proper sailor in the Captain Birdseye vein, with a white beard, an Arran sweater and a nautical cap. I am the only passenger and he sets off immediately I am aboard. The passage across the river takes about five minutes, although this is variable depending on the number of yachts gong down the main channel rather than across it, and the number of parked boats it is necessary to weave through, including another similarly pink vessel used for dredging (according to the sign painted on the side). We seem to come alarmingly close to many of them, but the captain's been doing this since he was in short trousers and with a deft hand steers the <a href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo_explorer#view=photo&position=198&with_photo_id=27983612&order=date_desc&user=3517283" target="_blank"><i>Emily</i></a> across the deep water channel and up to a jetty on the Warsash side without anything unfortunate involving anchor cables and the propeller. There's quite a crowd gathered over here, Saturday traffic clearly being enough to justify getting out the largest vessel in the fleet, with the patronage mostly consisting of families returning from a stroll or dog-walking. At the end of the jetty is a charming little ferry shelter (<a href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo_explorer#view=photo&position=48&with_photo_id=12239612&order=date_desc&user=2012323" target="_blank">also in pink</a>), with a confusing notice informing passengers they'd be better off not using it but instead waiting at the end of jetty, just so the ferryman can be sure they actually want the boat and aren't just resting their legs.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwFKyVNDEKrzmm55aKazdgwzRcXNO2cahW2nfu8ZJaHnhW21bhar3IGpvXlg-wNssYNg8a26YJRO13U_7v5MJMbisaoSIyDfoc2pKS5g6ZChbMYkfzgtnEtqhNP4rSj5QOAJI2vXxFiaoe/s1600/P3241660.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwFKyVNDEKrzmm55aKazdgwzRcXNO2cahW2nfu8ZJaHnhW21bhar3IGpvXlg-wNssYNg8a26YJRO13U_7v5MJMbisaoSIyDfoc2pKS5g6ZChbMYkfzgtnEtqhNP4rSj5QOAJI2vXxFiaoe/s320/P3241660.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDqyKy1dIbUVlsOrqh28JAZvc-KY7nXGJeXzPVbi7igxQO83p96ZGt7K-XZSxXFLBukxb0TcBIOxPxiHudt_-Qz6I_lpzY-1Jfd-nwPxjWwGYfwqMXiQBaA-bM4-2XhCP02ZTaX2wfoWIa/s1600/P3241658.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiDqyKy1dIbUVlsOrqh28JAZvc-KY7nXGJeXzPVbi7igxQO83p96ZGt7K-XZSxXFLBukxb0TcBIOxPxiHudt_-Qz6I_lpzY-1Jfd-nwPxjWwGYfwqMXiQBaA-bM4-2XhCP02ZTaX2wfoWIa/s320/P3241658.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">The Hamble River</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
<br />
Off the ferry, the trail goes down a shallow slope to the small quayside at Warsash (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=hamble&hl=en&ll=50.852267,-1.306075&spn=0.001646,0.006899&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=13.909932,28.256836&hnear=Hamble,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=17&layer=c&cbll=50.852268,-1.306078&panoid=WZcnr6iW4Y4dJRnoTpseiQ&cbp=12,185.2,,0,-11.48" target="_blank">Street View</a>). There's a nice pub here as well as a monument noting the area's involvement with D-Day in 1944 - in fact the first of several I'll pass on this walk. A bit further on at the mouth of the Hamble River is the College of Maritime Studies, with its distinctive jetty and practice scaffold full of <a href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo_explorer#view=photo&position=907&with_photo_id=35719342&order=date_desc&user=3131726" target="_blank">orange lifeboats</a> extending out from the land. There's a salt marsh a little way inland, Hook Lake, which looks very tranquil. By contrast, the Solent is buzzing, with ferries, container ships, yachts, jet-skis and freighters punting up and down on voyages of various distances. Fawley once again looms large across the water, although as I move on the flare stack will become a useful marker to determine how far I've come. It's a warm day, with a breeze just strong enough to cool without being a problem.<br />
<br />
Appropriately enough to lead on from the last paragraph, the next feature we come to is the Solent Breezes holiday park. The Solent Way used to follow the shoreline across the front of the static caravans, but that's not the case now because a lot of the shoreline isn't there any more. It's a cliff top, you see, and cliff tops have a habit of getting undercut by the waves and falling into the water, such that the trailers with the best view are now the ones most in danger of disappearing over it. The authorities realised that it was probably sensible to take walkers somewhere else than over a crumbling bit of sandstone, so there's now a detour round the back of the caravans and past a National Grid transformer station to join the rest of the cliffs which are holding up a bit better. You can still get through the bushes where the path would originally have come out, and see just how precarious it is. Whilst the caravans are still at a safe distance, for now, there's at least one section of fence which hasn't long for this world.<br />
<br />
Carrying on along the cliff-top, the view of the surrounding landscape becomes notably more expansive. The Isle of Wight's quite clearly outlined even in today's hazy air, a reminder that I'm reaching the point where the shoreline starts to turn to meet up with the English Channel. Across the water the New Forest gradually recedes as the estuary widens away from the drum of Calshot castle perched at the end of its <a href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo_explorer#view=photo&position=905&with_photo_id=35719370&order=date_desc&user=3131726" target="_blank">eponymous spit</a>. From this point onwards I start to scan the eastward horizon periodically for an important landmark indicating journey's end - the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth. No sign yet, but sooner or later the slender white spire will appear in the distance. After a mile or two, the path descends past a small beach, goes up another modest hillock and then becomes flat again at sea level and a row of small buildings appears. They're technically beach chalets, but most are half-way to being proper bungalows, with double-glazed verandas, solar panels or wind turbines for power (not in short supply here) and most with an upturned dinghy outside. I join the various hand-holding couples, surfers, kite-flyers, paddlers and dogs flagrantly ignoring the 'private beach' notice and carry on around the curve of the bay (not missing the opportunity to use a thoughtfully-placed toilet stop) towards Hill Head. This is another geography that's changed a lot over time, being the mouth of the River Meon. The sandbanks that gave this its original name of Hell Head have been tidied up along with the construction of a harbour and sluice gate for the river channel. The other way, inland, everything's rather special. The river now ends in a giant reed bed, Tichfield Haven. which means that local twitchers have the chance to spot. It's quite a striking contrast between the colourful harbour behind and the serenity of the brown estuary before.<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="314" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&t=m&layer=c&cbll=50.817172,-1.244817&panoid=6QAg8OLWQIZNjQ1Bpt5YTA&cbp=13,51.67,,0,0.02&ll=50.815212,-1.242957&spn=0.004257,0.012059&z=16&source=embed&output=svembed" width="562"></iframe><br />
<small><a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&t=m&layer=c&cbll=50.817172,-1.244817&panoid=6QAg8OLWQIZNjQ1Bpt5YTA&cbp=13,51.67,,0,0.02&ll=50.815212,-1.242957&spn=0.004257,0.012059&z=16&source=embed" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">View Larger Map</a></small><br />
<br />
All the beach huts here are green, and a few are open with their tenants inside enjoying the weather. There's still not really a proper beach but this hasn't tempered the availability of watersports, chiefly sailing in small one-man boats and kite-surfing. I haven't the faintest idea how to sail a dinghy but it looks highly diverting - at least nearly as good as walking. I always wonder whether anybody else is going the same way as me or as far. It's remarkable, given the reasonable probability that somebody else may be walking a particular stretch of a particular footpath, that one never follows or engages in swapping places with another hiker, the way that you keep up with another car on a motorway. Clearly everybody must have a sufficiently different pace or timing that no two path-followers run together. I keep stopping to take pictures too, which mixes things up a bit.<br />
<br />
Presently there's a village and the Solent Way diverts a little round beach-front properties. The more urban section brings more people to share the footway with and I have to weave around pushchairs, dogs and wobbling teenage scooters. Horse riders hold up the traffic going the other way. Periodically, an unidentified engine noise from the other side of the embankment is followed by the appearance overhead of a little yellow glider, which nervously turns over the sea and heads back to the landing strip before it runs out of sky. A mile or so further along the shore is the first proper town on this walk, Lee-on-the-Solent. Lee (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?q=hamble&hl=en&ll=50.80984,-1.213796&spn=0.003295,0.013797&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=13.909932,28.256836&hnear=Hamble,+United+Kingdom&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.809835,-1.213786&panoid=6U-MkEwRVEqvin78DREpFQ&cbp=12,301.87,,0,-6.02" target="_blank">Street View</a>) looks like a proper seaside town from the start, with a long straight road parallel to and slightly above the shore, neat grass and conservatively-styled apartments. In the centre of the town are some nice <a href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo_explorer#view=photo&position=3346&with_photo_id=26723154&order=date_desc&user=2481601" target="_blank">quasi-Art-Deco shop fronts</a> and a raised promenade area which add to the ambiance. There used to a be a pier too, although that's long since vanished. The amusement arcade on the beach front and the car park behind it used to be the
terminus of the little-used <a href="http://www.disused-stations.org.uk/l/lee_on_the_solent/index.shtml" target="_blank">Lee-on-Solent railway</a>, which was a distinctly unprofitable entity and soldiered on as little more than a parliamentary service until 1931, with six men and a dog on the last passenger train. There's also a slipway, which is handy for the jet-skiers to launch from, although it's size seems to suggest some greater purpose. It's really very large indeed. Mysteriously large - in fact it's big enough to be used a car park. Oh...<br />
<br />
Looking through the resulting break in the embankment I realise why. At the top of the slope, across the road, two huge propellers and a cabin with a radar assembly on top tower over a huge white superstructure. There's a sort of drawbridge-like door at the front of this massive machine, on which its name is written: <b><span style="color: blue;">hover</span><span style="color: red;">craft</span></b>. <br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilotVacqRa6gpvYFtBS275gDrh_UP8WZyHHpbFGMig9ya60AHL2MdzSRg1U17JgLzhbBv41MritLBMIhUp9N9ntUK2CzoGT_QawxlhqKK-B9XQKUvKroeDlNdZT32Xc1fsEYGhMvSE4IHN/s1600/P3241692.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEilotVacqRa6gpvYFtBS275gDrh_UP8WZyHHpbFGMig9ya60AHL2MdzSRg1U17JgLzhbBv41MritLBMIhUp9N9ntUK2CzoGT_QawxlhqKK-B9XQKUvKroeDlNdZT32Xc1fsEYGhMvSE4IHN/s400/P3241692.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Several 'air-cushion vehicles' at Lee</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
I like hovercraft. They have an endearingly eccentric character about them; slightly cobbled-together from unlikely combinations of components like an assorted Lego set, as if nobody has quite worked out how to neaten it all up yet, a mad idea that has not yet realised quite how excessively complicated it has become. They are the only machines I know which have floppy bits as part of the design and make an amazing racket even before they move anywhere. One can only imagine the joy of test-driving - or more accurately, test-flying - an early model and finding that not only did your bizarre invention actually work, it also went like the clappers on both land and water. This corner of the military airfield at HMS Daedalus is the world's only Hovercraft Museum and houses seventy different 'air cushion vehicles' of diverse sizes and designs, some in working order, others still under restoration. I particularly like the craft I first spotted, the giant SR.N4 <i>The Princess Margaret</i>, mostly for the four massive propeller towers mounted on top that look like they were just put there to impress, like the tail fins on 1950s American cars. This is a machine that can carry sixty cars, 170 passengers and still exceed 70mph! - which in 1969 was almost as exciting as putting a space rocket on the moon, especially when the whole project was a British endeavour. This site is closed to the public most of the time (apart from visits by special arrangement) but there is a poster advertising open days in the forthcoming months.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: right; margin-left: 1em; text-align: right;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLV1hhXtVw8B7JMBbPuIZrXSvHKZSoYKKxPmqJGlP_Sv_censubIs3qkXTfKVPi81xsi-m1gH6zm4ooErtAWaqFR7G7wmQALJ4d4hOUbyR83VT4Ys4TO1htYUBxbJy1x1NTS7B0n-sBMYX/s1600/P3241711.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhLV1hhXtVw8B7JMBbPuIZrXSvHKZSoYKKxPmqJGlP_Sv_censubIs3qkXTfKVPi81xsi-m1gH6zm4ooErtAWaqFR7G7wmQALJ4d4hOUbyR83VT4Ys4TO1htYUBxbJy1x1NTS7B0n-sBMYX/s320/P3241711.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Much danger lurks at Browndown.</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
<br />
After the crowds (and it really is crowded, everyone's outside this afternoon) of Lee the Solent Way comes up against a sturdy-looking fence and a gate with warning notices, which luckily happens to be open. Sometimes you have to divert around the next two miles, for Browndown is an irregularly-used military range, although they no longer use live fire here. The landscape is lonely and bleak in the extreme. Civilisation, houses and streets and yachts are not far away at all, yet all are hidden beyond the shingle and the scrubby, arid sandbanks behind. After an indeterminate period of time struggling across the millions of pebbles I come across the ruined remains of some small buildings, not knowing whether they were once complete or whether they were built this way to simulate the effects of bombing and shelling. <a href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo_explorer#view=photo&position=355&with_photo_id=63296716&order=date_desc&user=1715763" target="_blank">The place</a> is entirely a desolate military landscape, parched and barren even when warfare is absent from it. I imagine this is what it must be like in a nuclear winter; only the stones and the hardiest of grasses survive. Actually, my pontificating on the desolation of war is some way from the truth: if you know where to look there's life here that you won't find elsewhere precisely because the area is less well-trod: birds, lizards, grasses and algae unique to the Solent coast. It you look a little further, the place offers the first sight of a landmark I'd been looking out for all day: Spinnaker Tower, where I'll end, in the centre of Portsmouth.<br />
<br />
Nonetheless, I'm glad to leave and rejoin Stokes Bay on a tarmacked promenade with families and dogs and ice-cream. I pass an old fort which is now a museum of diving: as if to prove this, there are old iron minisubs on plinths outside, slightly rusted and with fogged glass. A while further on, at the <a href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo_explorer#view=photo&position=21&with_photo_id=35589983&order=date_desc&user=2677757" target="_blank">lifeboat station</a> (entirely funded by the local community), the coastguard <a href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo_explorer#view=photo&position=22&with_photo_id=35589969&order=date_desc&user=2677757" target="_blank">tractor</a> sits ready to tow a lifeboat out of the water, but clearly nobody needs rescuing right now, firstly as the sea's so calm and secondly because the crew are in a staff meeting, audible through the open shutters. After this the landscape turns back to grass (again very neat and Windows XP, must be something in this area) and reaches the southernmost point of this walk - indeed, the entire Solent Way this side of Southampton. It's a location offering a more-than-decent view of Portsmouth, which made it an idea location for defending the city from the French/Spanish/French/Germans/Germans depending on in what period of history it was deemed necessary. To this effect the army built Fort Gilkicker, a curiously-shaped structure which formed part of the chain of brick blockhouses in this area. In the nineteenth-century a huge earth bank was added to the front which it's possible to climb (I didn't spot the steps until after getting back down on hands and knees and picking up several thorny plants in the process) although you won't see much inside other than the modern radar installation and a lone guard, indifferent to the teenagers on the other side of his fence.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5LJXe5Jp9wtv6UVOA6k53Q6xK7mLvGX68yPuJl5OonmyTe1PgkE9-iDLdss-jnUFhu6Sj1rvureSxPRc0w_hPDR_BSbZF94AmDOUg7e7Xels2xxvKigwQAMD_0md5TbtMwT4vR8XZWTyx/s1600/P3241724.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5LJXe5Jp9wtv6UVOA6k53Q6xK7mLvGX68yPuJl5OonmyTe1PgkE9-iDLdss-jnUFhu6Sj1rvureSxPRc0w_hPDR_BSbZF94AmDOUg7e7Xels2xxvKigwQAMD_0md5TbtMwT4vR8XZWTyx/s400/P3241724.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Fort Gilkicker</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
It's reminder of the importance of the armed forces to this area, chiefly the Navy, but all the services have a presence here and have done for the last few centuries. The next section of shore is completely taken up with military properties, including the controversial Haslar Immigration Removal Centre and the hospital next door. Because of this, the Solent Way has to divert and crosses a golf course with the wearily familiar 'Private land - keep on path' notices (which always translate as 'We wish we could prevent you walking right next to our exclusive lawn but legally we can't, so we'll just make you feel as unwelcome as possible'), then some suburban avenues, then a tunnel-like road closed in by the high walls of military barracks and whatever else they have here (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=50.786187,-1.126549&spn=0.001648,0.006899&t=m&z=17&layer=c&cbll=50.786051,-1.12653&panoid=n66N8fNZvpbggC5gBp7L1A&cbp=12,72.61,,0,0" target="_blank">Street View</a>). At the end of the road there's a slender arched bridge (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=50.789041,-1.122853&spn=0.000412,0.001725&t=m&z=19&layer=c&cbll=50.789041,-1.122854&panoid=k4f0h6v3sFcWm9a5lm1KJQ&cbp=12,64.25,,0,0.14" target="_blank">Street View</a>) over Haslar Marina and its thousands of yachts. Over the water is the one military installation you <i>can</i> visit - HMS Alliance, which forms the greater part of the Submarine Museum. After a career sneaking around underwater and subsequently sitting on the quayside it's in need of some restoration work, and looks it too, certainly not the shade of black it started out in.<br />
<br />
I've very nearly at the end of my journey but as there's a ferry across the harbour every six minutes there's time for a short detour to get a picture of <a href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo_explorer#view=photo&position=230&with_photo_id=64835078&order=date_desc&user=6055616" target="_blank">Holy Trinity Church</a>. It's an attractive building in dark brick with narrow square tower, more like German or Italian ecclesiastical architecture than the usual British block. It's also where my trio gave a concert two weeks ago (the whiff of incense is still in the air). Arriving at Gosport waterside there's a <a href="http://www.panoramio.com/photo_explorer#view=photo&position=3993&with_photo_id=16884809&order=date_desc&user=2481601" target="_blank">magnificent view</a> of Portsmouth in the late afternoon light. I've never had a chance to ride the Gosport Ferry and am pleased to find it a very efficient way to cross the water (although I wasted half my ticket as they only issue returns). It's by far the best way to enter Portsmouth, what with a superb view of the Spinnaker Tower, HMS Warrior and all the various categories of naval ships and ferries steaming in and out of port. The green and white vessel only requires four minutes to leave Gosport and dock again at the Harbour station, which puts me neatly finishing underneath the tower I'd been using as a guidepost throughout the afternoon.<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjBgQX8c2yZT_gRVm65U7WskGhlTeefok7trVCUgKAx7zM_UK16pV7h8P5c1aP8-oAOLTzReQ97LGgOvqxkxsh22b2W4oaAQs0m3Yj6hgVDot562EMY1-OB5nKMI4PwwasB4uL_9HGpbXC/s1600/Portsmouth+harbour.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="195" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgjBgQX8c2yZT_gRVm65U7WskGhlTeefok7trVCUgKAx7zM_UK16pV7h8P5c1aP8-oAOLTzReQ97LGgOvqxkxsh22b2W4oaAQs0m3Yj6hgVDot562EMY1-OB5nKMI4PwwasB4uL_9HGpbXC/s640/Portsmouth+harbour.jpg" width="640" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Panorama of Portsmouth from Gosport</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
And that's it for now. Suffice to say I returned to Southampton, after waiting 40 minutes to change trains, to find the city in jubilant mood after a 2-0 victory over Doncaster.Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-17217305329627277992012-04-17T22:49:00.004+01:002012-04-17T22:50:55.765+01:00The concertA week ago I had the chance to take part in one of the many Titanic commemorative events taking place around the country. We've already covered how closely linked Southampton is to the ship, so it was quite appropriate that the City of Southampton Orchestra were doing a special concert in the docks. It was a good one.<br />
<br />
We all, orchestra and choir, dutifully arrived at Dock Gate Four on Monday evening for the
rehearsal. I'd long wanted to drive past the barriers at the entrance and
go inside, so was very pleased to be let through and allowed to drive along the access road to the cruise terminal. It was a pretty rough night, strong winds and heavy rain heightening the machined, industrial character of the place with everything either floodlit or picked out by small points of light. This whole area is artificial, concrete deposited into the Solent at the end of the nineteenth century to expand the port, and is imposing rather than picturesque; conceptually united, if we can be generous enough to suggest an artistic element in discussing it, by the fact that most objects are very <i>big</i>. On the left is the smaller Ocean cruise terminal, whilst ahead to the right rows and rows of Hondas and, in a car park MINIs. After crossing a single track of railway line, a huge diesel locomotive looms up alongside the road, sitting somewhat ominously with its lights on and coupled to a rake of auto-carriers. Cars are a major import here, but there are also giant rolls of cable, dumper trucks and, at the end of the promontory, two huge grain silos. <br />
<br />
After driving a good half-mile, I find the venue. The concert to be
held in the grand arena of the Queen Elizabeth II cruise terminal, next
to which is the exact spot Titanic sailed from and where Cunard liners
still depart from to this day. The building is a bland modern block,
which is a particular shame as what preceded it was the wonderful 1950
Ocean Terminal, built in Art Deco style with modern innovations such as
power gangways to the ship and conveyor belts for luggage. In an
exceptional act of cultural vandalism, Associated British Ports
bulldozed the entire structure on inheriting it via privatisation of the
docks in 1983. Had it survived, it would actually have made a fantastic
venue for the museum if it weren't for the commercial interests of the
port keeping the public out. A few rare pictures of it are <a href="http://www.thecunarders.co.uk/Southampton%20Ocean%20Terminal3.html" target="_blank">here</a>.<br />
<br />
In fact commercial interest has struck again, as our previously arranged parking spaces inside the terminal had now been grabbed as storage by [German luxury automobile manufacturer*] meaning we have to fight over the space outside. I'm lucky and get Meg about as close as possible to the door outside in the inclement weather. Inside the long shed the first 100 yards is a parking and drop-off area, bedecked with Union flags and about 100 new saloons and coupés, still without registrations and with protective plastic and factory tracking numbers attached. There must have been close to a million pounds' worth of middle-management tailgating equipment in there. No time to gawp, as we now have to locate a means of getting up to the departure lounge on the second floor. After fruitlessly trying to find stairs I eventually opt for walking up a static escalator. My first impression of the concert room is that it's not particularly inspiring. It's basically an airport lounge but with comfier chairs and a lack of marked-up shops. There's a marginal attempt to acknowledge the heritage of the site with reproduction posters of the White Star and Cunard liners, and models of the QE2 and Queen Mary, but this is very much a place that exists for waiting in to go somewhere better. Unlike at the time of the Titanic, or even fifty years later, there's little attempt to dazzle the passengers with luxury from the moment they arrive. It's symbolic of the fact that nowadays, as with flight, cruising and ship travel is a practical rather than a prestige-minded industry. Expense definitely gets spared in the current climate.<br />
<br />
Still, there's a semicircle of chairs for the orchestra and risers for the choir, and the lounge seats have been arranged in quite a lot of rows for an audience of considerable number (we sold out a month ago) so it at least looks like a concert venue. There are some windows on the far side overlooking the water but not much of a view apart from some cranes and the Hythe pier, and the rain hammering away outside and the white of the waves breaking. Incredibly there are more cars parked outside on the quayside, so if you're thinking of buying one bear in mind that it might have been left exposed to the elements on a Southampton dockside for an indefinite period of time. Presently the majority of the orchestra and choir arrive and we begin the rehearsal with Depart...to depart, a new piece which has been specially written for the occasion and will receive its première tomorrow night. The first issue was to turn off the noisy heating system, which took some minutes, in the process of which the fire alarm was set off, quickly being joined in rhythm by the percussion section. About half the choir started to get out quick and had to be called back whilst the rest and the orchestra just laughed and waited for it to be silenced - we were clearly not 'slightly on fire'. 'This is all part of the general<i> 'danger</i>' theme of the concert...' remarked the composer of the first item. I can't really comment much on what went on for the rest of the evening, suffice to say that we rehearsed the new piece (which I like) for a bit and then moved on the the Sea Symphony (which I liked even more). We had the soloists here tonight, so the plan was basically to run the whole thing and only stop if necessary. The additional noises of the rain, seagulls and particularly the wind whistling through the roof made for a rather atmospheric performance. Out in the gloom ships would roll past the windows, constellations of lights rising and falling together. I have to say I got more than a flavour of what it must have been like to sail on the Titanic through the dark of the North Atlantic.<br />
<br />
Tuesday night was completely different - sunny, a little damp from previous precipitation but bright and the sea calm. I parked up at about 5.30 at the foot of the grain silos with the rest of the orchestra, and got a few pictures in before anybody security-looking might have seen me and made a fuss. There was a truly enormous car carrier moored at the other side of the dock, ramp up and ready to depart.<br />
<br />
Rehearsal was necessarily brief, as the audience were starting to queue up outside. A female reporter and her cameraman burdened with equipment stayed for a bit to film the orchestra and choir for the evening news. They got two takes of the opening of <i>A Sea Symphony</i>, which not only gave a flavour of the concert but provided an excellent of shattering the idea that classical music is all quiet. We top and tail a few bits before there's a tea break. Quick, the punters are coming in.<br />
<br />
Practice over, I wolfed down the sandwiches we'd been supplied with for tea and took the cello downstairs, taking great delight in romping the wrong way through the security room unhindered with it. It was time to entertain the crowds with some jolly numbers from the White Star Line Song Book (and <i>Nearer, My God, to Thee</i>). The 'palm court' was a corner of the room with some trees that almost resembled palms, but not quite well enough. In fact this hardly mattered as there were plenty of other distractions for the waiting audience; chiefly the bar, but also four giant ship's funnels that had made an appearance at a previous Titanic-related concert; costumed actors and actresses and us palm court musicians ourselves - when the trombonist arrived and we could start, that is. The conductor gave my arrangements of <i>I Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside</i> and <i>The Glow-Worm</i> (no, I didn't think many of you would remember that one) several outings, interspersed with other bits and bobs he'd arranged from the WSLSB, which made the now-arrived trombonist jolly pleased as he could have multiple goes at the <i>duuur-uuur-ur!</i> glissando I'd written.<br />
<br />
Thirty minutes later we all run back upstairs to do the rest of the concert. It's a full house: we sold out a month in advance. Our conductor, John, enters the podium and allows Ian to introduce his piece <i>Depart...to depart</i>, with an explanation of all the different songs from the different classes of the ship he's based the piece around, as well as the sounds of the Titanic's whistle and machinery and other parts of the ship depicted in the music. I rather like it actually, and we give a good account of the dots for ten minutes or so. After the applause there's some faff time whilst the choir come on, which a chunk of the audience take as a cue to re-visit the bar. We also put some jobsworth carrying buckets past the stage in his place so he doesn't disturb the rest of proceedings. One settled down again, there's a dedication-cum-prayer by the Dean of Southampton remembering those on the ship and all who work in the port (this goes on a bit). Then Mark Oldfield and Jane Streeton, who are our vocal soloists, enter to more applause. Now for the main event - once the seagulls on the roof have shut up.<br />
<br />
John is on the podium. The brass and horn sections all have instruments poised ready for the downbeat...<br />
<br />
<i>BAAAAAAAAA!!! BA-BA-BA BAAAAAAAAA! BAAAAAAAA!!!!!!</i><br />
<i>'BE-HOLLLLLD.......the...SEAAAAA!!!!' CRASH!!!!</i><br />
<br />
And so begins surely one of the best openings to any symphony ever written, let alone somebody's First. The general aim of this is to knock people clean out of their seats with the volume and splendour of it all, in much the same way as the Verdi we did on tour. After all the luscious strings and blowing brass the piece moves on to a faster bit, then the baritone enters, then...well, space does not permit a blow-by-blow account of the whole piece, you'll just have to listen to it all. There are two - three, in fact - very good reasons for choosing to perform this other than the above; first, it's British and sea-related; second it was composed at around the same time as the Titanic was built; and thirdly, the Walt Whitman poem Vaughan Williams sets in the first movement includes the most apt lines for this week of commemorative events:<br />
<br />
<i>'Token of all brave captains</i><br />
<i>And of all intrepid sailors and mates</i><br />
<i>And of all who went down doing their duty'</i><br />
<br />
The last movement the symphony is Mahler-length, nearly half an hour, and deals with the ongoing quest of geographical and metaphysical exploration. Its opening is vast and cosmic, the first bit of sustained reflective calm in the whole symphony, later more exotic and questing as the text demands. In places it's almost like high-quality epic film music, at others one can hear clearly how much of a French influence the composer picked up (one achingly lovely passage accompanying the solo baritone is scored for muted horns, solo flute, oboe, cor, clarinet and solo violin and viola). The coda is a stroke of genius, with a false ending suddenly restarting as a gradual fade-out on two, then a single chord which is lost in the heights of the choir and the depths of the celli and basses. Trust a seagull to nearly ruin it...<br />
<br />
It was a triumph. The orchestra played superbly; the choir were perfectly tuned and by turns gloriously powerful and magically subtle. Best of all, we have had mountains of messages and emails praising the performance. I'd like to think that somewhere, far away, the Titanic's band were listening, cheering us on...<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #cfe2f3;">
* Hint: It's not Mercedes-Benz, Audi, VW or Porsche.</div>Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-1186227829188893562012-04-06T19:40:00.002+01:002012-04-06T19:47:23.969+01:00Titanic proportionsAs most of the world cannot fail to have noticed, April 2012 brings with it the 100th year since the first and last voyage of the <i>SS Titanic</i>*. Southampton has a particularly strong connection with the liner, as it formally departed from its docks and sailed with a large number of local crew, and so to mark the auspicious date a new nautical-themed museum will open (which we'll cover later on), as well as various live commemorative events. I'm going to be involved in one of these on Tuesday - but as before, more on that later.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
</div>
By way of introduction, I decided to take a walk through the city centre and visit some of it's Titanic-related spots. The Titanic Passenger and Crew Memorial in the docks is normally off-limits to the public, but by a stroke of luck on Monday and Tuesday I'll be able to get in there for the rehearsal and concert and take a look. For now we will have to be content with the public memorials in the city, starting with one of the smallest but, for me, the most personally significant one.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEFZaFIRnHECUaIAFzd-g2gvob1uW3zJhTK63pracYr7Na1HePKIPDTFSFdlCbd3AakBSzWO-w3hvYaf3lHmzEUbcbL2d_ixKpAsfcr4bTUIxDs47t3KMmOLCzmsNDTbd-xpVrgZsg1n2f/s1600/P4061757.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgEFZaFIRnHECUaIAFzd-g2gvob1uW3zJhTK63pracYr7Na1HePKIPDTFSFdlCbd3AakBSzWO-w3hvYaf3lHmzEUbcbL2d_ixKpAsfcr4bTUIxDs47t3KMmOLCzmsNDTbd-xpVrgZsg1n2f/s320/P4061757.JPG" width="257" /></a>The Titanic Musicians' Memorial isn't terribly obvious to the casual visitor, especially compared to the Highgate-Cemetery-level-of-grandiose Engineers' Monument a few yards away on East Park Terrace. It's a small stone plaque on the wall of an otherwise unremarkable building occupied by a firm of solicitors whose employees may, in all probability, have never realised quite what it was, not least because the engraved text is rather small. In fairness, as originally planned they wouldn't have had cause to, as the plaque was inside a library on the site until London Road received the attention of the Luftwaffe in 1940. The current replica was, disappointingly, only reinstated in 1990, but I suppose better late than never, especially as the mason responsible was a resident of Woolston. As illustrated by the photo below, the plaque is simple in design, with the names of the musicians surrounding an engraving. I find the hand-made, almost child-like, quality of the piece highly poignant, particularly the central depiction of a kneeling figure - presumably Saint Cecilia - gently holding the ship back from the waves as if to allow the musicians a few final moments to finish playing 'Nearer my God to Thee', the melody of which is engraved below the image. Bandleader Wallace Hartley, whose name sits at the head of this memorial, has his own individual monument in his hometown of Colne in Lancashire, as does Reginald Bricoux in Eastbourne. As a musician myself I can't help feeling a great deal of affinity with the eight musicians of the Titanic, ordinary working men who when faced with certain death simply carried on doing what they did best, and arguably aided the survival of others in the process.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAZKpS_P5mBxkpXYJ78usjlx18SLKIJZwYJ21A4BbVYHX15o0hFlfQV3ZOBfunYZaiDJe9Z8qmpX5LFeIcriqIR_LRYFsOCzuqS1vDgovPEu61NAsXxVDRNLBat_s9dLWwErCB2JH1mqlC/s1600/P4061756.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhAZKpS_P5mBxkpXYJ78usjlx18SLKIJZwYJ21A4BbVYHX15o0hFlfQV3ZOBfunYZaiDJe9Z8qmpX5LFeIcriqIR_LRYFsOCzuqS1vDgovPEu61NAsXxVDRNLBat_s9dLWwErCB2JH1mqlC/s400/P4061756.JPG" width="400" /></a></div>
<br />
On a related matter, there is some doubt as to whether this hymn was in fact the last piece played by the band, and, even it was, which tune was used. The famous scene in the James Cameron film uses the tune 'Bethany', as do Titanic films made in 1943 and 1953, however the British adaptation <i>A Night To Remember</i> did not. This may simply be due to this tune being the most widely known in the United States and therefore the most obvious candidate to the producers. Hartley, being British and a Methodist, would probably have known only the tunes 'Horbury' and 'Propior Deo' - and 'Horbury' is in fact the tune engraved on the memorial (I love the carver's detail in including a key signature of Eb and harmony notes). Two survivors who maintained that the last piece played was the 'Song of Autumn' may therefore have confused this waltz with the 3/4 metre of the hymn tune (or else heard a different group of musicians on the ship). Whatever the melody, there is little doubt that at least five of the musicians were still playing as the ship went down, until the angle of the deck made it impossible to continue.<br />
<br />
The Titanic Engineers' Memorial is, as already mentioned, on a far grander scale and in a far more prominent location, opposite the Cenotaph. When I crossed the road from the Musicians' Memorial there was a moderately-sized group of visitors who had just got off a bus and were being given what was obviously part of a tour by some costumed guides. A bronze angel sits over a columned screen on which the names of the lost are recorded, all on a double plinth above the road level. I suppose it's only fair that a greater number of men who arguably provided a greater aid to survival (light and power as opposed to morale) get the larger memorial, and one which reflects the more physical nature of their work. 100,00 people are said to have attended its unveiling in 1914.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi54Vjh55tb2QULUjCJ6IPqwqN4XdCxLVrVMXXiSiqayz8U9YqyiSE9JMQ3_Od4C-kSka0gS2nkNQMW-ISmp3J2jt8UFhyvLuIlNYIK2Lup0FVIwjo5Q5wx1C0UEfIUESBCYbV7PAd7CMr1/s1600/P4061758.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi54Vjh55tb2QULUjCJ6IPqwqN4XdCxLVrVMXXiSiqayz8U9YqyiSE9JMQ3_Od4C-kSka0gS2nkNQMW-ISmp3J2jt8UFhyvLuIlNYIK2Lup0FVIwjo5Q5wx1C0UEfIUESBCYbV7PAd7CMr1/s400/P4061758.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Titanic Engineers' Memorial</td></tr>
</tbody></table>
Travelling down the Above Bar St (i.e. 'above the Bargate', the still-extant northern gate to the medieval city) the next memorial is dedicated to the crew - especially the firemen and stewards - and lies inside the ruined church of Holy Rood, also a victim of bombing in 1940. It was originally built funded by public subscriptions on Southampton Common but was moved inside the church in 1973, partly to protect it from vandalism and partly to re-enforce the church's status as a memorial to the Merchant Navy. A plaque to the post office staff on the ship remains in the High St Post Office, but being late on a bank holiday I didn't get a chance to get a look at this one.<br />
<br />
Reaching the waterfront (a spot I walked past on the Solent Way last time) the last spot of Titanic significance on this tour is Canute Chambers. A modern passer-by might note the Victorian style of the building, but without any trace of the company today they would be forgiven for missing that this, in 1912, was the headquarters of the White Star Line. It was here that <a href="http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3484/3234347715_3b5b634e02.jpg" target="_blank">anxious relatives crowded outside</a> for days after 15th April waiting for news of the survivors and lost. <a href="http://www.historytoday.com/sites/default/files/southampton.jpg" target="_blank">The company hung</a> large white sheets on the railings on which were written long lists of individuals, including separate lists of misspelt names, an occurrence which would be almost amusing if it were not so tragic.<br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="240" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=southampton&aq=&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=13.909932,28.256836&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Southampton,+United+Kingdom&t=m&layer=c&cbll=50.896978,-1.39413&panoid=IsZRxHafm6B7UT2_OhnR1w&cbp=13,202.95,,0,-4.06&ll=50.892111,-1.394148&spn=0.017,0.048237&z=14&output=svembed" width="425"></iframe><br /><small><a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&source=embed&hl=en&geocode=&q=southampton&aq=&sll=53.800651,-4.064941&sspn=13.909932,28.256836&ie=UTF8&hq=&hnear=Southampton,+United+Kingdom&t=m&layer=c&cbll=50.896978,-1.39413&panoid=IsZRxHafm6B7UT2_OhnR1w&cbp=13,202.95,,0,-4.06&ll=50.892111,-1.394148&spn=0.017,0.048237&z=14" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">View Larger Map</a></small><br />
<br />
It was by pure luck that I walked back through East Park and spotted what had been spray-painted on the central pathway and the grass around it. It took a few seconds to work out what the white lines made up - it's more obvious from the north end - but the eye-shaped ellipses in threes on either side turned out to be the giveaway. Whoever had gone round with the spray-can had clearly had a pretty good knowledge of the ship, as they'd marked the position of the keel sections, the lifeboats, funnels, staircases and even Captain Smith's cabin.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;">
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggQm6SUC5Lw2ur3TfjZgwol6zf8U0lM9sjpf_pLMbdWAsdSGG1aIBwcRqDVkbI8QdDaI9F4I6bwnsIjq_0bT0hNCHU-cYodh5YhA8uiHFOMw-RZVLQYO1WEDX-DrBtFQrfaTF7kGwBfs82/s1600/Image0049.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEggQm6SUC5Lw2ur3TfjZgwol6zf8U0lM9sjpf_pLMbdWAsdSGG1aIBwcRqDVkbI8QdDaI9F4I6bwnsIjq_0bT0hNCHU-cYodh5YhA8uiHFOMw-RZVLQYO1WEDX-DrBtFQrfaTF7kGwBfs82/s320/Image0049.jpg" width="320" /></a><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH5CLQFaNQxZs6BWoVdYRmmO5IlK9YesGq1rW1pxfWnKpVm36TO5E2mK3_OrC1-vdJ4weO11gTBo57CSY7PyhVYXwuI_VBtjcFgYPxXWXC6sdqlGEqYwkfgzgTYutpFrPMa_ngE3Zb0_yL/s1600/Image0052.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjH5CLQFaNQxZs6BWoVdYRmmO5IlK9YesGq1rW1pxfWnKpVm36TO5E2mK3_OrC1-vdJ4weO11gTBo57CSY7PyhVYXwuI_VBtjcFgYPxXWXC6sdqlGEqYwkfgzgTYutpFrPMa_ngE3Zb0_yL/s320/Image0052.jpg" width="240" /></a></div>
An American couple stood and admired the giant 'blueprints' as I took pictures as best I could. We both were surprised by just how massive the ship was (something it's rather difficult to convey photographically from a static ground-level viewpoint) even by modern standards, and this piece of temporary art was an excellent way of demonstrating this up-close.<br />
<br />
And yet...despite all this it still seems like the city is ignoring this particularly significant part of its heritage. I don't mean that the majority of residents will associate the mention of the ship's name with a fictitious love affair on the cinema screen (now in 3D, I notice) rather than the extraordinary proportions of either the ship or the loss of life, but more that the city's acknowledgement of any kind of history is a mess. Most people are ignorant of the existence of these memorials because they're tucked away, and not even in the way that lets you feel as if you've stumbled upon a hidden treasure. There is no proper focus to the past: the old town and its walls, which should be meticulously preserved in as close a condition to medieval times as practical, are occupied by crumbling structures and encroached by a faceless giant shopping mall and derelict land. The docks are a particularly sad case; the public excluded, characterful buildings razed to make way for plastic-y corporate offices or generic apartments or yet more endless avenues of containers. I'm not opposed to the fact it's still a working port instead of a tourist attraction, but the half-hearted attempt at concealing the waterfront means that it manages to be an eyesore without also having the interestingness of it being open enough to observe what's going on, and appreciate what drives the town's industry. Neither is this an attack on corporatism - Southampton owed its status in 1912 precisely to the success of large firms such as White Star and Cunard. In return they gave it prosperity and civic architecture and an identity. I hope, and I hope not in vain, that the new museum will be at least a small step toward putting right all that is wrong with the town. It could be a fine city where heritage is able to compliment modernity and a civic identity is forged from the needs of commerce and of aesthetics. For now, however, it isn't, and until then it will never be as memorable or significant a place as in 1912.<br />
<br />
Anyway, to finish on a positive note, we should at least be thankful that there are a number of commemorative events taking place in the current month, and that your author will not only be playing a prominent role in one in the coming days but intends to give a worthy blog entry about it. There will be Vaughan Williams...<br />
<br />
<div style="color: yellow;">
<br /></div>
<div style="color: yellow;">
*Although often referred to as the <i>RMS Titanic</i>, the ship was never officially a Royal Mail Steamer so is correctly named as an ordinary steamship.</div>Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-9381741083871338482012-04-04T20:29:00.000+01:002012-04-04T20:29:21.716+01:00The Solent Way: Part 1Yes, it's time for another epic/nearly epic ramble across some diverting part of southern England. Specifically, the Solent. Home turf. <strike>Mostly</strike> almost completely flat.<br />
<br />
<h3><b>Introduction: The geography bit</b></h3>It may be recalled that in the not-very-distant past I navigated the entire length of the River Itchen, a pleasant but otherwise unremarkable chalk stream that, as you may recall, wends its way from the hills a bit to the left of Winchester into the sea at Southampton. That description is broadly accurate apart from the last bit, because how the water from the Itchen ends up in the English Channel is actually a little more complicated than that and is responsible for the existence of the other footpath in the area. Southampton, you see, is also the dropping-off point for the River Test, and the end of the Itchen Way is actually at the point where the two rivers meet. The combination of the two watercourses and millennia of subsequent erosion to soft rock means that a massive inlet called Southampton Water lies to the south of the city and carries all the river flow out to the English Channel. Adding to the picture is the lozenge-shaped Isle of Wight, which sits right at the bottom of the estuary and creates a complicated pattern of tides up its two sides (one of the reasons Southampton is such a successful port, as it has so much high water). The main landmass of the island is skewed rather to the left (west) so that a large section its northern shore creates a sheltered channel between Calshot and Keyhaven, which is one clue to how all of what we see today formed. The other is the famous series of chalk stacks (and lighthouse) at the very western tip of the island known as The Needles. These line up so remarkably well with a similar band of chalk on the Isle of Purbeck, some miles along the coast, that looking from above it's quite obvious that these were once joined. In fact during the last Ice Age sea levels were much lower and the northern channel described above was once the mouth of a 'River Solent', part of which still exists as the River Frome. A narrower Southampton Water would have joined this just below where Selsey Bill is today and it would have been easy to walk across a now-vanished area of land from Purbeck to the Isle of Wight. In fact this appears to have been possible (albeit with wet feet) until a few millennia ago, as Roman buildings have been found in the sea near Yarmouth. At the end of the Ice Age, both glacial meltwater and the interesting process of glacial rebound uplift causing the bottom of Britain to sink flooded the river valley and eroded the chalk, creating what we see today. If this isn't making much sense, here's a (very) not to scale map illustrating the gist of the last paragraph:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKsRRuFhU5-sqZm_70zsm09VVDH3HzQfRoQCfTY9G85cyQMgaAX1Y_wwWx-osZBvxCoNwVJej_ZbMgSReWh3ems0CSWvD7ut-YGzfUTe_e-ljEe2IX6IYAXyXc14f8fS2m_kyU7FfHI29C/s1600/Solent+map.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="141" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhKsRRuFhU5-sqZm_70zsm09VVDH3HzQfRoQCfTY9G85cyQMgaAX1Y_wwWx-osZBvxCoNwVJej_ZbMgSReWh3ems0CSWvD7ut-YGzfUTe_e-ljEe2IX6IYAXyXc14f8fS2m_kyU7FfHI29C/s400/Solent+map.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<h3><b>So, where are we going to go?</b></h3><br />
The boundaries of the Solent aren't officially defined; it is generally reckoned to be the mainland shore that roughly corresponds to that of the Isle of Wight. However, the boundaries of the <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solent_Way">Solent Way</a> are very specifically designed to meet up with the Bournemouth Coast Path at one end and the Sussex Border Path at the other, meaning the trail can act as one link in the UK section of the E9 Long-Distance Path. This is a massive 5000km series of paths (not all open as of 2012) up the entire northern coast of Europe, from Cabo de São Vicente in Portugal to Narva-Jõesuu in Estonia. We're going to be taking in the less giddying prospect of a 63-mile journey from Milford-on-Sea to Emsworth, which involves traversing most of the waterside around Southampton Water and a bit on either side facing out into the sea. Along the way we'll pass the harbour villages of Lymington and Keyhaven, the New Forest, an oil refinery, beaches, military installations, the cities of Southampton and Portsmouth and the mud flats of Langstone. Plus quite a lot of boats. And some hovercrafts. <br />
<br />
Obviously, the entirely logical thing to do is to start in the middle:<br />
<br />
<h3><span style="font-size: large;">Southampton to Hamble (10 miles)</span></h3><br />
The Itchen Way does not have a clearly defined end at Woolston. It just sort-of becomes the Solent Way, shrugging that the river has finished and deciding to merge into a coastal walking route. But there's a little bit of it we need to do before we can reach this point, and that's to start at where we will eventually return by ferry from an earlier stage.<br />
<br />
The Hythe Ferry will deposit us right into the middle of Southampton, at Town Quay, which used to be a proper working quay with docks and stevedores swearing and smugglers smuggling and men in flat tweed caps rehearsing sentences starting with 'back in maa day...'. After years of use, then several of disuse, in the 1980s it acquired a car park at the end and some swanky new UPVC-clad buildings, including a Beafeater and various offices and bars, although seems not to be particularly lively these days. Still, it's quite handy to have the ferry deposit passengers here, as it means one can get straight back to walking the Solent Way from Hythe, having missed out about 15 miles otherwise needed to get round the mouth of the River Test.<br />
<br />
<iframe frameborder="0" height="350" marginheight="0" marginwidth="0" scrolling="no" src="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=50.894805,-1.406937&spn=0.003289,0.013797&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.894503,-1.406286&panoid=jMNvx0Awnh3vllue5OLZTw&cbp=12,353.25,,0,-1.96&source=embed&output=svembed" width="425"></iframe><br />
<small><a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ie=UTF8&ll=50.894805,-1.406937&spn=0.003289,0.013797&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.894503,-1.406286&panoid=jMNvx0Awnh3vllue5OLZTw&cbp=12,353.25,,0,-1.96&source=embed" style="color: blue; text-align: left;">View Larger Map</a></small> <br />
<br />
Southampton's docks will be more fully covered in a future leg, as on this particular day the main focus of my interest would actually be departing from them and following, albeit several hundreds yards offshore, the route of The Way (makes it sound kinda' mystical, huh?). This was the <a href="http://www.cunard.co.uk/Ships/Queen-Elizabeth/"><i>Queen Elizabeth</i></a>, Cunard's latest cruise liner (something which instantly dates this trip to quite some time in the past) which would be making its maiden voyage out into the world from the same berth (give or take) as the <i>Titanic</i> did, hopefully with a somewhat lengthier career afterwards. There's not a particularly good view of the whole ship from anywhere other than the end of Town Quay - walking along Canute Road past the dock gates the view is largely obscured, thanks to Associated British Ports' public-spirited habit of grabbing all the available waterfront land and peppering it with warehouses, cranes and fences. I will concede that the ship was <i>so</i> bonking enormous this didn't matter much unless you were desperate for a view of the black expanse of hull over that of the decks and funnel, but the point remains.<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA5W9MWx-t59I78hb-uRwZUXpXYrMF-W5lf75j76tl1hzIsUjnQcLVPuVUFNGPlsknf0978erIWqRdq6Bi8DvYZJftwdW2oVhsKDk2QtBgRz1H2XhQqGUauO41xQI_ztLHuOVVXgUCHVFW/s1600/Queen+Elizabeth+moored.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="131" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiA5W9MWx-t59I78hb-uRwZUXpXYrMF-W5lf75j76tl1hzIsUjnQcLVPuVUFNGPlsknf0978erIWqRdq6Bi8DvYZJftwdW2oVhsKDk2QtBgRz1H2XhQqGUauO41xQI_ztLHuOVVXgUCHVFW/s400/Queen+Elizabeth+moored.jpg" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;"><br />
</td></tr>
</tbody></table>The path crosses Dock Gate Four and then a level crossing, which used to be traversed quite regularly by boat trains and dock shunters (another line branched off and ran along the road to Town Quay, believe it or not) and still sees regular auto trains taking new cars and vans off to the rest of the country. I have no idea if any car I've ever owned arrived this way, but it would be nice to think so. More interesting is the building opposite, South Western House, for this was once the main terminus station in the town, and a glorious, solid Victorian structure it remains, even retaining the green-strutted roof that once covered the platforms (and is now, with wearying predictability, a car park). It was a logical place for trains to terminate, of course, as the docks were so close. You can <i>almost</i> still imagine the smell of steam trains, ladies in elegant frocks and barefoot young lads in clogs running after the tram (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=50.897173,-1.397281&spn=0.003289,0.013797&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.897014,-1.397515&panoid=PglE4TIMhZT8uM6bGhzn6Q&cbp=12,81.74,,0,-5.88">Street View</a>, although not containing Edwardians).<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv4mS5uZQGYqWY_k7vVf1CjKPkbXjk9y35KCPhQNkI8_BILGd1cf76mgm2eCc21N0W5oWQ82dpNx9O8oi7X_GU78pKJ_xrNz5967XlduvsfWdcwm09mRfcRu8LCxh0m2YFXuyd4U5GWw9_/s1600/PA121032.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjv4mS5uZQGYqWY_k7vVf1CjKPkbXjk9y35KCPhQNkI8_BILGd1cf76mgm2eCc21N0W5oWQ82dpNx9O8oi7X_GU78pKJ_xrNz5967XlduvsfWdcwm09mRfcRu8LCxh0m2YFXuyd4U5GWw9_/s320/PA121032.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>After some dreary modern apartments the Way suddenly climbs a flight of steps on to the Itchen Bridge. It forms a long and surprisingly elegant curve over the river, given that essentially it represents an essay on the wonders of modular concrete construction. What preceded it was wonderful in its idiosyncrasy, a '<a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolston_Floating_Bridge">floating bridge</a>' chain ferry, fondly remembered by older Southampton residents and with its last incarnation still extant as a restaurant on the Hamble River. It was even <a href="http://www.btinternet.com/%7Eanthony.seaton/FLOATINGBRIDGE.JPG">painted</a> by L S Lowry in 1956, using his trademark hurrying stick-figure style. By the 1970s this was considered inadequate to carry the levels of motor traffic of the day (particularly buses which had to make the detour upstream to Northam Bridge to cross the river) and so a toll bridge was erected, towering over the river as the highest construction in the city up to that point. The city council have kept rather quiet about the exact date at which the tolls collected were equal to the cost of the bridge, finding it more convenient just to carry on charging for the privilege of driving from the City to Woolston. I, however, could cross completely free on foot, which had the added bonus of a good view of the <i>Queen Elizabeth</i> still being readied to set sail. There is a rather dense concentration of Samaritans phone numbers up here, complimenting the alarmingly minimalist guard rails. It's a bit windy too, and it has been known for double-decker buses to be diverted in heavy weather conditions. Uphill one side , downhill the other (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=50.898865,-1.38711&spn=0.003289,0.013797&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.898802,-1.386822&panoid=pV8KW5C3C22flWNCo5ToCw&cbp=12,0.42,,0,0.84">Street View</a>, and <a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=50.898865,-1.382926&spn=0.003289,0.013797&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.898862,-1.38292&panoid=djOTFBX2qCikqNnJxHDjGg&cbp=12,114.43,,0,3.22">again</a>).<br />
<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Jh-iYR0Y4o6oBpH_47R2_CUUCCqcxxV1tyJcH_imEnIKQvLnYtVIlkLzjA7UMXP-6Xaf_6VG6fznsLtnff4X4ip4pB6f2cGYO4RB4IjSJZxZysZws1bSAp7nd86xKoTKsiGPWu3O792D/s1600/PA121031.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj0Jh-iYR0Y4o6oBpH_47R2_CUUCCqcxxV1tyJcH_imEnIKQvLnYtVIlkLzjA7UMXP-6Xaf_6VG6fznsLtnff4X4ip4pB6f2cGYO4RB4IjSJZxZysZws1bSAp7nd86xKoTKsiGPWu3O792D/s320/PA121031.JPG" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">On the Itchen Bridge</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Safely on the other side (suicides and gusts of wind are the least of the potential hazards up there, especially after dark), Woolston (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=50.897972,-1.379728&spn=0.003289,0.013797&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.897991,-1.379037&panoid=LGl1ZHvBeFNFs7yssFwfdg&cbp=12,218.19,,0,-1.4">Street View</a>) has retained a rather industrial character even with the removal of the Vosper Thornycroft ship factory at the quayside. There's still - <i>still</i> - an vast and embarrassingly empty plot of prime riverside land up for grabs here, which at one point was in line for an ambitious plan involving glass towers and a multi-faith library (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=50.895333,-1.381767&spn=0.003289,0.013797&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.895331,-1.381769&panoid=az3nXMHayLBIGFII0Y4jfw&cbp=12,307.79,,0,0.7">Street View</a>). At present its progress has reached the extent of about thirty houses and a new road. We've covered most of this before in the Itchen Way, so we shall jump ahead a few hundred yards down the road to the point where we turn the corner onto a proper expanse of water again at Weston Shore. Weston (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=50.885086,-1.37018&spn=0.00329,0.013797&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.88448,-1.369177&panoid=TSn_IbKOQXnyG8-lGXbN9A&cbp=12,258.8,,0,-0.7">Street View</a>) isn't a particularly nice area inland, but luckily the tower blocks (scheduled for demolition, and not a moment too soon) are segregated from the shore by some trees and a long expanse of lawn, on which has been erected some quasi-artistic benches. They're a little difficult to describe, but sort of naturally rise out of the turf and contain snatches of poetry or descriptions of birds. There is a beach of sorts here, although it's shingle and mud, not sand, and the water has an awful lot of marine diesel, seaweed and other nasties in it. There was a sizeable ribbon of people gathered on the shingle to watch the QE go out, but it wasn't moving yet so I pressed on, past play areas and concrete shelters to where the 'coastal road' goes through some woods although the path stays by the water. At this point there was a noise like a thousand trombones in an echo chamber as the biggest hooter within a fifty-mile radius boomed over the water.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWhhka_Xyo4Xk2_agzGmcAtLoSt3hCJsPg3d2JWNmEWj9srhgtanRikKsvMDw1KZotcFtjfxjjAVI3WyiEIknngzbZJOhNXJ6PFPdpyrdw8y7MaRBVZbbGcgW7JVIGQKWjlR6HudinF7X-/s1600/PA121068.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: right; float: right; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: 1em;"><img border="0" height="240" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWhhka_Xyo4Xk2_agzGmcAtLoSt3hCJsPg3d2JWNmEWj9srhgtanRikKsvMDw1KZotcFtjfxjjAVI3WyiEIknngzbZJOhNXJ6PFPdpyrdw8y7MaRBVZbbGcgW7JVIGQKWjlR6HudinF7X-/s320/PA121068.JPG" width="320" /></a></div>Many of pairs of binoculars and camera lenses turned to fix upon the silhouette of the docks, which unfortunately obscured the ship behind a car park and a pair of giant grain silos. I found a convenient spot at the end of a slipway to the shore, and by this time the Queen Elizabeth had rounded the bottom of the docks and was providing an unexpected photo opportunity for commuters on the Isle of Wight ferry. The huge ship slowly processed down the Solent accompanied by yachts and small boats until twenty minutes later it had become a small silhouette rounding the Isle of Wight. I have to conclude that it was somewhat less elegant than its <a href="http://www.ocean-liners.com/ships/queenelizabeth.asp">namesake of old</a>, rather more in the 'floating block of flats' style utilised by the majority of modern cruising vessels. I'd moved on by the time it had disappeared.<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"></div><div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjAJNjQTOYJnRO4wjd_mpn644vGnU1OHxDzqKgj2T36h7rYijQztdsVbaeU1dnC9e3gIavZPOx7nhac6o-kHHNuMot6BMRnTFUI66cGFRrV8CNXD7CjwK9pscFsBveLmvsOp0EfsRgiOMq/s1600/PB151162.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="320" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhjAJNjQTOYJnRO4wjd_mpn644vGnU1OHxDzqKgj2T36h7rYijQztdsVbaeU1dnC9e3gIavZPOx7nhac6o-kHHNuMot6BMRnTFUI66cGFRrV8CNXD7CjwK9pscFsBveLmvsOp0EfsRgiOMq/s320/PB151162.JPG" width="240" /></a></div>The next settlement, Netley, is a pleasant village with one main street along the waterside and into the country park at the other end (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=50.870166,-1.351211&spn=0.00325,0.013797&t=m&z=16&layer=c&cbll=50.870133,-1.351215&panoid=VKE7RrdyRR8jIIh1pEpQlg&cbp=12,163.2,,0,5.74">Street View</a>). I used to come here a lot as a child, motivated by the possibility of either riding my bike down the slope or, later, breaking numerous bamboo rods in attempting to fly a kite. There's a Victorian church with an octagonal tower standing in the middle of the large lawn, which seems a rather odd entity unless you know what this place used to be (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=50.866966,-1.340826&spn=0.000206,0.000862&t=h&z=20&layer=c&cbll=50.866966,-1.340826&panoid=ghZund6XaB1dns1VtEEv7w&cbp=12,219.72,,0,-6.72">Street View</a>). It's actually the last remaining part of a huge <a href="http://www.historyinanhour.com/2011/05/03/netley-queen-victorias-great-hospital/">military hospital</a> which <a href="http://www.scarletfinders.co.uk/5.html">treated patients</a> from the Boer War up to the Second World War, and had its own railway station and cemetery to service this function. The wings were removed in 1966 leaving just the central chapel standing, overlooking the water at the bottom of a slope. I keep meaning to go up the dome but so far have never had a visit coincide with it being open. Ah well, there is still time. <br />
<br />
Having passed through the country park and yacht club, the next bit is rather nondescript shingle with woodland to the left and water to the right. Across the water is Fawley, a word which, locally, isn't used to signify the town. Instead it describes the far more massive oil refinery and power station that sits on the opposite bank of the Solent and, more controversially, on the edge of the New Forest. Indeed, when we come to walk the section on this side, the complex occupies so much land that the Solent Way doesn't even bother to rejoin the shore after heading inland to cross the Beaulieu River, but cuts across the Forest to Hythe. Piers jut out into the water allowing tankers of <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/nja/2692243432/in/set-72157606307872146/">various sizes</a> (although not the biggest supertankers, of course) to pump their eye-wateringly valuable cargo into the many storage tanks onshore. I find it slightly disagreeable that this industrial hinterland exists right next to an outstandingly beautiful area of medieval forest ('New' is relative), but at the same time there was something quite arresting about the equally awesome forest of <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/d_wheatley/3794803053/in/photostream/">towers</a> and <a href="http://www.flickr.com/photos/22754880@N02/2438723641/">spires</a> and pipelines and storage tanks, particularly near sunset when all the marker lights and floodlights were on and the massive vapour stack smudged into a clear sky. Is it trite to suggest that this place is a cathedral to our worship of oil, and even majestic in its apocalyptic desolation, full of fire and smoke and metal and black gold?<br />
<table align="center" cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto; text-align: center;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4gKjUDql2x2TSTGo_HVyF-kmsYLRSsU8MEmKTTEGKjHgAvzuPaCG5C8uGuusKM6ZJGH_zez0ecj5UdI1rm4fTMiMnjPuTuYmJO0PE37Wy0r1IbBtZoiv0fnzjPo11AZzTtYiV25cqvNWY/s1600/PB151168.JPG" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg4gKjUDql2x2TSTGo_HVyF-kmsYLRSsU8MEmKTTEGKjHgAvzuPaCG5C8uGuusKM6ZJGH_zez0ecj5UdI1rm4fTMiMnjPuTuYmJO0PE37Wy0r1IbBtZoiv0fnzjPo11AZzTtYiV25cqvNWY/s400/PB151168.JPG" width="400" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">Insert environmentalist slogan here</td></tr>
</tbody></table>Viewed from above (see <a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=50.829117,-1.361039&spn=0.007251,0.013797&t=k&z=16">Google Maps</a>) the storage tanks, with tops in various states of corrosion, appear more than anything like a set of giant paint pots containing shades of red, brown, blue, grey, black, yellow, or green where they have been removed and grass springs up.<br />
<br />
Approaching Hamble, there's a much smaller oil terminal on our side of the water, and the Solent Way is shoehorned up a narrow boardwalk underneath a pier, also containing several massive oil pipes. Up ahead is a white spattering like an Impressionist painting, of yachts parked in the river Hamble, and an area of semi-beach with sandy grasses and woods behind. It's through these woods I go to reach the village proper, and emerge out of a narrow lane in the main street (<a href="http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?ll=50.858789,-1.316128&spn=0.014493,0.027595&t=m&z=15&layer=c&cbll=50.858863,-1.316164&panoid=eRwcLr3NBp24zXwTVQAT7Q&cbp=12,67.05,,0,0.98">Street View</a>). As this ends at the riverside in a loop the place is literally a dead-end town, although this is hardly appropriate given that the town is really quite moneyed. It's also a place where a large part of the economy revolves around boats. Down a slope at the marina is the yacht club, where I played a quartet gig whilst a sixth-former, and the pier that form the terminal for the Hamble-Warsash Ferry, which is where I will resume the trail next time.Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-86055109931277747012012-03-18T22:48:00.000+00:002012-03-18T22:48:19.083+00:00NeolexiaThings for which terms should exist, but don't:<br />
<br />
<ul><li>The manoeuvre made by horn players whereby the instrument is spun around its centre axis several times until the condensation within dribbles out of the bell onto the floor.</li>
<li>The exaggerated follow-through gesture all string players, but notably cellists, make with their right hand after a pizzicato. There are varying degrees of this.</li>
<li>The dirty bit of the bow hair right next to the frog, which never sees either rosin or contact with a string.</li>
<li>That thing oboists and clarinettists do to clear water from a key, namely inserting a roll-your-own paper and blowing through the instrument in a faintly immature manner.</li>
<li>The duuu-yurrrrr-yumm bell-curve glissando commonly found in cockney music whenever trombones are involved.</li>
<li>The conductor's gesture of tapping the stick three times on the stand to get the musicians to shut up.</li>
<li>That quasi-arpeggio pattern of pitches trumpeters always do at the start of rehearsal.</li>
<li>The experience of only being able to play a rapid passage of notes correctly when one doesn't realise one is doing so.</li>
<li>The thing string quartet players (usually the leader) do where they nearly-but-not-quite jump up from their seat during moments of excitement.</li>
<li>A particularly necessary one: the layouts where the strings are laid out Vln1-Vln2-Vla-Vcl or Vln1-Vcl-Vla-Vln2. I use 'new/modern layout' and 'old/proper layout' in conversation but this can often confuse folks who have only ever seen the former.</li>
<li>The film canisters wind players carry and always have to go to the lavatories and fill with water to soak their reeds in.</li>
<li>The person who places the conductor's score, open at the first page, on the stand before a performance.</li>
<li>The person who presents the soloist with flowers (women) or booze (men).</li>
<li>A person who claps in the wrong place at the end of Sibelius Five.</li>
</ul>Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-53735717071394738092012-02-29T18:41:00.000+00:002012-02-29T18:41:23.955+00:00Don't play it again, SamI get through a fair amount of piano music these days, with the various choirs, accompanying and other engagements I have. Inevitably, one comes across things in piano music which are a little less than appropriate for the instrument, and so it's worth sharing a few to show that even the greats get it wrong sometimes. <br />
<br />
At the risk of stating the obvious (which seems to be happening with increasing frequency on this blog), it is worth setting out clearly and briefly how the pianoforte works: The player presses down the keys and holds them there for the required duration of the note. This causes various components to move, releasing the damping mechanism and striking a hammer against the string(s), setting it ringing until the dampers are allowed to move back into place. What this means is that the <b>only</b> things the player can actually control are:<br />
<ol><li>The velocity at which the key is initially struck, and thereby the volume and tone of the note;</li>
<li>The duration of the note;</li>
<li>Whether a pedal is used to add or reduce resonance.</li>
</ol>And that's it! The player cannot control the note after it has been sounded, cannot alter the decay of the vibrating string, and cannot alter the volume in mid-pitch. With all this in mind, let's take a look at a few examples of absent-minded piano writing. <br />
<br />
The first is this, from Dvorák's otherwise delightful Sonatina, Op.100:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrmMwEExC78lCZp3F-AO_2dIOz1QQRgo72mcZc_kR_v7dSxsSfy8GsLOoB5eASFE35d23Bz2TskraosDrF5onQnyDnu4PGqI6uSIwHGH60vM5G16mgXdYi42oGsw40abDHgufwwuJvRnwa/s1600/Dvorak+fp.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrmMwEExC78lCZp3F-AO_2dIOz1QQRgo72mcZc_kR_v7dSxsSfy8GsLOoB5eASFE35d23Bz2TskraosDrF5onQnyDnu4PGqI6uSIwHGH60vM5G16mgXdYi42oGsw40abDHgufwwuJvRnwa/s200/Dvorak+fp.jpg" width="186" /></a></div><br />
Now that's just stupid, isn't it? As we've explained above, the note cannot be altered once it has been struck. So to expect the player to suddenly reduce the volume or the piano's natural decay to drop suddenly but then level off to produce this effect is silly. I have tried suddenly releasing the pedal but the resulting change in volume is mostly wishful thinking. I suppose what Dvorák was trying to show was that the pianist should be sensitive to the violin's <b style="font-family: Times,"Times New Roman",serif;"><i>fp</i></b> when playing the E minor chord, but the fact remains that they can see it in the violin part above, and the effect is unplayable.<br />
<br />
Sibelius next, and this from his own transcription of Finlandia:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSmAK84Ww5gHHHwNxa24CiI7hQYuYhkLwqxzx1Cpou7iIFymsYV6aEhJGeIzPFdbakvTdafw8wWQmxEiuBJTreQLfBE2IqSKABhM4K-CBaanSF_t9L1peoYpcawtau2boe37FhL3aBqUXS/s1600/Finlandia+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="197" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhSmAK84Ww5gHHHwNxa24CiI7hQYuYhkLwqxzx1Cpou7iIFymsYV6aEhJGeIzPFdbakvTdafw8wWQmxEiuBJTreQLfBE2IqSKABhM4K-CBaanSF_t9L1peoYpcawtau2boe37FhL3aBqUXS/s320/Finlandia+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></div><br />
Now, this is not necessarily an error. A pianist <i>can</i> play repeated notes quite rapidly (viz. Rachmaninov's celebrated Op.23 No.5 prelude) but it is inadvisable to write this many in succession, and not as a four-finger chord, especially bearing in mind the tempo of this passage. What makes it particularly fair game to criticise this, however, is that less than twenty bars later he writes the eminently more sensible:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRgM2u33WiH4ZhrAHfc3qMtoAhahYX6HqQwhuJGsAGSMQQixibSHqLQL-o5SNWP8t_qo8CB7DQH4GOYmxZXao8zYKwNs5cORD8wFAHJdHG3sgaLdW7umubfMyiRZp22wlxcNhR0ldLgegL/s1600/Finlandia+2.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjRgM2u33WiH4ZhrAHfc3qMtoAhahYX6HqQwhuJGsAGSMQQixibSHqLQL-o5SNWP8t_qo8CB7DQH4GOYmxZXao8zYKwNs5cORD8wFAHJdHG3sgaLdW7umubfMyiRZp22wlxcNhR0ldLgegL/s1600/Finlandia+2.jpg" /></a></div><br />
The texture in the orchestral score this is derived from (trumpets, heavy brass) is near-identical in both bars, so it's not even necessary to differentiate between contrasting timbres. The second version also reproduces the slight variation between chords one would hear from an orchestral brass section. <br />
<i><br />
</i><br />
<i>Actually, I am loath to lay into this too much, as it's an otherwise fantastic transcription and actually reveals many details which are often overlooked in orchestral performances of this work. Particularly striking is the variety of articulation markings in the central 'big tune', which may seem slightly odd in view of the lovely, but bland, legato lines so often heard. There are also some dissonances which add interesting passing colour, yet are hardly noticeable when orchestrated. Most of all, apart from the above example, the transcription is gloriously </i><i>pianistic. Not a small number of the articulations just mentioned correspond perfectly with where the fingers might need to leave the note early in order for the hand to move, and correct balence in chords and accompaniment figures is easy to achieve. Watch a better performance than I can currently produce here:<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaogrOWfnb8">http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaogrOWfnb8</a> (and he nails the repeated semis three times!)</i><br />
<br />
Finally, a variety of piano parts for various pop songs, 'musical theatre' and show numbers. A lot of this music features successive complex chords - that is, damn near <i>everything</i> has a seventh or ninth or sus 6 added to it, resulting in waves of modal tone clusters which have to be splodged with the right hand (the left hand, meanwhile, usually plays some variant on successive parallel fifths to give the chords some semblance of having a pitch centre). I'm sorry if this is all a bit subjective and value-judgement-y, but I play a fair bit of this music and apart from finding it rather derivative and sentimental, it seems to completely disregard the principles of harmony and chord progression found in most tonal music. The constant addition of extra tones to chords and the copious amounts of pedal required means the music is often just a mush of the same notes in different combinations ('all the white keys, all the time!') and lacks the variation in tension between degrees of dissonance. <br />
<br />
Most of all, this results in some highly un-pianistic flailing about in order to play every single chord, because it seems making the notes lie at least reasonably under the hands just will not do. A number from <i>Wicked</i> I've been doing with somebody recently has actually been harder to learn than the Polonaise from the <i>Goldberg Variations</i>, because despite its speed and hand-crossings, the Bach falls under logical fingering patterns and uses only one note per hand at a time. I realise much of this music is guitar-based, and these chords probably present themselves as relatively elementary if you have six strings and frets, but the piano is also pretty common in pop and stage music and thus should be written for accordingly. The fact that sheet music includes chord symbols as well as a written-out realisation (note to self: future blog post on similarities between this an baroque continuo) doesn't really make it any easier to play, as I seem to spend as much time groping for <i>Cm sus2 (no third)</i> as I would for some blobs on the lines.<br />
<br />
Just as an example, consider the following. I need four fingers to play the first chord, and it seems logical to use 1,2,3,4 on it in order to use 5 on the semiquaver that follows. But reaching the chord on beat 2 is problematic. I'm now stuck with lifting the hand over my weakest and shortest finger to play the chord, making it impossible to have the fingers ready for it and make a smooth transition. Using another finger would break the legato between the first chord and the semiquaver. About the best I can do in performance is shown on the right:<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyQI0gVNyXJ9_9IFWMZp50TzzHTvbo6KAH8fw9OlOTcxEnFG2CJwhCdBqDuNeT6Ge-Kfe98aTeruP0LPNHMNr8X_MnKD-bjMONPrlpwAO2EY3QLf2Vw0fzy5sxnZbcpCJSfuI63FQMeIBi/s1600/Mushy+chord.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhyQI0gVNyXJ9_9IFWMZp50TzzHTvbo6KAH8fw9OlOTcxEnFG2CJwhCdBqDuNeT6Ge-Kfe98aTeruP0LPNHMNr8X_MnKD-bjMONPrlpwAO2EY3QLf2Vw0fzy5sxnZbcpCJSfuI63FQMeIBi/s1600/Mushy+chord.jpg" /></a></div><br />
If the extra A were omitted, I could move the hand easily and play three acceptably smooth chords. As it stands, I risk playing a wrong chord entirely, due to having to scramble to get the little finger out of the way, and grab the third chord as quickly as I can, whilst using the pedal exactly for the purpose I was told <i>not</i> to by my piano teacher. There is simply no good fingering here.<br />
<br />
But I'm 'classically trained'. What do I know?Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-76852603434974360902012-02-07T18:21:00.000+00:002012-02-07T18:21:13.673+00:00The myth of elitism: Part 1<div style="color: #e69138;"><i>In this series of posts, I hope to demonstrate that the accusation that classical/concert music is 'elitist' is largely a myth and to propose some of the reasons why it persists. In this first entry, several accusations commonly raised in the public sphere are rebutted.</i></div><br />
<div style="color: #cfe2f3;"><b><i>Performances are governed by draconian rules regarding social etiquette.</i></b></div>Those 'rules' being: be quiet when the action's going on and (usually) don't applaud between movements. Not much to ask really, as it's little more than an extension of normal courtesy. Exactly the same as for the theatre; the cinema; the minute or two minutes' silence for war commemorations; the memorial silences that seem increasingly common at the start of sporting matches; listening to any kind of speech or lecture; school classrooms; meetings; exams; funerals; watching snooker, golf, archery, shooting, chess and tennis matches; when an infant is asleep; and numerous other occasions. I suspect this taps into a deeper paranoia inherent in modern culture: we don't like being told what to do, we don't like being told our affairs are less important than something else, and we have a skewed idea of what actually deserves our respect. But is it really too much to ask that you don't make unnecessary noise when the guy performing for you is working so hard?<br />
<b><br />
</b><br />
<div style="color: #cfe2f3;"><b><i>Music is a pastime of the rich/'posh' people and is not 'accessible'</i></b></div>I have a pet theory that this is a self-fulfilling prophecy and influences public opinion simply because people keep crowing this tired line. Surely not for financial reasons? Show me a pop festival that lasts for two months and at whose every concert you can get within ten feet of its stars for a fiver. Show me how many record labels offer eighty minutes of music for £6, how many bands offer a student scheme for concerts with a generous discount, and how many of them also allow their gigs to be broadcast free of charge on public radio and over the internet. How much pop music is available out of copyright for free on the internet and has a massive online library to facilitate this? How many professional bands are subsidised by arts organisations in order to keep ticket costs realistic? <br />
<br />
There is no actual good reason why concert-going and music-making <i>need</i> be the preserve of the wealthy or the upper-class (not that this is even the case anyhow). Plenty of young people go to concerts at the moment, and by 'young' we do actually mean under-35's, including students and teenagers, and by 'concerts' we do actually mean the sit-down-and-hear Beethoven-and-Sibelius type, not 'classical club nights' as have been on the offering in London lately. Admittedly a great amount of 'art' music was originally commissioned by wealthy patrons, but that hasn't stopped its successful presentation to mass audiences for a period of over 200 years. Notwithstanding facts such as the huge number of people who attended Beethoven's funeral, concert music has had genuine popular appeal and genuine influence in recent times. To take just a few examples: the 'message' of Shostakovich's Fifth and Seventh symphonies to Soviet audiences; Rostropovich's impromptu performance of Bach as the Berlin Wall came down and Bernstein's Beethoven that followed it, with the words changed; and projects such as El Sistema and the East-Western Divan Orchestra. Importantly, it does not seem to take sides based on political persuasion or salary-level either. A recent account of the unlikely friendship between Occupy New York protesters and attendees at a performance of Philip Glass' <i>Satyagraha</i> at the Met drew the following from its author: 'the repeated myth of opera being elitist is one of the greatest lies of modern consumerist culture'. The fact that Philip Glass, classical composer, stood up and made a speech in support of the protest, at the risk of arrest, is surely the single biggest disproof of the 'elitist' myth to result from this happening. <br />
<br />
Finally, exactly the same accusation can be levelled at many other cultural artefacts. To take two examples, 'Gangsta' rap relies on a knowledge of a culture the fine detail of which is unknown to the majority of people, with its own dialect and - frankly fairly misogynistic and objectionable - subject matter. <i>The Wire</i>, a massively popular and (quite rightly) lauded television series, which is largely set within this culture, makes no concessions to the lack of specialist knowledge of its viewers and presents them with plot threads approaching the complexity of counterpoint, yet is accepted as being part of popular culture due to its subject matter and the form of its media. Surely both these examples demonstrate the inconsistency of the accusation - if elitism means excluding those without sufficient knowledge of the cultural artefact in question, I think these examples would qualify as much as Bach or Beethoven supposedly do. <br />
<br />
<div style="color: #cfe2f3;"><b><i>Only the rich can afford instrumental lessons for their children.</i></b></div>My response to this is two-pronged: First, learning anything costs money. Do we regard learning to drive as elitist because of the costs involved? What about electric guitar and other 'pop' instruments' lessons? Second, if you are lucky there was, and still is, public funding for music education, so anyone who objects to individuals' financial situations causing 'elitism' in this way should really blame the accountants and politicians who sanction cuts to music services. <br />
<br />
<div style="color: #cfe2f3;"><b><i>Classical musicians are snobs.</i></b></div>Some, perhaps, but the majority are just trying to earn a living doing something they actually like (we'll ignore for now those rank-and-file second violinists who 'gave up music years ago') and have the training for. They have the same degree of work concerns as the rest of us - and often the additional burdens of hectic travel schedules and self-assessment tax returns - tempered by the satisfaction of producing a good performance. The fact that some may ignore pop culture because they don't have time for it is not a personality fault and should not be regarded as a superiority complex. A brilliant essay by Aldous Huxley ('On Snobbery') points out that an individual can be a snob about almost anything - and also be a snob about not being/having something, too. As an aside, I do not recall ever being tailgated by an aggressive second clarinettist who believes the new BMW his employer has just paid £35,000 for makes him a superior species to everyone else. <br />
<br />
<div style="color: #cfe2f3;"><b><i>Culture of the past is not relevant to today's populace.</i></b></div>A slightly more considered accusation. And yet still wrong. Firstly, it stems from the mistaken belief that people in the past were more genteel, or more intellectual, or were somehow profoundly different in taste and mentality to today. History suggests that they weren't. Most good jokes from the last thousand years are still funny today, because our sense of humour hasn't changed. (It also begs the question as to why 'intellectual' music should be more popular in the past when the average standard of education today is astronomically higher). Secondly, although not universally adored, it would be foolish to think that modern society has no interest in the culture of antiquity. A television adaptation of an Austin or Dickens novel, or <i>Downton Abbey</i>, will draw an audience of millions. <i>The History Channel</i> is a viable commercial entity as are cultural documentaries on other channels. British Museum exhibitions frequently come close to selling out. Shakespeare seems to still be doing well as a crowd-puller. In any case, great art can, and should, be able to stand even outside of the period it was written in. I do not see that it is really necessary to have more than a rudimentary understanding of eighteenth-century culture to enjoy, say, Mozart's <i>music</i> on its own.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #cfe2f3;"><b><i>Nasty squeaky atonal music is where is all went wrong. Classical musicians only have themselves to blame. </i></b></div>Yes, if those modern composers hadn't been so selfish and instead had kept writing nice tunes it wouldn't have come to this, would it? I sense a whiff of shifting the goalposts here. On the one hand the music is accused of being old-fashioned, out of touch, not relevant to the times; and yet when it moves with the times (and serialism and its children probably did genuinely reflect the cultural mood of the times - hell, they invented eugenics and nukes in the same period) it's still not good enough. To be fair, I suppose there is some truth in this accusation; all the serialists safely tucked away in government-subsidised university departments could ignore public tastes and even act with outright hostility to them, which wasn't exactly endearing. However today's contemporary composers are working in a massively diverse range of styles and influences. In any case, there is comparatively little public rejection of equal doses of dissonance in such fields as cinema (where, ironically, grindingly dissonant music is not only accepted but near-essential to horror genres) and the visual arts.<br />
<div style="color: #cfe2f3;"><br />
</div><div style="color: #cfe2f3;"><b><i>Things like orchestras and ballet and art don't deserve public funding because they aren't popular. Public money shouldn't be spent on them when it could be used to give us cheaper council tax/cheaper petrol/more police on the streets.</i></b></div>Putting aside the sigh that inevitably results when encountering an individual with this attitude (which can be summarised as 'if it's not important to me, nobody should get it') this is largely a circular argument. If they <i>were</i> 'popular' (even though there is actually a healthy level of interest) they would make enough money on their own to not need public funding. Ironically, if this were the case you'd probably be going to concerts and whatnot so you'd spend more on this than comes out of your tax at the moment (bear in mind many people will happily shell out hundreds of pounds a year for football season tickets). I suppose if you don't care about culture it's very difficult to make the case for spending on anything beyond mundane practicalities, but it really shouldn't be a cause of contention given the minute amount each individual actually contributes to arts in real terms - it's pennies. As is often pointed out, state grants for the arts actually <i>make</i> money for the Treasury through ticket sales and employment, which means that we should really be talking about them as investments, not subsidies. If you're still annoyed I suggest looking down the back of the sofa and you'll probably be able to 'make back' what you've contributed.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #cfe2f3;"><b><i>Classical music is elitist because it's for 'intellectuals'.</i></b></div>This brings us back to where we started and also on to the next post in this series, as it opens up a wider problem, namely stigma of displaying intelligence. It's also a stupid way of thinking. I find it no more acceptable to dislike somebody for being intellectual than it is to dislike them for wearing a turban or having an artificial limb (and in my experience all of these bigoted mindsets can often be found in the same individual). If you dislike people with intelligence that much you should be happy to do without iPods, auto airbags, microwaves and a plethora of other things they have given us. And for the umpteenth time, the fact that somebody has a PhD and a professorship and likes Bach does not prohibit you from having the same taste. You can take what you wish from music without actually <i>needing</i> to understand or debate the finer academic points of it. Note that; firstly, the same individual may also like pop and rock music, and that some of said pop/rock has also been subjected to serious academic study - does that curse it as 'elitist' too? Once again it is a circular argument: classical music is 'only for intellectuals' only as long as you keep saying so.Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-39732327648348762012-02-05T15:19:00.001+00:002012-02-05T15:21:49.345+00:00A Child of the Snows: Growing an ideaIn the last post I promised some insights into the business of working a small amount of material into a longer section. As I've been working on the piece today, I have just such a scheme fresh in my mind, so let's take a look:<br />
<br />
The particular place is in the central section and sets part of the Field poem; the lines are <i>'Burn on, O star, and be the light/To guide us all to Him this night'</i>. The first thing to note is that we've already got some parameters set out:<br />
<ul><li>The music will be in a moderate to fast tempo, as it constitutes part of the middle section of the piece</li>
<li>The chorus will sing the text as the baritone soloist is resting in between entries (I've already divided up who sings what)</li>
<li>The orchestra will probably be accompanying for some or all of the music, meaning the chorus cannot be at extreme quiet dynamics whilst this occurs.</li>
<li>The text is optimistic and exuberant, suggesting a lively character and primarily tonal flavour to the harmonies.</li>
<li>The speech-rhythms of the text will have to be considered when writing rhythmic elements, as well as which vowel sounds will be advisable at extremes of register. </li>
<li>The music needs to have 'order of intensity' as discussed in the last post, i.e. it needs to 'go somewhere', and illuminate the words.</li>
</ul>The last two are, of course, more general and can be applied to most parts of the composition.<br />
<br />
Reading through this text was one of the happy occasions when a setting suggested itself immediately. Here is my original sketch for the soprano and a bit of harmony, scribbled at the piano:<br />
<br />
<table cellpadding="0" cellspacing="0" class="tr-caption-container" style="float: left; margin-right: 1em; text-align: left;"><tbody>
<tr><td style="text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6cIYbz_hUbzoe9XGfrRUrBnp5jZCpNZTSmbcHHmuwTlyDB6tG9xehbMAkDEnwtw0EOUizobJWvI3_RJcyp1_lzV-V8h8lqt6UAEDhVKh3ITum-VNKp4SGkI8oHxkZOFbIeUEtqfSUd4mF/s1600/burn+on+1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-left: auto; margin-right: auto;"><img border="0" height="87" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj6cIYbz_hUbzoe9XGfrRUrBnp5jZCpNZTSmbcHHmuwTlyDB6tG9xehbMAkDEnwtw0EOUizobJWvI3_RJcyp1_lzV-V8h8lqt6UAEDhVKh3ITum-VNKp4SGkI8oHxkZOFbIeUEtqfSUd4mF/s320/burn+on+1.jpg" width="320" /></a></td></tr>
<tr><td class="tr-caption" style="text-align: center;">(Click on any graphic to enlarge)</td></tr>
</tbody></table>5/4 time gives a pleasingly natural phrase shape to the line. The upwards leap on the word 'light' seemed to be the best way of highlighting this word, as well as providing contrast with the mostly step-wise motion that precedes it (I trust it will not be too difficult to find this pitch if the rest of the harmony suggests it). Rising thirds, indeed thirds in general, feature prominently in this extract and as such it would be a good idea to use them in the remainder. The next thing that I write down is the rest of this chord. At this stage, I'm not overly concerned about what voice sings what when writing down a chord in isolation, as voice-leading can be refined later on. I already have a rough idea of the the harmonies which I can 'hear' in my mind, though.<br />
<br />
It then occurs to me that it would be interesting and add to the OoI to have the male voices enter in canon a little after the female. Since the original phrase begins on a half-beat this needs to be replicated here too.<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCOEBlBK8lZPBJmVzsFpAMftil-wH2hcxWO_yzZfA3B6txd-KsLvag9JDPhslAN8RBpARxim-pRSzomCAimpERD9TVAppjarevN2NZORWUey6s19v9uUJtC9tHL5b-TuWpEUfWAg2QaX0A/s1600/burn+on+4.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="176" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjCOEBlBK8lZPBJmVzsFpAMftil-wH2hcxWO_yzZfA3B6txd-KsLvag9JDPhslAN8RBpARxim-pRSzomCAimpERD9TVAppjarevN2NZORWUey6s19v9uUJtC9tHL5b-TuWpEUfWAg2QaX0A/s400/burn+on+4.jpg" width="400" /></a>Now I fill in the rest of the harmony as well as possible. This mostly involves repeated stabs at the keyboard, changing one note at a time if the chord doesn't sound right. A fortunate occurrence is that often what looks like good voice-leading on the page will be what sounds the best as well. The harmony is quite sevenths-based, which adds a more interesting flavour than simple diatonic chords without placing unreasonable demands on the choir's pitching skills. Possibly my liking of luscious 1930s film-score harmonies is an influence here - Poulenc's <i>Gloria</i> also comes to mind.<br />
<br />
The first phrase seems complete for now. I already have an idea for the second, and, keeping the female voices each divided in thirds, I experiment with how this might produce harmonies before settling on the following:<br />
<br />
<a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW4eLKKfajv-vlsG7rB4oeC8JGC34_SUtez_F3dGXJDcklDv81brMHZo2-YsHHTVVt_TUM6v8W0ezhdOk_4wEWRaTywLL1CgL_h9CmIIUnuY1FQy3LgNYZcgDN11stWTQKlrd4p9SPrVZ5/s1600/burn+on+5.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="clear: left; float: left; margin-bottom: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="193" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiW4eLKKfajv-vlsG7rB4oeC8JGC34_SUtez_F3dGXJDcklDv81brMHZo2-YsHHTVVt_TUM6v8W0ezhdOk_4wEWRaTywLL1CgL_h9CmIIUnuY1FQy3LgNYZcgDN11stWTQKlrd4p9SPrVZ5/s320/burn+on+5.jpg" width="320" /></a>Again the phrase shape just suggested itself, but it came from a part of my imagination that clearly recognised the classic anticendant-consequent pairing. This phrase mirrors the first, leaping up and then coming down a little. The triplets keep the rhythmic vocabulary fresh as well as being pleasant to sing the word 'all' to. I fill in the harmonies again, adding a second splash of counterpoint to the male voices to maintain the symmetry and rhythmic motion.<br />
<br />
Now to decide how to end it all. I could bring it to a neat finish on G major, which seems to be the underlying tonality of the phrases, or a slightly more exotic version of it, but I want something more interesting and less closing. I work out that by keeping the altos on G (thus also avoiding them having to leap up to close to the top of their range) I can actually lead the whole choir into <i>this</i>:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJIre2rtm372yudWMsbFE6xUuhw5hdhKdB6c1A0caQpJryIetzcR8ddjQi927s4JCgmEJEmJrduoHoJkiwnD9dNfcKEkcM8WYFxmqmUwwF3IWX1u_jp0s08RrWlmgc9KN_iTKkCqkMEmwX/s1600/burn+on+6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhJIre2rtm372yudWMsbFE6xUuhw5hdhKdB6c1A0caQpJryIetzcR8ddjQi927s4JCgmEJEmJrduoHoJkiwnD9dNfcKEkcM8WYFxmqmUwwF3IWX1u_jp0s08RrWlmgc9KN_iTKkCqkMEmwX/s200/burn+on+6.jpg" width="115" /></a></div>F minor 7 - you didn't see <i>that </i>coming, now, did you? I play through it all and perhaps add/remove a few pitches. Taking a few paces into the other room where Sibelius is open and waiting, I enter it all into the program on full score and listen to the playback before making a few other tweaks to the writing. But something isn't quite right (other than the MIDI playback). The climax seems to arrive too early. The music needs another phrase, which will have to be a repetition of 'Burn on, O star' to avoid the same problem in the text. I don't want to push the existing harmonies around much to achieve this, so have to work out how to 'lift' the OoI in this new segment without spoiling the already-written ending. Back to the piano to note down, sans text:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIL_3vz2igt2-zoI8zrjF-Vg6OywpxMAuVwq5RRI-Rd_ewaLZlTr5jch4w9G5-z2quvMYKDVUe74_gU-KPPKLjGpBKgV0EVOqqO1Jv-by5f4jzT_kbeYBRIl99ADrr-zbZ4FtyZj9mv3ec/s1600/burn+on+7.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="149" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiIL_3vz2igt2-zoI8zrjF-Vg6OywpxMAuVwq5RRI-Rd_ewaLZlTr5jch4w9G5-z2quvMYKDVUe74_gU-KPPKLjGpBKgV0EVOqqO1Jv-by5f4jzT_kbeYBRIl99ADrr-zbZ4FtyZj9mv3ec/s200/burn+on+7.jpg" width="200" /></a></div>And back to Sibelius again. After quite a lot of experimentation and tweaking, I come up with this as the (for now) finished product:<br />
<br />
<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLukmSURpCIIqG7xERuMYAB1bCLWbZcIMmlBuKwvrRTIOgs_Fdu_CRYI1l3N0W0BZHtmUobtZ__aR18q9_Ww8b3LyAf4_coRRliJRB0FCE390YI6LXon_Nh4csiur9vgpxtZWB4j1tRLwR/s1600/star+screenshot+final.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" height="300" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiLukmSURpCIIqG7xERuMYAB1bCLWbZcIMmlBuKwvrRTIOgs_Fdu_CRYI1l3N0W0BZHtmUobtZ__aR18q9_Ww8b3LyAf4_coRRliJRB0FCE390YI6LXon_Nh4csiur9vgpxtZWB4j1tRLwR/s400/star+screenshot+final.jpg" width="400" /></a></div><br />
<br />
There are some substantial changes from the previous incarnation. The male voices now enter separately in two canonic entries (same pitches) whilst the sopranos enter with the tenors to avoid the low B; the one-beat of the word 'Him' is now two as it provides better proportions to the phrase, and as a result of this the male voices extend their rhythmic canon for another two beats. I wasn't sure about this to start with, but I then realised it results in a nice parallel with 'guiding' in the text by having the singers join up again at the end of the phrase. The latter half is now in 3/4 to accommodate these changes. A few <i>divisis</i> are re-allocated to pre-empt having a tenor section smaller than the others. Dynamics and placing of words are added and refined.<br />
<br />
It probably took the best part of forty minutes to develop and refine this little section of less than twenty seconds. I may tweak it again in future, but for now I am happy. Later orchestral material will be added and I will think about what comes before and after, but I now have a 'strong point' in the score to work around.Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-22079165021090465932012-01-29T22:25:00.000+00:002012-01-29T22:25:12.849+00:00The Problem with Big TunesEveryone loves a great, memorable tune. We're talking here not about just melody, but melody that can be elevated to being called a <i>tune</i>. Such things are usually tonal, regularly phrased, and featuring a melody-and-accompaniment texture, often chorale-like and generously orchestrated. They are instantly recognisable, make audiences feel good and can assure a composer a place in musical history. And yet they are also quite rare beasts. So why doesn't every composer write one?<br />
<br />
Well, for a start, coming up with a really good Big Tune is potentially a laborious process. In a classic example of the symbiosis involved in composition, the effectiveness of the melody goes hand-in-hand with the skillful use of harmony - both must be devised simultaneously to compliment one another, Since a great number of Big Tunes are felt to arouse feelings of national pride or other gushing emotions, the achievement of sincerity in such an entity can only be achieved by a relatively narrow repertoire of gestures - for example starting with a stable harmony to establish gravitas, or later a move to the minor in one of the phrases, returning to the major as if in reassurance. On the most simple level it can be hard to consciously set out to 'write a Big Tune like the one in [piece x]' and avoid sounding like a pale imitation of it.<br />
<br />
Second, the definition of a Big Tune will confine a composer to a relatively narrow musical style unless the music is deliberately a college or pot-pourri of different influences. Stravinsky couldn't simply introduce a four-square anthem into<i>, </i>say, <i>Rite of Spring</i>, as it would sound ridiculous in this context and be completely contrary to the aims of the music. <br />
<br />
Structurally and technically speaking, they present several problems. Chief amongst these is that the attraction of the thing is its completeness - that is, the tune is a sixteen-bar entity which one can sing along to and which follows recognisable lines. This is fine if the tune is to be a thing-in-itself, but less so if it is to be used as part of a wider form such as a movement of a symphony. Percy Grainger's famous quip that 'the trouble with folk songs is that when you've played it once the only thing you can do is repeat it' rings true, for good tunes are awkward to do anything else with. The more memorable a tune is in itself, the more 'closed' an entity it is likely to be, probably ending with a nice neat cadence in the tonic. For use in a larger form, it usually comes to just <i>too</i> satisfying and complete an end, meaning that the music has to stop and re-start, and that there is a lack of tension around which to build the remainder of the piece. Apart from anything else it can be difficult to chop up the tune into smaller segments with which any development will be facilitated; particularly for the listener who, having been drawn to the piece by tune, will probably find the fragmented version less appealing than the initial whole. It <i>is</i> possible - the finales of Tchaikovsky's Fifth and Nielsen's Third, the first and last movements of Elgar's First and several parts of Dvorak's Ninth are famous examples that manage it by various means, mostly by following it with something contrasting and then eventually bringing the Big Tune back at the end to satisfy listeners. Sibelius pulls it off in <i>Finlandia</i>, in oh-so-Sibelian fashion building the preceding material from fragments of the theme, then juxtaposing the last note of it with the start of the next section (cleverly avoiding the stasis that would have resulted from bringing it to a close) and finally presenting only the first phrase of the melody in the coda. Even when the theme is allowed to run in the central section of the piece it is carefully varied in orchestration and not allowed to become sentimentalised.<br />
<br />
Actually, <i>Finlandia</i> throws up a number of interesting avenues related to this topic. The work was originally introduced, in a slightly extended form, as the finale of the rather uninspiringly titled suite <i>Music for the Press Celebrations</i>. As the general feeling of the time was explicitly nationalistic, it is no surprise that the stirring tone poem quickly became performed on its own as an anthem of independence, and was as quickly banned by the Russians for this reason. With all this national feeling contained within, it was assumed that the work had been composed with the intent of being as 'Finnish' as possible and thus included national folk music. Sibelius had to repeatedly state that both the theme and the rest of the piece were categorically not based on any folk-songs. The assumption of this is quite telling. Folk music is not all melody and even rarer still the neat four-in-a-bar, major-key type (Finnish music often features five beats in the bar). Did the symphonic content making up the other 3/4 of the piece actually matter or would it have been enough to have just written the famous tune? Was the big tune even written as a crowd-pleaser or just for structural purposes in the first place? Sibelius went on to arrange the central theme for choir (twice, in fact) setting the patriotic 'Finland Awakes' and thus joining a tradition that continues to this day of putting words to likely tunes, appropriate or not.<br />
<br />
And that brings us on to the English equivalent of <i>Finlandia</i>, and another issue with Big Tunes - they become appropriated for hymns, songs, 'crossover' cover versions, etc, regardless of the composer's personal beliefs or the original context of the cultural artefact - and also become overplayed. Having seen his suite become a rare hit amongst his output, Gustav Holst eventually grew to hate the incessant elevation of <i>The Planets</i> to the neglect of his other music (despite it justifiably being his best work) and in particular the setting of the famous melody in <i>Jupiter</i> to the text of <i>I Vow To Thee, My Country </i>and its subsequent use at every kind of pompous nationalistic occasion. Apart from the fact that the work is more concerned with astrological connotations from Indian mysticism than the fruits of the scientific advancements of the European Enlightenment, Holst was both a pacifist and an atheist and conspicuously from an immigrant background - Sweden via Latvia. He would have been either horrified by or, more likely, resigned to, today's appropriation of this melody by jingoistic military occasions and flag-waving nationalism, and the assumption that it was written by a Very British composer. Elgar's <i>Pomp and Circumstance</i> March No.1 and the 'Nimrod' movement of the <i>Enigma Variations</i> suffer much the same problems. Elgar was also born an outsider (a working-class Catholic, making the patriotic 'Land of Hope and Glory' text somewhat out of place) and the <i>Enigma Variations</i> written as a highly personal piece, albeit in a generally light vein. Worse, in such an extended work as this, everyone wants to hear the Big Tune to the exclusion of the rest of the piece, and because the particular excerpt is what is most readily associated with the composer, they are in danger of alienating audiences with anything that departs from this. Returning to an earlier example, if you only knew the tune from <i>Finlandia</i>, then Sibelius' final two symphonies and <i>The Tempest</i> music must sound mightily strange on a first hearing. Holst put off audiences simply by not re-writing <i>The Planets</i> in subsequent orchestral outings, a perfectly natural thing for a composer to do. <br />
<br />
There are two happy upshots from all this. Film music manages to use the idea of the Big Tune more successfully, largely due to its role as accompaniment. If the audience needs to attach a particular recognisable theme to a character then this is a highly effective way to do it without having to worry about symphonic development (which would be too distracting for the medium). Indeed, the skillful writing of <i>Leitmotif</i> that works both as a film soundtrack and as concert excerpts is what constitutes the craft of John Williams and similar composers.<br />
<br />
Secondly, it had been demonstrated on numerous occasions (in fact the majority of frequently-performed symphonic output) that it is not at all necessary to write a Big Tune in order to compose a first-rate piece that will not only be melodic but have audiences positively singing along. Haydn repeatedly proves that motivic writing can still sound tuneful and produce a technically stimulating work. Verdi writes almost totally melodically, yet actual four-square tunes as described above are confined to one or two choruses per opera, maximising their effectiveness in music that <i>sets out</i> to be crowd-pleasing (yet loses no integrity or intellectual appeal in the process).<br />
<br />
<i><span style="font-size: small;">Edit: Curiously, contemporary pop music, which is also generally populist (if not by definition), seems to be equally shy of using easily memorable Big Tunes. With a few notable exceptions, it is older popular styles which tend to be more melodic, possibly as a result of their shorter evolutionary path from blues and music-hall genres, and the notion of a hummable melody is clearly anathema to punk, rap, metal and other such styles</span></i>.Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-91855970124026742342012-01-17T23:19:00.000+00:002012-01-17T23:19:58.029+00:00A Child of the Snows: IdeasOnce one has decided firmly to write a piece, a good measure of how comfortably one is going to work on it is whether ideas readily spring to mind on first thinking or, in this case, a first reading of the text. 'Ideas' can be as specific as melodic fragments setting individual lines of text or as loose as a general feeling about texture or harmony for a certain passage. Often, both present themselves at once. The second type, whilst vague, is actually the more important for it dictates the character of the piece, which in turn has implications for forces required, structure and harmonic material. When starting a new composition, I try and look for the broader type first, as this provides both the foundations and later leads to some suggestion of how to 'build up' a work.<br />
<br />
Allow me to go off at a slight tangent for a moment. It is important to introduce the idea of 'superficial' and 'non-superficial' elements in a composition and stress the craft of balancing the two. 'Superficial' is not used here in a pejorative sense; it refers to elements that are literally 'on the surface' and which present themselves as being the salient feature to the listener at any given point in the music. Typically, melody (or at least the dominant textural line) is foremost, followed by harmony and orchestration. These tend to be elements which are subjected to frequent contrasts and mutations throughout of the course of even the smallest works, strengthening their role of arousing the listener's curiosity. Non-superficial elements are generally concerns of structure, although the superficial elements also cross over into this category. If orchestration is used to re-enforce the larger structure and texture (for example in an antiphonal passage in which two sets of instruments are alternated, or a solo instrument presenting an <i>idea fixe</i>) then it becomes less of an attention-grabbing device and instead a more fundamental part of the composition. As far as I can see, the two exist in symbiosis, particularly so in a vocal work where both are ultimately derived from the texts being used. <br />
<br />
Gustav Holst once described composition as 'like approaching a house in fog. Slowly the details become clear - doors, windows.' In a way, this is a simpler way of expressing what I have said above: the more superficial elements tend to appear later once they have a solid background to be positioned on. I suppose the same could be applied to the process of learning anything - for composing a piece is very much an exercise in learning how a certain body of material will best work itself out over a length of time. One has to start with the overall, generalised basics and then gradually refine the craft.<br />
<br />
I already have the very big and some of the very small in ACOTS. At one end, the basic structure of the composition has been mapped out, and consists of an instrumental introduction, episodes of solo voice and choir, a faster middle section, more episodes of voice and choir, and a coda. I rarely, if ever, write these structures down, as they can be recalled mentally with no effort. This scheme is still flexible enough to allow for new ideas later on in the composing process and provides something akin to completing the edges of a jigsaw: smaller sub-assemblies can now be made up and can be roughly positioned in the central 'hole' for refinement later. At the other end of the scale, I have been devising small snippets of melody, harmony and other surface ideas. In the next post I will be discussing some actual notes - ideas, motifs - and what can be done with them, but for now I want to conclude with discussion of a few overriding concepts regarding the surface of the music.<br />
<br />
This most superficial element is, I suspect, the more fascinating aspect of composition for the interested reader. First, where do ideas come from? The short answer is as far as I can tell, that thinking about the 'atmospheric' elements of the piece immediately starts one thinking about what fits this concept. Bear in mind I think about composition a lot without having to make much effort to do so or even being aware of it sometimes. From then on it is simply a matter of trawling through one's thoughts on the piece until something of value suggests itself and gets written down. So how does one decide what is worth keeping? And how exactly does one go about writing the surface material, spinning it all out in such a way that it doesn't end up as just aimless wandering? These questions can be answered (at least in part) as one. Returning to the opening paragraph, ideas, at least in my process, have to have some kind of context which dictates their inherent usefulness against various criteria. In the case of this piece, there are several:<br />
<ol><li>Setting the speech-rhythms of the text </li>
<li>Expressing the meaning and character of the text</li>
<li>Playability</li>
<li>Order of intensity</li>
</ol>No.4 requires a little explanation but is actually simple enough. Order of Intensity (OoI) refers to the function of any element in the music with regards to whether it is pushing the music towards or away from a climactic point. We could also term it 'dramaticism'. This can be achieved using virtually any controllable parameter in the composition - volume, texture, orchestration, harmony, 'atmosphere'. To use a very crude example, the successive diminished scales beloved of cinema pianists (typically accompanying Harold Lloyd dangling from a clock whilst someone is tied to the train tracks, etc) are very definitely an ascending OoI over a short temporal span. Most of the time in symphonic music, however, the OoI is much more subtle. If you consider the opening of Brahms Second Symphony, the OoI in the cellos' four-note motif is very slight as it is moving towards a climax many bars away. The composer here requires a very stable sense of tonality and so uses just enough OoI to keep things moving forwards. Even when this climax is reached there is still upwards OoI towards the biggest climax in the movement, towards the end of the movement and ultimately towards the end of the symphony. As we can see, OoI is often operating on several planes at once in the same way as the structural plan described earlier.<br />
<br />
So ideally, any ideas that spring to mind for inclusion in a piece will already suggest some degree of OoI in <i>some</i> context at <i>some</i> point in the work, however small or requiring of development/revision. If this is strong enough, such ideas can provide little 'strong points', around which the rest of the work can be completed. The fact that an ideas contains some readily suggested OoI might seem to apply to almost anything - hey, Bach <i>Inventions</i> and such like are often made up of the simplest and smallest groupings of notes - but we have to remember that we have started out with an 'atmospheric' concept and so are already selective in what we are looking for in the range and level of OoI (chiefly dictated by the scale and dramatic intensity of the work). In addition, I have a good idea of what (broadly, for I am open to influences) constitutes my own compositional style, further refining the process. Ideas that lie too far from these parameters seldom are considered even if they could potentially provide an excellent composition in other hands, simply because they are unsuitable for the task in hand. As ACOTS is a choral work there will be additional stimulus to be found in the texts used, which can suggest all manner of word-painting, colour, texture, etc.<br />
<br />
What I've not mentioned so far is that these initial ideas almost always end up as significant motifs in the work, which brings us to a different area and technique of composition and one which constitutes a large part of how I work. In the next post, we will get to see some actual music. Promise.Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-61463020443631507932011-12-30T20:46:00.000+00:002011-12-30T20:46:01.594+00:002011 in numbers<b>Travel</b> (all distances approximate)<br />
<br />
Miles driven by me = 7000 miles<br />
Miles by road: =3750 miles<br />
Miles by rail: = 660 miles<br />
Miles by air: = 760 miles<br />
Miles total: = 12170 miles<br />
Things needed fixing on cars = 9 (hole in sump, wing mirror damaged by parent/wheelie bin; heat shield distorted; driver's electric window motor; air conditioning regas; driver's electric window motor again; air conditioning again; blown headlight bulb impossible to remove, LED centre brake light not functioning)<br />
Countries visited: France, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany, Austria, Hungary, Scotland<br />
Walks: completed Itchen Way, first stage of Solent Way, various rambles in Lakes.<br />
<br />
<div style="color: #fff2cc;"><i>Rather less walking and considerably less rail travel than last year - which will be rectified in 2012 - but offset by huge amount of road distance.</i> <i>Nearly 20% of total miles were accomplished during the Hungary trip</i>.</div><br />
<b>Music</b><br />
<br />
Concerts = 51, plus 23 services, 7 shows, 1 recording session, and other informal performances (e.g. choir singing carols at pub, weddings, chamber music course)<br />
Compositions completed = 7 (<i>The Sun Rising</i>, <i>Serenata</i> for harp, <i>The Bells of St Marys</i>, <i>There is a Blossom Sprung of a Thorn</i>, <i>Englefield Green</i>, <i>Beatus vir</i>, <i>Jak Drahokam</i>) plus 8 orchestral and 2 quartet arrangements and works in progress<br />
Hours spent in non-performance playing (practice/rehearsals) c.2000 divided evenly between cello and keyboard instruments<br />
<br />
<i style="color: #fff2cc;">These are all up from previous years. The increased number of concerts is hard evidence of how much more I'm playing the piano these days.</i><br />
<br />
<b>Favourites</b><br />
<br />
Piece of the year: Nielsen Symphony No.3 'Expansiva'<br />
TV series of the year: <i>The Killing</i> I and II<br />
Most interesting places: Pest, Budapest; Old Town, Edinburgh; Ulverston, Cumbria; Easedale Tarn, Cumbria; Avebury, Wiltshire; Lake Balaton, Somogy;<br />
Cups of tea drunk @ average 3 per day = c. 1200<br />
Wine: Korona Egri Merlot 2008<br />
Beer: Thwaite's Wainwright Ale<br />
Food: Hortobagy-style pancakes<br />
<br />
<i></i>Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-6552338783840988248.post-8566934948516842352011-12-23T23:03:00.000+00:002011-12-23T23:03:28.647+00:00A Child of the Snows: IntroductionAs this blog is, at least in part, a means of discussing compositions, I have decided to write a series on a fairly major choral work I am about to undertake. Over the next year I plan to provide regular progress updates as well as an insight into the composing process in general. The time-scale I have set myself is to have a pretty much complete draft by Easter and to have the whole thing done by the summer, ready for rehearsals to start in the autumn.<br />
<br />
In this post I will start by setting out the brief of the project and some initial thoughts stemming from this:<br />
<br />
The only definite stipulations of the commission is that I am to compose a cantata for Christmas 2012, which must be suitable for performance by amateur choral societies and modest orchestral forces, and must set G.K. Chesterton's poem <a href="http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/A_Child_of_the_Snows"><i>A Child of the Snows</i></a>. As this text consists of four fairly short stanzas, I have added two additional poems: another Chesterton entitled <a href="http://www.cse.dmu.ac.uk/%7Emward/gkc/books/carol.html"><i>A Christmas Carol</i></a> and <a href="http://www.mgilleland.com/efchristmas.htm#Town"><i>Bethlehem Town</i></a> by the American Eugene Field.<br />
<br />
The first consideration must be of what forces to write for. Obviously the chorus comes ready provided: an SATB choir of around fifty, which is big enough to allow divisi. Having considered the texts I decide to use a baritone soloist only. The thinking behind this is that I will alternate verses of the two Chesterton poems, as the subject matter of their respective stanzas flow nicely into one another, and so have the soloist sing <i>A Child of the Snows</i> whilst the chorus take <i>A Christmas Carol</i>. This also has the practical result that each gets to rest their voice(s) whilst the other sings, alongside the musical effect. Having another - most likely female - soloist will, I reason, confuse the narrative coherence of each text, as sufficient contrast is already provided through this alternation of forces.<br />
<br />
Orchestrally speaking, the main contingent of the chamber orchestra will be a body of strings, probably no more than two desks to a part. This is mostly out of practicality: firstly, the the larger the orchestra, the more people need to be paid for; also, as the chorus is medium-sized - think BBC Singers rather than BBC Symphony Chorus - an overly large ensemble would present issues of balence. This becomes especially important given that I am writing a religious work, most performances of which will take place in churches, which naturally have a large and resonant acoustic. To the strings I intend to add piano (am toying with the idea of piano four-hands), possibly oboe and a few other instruments.<br />
<br />
Other considerations arise from the nature of the performance: the musical material must be within the technical range of the chorus (they're good enough to do big works by Bach, Brahms and Finzi, and do them well, but naturally there is a limit to what one can reasonably expect from non-professional singers rehearsing one evening a week) and the orchestral parts must be able to be brought up to performance standard on only individual practice time and a rehearsal on the day. I know the orchestra, all of whom are of pro standard, will give their best with whatever they are given, but from past experience I know to aim for the maximum effect via the simplest means. Come to think of it, this is actually a pretty good compositional philosophy in general.<br />
<br />
This is probably the biggest project I've taken on to date, as although the orchestration is smaller than for <i>The Sun Rising</i>, the performers will be of a comparable number and the piece is planned to be roughly twice the length, with the total performance time approaching half an hour. It's also the first time that 1) I've written a choral work with accompaniment by an ensemble rather than keyboard (the two trumpets and organ in <i>Benedic Domine</i> don't really constitute an 'ensemble'); 2) I've written for solo voice and chorus in the same work (again, the short solos in <i>Beatus vir</i> and various other works were for untrained choir voices and so don't really count); 3) I've written for baritone soloist and 4) I've written with a particular soloist in mind (other than myself). I hope these sound like relatively minor neologisms, as I consider them to present no real difficulties in the job of writing the music.<br />
<br />
There are some 'miscellaneous' considerations which may or may not a have a bearing on the composition: I have been told that for the première the other two pieces in the concert are planned to be Dvořák's <i>Mass in D</i> and some Christmas carols written by a fellow young composer, Tom Daish. It is probable that the second performance will use a smaller orchestra than for this as the venue and choir are smaller, so I may need to bear in mind the use of <i>ossia</i> passages and the possibility of keyboard(s) substituting for some instruments.<br />
<br />
To finish, I can already say I have sketched out some parts of the piece and have some idea of the overall structure. We will discuss these first steps in the next post.Simon Whttp://www.blogger.com/profile/04381857764119805946noreply@blogger.com0