The concert

A 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.

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 big.  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.

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 here.

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.

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 'danger' 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.

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.

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 A Sea Symphony, 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.

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 Nearer, My God, to Thee).  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 Do Like to Be Beside the Seaside and The Glow-Worm (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 duuur-uuur-ur! glissando I'd written.

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 Depart...to depart, 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.

John is on the podium.  The brass and horn sections all have instruments poised ready for the downbeat...

BAAAAAAAAA!!! BA-BA-BA BAAAAAAAAA! BAAAAAAAA!!!!!!
'BE-HOLLLLLD.......the...SEAAAAA!!!!' CRASH!!!!

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:

'Token of all brave captains
And of all intrepid sailors and mates
And of all who went down doing their duty'

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...

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...

* Hint: It's not Mercedes-Benz, Audi, VW or Porsche.

Titanic proportions

As 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 SS Titanic*. 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.

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.

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.

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 A Night To Remember 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.

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.

Titanic Engineers' Memorial

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.

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 anxious relatives crowded outside for days after 15th April waiting for news of the survivors and lost. The company hung 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.


View Larger Map

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.

 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.

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.

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...

*Although often referred to as the RMS Titanic, the ship was never officially a Royal Mail Steamer so is correctly named as an ordinary steamship.

The Solent Way: Part 1

Yes, it's time for another epic/nearly epic ramble across some diverting part of southern England. Specifically, the Solent. Home turf. Mostly almost completely flat.

Introduction: The geography bit

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:

So, where are we going to go?

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 Solent Way 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. 

Obviously, the entirely logical thing to do is to start in the middle:

Southampton to Hamble (10 miles)

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.

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.


View Larger Map 

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 Queen Elizabeth, 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 Titanic 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 so 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.

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 almost still imagine the smell of steam trains, ladies in elegant frocks and barefoot young lads in clogs running after the tram (Street View, although not containing Edwardians).

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 'floating bridge' 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 painted 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 Queen Elizabeth 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 (Street View, and again).

On the Itchen Bridge

Safely on the other side (suicides and gusts of wind are the least of the potential hazards up there, especially after dark), Woolston (Street View) has retained a rather industrial character even with the removal of the Vosper Thornycroft ship factory at the quayside. There's still - still - 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 (Street View). 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 (Street View) 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.

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 namesake of old, 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.

The next settlement, Netley, is a pleasant village with one main street along the waterside and into the country park at the other end (Street View).  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 (Street View).  It's actually the last remaining part of a huge military hospital which treated patients 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. 

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 various sizes (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 towers and spires 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?

Insert environmentalist slogan here

Viewed from above (see Google Maps) 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.

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 (Street View). 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.

Neolexia

Things for which terms should exist, but don't:

• 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.
• 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.
• The dirty bit of the bow hair right next to the frog, which never sees either rosin or contact with a string.
• 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.
• The duuu-yurrrrr-yumm bell-curve glissando commonly found in cockney music whenever trombones are involved.
• The conductor's gesture of tapping the stick three times on the stand to get the musicians to shut up.
• That quasi-arpeggio pattern of pitches trumpeters always do at the start of rehearsal.
• The experience of only being able to play a rapid passage of notes correctly when one doesn't realise one is doing so.
• The thing string quartet players (usually the leader) do where they nearly-but-not-quite jump up from their seat during moments of excitement.
• 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.
• The film canisters wind players carry and always have to go to the lavatories and fill with water to soak their reeds in.
• The person who places the conductor's score, open at the first page, on the stand before a performance.
• The person who presents the soloist with flowers (women) or booze (men).
• A person who claps in the wrong place at the end of Sibelius Five.

Don't play it again, Sam

I 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.

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 only things the player can actually control are:

1. The velocity at which the key is initially struck, and thereby the volume and tone of the note;
2. The duration of the note;
3. Whether a pedal is used to add or reduce resonance.

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.

The first is this, from Dvorák's otherwise delightful Sonatina, Op.100:

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 fp 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.

Sibelius next, and this from his own transcription of Finlandia:

Now, this is not necessarily an error. A pianist can 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:

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. 


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 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:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SaogrOWfnb8 (and he nails the repeated semis three times!)

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 everything 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.

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 Wicked I've been doing with somebody recently has actually been harder to learn than the Polonaise from the Goldberg Variations, 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 Cm sus2 (no third) as I would for some blobs on the lines.

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:

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 not to by my piano teacher. There is simply no good fingering here.

But I'm 'classically trained'. What do I know?

The myth of elitism: Part 1

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.

Performances are governed by draconian rules regarding social etiquette.

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?

Music is a pastime of the rich/'posh' people and is not 'accessible'

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?

There is no actual good reason why concert-going and music-making need 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' Satyagraha 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. 

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. The Wire, 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.

Only the rich can afford instrumental lessons for their children.

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. 

Classical musicians are snobs.

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.

Culture of the past is not relevant to today's populace.

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 Downton Abbey, will draw an audience of millions. The History Channel 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 music on its own.

Nasty squeaky atonal music is where is all went wrong. Classical musicians only have themselves to blame.  

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.

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.

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 were '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 make 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.

Classical music is elitist because it's for 'intellectuals'.

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 needing 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.

A Child of the Snows: Growing an idea

In 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:

The particular place is in the central section and sets part of the Field poem; the lines are 'Burn on, O star, and be the light/To guide us all to Him this night'. The first thing to note is that we've already got some parameters set out:

• The music will be in a moderate to fast tempo, as it constitutes part of the middle section of the piece
• The chorus will sing the text as the baritone soloist is resting in between entries (I've already divided up who sings what)
• 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.
• The text is optimistic and exuberant, suggesting a lively character and primarily tonal flavour to the harmonies.
• 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.
• 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.

The last two are, of course, more general and can be applied to most parts of the composition.

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:

(Click on any graphic to enlarge)

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.

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.

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 Gloria also comes to mind.

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:

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.

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 this:

F minor 7 - you didn't see that 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:

And back to Sibelius again.  After quite a lot of experimentation and tweaking, I come up with this as the (for now) finished product:

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 divisis are re-allocated to pre-empt having a tenor section smaller than the others.  Dynamics and placing of words are added and refined.

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.