Prejudice and Pride

Reading through Peter Giles' interesting history of the fall and rise of the counter tenor (entitled – what else? – The Counter Tenor) I was struck and a little disappointed by his attitudes to any music other than 'classical'. (Here I use inverted commas just as he does to refer to any other form of music). Had the following opinions been published in, say, the 1920s, one could almost understand them, though his level of animosity towards musical development would still have seemed rather alien to our modern sensibilities. The fact that these opinions were published in 1982 makes one wonder why his publisher didn't suggest he dilute his vitriol. Here is a typical example:

The whole world of serious music is itself the subject of incredible prejudice. It is ignored good-naturedly, or scornfully dismissed as irrelevant by a now sizeable and growing proportion of the general public, who know nothing of any tradition before Elvis Presley and care less. (Giles 1982:3)

And...

So we have a fascinating situation: on the one hand a tradition legitimate and honoured, successor to the Romantic, Classical and Baroque, going back to Renaissance and Medieval times, but hidebound in many matters. Next to it, another tradition, recent and clearly illegitimate, artificial, of mammon, in many ways barbaric, all too prey to the whim of the moment and the wave of the manipulator's chequebook; but at least utterly free to go where it will within its limited abilities and 'cultural' boundaries. The first is the undoubted arena for, surely, the ultimate in vocal and instrumental technique, for mankind's most profound musical experiences and statements. The second, for the most part and with the exception of the art form 'jazz' and certain musicianly groups like 'Sky', comprises ephemera perhaps more of interest to the sociologist than the true artist musician. (Giles 1982:4-5)

The irony that these comments and countless others like them appear in a chapter entitled 'Prejudice and the Status Quo' will surely be lost on nobody. Neither, indeed, is the irony of two lengthy citations, both written in the 12th century, in the following chapter on the development of organum singing and the rise of the Paris Notre Dame School. It would appear that Giles in fact part of greater, not to mention highly legitimate, tradition of moaning about the development of music, a tradition stretching back a thousand years.

Whence hath the Church so many organs and musicall instruments? To what purpose, I pray you, is that terrible blowing of belloes, expressing rather the crashes of thunder than the sweetnesse of the voyce? To what purpose serves that contraction and inflection of the voyce? [...] Sometimes, which is a shame so to speake, it is enforced into a horse's neighing: sometimes the masculine vigour being laid aside it is sharpened with the shrillnesse of a woman's voyce: now and then it is writhed and retorted into a certain artificial circumvolution. (Aelred of Rievaulx, Speculum Charitatis, 1123)

As Giles points out, "John of Salisbury was also worried by much of what he heard":

The very service of the Church is defiled, in that before the face of the Lord, in the very sanctuary of sanctuaries, they, showing off as it were, strive with effeminate dalliance of wanton tones and musical phrasing to astound, enervate, and dwarf simple souls. [...] When this type of music is carried to the extreme it is more likely to stir lascivious sensations in the loins than devotion in the heart. (Policraticus, trans. John of Salisbury, 12th century).

And he wasn't even talking about Elvis Presley...

I know that one, though...

Well, I've been extraordinarily quiet these last few weeks. This is mostly due to working hard, being in the United Kingdom and the fact that Facebook's Scrabulous seems to have taken over my life... But as the minutes tick away before the start of 2008, I thought I'd better post something of interest just to have something in my December column. So here is a snippet I found this afternoon:

The following article is from the January 2008 edition of BBC Music Magazine. It's a shame this isn't a more widely read publication in, say, Finland, a country with, in my experience, some of the most congested and bronchial concert audiences in the civilised world. The idea of the great Sir Simon Rattle (pictured in a wonderful caricature by the Belgian sketch artist Jan Op De Beeck, which lends extra credence to a joke Magnus Lindberg told me a few years ago and which almost certainly deserves a post all of its own) instructing a Carnegie Hall audience in how to cough correctly (ie. discreetly) is one I shall treasure. Enjoy!

(P.S. New Year's Resolution #1: Post more actively in 2008!)


Splutter Ye Not
So, what's the best way to cough? Instruction on this very subject has been given mid-symphony by Sir Simon Rattle, who finally lost his patience with a persistent hacker in New York. Conducting the Berlin Philharmonic in Mahler's Ninth Symphony at Carnegie Hall, Rattle broke off after the first movement to address the audience. 'This piece starts with silence and returns to silence,' he said. 'The audience can help to create the piece by remaining silent.' The silver-headed maestro then proceeded to whip out a handkerchief from his pocket and show how best to muffle the sound, should anyone continue to find the urge to clear their throat simply too much to resist. The audience, we understand, behaved impeccably thereafter.

Blowing the Proverbial Brass Instrument

Of course, one doesn't like to blow one's own brass instrument too much and too often (take that as you will), but since last week was one of the most professionally challenging in living memory – for reasons that I'd better not go into on this forum – I think I can be excused a little self-indulgence.


After a week of unfounded criticism of my work, the seeds of doubt having been thoroughly sown in my mind (but let's not even go there), it was heartening to come across this review in the New Statesman of my recent translation of Maria Peura's At the Edge of Light (Maia Press). I spent a few days at the Edinburgh International Book Festival with Peura at the end of August (post here), and was very pleased at the reception with which her book was met. What's most pleasing about this review is that the reader has actually taken the time to put the novel in its proper context – a context with which most UK readers will be largely unfamiliar – and has realised that, though death is omnipresent, this is ultimately a book about survival, about living. A fascinating read, I'm sure, for all those with a Scandinavian bent, or does such blatant plugging count as one blow of the trumpet too many?

Itchy Feet

The autumn is well underway here in Helsinki; the view from my window is fresh and colourful. I like autumn, the colours, the cripsness in the air, gradually having to wrap up warmer and warmer before leaving the house. The thought of winter, however, is somewhat harder to deal with. In Finland it's long, dark and – if you're lucky – cold. There's nothing worse than a slushy winter with no snow (last year, for instance). But global warming is just a communist myth, right?

To help alleviate the darkness, two friends who have just embarked on trips to far-away climes have started blogging to help us all keep in touch. Anyone interested in reading about how other people are having a great time while we're stuck here may enjoy reading them too. The only drawback for our international friends is that both blogs are primarily in Finnish.

One friend, the cellist from our summer Schubert project, has taken off for Australia and New Zealand where she'll be travelling around until the end of November. We all met up at the Aussie Bar in Helsinki (where else?) for a final drink beffore she left, and I really encouraged her to establish a blog to keep us up to date on what she's been getting up to. The results can be seen at The Australiasia Trip 2007, where Eevukka has promised to post photographs as soon as she finds a computer that can cope. Apparently the computer in the hostel is State of the Art 1983.

The other new travel blog of interest is Iranoia, written by a translator friend who has set off for Tehran for at least the next six months. There he plans to, in his own words, "brush up his Farsi"... As you do. Posts at Iranoia tend to be in a mixture of Finnish and French, with the occasional smattering of Arabic and Farsi, so anyone with those languages should check out what must, I'm sure, be one of the most enthralling travel diaries on the net. There can't be too many Finnish translators living in Tehran :-)

All this talk of travel is making me restless... O is off to India in a couple of weeks, another friend is in Cyprus, another just came back from two weeks in Thailand and Laos, the list goes on. The furthest I'm going to get this autumn is probably the UK - I don't think a travel diary will be necessary!

Perfect Partners

There are two principal reasons for my recent lack of contact with the blogosphere: a) I have had an immense amount of work to get done and b) I have been gallivanting across Europe (photographs from Gran Canaria hopefully to follow soon...) Now that the majority of this work has finally reached my big Outbox in the sky, I can finally sit down and return to more pressing matters.

Wandering through Foyle's in London yesterday, a place which is arguably one of the most amazing bookshops in the world, I was interested to discover a stand of books being sold in pairs. Amazon has been using its Perfect Partner scheme for years, and it seems to work very effectively - or rather, it certainly works on impulsive internet shoppers like me ("People who bought this item, also bought this item. Buy them both now for only £n!"). With this in mind, I suppose it's not too much of a leap for publishers to start doing something similar, in this case by packing two novels together in a plastic wrapper. Altruistically thinking, this will not only increase their sales, but will bring readers into contact with books they might otherwise have overlooked.

Be that as it may, I couldn't help being puzzled at some of the publisher's Perfect Partners. The Grimms' fairytales and Angela Carter's The Bloody Chamber seem a sensible pairing, as do AS Byatt's Possession and George Eliot's Middlemarch. But when we get to Mary Shelley's Frankenstein paired with Jeanette Winterson's Sexing the Cherry, one has to wonder at the logic of it all. Would customers who bought Mary Shelley really also buy Winterson, and vice versa? But despite all this, the oddest couple on the stand has got to be the pairing of Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting with Oliver Twist! Both are depictions of squalor, but that's about as far as I can connect them. Any guesses?


And while we're on the subject of books, I have to give a particular mention to a novel I read last week which utterly blew my socks off: The Half Brother by the Norwegian author Lars Saabye Christensen. This Friday I'll have the honour of meeting and interviewing Mr Christensen at the Edinburgh International Book Fair in a panel discussion with Finnish author Maria Peura, the translation of whose novel I have just completed. At 764 pages, The Half Brother is a fairly hefty tome, but worth every minute I spent reading it, and although I'm very nervous (especially as, when I went to look for the hyperlink to the above event, I noticed it's SOLD OUT...), I'm immensely looking forward to the whole event. Further posts doubtless to follow...

Täydellinen euroviisu

This song, Täydellinen euroviisu ('The Perfect Eurovision Song'), was created at around the time of this year's competition, held here in Helsinki. The idea was to cram as many Eurovision clichés into one song as possible. This one certainly has the kitsch factor: it comes complete with at least three modulations!

Just to put this in some sort of context, Jari Sillanpää (the singer on this video) was voted the Finnish Tango King in 1995. For years his homosexuality was an open secret, but he only officially came out about two years ago. This video seems to be a real celebration of... something. It reminds me of the work of Pierre & Gilles. The airbrushed ice cream moment says it all!

The Last Temptations

Hello all!

I've been rather incommunicado this week. The reason for this is that I've been away in the deepest Finnish countryside, far from the nearest WiFi signal. Being away from the internet has its benefits, as when I can't read my email, address work issues, read blogs etc etc, there's no point in fretting about doing so. The minute I arrived in a slightly larger town, the first thing I did was, of course, look for a pub with a free internet connection... Admitting you have a problem is the first step :-)

Not that it's been a particularly relaxing week, mind. I've been on an island called Aholansaari (the adopted home of the 19th century lay preacher Paavo Ruotsalainen and centre of the Finnish revivalist movement) rehearsing every day with the chamber orchestra, Aholansaari Sinfonietta. Our concert this evening, at the annual Finnish revivalist festival (which, though I'm not a member of the church, is a fascinating branch of Christianity, and warrants a blog entry all of its own), doesn't start until 10pm, so I have the whole afternoon to relax and catch up on everything that's been happening in the blogosphere.

Our concert programme is very interesting. We start with the overture to Mussorgsky's opera Khovanshchina (orch. Rimsky-Korsakov), followed by a selectioon of arias and interludes from Finnish composer Joonas Kokkonen's opera Viimeiset kiusaukset ('The Last Temptations'), which recounts the final days of the life of the afore-mentioned Paavo Ruotsalainen. The music is marvellous, as is our soloist, Esa Ruuttunen. We finish the concert with Mendelssohn's Fifth Symphony, 'The Reformation'. Hopefully my fingers will still be up to the tempi of the final movement by ten this evening...

Nature's Call

This afternoon I got back from a very relaxing Midsummer break in a Finnish countryside idyll, where I spent the weekend with my friends E and O at the latter's family cottage. Good food and much beverage was consumed by all; we sat in the porch all day reading detective novels and generally soaking up the lazy Midsummer atmosphere.

O's cottage is wonderful: walls of old logs, low ceilings, mice, the real deal. There are only three drawbacks: no lake, no electricity and no running water (= outdoor loo). For men, having a toilet that flushes perhaps isn't such a big deal – after all, most of the time you don't need to sit down. E, on the other hand, bemoaned the fact that she had to squat ungraciously and uncomfortably every time nature called. À propos this very subject, our translator colleague L last week edified us about women's britches in the 19th century, which had a flap in the middle for easy access and the use of stand-up female urinals. A quick look on Google reveals a few very interesting articles on the subject, notably this one.

Now, however, it looks as though women's days of squatting in the bushes are over. While reading an interview with our favourite author Sarah Waters, we came across the following marvellous link. What I like most about this are the blurbs, the photographs and, above all, the name. Why would a woman running along a sand dune be carrying such a thing – in her handbag? Oh well, going to the summer cottage will never be the same again...

Where's My Clock?

I just opened up my blogger page and was about to sit down and write a new post, when – to my horror – I discovered that my clock is missing! (It should be in the right hand column under the section 'Tempus fugit'.) What has happened to Clocklink? If anyone knows how to help, do get in touch and let me know what can be done about it... Thanks!