weird juxtaposition

Last week we went to see three productions, all about as different as could be, because friends were in them.

On Wednesday, we went to see Oliver! at the Bath Theatre Royal, because Balador was in it. It was quite weird watching a musical where you were trying to catch sight of a member of the chorus all the time. I'm not normally a fan of musicals (and have managed to avoid most of them) but I quite enjoyed watching it because we did the first scene for a school concert, and I was a scrubber in the workhouse (in the original meaning of the word scrubber). Also Balador was excellent (especially his impression of a drunk - you'd think he had been practising...)

On Thursday, we went to see a concert of Tallis, Byrd, Dowland, Elgar and Vaughan Williams in Bath Abbey. The acoustic was a bit strange because we were sitting in the choir stalls, the rest of the audience were in the nave, and the choir were in the transept facing the nave. But the music was wonderful - particularly Tallis' Spem in Alium, which is glorious, nay, celestial (though I am still wondering why he is placing his hope in garlic).

On Saturday, we went to see a community theatre production called Brave at the Bristol Old Vic, which described itself as an evocation of childhood, and turned out to be a series of cameos interspersed with minimalist music and lots of people rushing about on the stage. Some quite amusing bits, but I wouldn't have bothered if my friend hadn't been in it. Still, it was better in some ways than some professional experimental theatre that I have seen.

torch songs

A discussion about music over at The Expulsion of the Blatant Beast led me to think about my repertoire of songs that I like to sing, and what they might have in common. Usually they're in a minor key (as far as I can tell, since I don't really understand about keys and modes and stuff) and about something sad and yearning....

• Nanna's Lied (Kurt Weill) - lyrics
• Flower of Scotland
• Je ne t'aime pas (Kurt Weill, Maurice Magre) - lyrics
• The Curragh of Kildare
• Waly waly
  

There are other songs that I want to learn, but since I so seldom attend eisteddfodau these days, it's difficult to find opportunities to perform in front of a sympathetic audience (since I can't sing if there are people sniffing and tutting about non-musicians, yada yada yada).

the art of suicide

It has always amazed me that some art apparently has the power to suggest suicide to people. Goethe's novella Die Leiden des Jungen Werthers apparently caused many suicides among German youth, who dressed themselves in the style of the hero and even had the same book beside them when they committed suicide.

Similarly, the Hungarian song Szomorú vasárnap (Gloomy Sunday) apparently has the power to suggest suicide to those who listen to it, according to Curious Expeditions:

Hauntingly beautiful, the story goes that the song was so sad, so depressing, so completely soul crushing, that upon hearing it even once, Hungarians were driven to suicide. And not just a few, during its era, hundreds of suicides were attributed to the melody.

Billie Holliday also recorded a version, which is certainly very sad and gloomy (but then so are most of her songs).

Then of course there are all the novels about suicide: The Virgin Suicides by Jeffrey Eugenides; A Long Way Down by Nick Hornby; Suicide Wall by Alexander Paul.

Chris Power in The Guardian blog further explores the theme of literary suicide. Both Schopenhauer and Donne defended it, and Plutarch considered Cato the Younger's suicide a noble death. The Romantics lauded the death of Chatterton as 'the apotheosis of artistic sensibility'.

There is also a tradition in Japan of writing haiku before committing suicide (and also before a natural death):

In a full ceremonial seppuku (Japanese ritual suicide) one of the elements of the ritual is the writing of a death poem. The poem is written in the tanka style (five units long which are usually composed of five, seven, five, seven, and seven syllables). Asano Naganori, the daimyo whose suicide the forty-seven ronin avenged, wrote a death poem in which commentators see the immaturity and lack of character that led to him being ordered to commit seppuku in the first place.

Oddly, different countries have different suicide rates, which remain fairly constant, perhaps because of varying cultural attitudes to suicide. Hungary is number 5 on the list.

Goths are also fascinated with death and gloom, as this song by Emilie Autumn, The Art of Suicide, illustrates. They also love death in general; Chas Clifton recently spotted a Gothic Book of the Dead, which offers advice on:

Meditating on gravestone sculptures, creating a necromantic medicine bag, keeping a personal book of the dead, and other exercises will help you explore the vital, transformative forces of death.

Chas declares himself no longer entranced by death, having experienced too much of it lately. I agree - life is too full of joy and complexity and love - but it's a curious pleasure to wallow in melancholy sometimes.

She dwells with Beauty—Beauty that must die;
And Joy, whose hand is ever at his lips
Bidding adieu; and aching Pleasure nigh,
Turning to poison while the bee-mouth sips:
Ay, in the very temple of Delight
Veil’d Melancholy has her sovran shrine,
Though seen of none save him whose strenuous tongue
Can burst Joy’s grape against his palate fine;
His soul shall taste the sadness of her might,
And be among her cloudy trophies hung.

... as Keats so eloquently expressed it in his Ode on Melancholy.

Suicide is always a tragedy, and leaves heartbreak in its wake. But its cultural aspects are very interesting.

funk to the music of the galvanised bucket

As if monastic heavy metal dudes were not enough, now babies can get in on the act too, with rock anthems transformed into lullabies, which sound as if they are played on a xylophone.

Rockabye Baby! is a series of albums put out by some record label that feature your favorite rock songs turned into wordless, soothing lullabies for children.

Some of them are an improvement on the original, especially in the case of Metallica, but some definitely aren't.

A much more exciting prospect is presented by Universery Rhymes, an updated and very stylish version of classic nursery rhymes, with lyrics by Jaspre Bark and music by Jason Rebello.

Alien visitor Muth Argooz has made a special recording of all the nursery rhymes he has been writing down to send back to his planet. As you may know he doesn’t speak our language very well so when he writes down the rhymes he never seems to get them right.

hot capuccino

BBC video: A Capuchin friar has taken up singing in a heavy metal band - not because he wants to convert people to Christianity, but because he wants to convince people to live life to the full. What a dude!

Apparently he went to see Metallica in 1990, and got really into heavy metal. I can't say I'm a huge fan of heavy metal myself, I just think he's got the right idea about life. Also, what a splendid beard!

hidden talents

The BBC has just discovered an archive of recordings made by Delia Derbyshire, the woman who composed the classic Doctor Who theme music (but the credit was taken by someone else).

They are amazing, and well ahead of their time.

Paul Hartnoll, formerly of the dance group Orbital and a great admirer of Ms Derbyshire's work, said the track was, "quite amazing".

"That could be coming out next week on [left-field dance label] Warp Records," he noted.

This story seems reminiscent of numerous instances where someone discovered or created something that was then credited to someone else.

• Artemisia Gentileschi - many of whose paintings are (or were) attributed to male relatives
  
• Jocelyn Bell-Burnell - discoverer of pulsars (for which her male PhD supervisor got the Nobel prize)
  
• Rosalind Franklin - co-discoverer of DNA (she died before the Nobel Prize was awarded to her three collaborators, and it is not given posthumously)
  
• James R Heath - co-discoverer of C60, better-known as Fullerene
• Hans Geiger and Ernest Marsden, who contributed to Rutherford's theory of the atom
  

freakin' awesome usability rap

Usability explained in a mellow rap from The Poetic Prophet (AKA The SEO Rapper).

why birds sing

I just finished watching the documentary Why Birds Sing on BBC4. David Rothenberg says they sing because they enjoy it (and a neurologist has contributed significant evidence to this theory by showing an increase in dopamine - a pleasure hormone - levels in birds' brains when they sing). Conventional bird-song science says that they sing to attract females to mate with, and that the females are attracted by the complexity of the song, and that there's no aesthetic sense in birds. But if that is the case, why are the female birds attracted to the song? If they find complex songs more attractive, then they're making an aesthetic judgment. QED. I don't understand why rationalists are so antipathetic to the idea that animals feel emotion. If there are gay animals (clearly having sex for a reason other than procreation, like emotional bonding) and animals that love to interact with other animals - like dogs and cats that like to hang out together - then clearly animals experience emotions. In The Science of Discworld, Jack Cohen mentions that he once had a praying mantis (an insect, for goodness' sake) that liked to do tricks to impress an audience, and would not perform if you gave him a trick that he considered too simple. So I can't see what is so irrational about saying that birds have an aesthetic sense, and sing for the sheer pleasure of singing. I don't think this is anthropomorphising birds. It is quite probable that early humans were inspired to make music by listening to birds, and this is why our musical scales are similar to theirs. It seems that rationalists want to take away any notion of love or spirituality, and explain everything mechanistically. I don't think it is irrational to say that birds and animals can experience pleasure (why else do cats enjoy stroking and food, bonobos enjoy sex, or humans enjoy all the things that we enjoy - after all, we are animals too).

There's also a longer article by David Rothenberg on why this is important.

"As human music grows to encompass ever more kinds of sounds and listens more sensitively to what is around us, there will be more interspecies music than ever before. It works best when the human musician welcomes the encounter with openness and respect, ready to take in the unfamiliar and genuinely learn something new, to change one's musical sense in the presence of new and exciting sounds. Approach the situation without too many expectations, and let us make music together that neither species could make apart. It is one more way for us to learn about and to appreciate the animal world."

And here's another article, featuring marvellous musical mice (who sing in octaves and shifts in the ultrasonic range).

Timothy Holy and Zhongsheng Guo of Washington University in St. Louis show that male mice “sing” to females in ultrasonic ranges.

“Individual males produce songs with characteristic syllabic and temporal structure,” the authors write.

In this study of captive animals, the mice sing primarily in octaves and shifts. In a study of wild California wild mice, other researchers found that the mice sang in thirds. Patricia Gray says, “This is phenomenal to me as a musician that intervals do matter. They matter to us and to other species as well.”