A literary Bank Holiday

Two hymns from CofE hymnology both sung to the same tune, each containing an (unintentionally) entertaining nugget. The first,  Glory To Thee, My God, This Night,  throws up this:

Teach me to live, that I may dread
The grave as little as my bed

Are you familiar with bathos? - an English language figure-of-speech defined as "anticlimax (esp. literary)  created by an unintentional lapse in mood from the sublime to the trivial or ridiculous." Look no further for an example.

The extract from Awake, My Soul, And With The Sun, is subtler, a collector's item:

Direct, control, suggest, this day,
All I design, or do, or say.

The beginning of a text in A-level philosophy, geometry or carpentry? The French would say it presumes a dirigiste universe. Though being French they would not say who is driving.

THINGS I'M ASHAMED OF BUT WHAT THE HELL An addiction revisited. No one who can tolerate the custard in custard doughnuts can be said to have a palate.

That pungent mixture of esters, valencies and sulphides (I jest. I know nothing of these things.) rules out all informed gustatory comment. So forget my wine recommendations since I secretly relish these caky, chemical sausages. At least I do when I can find them. The nanny state has decided I need protecting from myself and is making them rarer and rarer. Soon I'll be reduced to parsnip purée from a tiny jar.

WIP Second Hand (No recent additions)
Francine smiled indulgently. “You persuaded me about the chin though I'll never quite understand how. But these bony buttresses stand out like geometry: straight lines, no dignity. They're not cheeks in any sense, they're contractions. Bits and pieces plastered in the centre; a cramped collage.”

Look on my works ye mighty

This is a mean-spirited plaque. It's in Westminster Abbey which is OK although I, as an incorrigible and philistine admirer, would prefer the info laser-beamed against the night sky for eternity. I could say "for infinity" except that the plaque's subject thought infinity (the symbol ∞)  rendered maths equations "unbeautiful".

According to the biography I have just read the plaque is two feet square and that clearly isn't enough. The spare inscription matches the subject's modesty, but see how cramped everything is.

The symbols - how deceptively simple! - depict the relativistic equation for the electron. Like you I remain cut off from the detail but, having read The Strangest Man by Graham Farmelo (himself a physicist), I have the tiniest feel for the equation's importance. More than I expected since Farmelo manages his book without recourse to equations.

The subject is routinely labelled, by people who know, Britain's greatest mathematician after Newton. He is of course Paul Dirac. Genius is not too strong a word.

BLESSED with  phenomenal powers of absorption in my youth I unwittingly committed to memory hundreds of verses from Hymns Ancient And Modern. The verses are full of oddities. For instance:

Ye servants of the Lord,
Each in his office wait,
Observant of His heavenly laws,
And watchful at His gate

“Office" gets me. What about farm labourers? Fishermen? Astronauts? Pole dancers?

WIP Second Hand (47,817 words)
SALADS were difficult, they demanded a knife and fork used simultaneously. Otherwise she found herself stoking unwieldy bundles of lettuce into her mouth, eating cucumber slices singly and tearing up lengths of over-cooked beef with the edge of her fork. Recently she’d experimented with the American approach - dogged and continuous sawing beforehand to reduce the food to bite-sized portions.

A lugubrious celebration

Since this is my hundredth post (as LdP) and I am demonstrably old, I am using the hymn tune, Old Hundredth, to celebrate. Despite my atheism hymns represent my introduction to music. My mum sang them round the house and I copied her. Briefly, inexplicably, I joined a church choir. Hymn words and music are still embedded, three-quarters of a century later.

OH is a lumbering TUNE usually played very slowly, as here. It becomes risible when attached to these words:

All people that on earth do dwell

since the second line is distinctly contradictory:

Sing to the Lord with cheerful voice.

OH is not cheerful. Later the words become repetitive and then acutely genteel:

Praise, laud and bless His name always

For it is seemly so to do

When was the last time you did something seemly?

The tune also accompanies a four-liner also known as the Doxology.

Praise Him from whom all blessings flow,

Praise Him all creatures here below, etc.

The Doxology is not the scientific study of detergent but “a short hymn often added to the end of canticles, psalms, and hymns.”

None of which is very interesting. What is interesting is that you can sing Good King Wenceslas to OH. It’s difficult but possible. Doing so tells you a good deal about how the brain’s cells work for and against your inclinations. Your instinct tells you what you’re doing is wrong, but another set of cells supports this inventive and adaptive act. I urge you to try this. It will cause you to love your brain.

The recording is by the Westminster Abbey choir, sharpened up strategically by London Brass.

Britain's answer to the Prague P

BBC TV carried a ninety-minute programme on Jonathan Miller, the man whose polymathism I most envy: doctor, biologist, comic actor ( Beyond The Fringe), TV documentarist (the human body, atheism), play director (a good chunk of the BBC’s Shakespeare series), opera director (about eighty works worldwide) and abstract metal-welding sculptor. Plus bits in between such as director of a dramatized version of St Matthew Passion (His own comment: “Not bad for a Jewish atheist.”).

He seemed to have directed the BBC programme too, certainly shaped it. And, we think, chose the music. At one point the LvB fourth piano concerto fluttered, at another the Schubert quintet. And then, like a personal benison for me (this version is sung surprisingly in Yorkshire - well I never said Tykes can't sing) this hymn:

Immortal, invisible,
God only wise,
In light inaccessible,
Hid from our eyes…

Unresting, unhasting
And silent as light,
Nor wanting, nor wasting,
Thou rulest in might.

Perhaps it best describes the scope of his abilities. If so, so be it. But it’s a hymn I had temporarily forgotten and I’ve subsequently washed many a plate bellowing out its unrestrained sentiments (Thy justice like mountains, High soaring above.) in our wonderful kitchen acoustic. Thanks JM.

VERIFICATION I’ve noticed some belly-aching about Blogger’s renovated word verification system. Too difficult they say. My view is different. As long as I can handle it it’s proof I’m sentient. And I’m hanging on to that.

Feed the toaster; make a noise

Am I a snob? Of course I am. Despite dressing down to the point where Mrs LdP prefers to walk ten paces in front I spoil this raggedness by using big words when I meet a neighbour. Merely admitting to opera turns me into un grand prétentieux. As does italicised French through my blog.

Yet, left to myself, preparing my brunch, I sing hymns. Nothing snob about hymns. Often I mock them for their naivete. Now it’s time to list my favourities.

I like When I Survey The Wondrous Cross because it was my Granny’s favourite. The tune is upbeat but, as usual, I go for good (or goodish) lyrics. Here’s the concise last verse;

Were the whole realm of nature mine,
It were an offering far too small;
Love so amazing, so divine,
Demands my soul, my life, my all.

In The Bleak Midwinter (“Snow had fallen, snow on snow.”) has already been mentioned as has Love Divine All Love Excelling (“Changed from glory into glory.”)

But what about Christian Dost Thou See Them? Mainly for the lines that immediately follow:

While the hosts of Midian
Prowl and prowl around.
Christian up and smite them…”

Muscular Christianity, you would agree.

Another favourite was inherited from my mother, a quondam churchgoer: Wondrous Things of Thee are Spoken, because she always broke off to laugh at:

With the camp of God surrounded,
Thou mayest smile at all thy foes.

This is the season for forgiveness so perhaps a gesture towards my birthplace, the West Riding of Yorkshire (now West Yorkshire). This one starts well, but fades.

Hills of the North, rejoice;
River and mountain-spring,

Perhaps when the technology’s improved a conference-call sing-song with like-minded unsnobs. The pic’s York Minster.