A little learning... can be quite hard

Yesterday was Monday. At 8.30 am Skype hoodled and V appeared on the computer screen with another singing lesson. I’m well into my fifth year and the telescope is now reversed: once it was broad structures, these days fine detail.

I deliberately upped V’s fee at the beginning of The Plague when her other students were losing their jobs and unable to continue. Subtly she has lengthened my nominal hour, sometimes to ninety minutes. I threatened to up the fee again and we both laughed.

Often we discuss music teaching in general. How discouraging is it for her when a problem arises and – for a time – I am unable to grasp her solution? I’d noticed she often varies her approach several times when this happens. This turned out to be fundamental. If she exhausts all her approaches she tells the student – kindly, I’m sure – she can do no more.

I have a long-standing problem which is still in the balance: singing duets, my most profound desire. The idea of being “ploughed” doesn’t bear thinking about. Especially during The Plague. But V has let me indirectly know my zest for learning seems undiminished, and she approves of the work I do on my own.

The teacher/student relationship is both intense and remote. Over the years I’ve picked up odd details, especially about V's daughters, but this is one area where my journalistic curiosity is put on hold. On the other hand I’m required to inspect the shape of her mouth and even the position of her tongue when we’re dealing with tricky vowel sounds. What I can say she is infinitely patient and can also work magic. I outline a difficulty and inevitably her recommendation involves something I’d never considered.

Learning is personality as well as facts.

Remote learning

Today was my first singing lesson on Skype. My webcam still hasn’t arrived so I could see V but she couldn’t see me. Which is it as it should be. I am older, raddled and given to insincere smiles. V, in contrast, has a powerful message: singing is uplift.

I felt strangely formal, glad I’d doffed my pyjamas and shaved even if I was invisible. Skype forces V to talk more and I realised how much of her tuition is usually non-verbal: a brief noise as I repeat a defect, the piano hammered harder for emphasis, a finger pointing ceilingwards in preparation for a high note, a frown, a smile. In real three-dimensional life silences can be tolerated but not on Skype.

V’s chin appeared to be resting on the bottom edge of my monitor frame. She got up and added another pillow to her stool. Added another. A slight improvement. But why was she constantly looking to her left? Because her Skype-equipped laptop rested on the piano immediately in front and the score had had to be moved.

The lesson was hyper-technical, half an hour devoted to the song’s first four or five notes. I fretted, unable to re-create my own timbre. Demonstrating, V leant forward, forming her lips into a tight circle, then restricting their width with her index fingers; patient as always. I continued to stumble, knowing now how I’d be spending the forthcoming six days in my study.

After more than four years of lessons we’ve become friends, talking briefly about our families and the politics we both hate. For the moment Skype inhibits this. Even so it’s a far greater improvisation than I imagined. And the sound quality is not half bad. Infection is held at bay, progress is tangible.

I sing Schubert's Der Lindenbaum

Here something a little less Serious

And here the Mozart aria I was asked to sing at Lesson No. 1

Finally Lucy's earworm
 

Gravely among graves

Death's a lonely old

time, ain't it Johannes?

Friends whose blogs I read regularly refer to groups, bands and singers acting as musical milestones throughout their lives. And/or as objects of sexual adoration.

With one or two exceptions (Simon and Garfunkel, Nina Simone, Frank Sinatra) these names are simply names to me. I am aware of them, nothing more. There is no implicit criticism here. I simply travel on a different train, an outdated steam chuffer that trundles along rural routes and spends aeons untended at stations, deserted by staff. Speed is immaterial. I only visit graveyards. To a man (and I fear they all are men) my "milestones" are tombstones.

Living conductors, orchestras, singers and instrumentalists re-animate the works of these long-dead ghosts. Newspaper critics praise or denigrate such "performances" then all is still. My patch represents only a tiny percentage of what constitutes music these days. Even The Guardian, my newspaper, which tries to be even-handed about culture, devotes only a few column inches to this branch of archaeology, and then – ironically - only when the work is "new". By implication, soon to be forgotten.

A bit like being limited to novels written before, say, 1900. Great names, great works but lacking Joyce, Greene, Waugh and Proust.

Minorities like mine may seek comfort in snobbery: “This stuff has survived; it must be good.” – I’ve done it myself. Also much modern popular music is electronically tweaked; for a baritone such sounds are beyond my debutant skills.

Minorities may also pretend to be elite but it really isn’t worth the effort. One friend said classical singers’ voices sounded “artificial”. I sort of agreed.

I enjoy singing; it seems to “complete” me. But this is surely an intimate sensation, probably incommunicable.

Is smoke finally emerging from the chuffer’s chimney? Time for more tombstones.

Bars now downloadable

Uh, huh: gotta straighten this out right away.

Hustle (primary meaning:  to push or convey; secondary meaning: to swindle or cheat). You do understand it's the former sense, don't you? To push as in "present for sale".

Opening Bars is now available, greatly reduced, as a Kindle download. Pat (he's a fella and a friend) who runs The Racing House Press which published Gorgon Times and Out of Arizona, fixed it yesterday and let me know. He'd chosen the price; was it OK?

I said, "Yes. I'd rather be read than make money." So I'm hustling but in a downbeat, half-ashamed, British sort of way.

Click one of the two options in the sidebar depending on where you live.

And now I'll shuffle off and nurse my sciatica which, if anything, is worse this AM.

... amid th'encircling gloom

Dark outside and it will remain so for another hour. Low temperatures were forecast last night so will there be ice outside? I'm due a singing lesson, the first in almost three weeks, and the roads to V's house are precipitate. On top of that I'm still wheezing from the cough. Will I even get through the warm-up?

Change and decay in all around I see.
Oh art which changeth not,
Abide with me.

But what's this? An email from brother Sir Hugh, off to his bed where he doesn't expect to sleep. Like me he recently had surgery, though more major than mine. Just a line to say he's bought and read Opening Bars. And reviewed it in Amazon!

Straight off in the review he admits to being my brother. Which seems to validate that which follows. I couldn't ask for better. I guess I'll get through the warm-up, perhaps even try the Purcell.

Thanks bro.

Alter Ego does a duet

Just got back from an intense singing lesson which...

Uh-huh, still on about that craze of his. Silly old fart. Should stick to flower-beds like any self-respecting, half-dead octogenarian.

... three months devoted to Schumann’s song Im Rhein...

Must be tone deaf, just like his blog. I know for a fact the song lasts only one minute, twenty seconds.

...but then it is a masterpiece...

How would he know?  Age fifteen he listened to Radio Luxembourg.

... the way the music fits the Heine poem...

Oh yes, anything German and he’s away. Did you know he can order a beer in German and that’s about it.

... the more detail, the subtler it ...

See how he pretends he can read a score. Sheer bollocks. Im Rhein’s marked Ziemlich langsam and I doubt he knows what that means.

... no reason why we should not spend another three months...

But does his teacher agree?

... V is very patient ...

Aye, she’d have to be. Listening to an eighty-two-year-old throat mangle a so-called masterpiece. She should be paid in euros, by the cartload.

... magic moment! The last four syllables – liebsten genau – exactly fit my natural voice.

But what about the other five-hundred syllables? Ear-plugs anyone?

... V says so ...

The alternative would be to say he needs putting down.

... private lessons, a better choice of music ...

Here’s the key. At his age he should have joined a choir, so he could hide his croakings. Mind you, a choir with very low standards.

PS. Still a thrill, after almost two years. Making a stab at Mozart in a resonant kitchen with this portable, ever-available instrument. Shockingly difficult of course but, then, that’s one of the attractions – an adult thing to take on.

Gallons into an egg-cup

For ages no Jehovah's Witness has asked me to let Jesus into my life. I used to be abrupt, now I might be gentler: urging him or her to do the same for music. Wholeheartedly, submissively, expecting ennoblement.

Years ago I converted my 200 LPs into CDs to occupy the same shelves as my existing CDs. Then I fed CD files into an MP3 player for holidays, listening to the Late Quartets after swimming off the isle of Karpathos in the Dodecanese. The MP3 player was fiddly but it did the job for a decade.

Now a much grander project: transferring virtually all my 700-plus CDs on to 32 gigabyte card hardly bigger than a postage stamp. That's the dark blue bit sticking out from the white card-reader.

Over the weekend we dined out, staying overnight. I stuck the incomplete 32 GB card into the elaborate car radio (an under-appreciated asset), switched on and scrolled through many titles clearly displayed on the large screen. Did VR fancy the Brahms violin concerto? She did. The last strains faded in the restaurant car park -  David Oistrakh, once on a battered LP dating back to the Ark. Neither of us had spoken for an hour. I suggested a powerful white Rhone. The restaurant offered Croze Hermitage. Amen.

Hardline Hope, a novel (17,063 words)
For her it was a game; what she was banking on was he’d take it at face value. A furtive, speculative look crossed his face and she knew it was happening. She gave him a little nudge: “One of those pants suits, tight round the derrière. With these glasses I’m halfway there.”

“Yeah, but can you sell?”

“To men, possibly. To women almost certainly... I’d be saying: this could be you, Miss Solicitor, Miss Marketing Director...”

Winter magic

As autumn slides into winter music takes a tighter hold. Two concerts in Birmingham to which we travel by smallish bus, still in daylight, through Herefordshire's theatrically beautiful countryside. Yes, we miss the fizz of being close to London but there's peace here and an expectation we'll live longer. Already have.

Rachmaninov's third piano concerto (well liked by VR, more austere than the famous second) and how difficult it must be to play; for a time Old Man Sergei was the only chap who could. Plus Nielsen's fourth symphony, the slightly risibly named Inextinguishable, long, noisy, a huge orchestra, but it finally hung together for me (the result of hearing it in a hall instead of on CD).

More recently, Mozart's most satisfying piano concerto, played with casual skill as if it was the fifth rather than the twenty-fifth. Followed by Brahms' German Requiem, with the CBSO choir in thunderous good form, even if we were distracted by a kerfuffle involving one of the sopranos.

Last night sad apprehension as BBC4 devoted an hour-and-a-half to an examination of the five Beethoven piano concertos by the Norwegian pianist, Leif Ove Andsnes. Sad because BBC4, clearly a TV channel for elitists, will be a likely casualty following endless ideological sniping by the present Tory government and Rupert Murdoch's commercial desire to see the BBC, in its entirety, disappear.

Glorious anyway in that the first and second concertos, sometimes downgraded when compared with the later, giant trio, are not only wonderful (we knew that) but for virtuosos.

Non-musical note. One of my verses is to be published in a collection, of which more later. This week the collection's contributors received a collective email starting: “Dear Poets”. Mum, Mum, I’ve made it! At eighty!

Who are these people?

The answer seemed obvious,

Here's the situation. Matinee concert at Birmingham Symphony Hall: hall (seats 2262) at least 75% full; stalls (£26 a pop) almost 100% taken; programme* close to classical (ie, posh) MoR; average age (cf. the greyness of the heads) about 65.

Question. How many present are music lovers? The knee-jerk answer is surely all of them.

Why anything other? Unlike a play, music concerts operate in a language not understood or appreciated by everyone and there are few visual diversions. You can't pick and choose as in a gallery. There's no story as with a play. Other than at the interval there are no chat opportunities as at a restaurant.

Just the cognoscenti? I had my doubts. The figures don't compute. The listening figures for BBC Radio 3 are tiny and that's a nationwide service. Sales of posh CDs are way down and many famous names are out of contract. Note how much space serious newspapers allocate to posh music.

But what do I know? I'm a rank amateur. I asked M who knows posh music back to front, has solo-ed the Mozart clarinet concerto. She thought then nodded. "By no means everyone."

But why do they come? I asked. It's expensive, you're required to remain immobile and silent for sometimes an hour at a time, it's a fuss.

M said: an afternoon out, a family habit, better than staying at home and watching the wallpaper if you’re retired, a sense of elite community, can lead to advantageous name dropping.

No wonder poppers think the posh lot are weird. No wonder my kids indulge me.

* Magic Flute overture, Mozart pno. cto 24, Elgar first symphony.

Stepping back a little

 Although I have CDs of music played on period instruments (memorably Melvyn Tan, fortepiano, doing LvB) and have seen period  performances on telly, yesterday was my first live concert. To Birmingham for The Academy of Ancient Music with two versions of Stabat Mater (Vivaldi, Pergolesi), Salve Regina (Vivaldi) and two concerti armonico (van Wassenaer).

Some things I expected. Gut strings detune quicker than the modern metal-wound kind and there's some messing about on their behalf. Not least for the gloomy, possibly French woman, endlessly attending to her theorbo (pictured). This cumbersome device seemed, to my gradually dysfunctioning ears, almost inaudible. Gut strings in general are supposed to generate less noise but this problem didn't arise. I am by now used to counter-tenors and Andreas Scholl, world renowned, offered beautiful, wobble-free tone over his full range.

What did surprise me was the structure of the music. The two cellos and double bass were reduced to an undemanding and repetitive drone-like accompaniment which I believe is called ground bass. Strange, given that Bach's dates are contemporary with these three composers and his unaccompanied cello suites - a growing comfort in my declining years - demonstrate what you can get out of a cello when you try.

The van Wassenaer pieces, both in four movements, were good fun but predictable. This Dutch nobleman favoured the "round" approach; each violin playing the same melody but entering the fray at different times. Very soon I was able to hum in advance what the next ten seconds would bring. Quietly of course.

There was no conductor, the leader (a violinist) did the cue-ing with a most eloquent body. Informality reigned. To the point where leader and counter-tenor crashed into one another when leaving the stage.

Taste the spice, feel the warmth

I rarely use the car radio, despite its simplicity and its undeniable hi-fi. But sometimes Tesco can be so dispiriting... Punched the button just in time to hear the BBC Radio 3 presenter Sarah Walker (who's almost managed to suppress her northern accent but at the expense of inducing a disagreeable chuckle in her voice) announce Brahms' variations on Haydn's St Anthoni chorale. And suddenly Tesco and all other retailing engines faded as I embraced the great and good Johannes, knowing it made me a fuddy-duddy, knowing that the trend is away from his rich textures, knowing that his tunesmanship in this day and age is thought to be slightly simplistic. Said all this to VR and was astounded to receive this reply: "He has a sentimental attachment to me too. This was the first piece of music you played for me."

I never knew! And it all happened 54 years ago. For Brahms is surely the glass of glűhwein drunk in anticipation of a 3 km descent down a broad-boulevard blue run, groomed to show off one's parallel ski-ing abilities. A world now lost to my enfeebled legs but remembered in tranquillity and with affection.

Driving home, there was more. My last short story ended enigmatically with:

But couldn’t see playing Schubert trios day in day out. Felt sure the Brahms sextets would be a goer.

To which Beth commented:

I loved this story, and cringe for poor Brahms.

To which I responded:

Are you implying there's another mini-step between Schubert and Brahms I should have used?

To which she replied:

Oh no, just that poor old lumbering brown Brahms would be embarrassed, and since I love him so much anyway, I feel compelled to defend him.

So should we all, all love Brahms. 

Right from the horse's mouth

It’s pleasant to loll on your couch (Naked, if it’s summer), before your own loudspeakers, listening to Symphony For A Thousand then switching to Sinatra’s Stars Fell On Alabama. No restrictions, physical or artistic. You could also get drunk except Sinatra doesn’t go with wine.

But it only works via self-delusion. The Mahler can involve four or five hundred instrumentalists and choristers. Listen again to your speakers. Does that really sound like hundreds of voices? It’s a mere summary.

For high fidelity go to the concert hall. Voices in unison throb in a way that neither CDs nor LPs can catch. True sound. As with the perfectly rendered coughing - always in the ppp passages; always taken up by copycats. Plus the sight of the elderly shufflers, one of whom had a heart attack at Birmingham two months ago. Lifelike sound and lifelike viewing. Sometimes they’re a curse.

 I have a dream for the wedding anniversary. A real-life soprano or a string quartet in our living room. Benylin in brandy coasters. Twould cost a couple of grand but it would be ours, and unmediated. Two hundred and fifty years ago we could have booked Mozart. Or would Carol Anne Duffy reading her own stuff be a goer?

DEHYDRATED SONNET Tone Deaf’s competition for sonnet with fewest words. Must include one reference to music. Great prizes for just entering. Entries to LdP in time for June 1 posting. Additional spec: title may be long or short; words used are not included in total (A great opportunity for cheating!).

BLEST REDEEMER (66,534 words so far). Plutarch’s first provisional pass: add more dates; Hitler Youth anachronistic; height disparity between two chairs; camp up Imogen; it’s not really meditation; etc. 

When young I was much worse

What makes an adult? Given you agree I’ve made it, sewing this lot together creates an LdP template. But for you – and particularly you! - there’ll be variations.

● Always vote.
● Of LvB’s symphonies like the Pastoral the least.
● No longer end restaurant meals with cheese.
● Respond to jazz nostalgically.
● Regard things as half of a pair.
● See London as a kind of Santa’s grotto.
● Prize comfort above cash.
● Go for more obscure operas (eg, Janacek’s Jenufa).
● Weep appreciatively at unexpected articulacy.
● Eschew public transport (other than trains).
● Acknowledge that some Mozart is musical boilerplate.
● Reflect smugly on time spent in foreign countries.
● Weep appreciatively (but embarrassingly) at what I consider to be great musical performances.
● Spend unthinkingly on keeping computer “up”.
● Avoid sentimentality re. grandchildren.
● Avoid sentimentality.
● Award imaginary medals to those who explain music well.
● Donate more to charity.
● Consider deleting previous admission.
● Rarely buy programmes at music concerts.
● Admire (quietly) those who kill officially on UK’s behalf.
● Drink far less beer.
● Increasingly prefer chamber to orchestral music.
● Write fiction to explore the feminine viewpoint.
● Worry about growing incidence of gorgeous (women) soloists.
● Read less, re-read more.
● Speculate on Sibelius’s ineluctable progress up the charts.
● No longer enjoy identifying political mendacity.
● Bathe less.
● Increasingly doubt worth of lists vs. prose.