Dogging for the Disabled

Last week, I attended the Dogging Musikfest in Austria's charming Burgenland; although I suspect it would have a higher audience if it was relocated to Essex.  The weather was sweltering in a way that only Mitteleuropa can be but excellent portable air-con was provided.  I was also particularly struck by the care and attention given to disabled members of the audience.  Ramps had been constructed to the front of the stalls giving those in wheelchairs the best seats in the house. Helpers and carers were given the end seats on the front rows of the stalls for ease of access.

That being said, the recital on the evening in question hardly generated much competition for the best seats. 

Three settings of 'lost' Hungarian folk songs by an American who lives in Minnesota are hardly going to form a queue.  The notes helpfully advise that 'lost' and 'discarded' are the same word in Hungarian, apparently, so it's difficult to ascertain with any level of certainty why the composers considers these songs noteworthy.  The song cycle which took up the second half of the recital was in Rumelian dialect and (and I think you'll be as pleasantly surprised by this as I was) deals with a shepherd's love for his shepherdess girlfriend (well she'd hardly be an accountant, would she?) his sheep, his sheepdog and, judging from the endless number of sections which make up this piece, his love for anything else with a pulse in the surrounding area as well. Bizarrely, this offering was also the work of an American composer who lives in Minnesota but not the same one.  I wonder if they know each other?

I had never heard of the 'internationally renowned' Welsh baritone whose job it was to interpret these pieces nor his accompanist who, apparently, is 'much in demand' on the international circuit. Not for any musical reason I could discern.  As a decorative doorstop, perhaps, or specialist gigolo for women who become aroused in the presence of plodding, musical mediocrity.  Whatever, the 'back story' (as our American cousins have it), the opening bars and optional accuracy of the singer confirmed the two hours of exquisite torture to come. 

God knows, the 'discarded' folk songs gave me ample time to consider my forthcoming defence statement and reasons why eating Scottish people is wrong. But it was only during the opening section which avowed a love for 'all things in nature' (Keep your cats in doors!) that it was brought home to me how compliant I and other music writers have all become over the years.  We can't just shout down a performer or walk out when being subjected to substandard music or barrack the accompanist from the stalls. We'd never get free tickets again!  However, the two disabled members of the audience had no such qualms.

Throughout the Hungarian songs, it was obvious that the female wheelchair user was less than impressed with the musical fare and seemed determined, despite the ratchet straps which held her wheel chair in place, to escape the aural torture.  The song entitled 'To The Mountains' was punctuated with crashes and bangs from the front of the auditorium as she appeared engaged in a life-and-death struggle with her wheelchair entirely reminiscent of Dr Strangelove's attempts to control his politically-incorrect, rogue right arm during the closing stages of Stanley Kubrick's comic masterpiece.  During the section entitled 'Song of Departure', a helper stepped forward, noisily released the ratchet straps and pushed the wheelchair into the gloom of the abandoned zone of the stalls. Throughout the whole episode, the internationally renowned Welsh baritone (IRWB henceforth) had maintained a stony visage with his 'eyes to the far horizon' (about row S of the stalls). Although I could tell that his resolve had weakened as he manfully sang over the noise of of the wheelchair's squeaky guide wheel as it headed towards the exit.  The interval arrived only just in time.

A surfeit of enthusiasm for the Shepherd's song cycle in Rumelian dialect seemed to be the problem for the gentleman in the wheel chair who now took sole possession of the raised observation platform almost at eye-to-eye level with IRWB.  The organisers had done well to find not just a disabled person keen on modern settings of late nineteenth century pastoral song cycles but one who was also cogniscent of the impenetrable Rumelian dialect.  Not content with forty minutes or so (I wasn't timing it.) of passive enjoyment, he livened up the sections marked 'I Call My Flock' and 'The Dog's Bark' with some free-form vocalisation. This was more than IRWB could stand.  His face glowed russet.  Perspiration soaked his fashionably Nehru-collared shirt as he laid on the fortissimo with a trowel in a desperate effort to be heard above the wailing from the observation platform directly in front of him.  This had now grown in volume with a helper stepping forward advising his charge:

'Nicht singen sie, bitte.  Singen hier is verboten!'

And so it was to prove.  The final section of the song cycle telling entitled 'Our Laughter Fades' was galloped through at some pace as it was now obvious that IRWB and his 'much in demand' accompanist just wanted to 'get the hell out of' Burgenland and be on that plane to the next star-studded musikfest; preferably one beyond the reach of current EC legislation regarding access for the disabled.  Speaking personally, I think that Dogging might become something a summer fixture.  

Organ Snatchers & The Great Debate

It's not been a great month.  I am summoned to the youthful, guitar-plucking presence of MIN's editor, Steven, to explain the unfortunate circumstances surrounding my after dinner speech (unpaid) to some ghastly music press knees-up and music awards ceremony in Dundee, of all places.  The event would have gone swimmingly but for three rogue factors:

1.  Jose Cuervo Tequila:  A tequila of note.

2.  My choice of topic

3.  Some fat, know-it-all, waste-of-skin, Glaswegian bagpipe-maker whose name the company lawyers have forbidden me to write or even refer to in any way even though it sounds very much like 'McFuckwit' (This is exactly what I mean! Ring me. Ed.)

It's true that I may have had one or two 'margueritas' too many before the dinner but, in my defence, they were free and excellent.  Nor was the improvised speech entirely my fault as somebody with a red beard (a woman, I think) spilled her vodka and Irn Bru over my notes rendering them all but unusable.  

It's strange what topics appeal to a mind half-submerged in tequila. I'd half-heard a story on the nocturnal BBC World Service about the Welsh self-assembly government (That's Ikea, isn't it? Ed.) helping itself to people's organs.  I thought this would be a good topic on which to start.  I told the assembled throng that I myself had once possessed a huge organ built, reputedly, by the famous nineteenth century drunk and bankrupt, John Avery.  Unbeknownst to the landIord, I had it reconstructed in the stairwell of our house in Abergavenny. It was ideal for keeping up my Bach and Buxtehude and also had enough punch about it for some Sorabji and Saint Saen when the occasion or alcohol-level demanded.

It was at this point that the chairman started to tap my elbow.  I decided to ignore this putting it down to some local custom.  I continued describing the qualities of the instrument and how it provided an interesting conversation piece for visiting dignitaries to the Abergavenny area.  The elbow tapping continued but I was not to be put off.  Our neighbours complained that the vibrations caused by the pedal stops were adding to the subsidence which already blighted our shared party wall.  Mrs Vapor appealed to the better side of my nature and we had the instrument removed and, after a brief psychotic episode during which I believed that the instrument was possessed by the spirit of its builder, John Avery,... burnt.

I began to notice that many in the audience seemed puzzled.  By now a considerable debate was going on.  This rose in volume as I castigated the Welsh Assembly Government for being nothing more than a Stalinist-inspired, district council on steroids incapable of organising fornication in a brothel. Bodies such as these are too powerful, I said.  They've got enough to keep them occupied with basic problems of modern life like dog-mess, pot-holes and spandex cycle-wear without marauding through the countryside, sequestering church and chapel organs without so much as a 'by your leave'! Heaven knows what problems this would cause numerous religious foundations in Wales!  I was not surprised, I reported rather topically, to hear that Dr Barry Morgan, The Archbishop of Wales, a man whose name is almost synonymous with 'organ', had waded into the debate saying that if the Welsh Assembly Government just helped itself to people's organs, then organ voluntary donations (Shouldn't that be 'voluntary organ donations'? Ed.) might even decline. But before I could bring the matter to a conclusion, my delivery was rudely interrupted by 'McFuckwit', or whatever his name is, from Table 16 in the far corner of the polished floor that comprises The Dundee & District Zumba Studio.

'He's nae talking aboot Church organs, ya daft twat!'

At first, I mistook this for an ungainly attempt to muscle in on the proceedings so gave as good as I got.

'It's organs today but what will be it tomorrow?'  I yelled back, rhetorically. 'People like you are never satisfied.  That's your problem! It starts with organs but where will it all end?  Dogs? Er... Cats?  State ownership of children?  The end of the Union itself!'

To my amazement, the audience seemed to be siding with 'McFuckwit'.  Amidst increasingly urgent requests for me to sit down and be quiet, the tapping at my elbow had now developed into full-blown tugging.

'What is it? What the hell do you want?'  I yelled at the chairman.  Calmly, he explained in under 140 characters, without the aid of glove puppets that the organs refered to in the BBC World Sevice report were the sort used in transplant surgery and not the large, wind-powered musical instruments often found in religious buildings. Seeing that the crowd were turning nasty, I decided to beat a hasty retreat to the bar whilst a fashionably short Scottish composer brought proceedings to a close.  

All would have been well, had 'McFuckwit' not decided to continue our frank exchange of views in the bar.  This resulted in a brief tussle during the course of which I bit off a tiny section of McFuckwit's ear; no bigger than a Waitrose sample; no more than any international footballer would have taken; an amount constituting less than 2% of the whole ear.  I am now bound over to appear in court in November.  I forget the charge but being under Scottish Law it's probably something like 'being foreign in a public place and attempting to eat a bagpipe maker at one sitting'.  Who knows, my next few columns might be sent in from some oubliette in the Scottish borders. (Steve, Please put your appeal for to help with legal costs here. Regards, QV) ...

Trouble in Belsize Park

A dinner party gets out of hand in Belsize Park... not for the first time, I'm sure.  A flurry of accusations from two Scottish, original instrument-playing guests goes badly wrong when Mrs Vapor (for it is she) retorts that it should be a 'McFlurry of accusations' given that such infantile nonsense would be better coming from a clown in a fast food hamburger 'joint'.  The name of the hamburger joint in question escapes me.  Mrs V. seeks consolation in the arms of Jose Cuervo and is soon asleep on the living room couch (floor in yr, original ms.  Ed.) leaving the grown-ups to pick up the pieces of the evening.

Much alcohol has been consumed and the bitterness of the earlier evening persists.  Our hosts are excellent amateur viola da gamba and viola d'amore players but can take it all a bit seriously.  Mr Host claims that if anyone who takes their original instruments seriously should make their own strings from wire or gut as required. The Scottish contingent chip in that there would be little time left to actually play the virginals if they had to make all the strings as well. I should have been content with the remnants of the mescal bottle but no, I had to shove in my six pennyworth.

'How difficult can it be?'  I heard myself saying as I entered the minefield.  Forgetting the vegan repast to which we had been so recently subjected, I blundered on. 'I've got a terrier who kills several cats a year so there'll be no shortage of raw materials.'

At this, Mrs Hostess bursts into tears (more fuelled, I suspect, by gin than sentiment).

Mr Host glares at me.

'Really, Quentin. You can be such a bore at times.  She's only just got over the loss of Gassman.'

I should have just hung my head in shame and said nothing but the mention of the recently deceased cat's name (after Leopold Florian Gassman, the eighteenth century, Bohemian composer) suddenly struck me as very funny.  My ill-concealed sniggering only threw petrol on the flames.  I then remembered that the unfortunate creature's mortal remains had been peremptorily exhumed by the dog next door and had to be re-interred amidst more wailing and lamentation from the bereft owner.  

'You really are a shmug shon of a bitch, Quentin.' said the glossy-faced, red-haired virginal player from the north of the border. 'To teach you a leshon, I'm going to make you a bet.  If it'sh sho easy to make gut shtrings for original inshtruments, let'sh shet a date and shee who can actually make a useable string by that time.  I'll put £500.00 on the table now just to shee you eat a huge dollop of humble pie.' 

'In any case,' added his remarkably unattractive wife whose face glowed red like the buttocks of a sexually aroused capuchin monkey, 'any fool knows that gut strings are made of goat, sheep or cow intestine.  The 'cat' in 'catgut' is short for 'cattle' and has nothing to do with cats.' (more wimpering from our hostess).

There was nothing for it.  I'd been called out. My honour was at stake.  I had to take up the challenge.  Also, there was nothing else left to drink.  I duly bet the Scottish party that I could produce a more playable gut string than he could in seven days. 

Despite our disagreement, we all muck in and in carry the recumbent form of Mrs V. to a kerbside cab.  The cabbie stung me an extra £20 (You told me it was for a train fare! Ring me. Ed.) to take the starboard side of Mrs V to our doorway while I steered the port side.

I awoke early and set to my research.  By 0900hrs I was something of an expert on the theory of manufacting gut strings for divers instruments between 1450 to the present day.  Mrs V. announced that she had come down with a bad attack of neurasthenia overnight and would be staying in bed.  The day was mine to get on with the great project.

A couple of phone calls to the local abattoir and I returned with a tub of raw material that had recently been the innards of a lean, young, male sheep.  Lean beasts, the slaughter-man assured me, have the toughest guts. 

By 1400hrs I had divided the batch into two reserving one half for a plan B situation in our utility room fridge. I cleaned the intestines in cold water, removed any trace of fat and then washed them again thoroughly. The next morning I scraped off the external membrane and high-tailed it down to a local chemist friend to pick up a caustic agent to cure the prepared lengths of gut.  Twenty four hours later they ready for drawing out to a sufficient length for smoothing and equalizing.  

Day Three and it's off to the potting shed to fumigate the strings with sulfur dioxide. Do not try this at home.  A couple of test runs twisting the strings and my gut strings were ready and about the length that could be fitted to a small cello.

I returned to the house exhausted by my labours to find that Mrs V. had once again joined the world of the living... but not in a good way.  She was being sick in the downstairs loo.  I also noticed a vaguely unpleasant odour hanging in the air centred around a frying pan which showed signs of recent use.

'How long were have you left those sweetbreads in the utility room fridge?  They were revolting!' 

Mrs V. slumped down at the kitchen table. 

'What sweetbreads?' I reply.  To this day she doesn't know or even suspect.  

And what of the competition? It was all a waste of time!  Edinburgh's glossy-faced virginal fingerer claims that he had consumed too much drink and that he only had the dimmest of recollections regarding the evening in question.  He certainly doesn't remember making such an odd bet and attests that he has never bet £500.00 on anything in his life.  I thought about contacting the other party in Belsize Park to back me up but decided, in the end, to let sleeping dogs lie. 

Mrs Vapor is Away

Mrs Vapor is away.  Each and every Spring she travels to Mexico to attend the AGM of Los Amigos Confundidos del Betty Ford Foundation in Tijuana (sponsored by Jose Cuervo Gold, a tequila of note).  She and a gaggle of her excited friends need no sedation on this long haul flight which is more than can be said for the cabin attendants on their arrival in the land of Mariachi, Mescal & Murder.  The schedule for these 'ladies that lunch' must be hectic as Mrs V often arrives home with her nerves more of a frazzle than when she left but such is the plight of charity workers in the 21st Century.

Mrs Vapor's absence allows me to give the house a cursory spring clean making sure that no bottles remain in light shades, washing baskets, lavatory cisterns or bathroom cupboards.  Domestic drudgery is interrupted by the arrival of a hand-written note from my publisher, Wesley Stanton.  This could be either very good or very bad.  However, I am usually forewarned of bad things by curt and ill-mannered emails from Steven, the guitar player who occasionally chips in as MIN editor (Ring me. Ed.) Yes, that's the sort of thing.  

The letter from Mr Stanton is obviously part of a charm offensive on his freelance contributors heavily influenced by Prime Minister David Cameron's recent posturings on Europe.  The letter confirms that my fee per column will be increased by 150% during the course of 2014  if, and only if, he, Wesley Stanton , is confirmed as leader of the Conservative Party and if he wins a general election.  The shaky hand and tear marks on the paper lead me to suspect that mischief and alcohol both played their part in this prank (Mr Stanton's, not Mr Cameron's).

Plans to head up to London and spend several lunchtimes and evenings at the well-known, Mayfair inn and musicians' lair, The Hand & Vibrato, have to be curtailed when news reaches me that Nigel Kennedy - the session playing bassoonist not the fiddler - has been taken ill with gout and is currently unable to approach either work or drink.

Instead, I take up a long-standing invitation to visit a blind piano tuner friend, Ivor Quimm, who now lives near Dunkirk (the delightful hamlet in Gloucestershire not the refugee holding yard in northern France). I drive to the farmhouse with some trepidation remembering our previous meetings.  It's unfortunate when a blind person is also clumsy and as a result harms his or her self; when third parties are the victims, it can be downright scary.

We first met years ago when I was working as a humble sleeve-note tamer (Editor, surely. Ed.) at Septum Records. Younger readers probably won't know that recordings on vinyl disc were housed in capacious cardboard sleeves on the back of which academics, down-on-their-luck composers, musically-educated prostitutes and other demi-modaines would vie with one another to display their brilliant musical ignorance.  The supplied texts (though rarely worthy of the name) had to be corralled, neutered and branded into a readable form before being committed to print.  This ghastly process was carried in the Dark Ages before word-processing using type-writers, tippex and glue of such chemical potency many male sub editors were rarely capable of fathering children after using them.  But I digress.

Septum Records had converted an old railway tunnel into a recording studio as the sound of so many of its records accurately reflected.  Again, younger readers may not have heard of the term 'tunnel vision' (vision which concentrates on the particular to the detriment of the general) so will be doubly unaware of the term 'tunnel sound' (recordings which concentrate on the general to the detriment of the particular) which many reviewers used to describe so many of Septum's recordings.  

Locals maintained that the tunnel was haunted.  But there again, the local paper reported locals having sex with livestock so these views were not to be taken seriously. However, some recording artists like Bulgarian pianista and claustrophobic, Eva Dayofova, found recording at Septum Records a particular trial with near-perfect playing ruined by the artist's whimpering throughout and uncontrolled screaming when a blown fuse dropped the whole unit into darkness. Suffice to say that even those without a superstitious bone in their body found the total silence and darkness of this studio slightly unnerving. 

Early one morning I went along to the control room to prepare for the morning's takes.  Having switched everything on, I was busy sorting out some scores when I heard through the speakers the unmistakable sound of someone breaking wind.  I remember think to myself that the locals surely would have mentioned the fact that the tunnel spectre was flatulent.  But then, I heard a chair being scraped across a wooden floor followed only seconds later by a low and rhythmic thudding.  Then silence.  I went to the studio door and rather half-heartedly whispered:

'Is there anyone there?'

Answer came there none so I retreated to the safety of the control room and locked the door.  Cranking up the twin Quad amps to their highest rate I strained my ears and stared gazed through the soundproof glass into the dark studio interior beyond for further supernatural occurences.  By this time, of course, the ghost or, as as I was subsequently to discover, Ivor, had settled his flatulent golden retriever guide-dog, Cedric, who was now sitting beneath the Bosendorfer grand beating the upright with his wagging tail.  Having positioned a chair mid keyboard, Ivor was ready to start the tuning process. 

In the studio, he struck middle C.  In the control room my head exploded as the twin 500 watt Quad amps turned the single piano note into a wall of pain. With a howl and both ears on the verge of bleeding, I managed to find the control desk and reduce the sound level before Ivor continued his work.

It was on my second visit to his charming farmhouse, that I lost half of my spleen.  The fault was mine entirely and I advise anyone who will listen to this day:

'Never address a blind person from behind when they are carving a joint'.

I still bear the scar.  The incision was precise but complicated by the presence of roast potato and some rosemary so half of my spleen was forfeit.  I shed a good deal of blood but made a good recovery. But friends are still kind enough to say that despite my loss, I still possess enough spleen to go around. 

Wind & Original Instruments

The recent windy weather reminds me of a rather scary incident which took place after The Great Storm of 1989 during which many trees and several meteorologists' reputations came crashing down. I spent the night of the storm in a medieval farm house in the heart of the Chilterns (about 200 yards from where HS2 is set to emerge) watching the soon-to-be Mrs Vapor sleep off an altercation with a bottle of Jose Cuervo Tequila whilst the ancient crook-beamed roof above her flexed and distended as if being tested by one of those alien machines from The War of the Worlds.  For those of you write to correct my occasional mistakes, I realise that the aliens inside the machine probably hadn't traversed the universe merely to carry out structural surveys of ancient buildings in Buckinghamshire (although an opportunity to crush micro-scientologist, Tom Cruise, with a giant metal claw might just've persuaded them).

The following day, our drive back to London was halted by a large walnut tree which had fallen across the road.  Three or four men holding axes and chainsaws were standing on the horizontal trunk.  A few yards away another group of men were shouting.  I thought at first they were discussing how best to remove the tree from the road.  But their lack of yellow and orange hi-viz jackets alerted me that all was not as it should be.  It was only when I approached that I gleaned that co-operation could not have been further from their thoughts.

'You can piss off and call the police for all we care!' shouted one lank-haired, spotty youf. 'We were here first and we'll have this bugger cleared away and planked up before they or your mum get here.'

A chainsaw burst into life and branches began to fall from the trunk.  'You're not even from round 'ere', retorted the beardy from the other group who bore a startling resemblance to the last Archbishop of Canterbury.

'We've had our eyes on that tree for years and no bunch of ***** like you lot is going to nick it.'

My mind raced.  Had I stumbled upon a timber-smuggling operation in the English home counties to rival that of Brazil or South East Asia?  Obviously not as the army was nowhere to be seen.  The truth was much more terrifying.  I had chanced upon a confrontation between a group of chairmakers from nearby High Wycombe and those pit-bulls of the artisan musical instrument world; harpsichord makers!  

I beat a hasty retreat back to the safety of the car just in time.  Coming up the road behind us was a lone lute-maker from Amersham.  Things had already turned ugly but it was only when the lute-maker started up his chain saw that the first punch was thrown. In the passenger seat Mrs Vapor was still 'in Mexico' . Through the tequila-flavoured mist on the windscreen I watched in horror as a scene of medieval violence unfolded. I hadn't seen so many angry men with beards throwing punches since my Christmas visit to the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem two years previously when Armenian Orthodox and Coptic monks celebrated the birth of Christ by jostling and then punching and kicking each other.  To this day, I don't know what their 'beef' was about.  

At least with the artisans it was clear that the punch-up was over wood.In times of austerity, many musical instrument makers must find business tough especially the really specialist makers of niche authentic instruments.  It's difficult to imagine that bankers might suddenly find playing a fruitwood-cased hurdy-gurdy or a copy of Haydn's forte piano more relaxing than swigging from bottles of Crystal whilst stuffing fifty pound notes into the g-strings (not cat gut) of the gyrating, oiled dancers at Spearmint Rhino. Unless George Osborne harbours secret desires regarding a facsimile of a french pedal harpsichord circa 1740, instrument makers are unlikely to be in line for major tax breaks.  I was saying to Mrs Vapor that George Osborne would actually look quite good in a periwig circa 1740.  Mrs Vapor retorted that he should opt for a later instrument circa 1789 as his head would look equally good stuck on the end of a pike.  But that's just her way.  

God help us but the plague of digitisation might also be visited upon the historical instrument makers.  Just as the retail side of the music industry has just been declared HMV positive, artisans may soon be robbed of their living by increasingly sophisticated digital sampling software packages.  Why go to all the hassle of building one of these archaic instruments when you can just digitally sample and sell the sound.  As clean and simple as this solution appears for those having difficulty in stumping up the funds to buy a baroque harpsichord or set of English renaissance virginals, it would diminish the experience the audience experience somewhat.  If the stage contains just a couple of moon-faced recorder players, a viola da gamba-ist with a hernia and a bloke with an electronic keyboard it's all a bit of a let-down, isn't it.

Mercifully, the fashion for historically accurate performances in period dress is now past but audiences still turn up to see the weird and wonderful array bygone or even new musical instruments being coaxed into sound.  Leon Theremin's eponymous electronic instrument still packs them in.  Whilst the player looks like he's suffering from Ergotism/St Vitus's Dance, the ethereal sound is instantly recognisable to insomniacs around the world as being that of the BBC World Services's title theme, 'Sailing By'. By why restrict ourselves to the concert hall.  Recently, subways and public conveniences lobbies across Europe have been brightened by the sound of the Hang, a metal percussion instrument favoured by the dread-locked, crusty, busker classes although the splash-back cannot be good for the instrument and must tarnish it badly.  I also have to admit that I have difficulty maintaining a stream whilst being played at at such close quarters.  Mrs Vapor tells me that it's my age or that perhaps I should spend the twenty pence and relieve myself inside the toilet facility for a change. Radical thoughts for testing times!

Beethoven, Banking & Advertising

In the beginning was the flash flood; a nasty, life-threatening, weathery thing that nearly did for Noah.  Then along came the flash card which sent nerd pulses racing at the prospect of carrying as much 2MB of information without needing planning permission to do so.  Now, Youtube is crammed with videos of flash-crowds, flash-dances and flash-choirs and most recently the rather inelegantly named flash symphony orchestra. The product of classical musicians with time on their hands and a deep-rooted psychological need to perform for nothing in public?  Or a more plausible explanation is that this heavily produced and managed video of a supposedly spontaneous event is merely a thick, juicy slab of corporate advertising. The type of advert which agencies produce in the hope that they are so side-splittingly entertaining that they will go viral.  The type of advertising which, like an American dinner guest, recognises no irony.  Hell, no!  If you can use the face of Adolf Eichmann to sell burial plots in Israel, you just go ahead and do it. 

Such a piece of work is the advert for Banco de Sabadell in Catalunya (link: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CF-x3ybA1kc). 

On a quiet summer evening, a double bass player in full fig serenades the passing populace of the Catalunyan town of Sabadell with the bass part of what is now known as The Ode to Joy drawn from Beethoven's 9th Symphony ( Oh God! Not again!).  The irony starts early as a young girl drops a couple of euros into the bass players bag.  If Spain's economy continues on its current track, that was the bass player's pension!  The ad agency propaganda unit goes into overdrive with close-ups of children ranging in age from four to ten all looking bewitched as the bassist is joined by a cellist.  On Planet Reality, these same children would not let the appearance of a couple of musicians in any way hinder their noisy and anarchic play.  But on Planet Advertising, the oh-so-familiar Beethoven strains induce a torpor-like state which can only usually be achieved by the use of opiates or prolonged exposure to BBC Arts programming.

By the time the bassoonist and viola players arrive, quite a crowd has formed.  It's free, after all and who am I to deny the hard-working Catalans a five minute break from wondering how long their ever-rising tax bill will subsidise more laid-back areas of the Spanish economy.  Even those in the crowd who spent the last fifteen years living under an rock on Neptune now begin to recognise the EU's official anthem and glances of recognition are exchanged as a timpanist struggles through the crowd and toes began to tap as the impromptu choir kicks in.  You can almost hear the tumescent advertising executives hunched onanistically over the control room desk glorying in their triumph of presentation over substance.

The toe-tapping amongst the crowd continues and it looks like a few want to join in with the singing.  Mercifully this is edited.  Down the centuries, musical production supremos have tried rightly to deter audience participation having surmised that in order for a large impromptu choir to make music successfully, then a knowledge of the words is important and even a working knowledge of the language in which the words are written.  To ignore this would be to risk turning a musical event into an afternoon at Anfield.  Still, even this good work is now under threat by such darlings of the musical establishment as the Simon Bolivar Orchestra under Gustavo Dudamels.  Call me old-fashioned but I, for one, prefer my Haydn Symphony No. 86 without the string section samba'ing through the allegro.  If an orchestra is enjoying its music-making then surely it can express this in its playing and not have to resort to limbo dancing its way through Mozart's C Minor Mass, buck naked.  

Meanwhile, back on Planet Advertising, background shots of Banco de Sabadell have become more noticeable.  The whole ghastly pretence ends with one of those easy to remember but plainly wrong slogans; in this case: Som Sabadell (We are Sabadell).  For God's sake will someone pass the bucket!  How unutterably puke-making.

What is wrong with this assertion?  How long do you have and where should I begin?  The credit crisis brought on by the banks' foolish if not criminal behaviour looks likely to plunge western economies into two decade of stagnation like that suffered by Japan.  As western governments struggle to control expenditure, Arts is one policy area that most of the population still have difficulty in spelling let alone appreciating and is always at the top of the list for the chop. The irony of this shameless piece of fabrication is that many of the musicians featured will probably not have a job in three years time; that hands trained to play instruments will end up, if they are lucky, stacking shelves in the Corto Ingles; that musical education (so often an escape route for enterprising musicians) will also be a no-go option as the axe is poised to fall on here as well.

So. It looks like Sabadell is already having trouble with the 'we're all in it together' bollocks.

The irony is on so many levels, it's difficult to list them here.  Happy families all singing along with the anthem of an institution like the EU which is also rapidly becoming divided North and South.  Voters in northern EU member states are increasingly reluctant to fund blank cheques for the economies of their southern neighbours.  Not so much 'We are Europe' but 'We are closed. Come back next week'.  All the while, against a background babble of 'austerity' and 'cuts', the EU is entering its 11th year of operation without a set of audited accounts; a prerequisite for even the most basic financial discipline, one might think.  

Then, of course, there's the great deaf genius himself, Beethoven.  When he finally saw through Napoleon's PR, he withdrew the dedication of his Symphony No 3.  Sadly, he isn't around to stop his music and Schiller's words being used for political purposes by the technocrats and bankers.  By all means sing about the brotherhood of mankind. It takes their mind off looking for a job.  Invoke the Daughters of Elysium.  Even though many of them have 2 screaming kids, no partner and are worried to death about where the next social handout is coming from. On the ground, the Ode to Joy is not quite so jolly. Still, providing it keeps the minds of the masses off the harsh realities of economic decline, who caused it and how an integrated federal Europe will make everything better, then it's doing a good job.

Surely, the good people of Sabadell and elsewhere in Europe deserve better.  Surely, the bankers of Banco de Sabadell should know better.  After the mess the banks created, a period of silence and contemplation would be greatly welcomed not a barrage of cynical advertising trying to rewrite history with whatever flash crap happens to be popular at the time. And what of Beethoven's Ode to Joy? Wouldn't an anthem by Haydn better reflect the general yearning for security and stability.  Wouldn't something by Brahms better reflect Europe's new mitteleuropa character.  What the good people of Sabadell and their musicians need is not a perpetual state of revolution but a period of sustainable, achievable government with structures to match. What nobody needs is banks air-brushing history and reality distorted through the prism of advertising.

Of Music & Youth

To Cardiff, to meet up with old friends from my recording industry days.  It's a seasonal concert with the high point being elfin harpist, Catrin Finch plucking away at a konzertstueck by Pierne (acute accent) and the low point being Leroy Anderson's Christmas Festival; a musical car crash in which a minibus of Christmas Carols smashes headlong into a bulk tanker-full of shite orchestration and appalling musical taste.  You know you're in for an absolute horror when the introduction includes the line:

'.. he was a Harvard graduate who left a promising future in Gynaecology to become a composer.'

Wedged as I was between composers of note ('notes' surely, Ed.), it was impossible to ignore the involuntary wretching of Geraint Lewis to my right as Leroy Anderson's work reached its shuddering yet strangely worthless climax. During the interval, he politely blamed this on a rogue prawn he had consumed at a reception the previous evening.  The whole dreadful experience did give pause for thought about the current state of music and the direction in which where the industry, composers and market are all heading.

If you apply the 'University Challenge Test', the omens are not good.  Historical records do not go back far enough to note the last occasion on which a contestant ejaculated the correct answer to a classical music bonus.  The gnomes who set the questions for the programme seem to have abandoned the subject altogether.  To the obvious disgust of Paxman, all music bonuses are now pitched at an intellectual level somewhere between a laboratory rat and Gordon Brown.  Would that his (Gordon Brown's, right? Ed.) knowledge of gold markets, insurance and the economy generally were matched by his near universal wisdom regarding the popular music combo, The Arctic Monkeys.  Right on, Gordy!

A composer recently mentioned to me that he had visited his son's rooms at an Oxford college and had been shocked to discover that this second year undergraduate seemed to possess not a single book on music or any associated topics.  Surveying the discs strewn across the floor in that carefree way the young have before they have to earn the money to buy the stuff, he could find just one containing classical music.  It was a cover disc from the late Classic FM magazine and was, to his great sadness, unplayable as it had recently been used as an ashtray.

In his son's defence, he did mention that most students keep their music collection online and often use electronic texts for their studies.  However, the scene hardly conjures up students reading widely in their chosen field and coming to a broad understanding.

So, the pessimist in me says, not much hope for the future, then.  But surely the record companies themselves have some solace to offer?  From here in fashionable Worcester Park, the record companies seem to be busily buying one another up and consolidating into an ever shrinking number of music production companies.  Soon Philips, HMV, Sony, Deutsche Grammofon, Warners, Hyperion and Naxos will all be distant memories.  The contents of their back catalogues will be cast onto the digital winds and offered for sale in disembodied, bleeding sound gobbets online from a single megasource.  

This dismal prospect must to a certain extent be blamed on the classical music media; in particular, Classic FM.  Time was when the music industry listened to Classic FM for light relief.  Adverts for Alpine Salt interspersed sections of music which were, more often than not, incorrectly identified by the presiding media has-been. It was often apparent that despite the amiable chattiness, the DJ's had not a clue what they were talking about.  The whole idea of playing individual movements from a symphony, string quartet or opera aria's seemed OK as it allowed you to catch your breath in between gaffs.  

But how things changed.  As the witless and ill-informed were removed from the broadcast side of things, they were replaced by presenters whose sucrose, syrupy approach to presenting resembled the bedside manner of Hannibal Lecter crossed with levels of sincerity and patronisation achieved previously only by politicians and their familiars.  

But hey!  Who am I to bitch on about this?  The listeners love it especially the blue-rinse brigade.  But accessing a new listenership comes at a hefty price. The music has suddenly been knocked into a subordinate role as it merely separates the sections of vacuous effusiveness from the 'nice young men' who present.  Across the chintz-upholstered retirement homes of the South, the scene is played out:

Joyce:  Betty do come and listen it's that nice young man on the wireless talking about music.

Betty (confused): I don't know who you mean.  Is he a musician?

Joyce: No, dear, no.  He used to be on BBC doing the gardening. Oh! What's his name?

Betty (even more confused):  Then why's he talking about music if he's a gardener?  It's not Monty Don, is it?

Joyce: No dear; no. You know him, Betty.  You like him.  He wrote that book.

Betty:  He sounds multi-talented.  We had a gardener like that once.  He was very good with his hands. 

Joyce:  Oh, hush now, dear.  There playing another 20 seconds of a piece by that nice man, John Rutter.  Oh! What a surprise!  It's in C major...

Betty:  John Rutter's a composer, dear.  Not a gardener.

Joyce:  Nurse!

But deep in the bowels of the BBC Radio 3, something stirs.  No, it's not an unchecked news story about a celebrity.  It's the BBC Radio 3 Emulation Unit going about its business.  If bleeding chunks of music ripped from the still quivering corpse of a Mozart symphony works for Classic FM, then BBC Radio 3 will, as the expression goes, 'fill its boots'.  Imperceptibly at first, sections of music were broadcast just to fill the time available ( a bit like CBeebies but without the intellectual content); now the practice has spread across the BBC Radio 3 schedule like syphilis through the brothel-attending public of seventeenth century Venice.  Unless this unspeakable evil is stopped, classical music broadcasting in this great country will be reduced to the state of multi-storey car park lift music (obviously without the smell of urine). 

It's a scary prospect but the whole thing comes full circle.  Generations of students with attention spans stunted by excessive computer use will be incapable of conceiving of a work longer than three or four minutes.  Composers will write 'to a market' just to get any airtime at all.  Online music stores will refuse to sell pieces which last longer than six minutes because of the download speed implications.  Farewell the Brahms symphony!  Adieu Bruckner, Mahler, Beethoven and the rest.  In the future, if you want to download a symphony, it's William Boyce or nothing!

But just when all before me seems bleak, I bump into Rob Cowan's elocution coach. He reveals to me the classical music market of the future in all its complexity.  It's true, he confirms, competing classical labels and retained artists and ensembles may be things of the past.  But there is hope.  Musical ensembles, disappointed with years of negativity from the shrinking, reorganising record labels, have grabbed the initiative.  Not content with just making the music they are now making the recordings, packaging and marketing them digitally. There are some stinkers out there but most offerings are suprisingly competent and some very good. Perhaps, the music graduates of the future will find themselves looped by performers in the business of getting recordings to the consumer.  Depressed?  They probably will be.  But the good news is, they will only be depressed for six minutes.  If they pitch it right, their episode of depression might get broadcast on Classic FM.