Song of Albion 5

To start at the beginning of this series of posts on music click here. The title "Song of Albion" in an allusion to Stephen Lawhead's trilogy - chosen because his concept echoes some of my own thoughts.

Have you noticed how, in community singing, people rarely give the last note of a phrase its full musical measure? To the point that, if you do, you feel totally out on a limb? You may also have noticed that kid's recorder playing can be painful? And yet a recorder consort can make a surprisingly beautiful noise, for example:

In a recent post I pointed out that you can get away with low resolution colour in video provided outlines in the picture portrayed are sharply defined. Edges, boundaries, have great importance. "Remove not the ancient landmark which thy fathers have set". Children, indeed all of us, need clear boundaries for living. In science at least (what do I know of other subjects?) concise definitions are essential for the development of argument, and a definition limits a concept within a boundary. So it is with music. Without boundaries to say how long a note should be played, or at what pitch or intensity, music would be chaos. "If even lifeless instruments, such as the flute or the harp, do not give distinct notes, how will anyone know what is played?" Correct intonation is what differentiates the good musician from the masses. "Correct", of course, does not necessarily imply rigid time or even perfect pitch because music is not mechanical - it breathes life from its creator.

Boundaries and edges imply variation. If all parts of a picture were the same colour then there would be no edges and it could hardly be called a picture. The amount of variation will of course vary according to mood. Turner (one of my favourite artists) uses this to great effect by exaggerating lack of definition to emphasise the edges of his subject. Presented with chaos the eye tries to find definition. That's how my mother reckoned she could see all many of shapes in cloud formations, shapes that I could never see.

"Rain, Steam and Speed", J. M. W. Turner

The "Fighting Temeraire", J. M. W. Turner

The master knows just where to place an edge to full effect. I used to teach people to drive. When sitting in the passenger seat it becomes quickly obvious whether the student has good control of the car or not. The car obeys a good driver and one feels safe. Conversely the car seems to have a mind of its own and takes the bad driver by surprise: it is uncontrolled, no edges. I know when my piano playing is good because, at those (rather rare) times, I find the sound it makes is exactly what I want.

In community singing (for example praise and worship in church) we may not be wanting a "performance" but I see no reason why the music should not be "good".  Why should our singing always be as loud as possible but the last notes of each phrase be curtailed, why not embrace more variety in rhythm and style, and in instrumental accompaniment? Should we not strive to increase the beauty in all that we do?

Mind you, I remember a man in the church my grandparents went to - Smee was his name I think - he sang the hymns with a loud and raucous voice hopelessly out of tune and, when challenged on the subject, I remember him saying that he knew he couldn't sing well but his over-riding desire was to use whatever he had, voice included, to give glory to his God and no-one was going to stop him. And at the time I bought that argument, and I still do. Nevertheless I long for something better...

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Barefoot running after the deluge

Yesterday it started raining at lunch time. It rained and it rained and it rained. Piglet told himself that never in all his life, and he was goodness knows how old--three, was it, or four?--never had he seen so much rain. Days and days and days.  Well actually - well into the night.  This is the rain that was forecast to cause much flooding in the UK.  It would have to rain a lot for us to be flooded, mind you.  I woke in the night (to relieve myself) and the wind was howling.  I had kinda planned to go running in the morning as it was forecast to be warm and wet.


I first woke (after the above) at some unearthly hour and got out of bed, went to the bathroom to change into my running togs (so as not to wake Ali) only to find that I was still lying snug in bed.  This dream reoccurred several times before I actually got up and, lo, the storm had passed, the wind had calmed, and there was even some blue sky.

Thomas Cole (1801 - 1848) The Subsiding of the Waters of the Deluge

The Deluge, engraving by William Miller after the painting by John Martin

The Morning after the Deluge c. 1843  Joseph Mallord William Turner

So I did the usual forest run, a bit squishy under foot in places, but not as bad as the pictures suggest. The subject "the morning after the deluge" has tickled my fancy since early childhood.  Turner is some distant relation of Ali's side of the family, but I approved of his paintings long before I knew this.  The squiggle in the middle is, I am told, meant to portray the serpent as in Genesis.

The rest of the day has had, possibly, the best weather for a long time.  It was very hot in the "jacuzzi" tunnel so I took the opportunity of emptying, cleaning and refilling the jacuzzi.