samedi 17 juillet 2004

Persistence and protection Despite my recent attempts to be sporadic and boring, it would seem that two 1/4 of you are still out there. I've received one request and two impertinent e-mails. Before dealing with these, on further listening to the delectable CD of music by Stefano Landi recommended in the last entry, it struck me that at least two or three of the pieces would sound almost contemporary to anybody whose taste in the 1960s and '70s included the likes of Fairport Convention ('Liege and Leaf'), Pentangle 'Sweet Child') and Steeleye Span ('The Early Years'). As teenagers going to concerts by "Brit folk-rock bands", few of us imagined how steeped these splendid musicians and singers must have been in traditions at least four centuries old. That period, just before I started working for the Beeb and writing about music, saw the beginnings of the 'Early Music' revival and fierce arguments about the rights and wrongs of performance styles. Now that such music is part of the "mainstream", one ambitious web site worth knowing, still partly "under construction", but with some fine articles under several headings and a very good set of links for further exploration is the 'Goldberg' portal. One of the cheeky notes is from Jean-Pierre C., who thinks I've lost all interest in more contemporary music. Far from it, J.-P.. The problem, if such it is, is that the iPod now holds more than 200 songs issued with magazines reviewing releases of the past 12 months or so. Slowly exploring these is to find a few delights and surprises bubbling up to the top of a cauldron of noxious noises and stale potions. I'm still creaming off the best and don't currently have an afternoon to share discoveries ranging from 'Absent Friends' (The Divine Comedy', March 2004) to 'Crève Coeur' (Daniel Darc, March 2004) and Bebel Gilberto's latest, released last month with her own name for title. David S, a veteran Mac user when not at the Factory, has recently opened an account, as I have, at the iTunes Music Store in Europe. And David has found, to his annoyance, that he can't make playable CDs out of music he has duly purchased. David doesn't want to be an expert in AAC format. Especially the protected kind and how to "crack" it. He doesn't want to read through the morass of information about this problem on the Net. And I don't blame him, because I've read only too much of it. David -- and others -- might do well, however, to take a look at "AAC is a mystery" in the MacFixit Forums, which covers most of the difficulties (and how to get round them). At present, that thread ends with a joyous comment from 'Hal Itosis': "> The problem has been solved though why is not totally clear. Correct. It's the 'software equivalent' of smacking the top of the TV set, or jiggling a loose toilet handle." I've yet to buy anything at the ITMS-Europe, because I've already overspent my "culture budget" on DVDs again. When I do and once I've burned a successful CD, I'll reveal how I did it. In the meantime, once David's done it successfully himself, he could rejoice in the ongoing campaign holding that "iTunes iSbogus" (Downhill Battle). I've downloaded, but not yet tried, a beta application being developed by Mario Diana, who is need of testers for iTmsBackup (SourceForge). This does something else. It: "makes it easy to back up your purchases from the iTunes Music Store® to a hard disk or other removable media, saving you the inconvenience of using multiple CD-ROM's for data backups. Backups of all your purchases can be stored in one convenient location." Finally, a long, imperious missive was from Somebody who thinks I have been unfair to "whet the appetite with (the tale of meeting the) love of your life and declining to update me since". Well, Somebody, a promise is a promise. However, I didn't make any promises to you, did I? But here's a double update for the price of one. Milady is lovelier than ever and still talking to me. The last time she did so, she used a term of endearment which surprised me. This may have been an accident. But I prefer to hope that it wasn't. The Wildcat, still prowling her corner but now starting to break the bars of her cage, was extremely indiscreet. When I confessed last month that it had taken me five days to write a billet d'amour, she saw fit to pass on this morsel to a friend of hers. He thought it was very funny. Now you know why I have very little more to reveal here. 8:08:56 PM  link   your views? []

jeudi 15 juillet 2004

Dances of life. Passacaglia. 'The Pianist.' "In the sacristy of the church where we recorded (...), there was a small, very well-equipped kitchen, with a large bay window looking out on to the surrounding trees. Light, calm, silence. We met there from time to time between takes, a glass of wine, bread, fresh fruit, coffee... It was a moment of great tranquillity, few words, many glances exchanged. Open windows, cigarette smoke vanishing into the cool air of those summer afternoons. After the music, those few minutes allowed us to get our energy back between one piece and the next; we exchanged our impressions, comments, smiles. We spoke different languages, we didn't all know one another, but as can mysteriously happen sometimes, there was a subtle musical esteem that enabled us to play and sing together as if we had always done so. And it is true that music brings people together, cuts across the frontiers of our feelings. From Finland to Naples, from Japan to Austria via Holland, France and Belgium, from one side of the Po to another in search of who knows what blackbird, a little songbird flying high up there (...)." Marco Beasley, tenor, thus added a personal view, dated Genoa, 25.09.2001, to round off the programme notes provided with a wonderful recording of works by a singer, harpist, guitarist and organist previously unknown to me, Stefano Landi, who first turned up in Rome as a choirboy in 1595. Landi went on to become a teacher, part-time member of the papal choir, and rich patron's composer. However, the title of the CD most strongly recommended to me by Barry J is 'Homo fugit velut umbra...' (Man flees like a shadow), an anonymous song-dance of death which precedes the varied collection of songs and poems set to music by Landi and recorded by L'Arpeggiata. When I told Barry of the Bach I wrote about yesterday, he asked whether I'd heard of Christina Pluhar and L'Arpeggiata ensemble. Now I have. As Barry and the fellow who reviews 'Homo fugit...' at that Amazon.fr link said, this achievement is a marvel. It ranges from the mystical to the amorous. Others have more to say of it on a page in the BBCi Classical Reviews. Thanks for that one! Last night, a film and music left me haunted throughout today. When 'The Pianist' came out in the cinemas after taking the Palme d'Or at Cannes in 2002, I avoided it, being too much of a coward to face any more Holocaust at the time. Unlike many of the professional critics who managed to gather their thoughts and impressions of Polanski's literally stunning film within a few hours of seeing Adrien Brody's performance in 'The Pianist' (Rotten Tomatoes), I scarcely know yet what to say since it has left my mind reeling and revisiting many scenes and images over and over again. All I'm sure of is that it's one of the greatest and most terrifying movies I have ever experienced, devoid of melodrama and cliché. I have also decided, I think, that this largely true account of survival in and beyond the Warsaw Ghetto under German occupation is one of the very few films that I still consider the Kid, for all her considerable but hard-won maturity at 15, may still be too young to see. There may be a dark side, which worries me not at all, to her 'belcatja2' blog -- currently winning her more than 500 "hits" a month -- and her iTunes may be full of the direst heavy metal among a much brighter musical collection, but Marianne remains ultra-sensitive to real violence and inhumanity. I'll discuss it with her, but this DVD may be a film to give her nightmares for weeks. If hell is the absence of God and the absence of god is no more and no less than the absence of love, Polanski's Warsaw is it. Of course there are scenes of horrifying bravery and courage in such a hell. There is resistance. Some of the characters retain humanistic values and care for one another. The film is full of the ironies and the paradoxes that constitute life, but what kind of life? Drawn utterly into 'The Pianist', I felt like a voyeur, much as I did in 1994 when we were reporting on the genocide in Rwanda. Organised extermination is the rule and still in this film each individual murder comes as an almost physical blow. Like the audience in the concert hall at the end of the movie, we are outsiders, mere survivors perhaps, looking in on the edge of a place where hell strangely meets heaven. The music is genuinely miraculous, somehow. It "cuts across the frontiers of our feelings", as Beasley wrote of Landi's pieces from a different age. Some reviewers suggest that Polanski has shown us his most intimate understanding of the nature and power of art itself. I don't know. Perhaps that is one way to comprehend the scene where the pianist plays for the SS captain who returns to give him bread, a greatcoat and life. Like the pianist himself, disintegrating throughout a superb performance among nothing but other outstanding pieces of acting, you could feel detached, disengaged from the horror of which you are at once part and witness. Or you could see him as contemptible, emotionally frozen, unable to take sides in a total war where almost everybody else finds they have no choice but to do so. By the end of this film, what the hell is it that we, as part of the audience, as both voyeurs and people sharing in the completely personal experience of music, are applauding? A performance? Survival? Art? Transcendence? Again, I don't know. I think I prefer not to know. To write that we all have hell and heaven in ourselves is a cliché and perhaps became one because it's true. There is also, inevitably, the "what on earth would you have done and become?" question that tales like this leave behind. Seeing 'The Pianist' is, I think, one of those experiences that render judgement virtually impossible, yet verdicts have to be reached if we're to retain any humanity at all. It's an insight into what the Nazis called a "final solution" which raises enormous and perhaps unanswerable questions. It reaches beyond reason. It's a film I certainly want to see again, several times. But none of them too soon. Until I read those liner notes for the Stefano Landi album, I didn't know where the musical term passacaglia began. Referring to the subtitle of that anonymous first piece, Christina Pluhar tells us that "'Passacaglia della Vita' suggests a dance of death, a danse macabre, which conjures up before our eyes the mediaeval vision of a skeleton dancing through the streets of the town (passa=calle, the original meaning of the dance in Spain)." In one of the most powerful long shots in 'The Pianist', a skeletal musician hobbles through the ruins of a city. I can't help but leave this on that unfinished note. 9:58:02 PM  link   your views? []

mercredi 14 juillet 2004

What 'special day'? Julie's back to ask whether a special 'Bastille Day' entry is planned. Well, no. I referred to its 'Diverse Distractions' last year and nothing has changed, except that I'm obviously back at the Factory and Google has again proved through two-timing July 14 banner cowardice that Franco-US relations are no better. Oh, and soldiers appeared outside the Factory in full dress uniform with funny hats simply to prove that Napoleon's armies are alive and well and looking better now than they did when they got back from Russia. In between, there's been the Michael Moore phenomenon, but he doesn't get a special mention from this part of the country where packed cinemas are merely preaching to the converted. I can't be bothered to see the film, since MM apparently preaches in person, incapable of simply letting his propaganda do the job for him. This worries others less. Barry J argues that MM has merely resurrected the fine old tradition of pamphleteering. In short, ask me how I feel in 12 months' time if that damned regime is still in the White House. Meanwhile, I'm accidentally a belated convert to 'The West Wing' (TV Without Pity), since somebody sent me three episodes of Season 2 as a gift DVD with a recent order. Even such intelligent writing and fast-moving wit isn't going to persuade me to acquire a telly. Now Julie's a confirmed Mac OS X convert, it's time for a quick link to my favourite blog-reader and writing tool. At the MacDevCenter, Giles Turnbull last month compared NetNewsWire with relative newcomers like Shrook and PulpFiction, in "RSS: the Next Generation." This is recommended reading before trying or buying, not forgetting that a NetNewsWire 2.0 is in the pipeline and will be a free upgrade. Brent is still working on it (inessential.com, once he's done with talking about memory). 7:51:19 PM  link   your views? []

mardi 13 juillet 2004

'Kind of interesting.' And inspired... When Barthelemy, the Factory's old hand in Kinshasa, told me how many seats are held in Democratic Republic of Congo's National Assembly by a former rebel movement, he confused me. "Pardon?" "Nonante-quatre," he said again. "OK, thanks," I said as it registered and I hung up the 'phone. Of course, he would say "94" in the same French that people speak in parts of Belgium. And that's a numbering system which generally confuses me less than the "standard" French "quatre-vingt-quatorze" ("four-twenties-(and)-fourteen"). After all, his huge African country was once considered the private reserve of the King of the Belgians. Even now, when French people give me 'phone numbers the high side of 70, when 73 becomes "sixty-(and)-thirteen", I tend to check them by repeating the figures back individually. I'm glad the word "innumerate" exists because it was invented for me, but the thinking behind my query brought me back to an old favourite. For French-speakers who care to know where the numbering systems diverged, since the alternate usage can sometimes still stump us, editor Luc Bentz's "hand-sewn and non-profit" 'Langue française' reveals all. Well indexed and with a FAQ and S.O.S. service (the latter on holiday this month), Langue française enlivens what could be one of the dullest academic subjects on earth with a few good jokes. That takes me to the award of this month's prize for a Factory note. When AFP, like the other huge news agencies, updates a story with a "lead" using the same master-search words as before, we also like swiftly to tell clients what's new with what's known as a "trash line" under the headline. Nobody's going to beat Lauren, now working out of Dakar, for updating one of today's "stupendously tedious but necessary" items by telling the simple truth: "ADDS SOMETHING INTERESTING". Unfortunately, the house rules wouldn't allow me to send it on to the punters quite like that. My most interesting and rewarding musical find so far in July comes not from the totally modern repertoire I'm still exploring on the sampler discs that come with various good music magazines, but from an almost newborn (May) recording of an absolute foundation stone of western classical sounds. French organist André Isoir has stunned me with his interpretation of "Grandpa" Johann Sebastian Bach's Art of the Fugue, which has become the third version of the work worth a place on my iPod. Though performed countless times in a multitude of ways, Bach's art still gets something new from Isoir, who provides technical reasons for a re-arrangement of the order in which he plays the fugues; this doesn't in fact need explanation both to surprise and make total sense to keen ears. By discovering the freedom that can be the fruit of strict discipline, Isoir uses the remarkable tones and colours of the organ of Saint-Cyprien en Périgord, in the heart of a lovely part of southwest France, to offer one of the most joyful "readings" of an inexhaustible piece of music you could ever have the luck to hear. For about 10 euros on the adventurous Calliope label, it's a must. As a sometime aspiring (ethno-)musicologist, I also savoured the unusually good programme notes (mostly translated into English) by Jean-Michel Verneiges, who even manages to bring modern chaos and complexity theory and approaches to infinity into it without being insufferably pretentious. I found this CD at a local bookshop whose tastes are much appreciated by the Kid and me, but have just taken in a rather evident but easily overlooked fact. On the Net, for those who don't have a habit of reading the music magazines but want to keep an ear to the ground, by the simple expedient of exploring the "new releases" links in the Amazon empire, you can make some most interesting discoveries. Calliope, it would seem, is the Muse of Eloquence. With another new moon coming -- I can already feel certain influences waning again -- I think I might need some of her help soon. The 'Circle of the Muses' is closed to newcomers, but remains informative and possibly inspiring. As for the somebody who recently told me that something I wrote to her was "kind of interesting", she's lucky. She's far too lovely to be strangled for it. And has even usually been kind of kind to me. So far. 9:12:35 PM  link   your views? []