vagabond 1977 september 02 friday

friday 2 september 1977

almost there

0900

outside temperature 19º

weather fine and clear

Bratislava was an interesting experience. We had fully paid up tourist visas. The other passengers filled up their dockets to go ashore on one or other, or both, of the set coach tours. After some enquiries we were allowed to proceed on our own so long as we changed ten dollars each into local currency – and then spend it. Notices say it cannot be changed back  and, in fact, the visas clearly say visas are issued only on this condition. We set out to see a little of Bratislava and to spend our crowns. We bought Czech gramophone records, some postcards, a souvenir spoon, pretty coloured handkerchiefs – and a pair of nylon stretch socks!  I tried not to persuade myself that the town was drab; but I couldn’t help remembering all the accounts I had read where that word was used to describe the places being visited. Just the same, it is a thrill to see an undulating baroque façade and then go into a church which soars with exuberant exultation. There is nothing like this in Australia. There’s nothing like it in England, for that matter. It’s a great movement of the spirit that by-passed the British Isles. More’s the pity.

Getting back on board was more difficult than leaving. When an armed guard has been ordered to see that all passengers go through a particular entrance, he sees to it that all passengers go through that entrance. When the same armed guard has been ordered to inspect everyone’s boarding pass, he requires everyone to produce boarding passes for inspection – whether they should have them or not. Patience and smilingness helps wheels to turn. And tea is still being served in the dining room.

Wien

We were having breakfast when the ВОЛГА [Volga] tied up at Praterkai. Theresa was there waiting for us. Quite unchanged. The same inclination of the head. Exquisitely poised. Perhaps a little rounder in the face. And the months melted away.

Wien is a grand city. A Grand City. GRANDEUR and STATELINESS are everywhere. Wide imposing streets. A sense of space. A sense of things happening. Pedestrian underpasses newly built at the Ring’s major intersections. An underground railway in the course of construction. New buildings going up everywhere. Action and achievement.

In the Kaertnerstrasse I saw elegant women for the first time since Bond Street in 1968. This elegance is part of european culture. Part of its music. How can students outside Europe ever hope to achieve Mozart’s elegance? unless they come to study here? In its place we in Australia so often have a backwood’s approach. Let’s face it. Don’t let’s pretend we are in the same league as Roma or Paris or London. Least of all Wien. 

John Painter once wrote a report which said : ‘For a violinist, he makes a good butcher.’ Being realistic – and without being really unkind – we could say of many of our pianists : ‘If they could handle an axe, they would make good woodchoppers.’ So many ‘promising’ students with ‘potential’. So many students who sadly NEVER achieve the standards they could. Students who are encouraged to believe they are outstanding when – by metropolitan european standards – they are mediocre. 

Australia has its own particular virtues, its own particular qualities. But to dilute them with pretence is disastrous. Music is an international art and we do not do our job well when we prepare students for an international career. Not many of them will achieve international careers, but if the standards are not applied, we do  less than our proper duty towards the art of music. Too much local energy goes into passing exams and winning competitions. The need to make marvellous music is forgotten. And I have seen too many Sydney students fade into oblivion when they could have been world class. 

If we were not dealing with music, our approach could be different. One of Australia’s major problems is the burden of its european antecedents. Dorothy Helmrich, to my certain knowledge, has been aware of this for many years. But her voice was silenced. Overtrodden. She realised the dilemma of trying to develop a genuine australian music whilst still being surrounded with a european heritage. But others, who should have known better, turned the conversation into other channels. 

There are those who prefer to hide problems rather than face them. Don’t let’s disturb the outside world. Don’t let us admit any oversights or shortcomings. Bring out the whitewash. Let’s pretend everything is marvellous.

/760/

vagabond 1977 0831 on the Danube

wednesday 31 august 1977

aboard the Volga on the Danube

0835

we passed kilometre 1860 ten or fifteen minutes ago while we were at breakfast.. kilometre 1869 brings us to Bratislava and a new country. the land on each side continues to be flat though the trees at the water’s edge are not so persistent. the banks are lined with large stones which seem to serve to keep the edge from crumbling into the stream. there are meadows to be seen. and in one quiet junction where stone partially dammed the flow, a boy in red bathing trunks was fishing. he waved to us. I hope there were those on deck who waved back.

there is now a sense of the ending of an episode. a sense intensified no doubt by the energetic demands of Budapest. travelling was hot. there was much to be crammed in. it was worth it. I think of the occasions as an intense episode approaching an unavoidable conclusion. The one strongest in my mind is the post final show of the Solid Eight. That was in 1944. Thirty-three years ago. I was the sixteen-year-old boy-wonder-pianist. I had learned to be effective in styles that were new to me. My own classical work improved out of mind as a result. I grew to thrill to the applause of audiences two thousand strong.

We are all jongleurs. Mountebanks. Troubadours. Wandering minstrels. Clowns? The extravert response to popular attention. 

Now I have seen the realisation of a dream. We have travelled more than a thousand miles of Danube. The roman legions have not been waving their spears on every inch of bank, but the impression of Trajan has grown stronger and stronger. It’s not a very popular code today, but Great Men do make a difference to history. Trajan did it. The greatest extent of the Roman Empire. His signs are everywhere. His tablet at the Iron Gates. His defence works. His bridges. His edicts. ‘Aquincum shall be a town : the capital of lower Pannonia.’ We shall do this. Those people shall carry out my orders. After him, Hadrian. The importance of defence. The Wall across Britannia to keep the Picts and Scots at bay. Where did Hadrian go wrong? Or was it simply that external conditions had changed? Did he try to maintain a familiar status quo in a changing world? The legend of Canute, the danish king of England, set to keep the rising tide at bay. Some things cannot be done. 

The ravenously conservative make life miserable for others while they cling to their familiar ‘standards’. But if you try to stand still in a moving world, you move backwards. You must move forward even to maintain yesterday’s position. Every fine practising practical musician knows this. Ricci once told Joseph Post’s director’s class : ‘it takes me three hours each day to reach the point at which I left off yesterday.’ Only yesterday’s written word, yesterday’s brush on canvas, yesterday’s brick on brick remain for tomorrow to be seen. The mind must always move on. and on. and on.

Creative Dreaming

saints Sergius and Bacchus ..

the Aquincum organ .. 

Biró and his black wife ..

boys and girls with arms interlaced in the streets of Budapest ..

the happiness of people whose roots are secure ..

currency

I am profoundly grateful that my preparation included small sums of paper money for most of the countries I shall visit. Grateful, too, that the mental prompting put some american dollars in my hand despite gloomy newspaper implications of a shrinking value. Dollars bought at Tel Aviv and Rome when other currencies were more difficult to negotiate. Dollars bought refreshment on the Volga before we organised our Deutschmarks. The currency on board is calculated in Deutschmarks, Dollars and Schillings. Boys in Budapest enquired for Geltwechsel. They wanted Deutschmarks. The special tourist shops wanted foreign currency. We changed twenty english pounds. Rather more than six hundred hungarian florints. At the moment of renegotiation - with the ship about to sail and the Ibusz office apparently closed – the clerk told us our exchange receipts advised us that only half our received sums of hungarian money could be renegotiated. Between us we had spent hardly a pound. There just were not the articles we wanted to buy. So I came away with sixteen american dollars and some florints which I hope will turn into something else by the end of the week. We bought nothing in Jugoslavia for lack of local currency. Ditto Bulgaria. Now we’ll see what Czechoslovakia holds.

film

I searched high and low in Budapest for Ektachrome. None. The special Tourist shops had ciné film but only one had 35 mm and that was 25 ASA. Too slow for my intentions. And too expensive at a quoted price of USA $9.90 for twenty transparency frames. One fotoshop in Vasi had Agfachrome S. But it was 120. Not my size. There was some Orwo. To me this was unfamiliar and slow. I thanked my stars that the bulk loader back home in Kirkwood Street had had enough Tri X to fill all my empty cassettes and decided to shoot in black and white until I can buy more colour in Wien.

0920

we are berthing at Bratislava.

the trees on the promenade – horse chestnuts, conkers – are turning brown.

AUTUMN

My Autumn. The Autumn of Our World.

As I envisaged when I dreamt in Sydney.

Seek and ye shall find

It was Egon Wellesz in the Hilary Term of 1950 who first taught me the importance of going back - 'ad fontes' - to the original source material of whatever subject I was researching.

In those days and subsequently, such going back often involved long journeys by car or by rail. My little old Austin took me to Wellow in search of the English composer and keyboard virtuoso John Bull. He wasn't there. He never had been. A simple bus ride from Marylebone Road to the British Museum solved that particular riddle. When Anthony à Wood compiled his Athenae Oxonienses back in the 17th century, he confused 'my' John Bull with a man of the same name at Brasenose College. And it was the BNC alumnus who farmed the land at Wellow in Somerset.

40 years ago, the great railway lines of Europe took me to Autun and to Munich - and to many other delights - searching the archives for earliest extant examples of Western musical notation. Autun MS 19 f5 was the story of an authority figure too eagerly 'seeing' musical notation where none existed. And Munich was the story of a scholar failing to note that the melody on the very last page was not part of an original dated text.

And so to this morning, ere she of the rosy fingers had left her nocturnal couch, I go off once again chasing wild geese. I read: 'The earliest example we have of the use of accents in a New Testament manuscript dates to the 5th century AD.' It's in a MS known as the Bezae Cantabrigensis - and I sit in my cozy attic while the Internet does my searching.

Sure enough the clues are there for the finding. Codex Bezae is now MS Nn.2.41 of Cambridge University Library. It's online in digitised form. I leaf through the alternate pages of Greek and Latin written in the kind of capitals called Uncials. No sign of any accents until ...  a much later hand adds a footnote which includes signs which look to be accents over lowercase letters. They are there - I find them hard to distinguish - at the foot of slide '34 of 856'.

So there we have it. If my eyes do not deceive me : acute grave and circumflex in a 5th century CE ms. True ...  Except except except. They are not 5th century accents.

Thank you, Egon Wellesz.

fc oxon 2017 august 28 monday

Paul Robeson

My good friend Tully Potter posts about that great American singer Paul Robeson. Tully remarks on performances of Ol' Man River - and I am back in the Blue Hall in the Edgware Road. It's a 1930s Saturday afternoon matinee. Price of admission 4d. There on the screen, larger than life, is Paul Robeson in a prettily staged scene. Mississippi paddle boat being loaded with big bales of goods. The black and white film has its own particular lustre. 'Showboat' I think it was called.

'Get a little drunk, and you land in jail.'

Then there was King Solomon's Mines. Set in Africa.

AND ... there was How Green Was My Valley, which I saw in Caerphilly. Very appropriate because the film was set in Caerphilly. The local male voice choir is rehearsing for a big concert. It's Mendelssohn's 'Elijah'. And the singers are desolate because they have no bass soloist. They sing the lead-in - and stop. And, at that very crucial moment, this magnificent bass voice sweeps in from the street. "O Father Abraham, Isaac and Jacob." For a moment all in the hall is still and silent. Then they rush to the windows.

After all these years, the memory still plays on the heartstrings.

fc oxon 2017 august 19

A&P

I've begun to read a novel set in New England. The story teller moves into an old house out in the country. He goes shopping. Is surprised to find an A&P store. What's an A&P store? I ask myself. Google comes to my aid.

The Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company.

And my mind goes back to my elementary schooldays in the late 1930s. The Home and Colonial Stores. Just up Chapel Street. On London's Edgware Road. Next door to the Grand Kinema. Next door to Jolly's little shop.

Sometimes I'd be sent shopping. I could get a dozen eggs for 11 pence. Butter would be cut to size and so expertly neatly wrapped at the counter. The man with the moist sugar made a paper cone. Poured the sweet white grains into it. Sealed it up. Handed it over as I paid my coin.

All gone now. All knocked down and swept away when they built the Expressway.

Memories are such treasures.

fc oxon 2017 august 17

It's cold and it's damp!

A thought bubbles up to the surface and demands attention. A sweet memory from 1950. Willy Hall who had the rooms opposite mine that year on Univ’s Kitchen Stair. His favourite gramophone record. Nellie Lutcher singing “Hates California. It’s cold and it’s damp. That’s why the lady is a tramp.”

I know what prompted this excursion to the outside world. 

Its the 2nd of AUGUST, for goodness’ sake. It’s cold and it’s damp. I’ve just been driven to turn the central heating on. 

AUGUST. Bah, humbug!

When I was in California it wasn’t damp but it was distinctly chilly. In the City of the Angels it was Holy Week 1965. Outside a church in Spanish Town, a group of women were weaving palm crosses for Sunday’s faithful. Fran & Sam were lavish hosts. We went to the Oceanarium, Knott’s Berry Farm, Forest Lawn, Disneyland. 

On Maundy Thursday I flew to New York. On Good Friday I made my obligations at St Patrick’s Roman Catholic Cathedral. (Then I bought a lovely 35mm lens for my Leica.)

In the evening I was with Harold Ax - my wonderful Jewish host - and his family at their farmhouse in New Jersey. “We always have an extra place at table,” he explained. “In case Elijah is passing by.” It was one of those very rare years when Good Friday coincided with Pesach, the Feast of the Passover (which we learned about in our morning Scripture lessons at St Mary’s (Church of England) Elementary School in that very different world of Harcourt Street in the 1930s.)

fc oxen 2017 august 2nd Tuesday

Koiné and the layers beneath the text

It’s been a good day today. I’m looking forward to a return to Blackfriars in Michaelmas Term - and I recognise that my koiné is too rusty to raise its head in public. So I revise. And I find gems I never expected.

I’m presented with a simplified Gospel passage for translation. Here are the ‘mathetai’. Who are they? First impulse is to go with ‘disciples’. That’s the usual translation. I pause while my inner senses examine other possibilities. Yes, that’s it. ‘Students’ - and they’re running toward their teacher. Running? - and this is where BDAG earns its keep - the verb can also mean ‘to make an effort to advance spiritually or intellectually.’ Now that’s altogether a different picture. 

And when they get to their teacher, they ‘prosekynesan’. They ‘worship’ him. How, I ask myself, do they ‘worship’ him? What exactly do they do when they worship? 

And memory offers a prompt of January Saturday mornings at the Orthodox Church in North Oxford when the regular worshippers bow low as they enter the sacred space and make a gesture in the air below their faee, a gesture I interpret as a sign of the cross. And, later, a priestly person at my ear murmurs ‘It’s supposed to be a Proskynesis’. Or, as BDAG again has it : the custom of prostrating oneself before persons and kissing their feet or the hem of their garment, the ground, etc. The Persians did this before their deified king. The Greeks before a divinity or something holy.

I saw this once at St Barnabas, Pimlico. A morning of the Triduum. The liturgical colour is black. The three priests step into the chancel and ‘prostrate’ themselves. Side by side. Flat on their faces. I still experience a frisson as I relive that moment when time stood still.

fc oxon 2017 july 30 sunday