Music

Friday

Steerpike

Lyrical Dave – PM’s union speech packed with song lyrics

David Cameron’s speech on the union this morning prompted many questions. Why was he in London? Why were there so many empty seats in the Olympic velodrome? Etc, etc, etc. But Mr Steerpike wants to know why the speech was peppered with song lyrics. ‘We don’t walk on by,’ said Dave – unlike Dionne Warwick. The ‘North Sea’ is, apparently, ‘a light that never goes out’ – now we know what The Smiths were warbling about. Gordon Brown once professed his love for the Arctic Monkeys. It seems that his successor has got hold of the band’s fourth album, which contains the song ‘Brick by Brick’: ‘And we built it

Thursday

Peter Phillips

How Claudio Abbado bridged old and new

Not long ago the great conductors of classical music were general practitioners. They expected to give satisfactory interpretations of music written from the beginnings of symphonic composition to the present day, and audiences took it for granted that, if they knew what they were doing with Mozart and Beethoven, they could be trusted with Handel and Stravinsky. Their orchestras adopted the same approach and, within a narrow definition that bespeaks a more innocent age, everyone was content. There was little concern that Handel would not have recognised the sound that the instruments of the modern orchestra was making; and no one was disturbed that the big hero figure out front

Simon Baker

A creepy father, a lustful music teacher, four virgins — and one genuine love affair

London, 1794. It’s a different world from that portrayed by the Mrs Radcliffes and Anons of the time: rich young women are not all naïve and swoony in Katharine Grant’s first novel for adults. In Sedition, five girls (two of them sisters, the others unrelated) are more or less put up for sale by their calculating parents, who want to attract titled sons to help them complete a leap from trade into the aristocracy. From the start, the parents’ scheme of buying a pianoforte and hiring a music teacher to help the girls appear eligible seems destined to backfire momentously. One of the daughters, Alathea, is not at all innocent

Thursday

Stephen Walsh

Shostakovich, Leningrad, and the greatest story ever played

The horrors of the Leningrad siege — the 900 Days of Harrison Salisbury’s classic — have been pretty well picked over by historians; and meanwhile the story of Shostakovich’s Seventh Symphony, the improbable circumstances of its composition and first Leningrad performance in August 1942, is well known from the extensive, and still growing, literature on the composer. But Brian Moynahan’s book is the first to my knowledge — in English at least — to interweave these narratives to any significantly detailed extent. Moynahan is not a musician, and this is not really a book about music. It’s about an event which symbolises and personalises a history that, en gros, is

Lucinda Lambton

A girl, a train and a miniature pistol: how I met the Everly Brothers

I was drifting in and out of sleep last week, listening to the news, when suddenly eight words — at first sounding no different from the general run — slammed into my senses. ‘Phil Everly of the Everly Brothers is dead.’ For the first time I knew how it felt when ‘the earth stood still’. One of the two brightest flames of my youth had been extinguished. I was friends with both Phil and Don Everly for some 45 years and it was, to be sure, a dazzling friendship. Beat this for its beginnings: it was 1960 and we met at midnight, boarding the Flying Scotsman at King’s Cross, surrounded

Friday

Jane Ridley

The food of love | 3 January 2014

The Albek Duo are two astonishingly beautiful and talented Venetian musicians, Fiona and Ambra, who are identical twins. Hearing the sisters perform inspired Christopher Ondaatje to create this book. He tells a story — ‘Love Duet’ — in which he imagines what would happen if the twins both fell in love with the same man. They agree that one should marry, and they should carry on as before. For the sisters, abandoning their music or each other is unthinkable. This is an anthology of stories on the theme of music and how it can govern our lives and express our emotions. You don’t need to be a concert-goer to enjoy

Wednesday

Steerpike

We’ve got to hold on…

Hats off to the Duke of Cambridge for joining Jon Bon Jovi and Taylor Swift on stage at Kensington Palace last night for a sing-along of ‘Livin’ On A Prayer’. The Winter Whites Gala was raising money for Centrepoint homeless charity. It’s the taking part that counts.

Thursday

Christopher Booker

Old England died in 1963

There is no better measure of the pivotal importance of 1963 than to recall what Britain was like in the early 1950s, as we slowly emerged from the shadows of the second world war. The great Labour experiment of 1945 had petered out in a grim slog through years of austerity and rationing. With Winston Churchill back in No. 10, life had begun to crawl back to ‘normality’. Conservative values ruled: respect for tradition, discipline and authority. The old class structure still stood. No extramarital sex or homosexuality. In the cinema we were entertained by cosy Ealing comedies and films portraying the ‘stiff upper lip’ spirit which had won the

Wednesday

Steerpike

The PM’s musical tin-ear

The news that Hull has been crowned the UK’s City of Culture for 2017 was discussed at PMQs. The PM extolled the virtues of the city, and made special mention of native eighties alt rockers The Housemartins. However, with a crashing sense of inevitability, the band’s founder, Paul Heaton, was unhappy with the endorsement: ‘Well, apparently David Cameron likes ‘London 0 Hull 4’. Which part of the attack on his policies and rich friends did he like best???’  The poor wee lamb ranted for a while about Thatcherism, and then concluded: ‘Cameron has ruined my day.’ My heart bleeds. Still, you would have thought that Cameron might have learned his

Friday

Emma Hartley

One Great Thing gets embarrassing for the Yes campaign in Scotland

Big Country’s song ‘One Great Thing’ is an anthem for the Scottish Yes campaign: it was soaring in the background during an item recorded at a ‘Yes’ rally on the Today programme the other day. And since Big Country’s bagpipe-sounding guitars were one of the joys of my adolescence and I’ve been partial to a check shirt ever since, my heart soared along with it. ‘Yes,’ said Jim Lafferty from the Yes campaign’s communications office, appropriately enough, when I rang to ask how it had come about. ‘It was suggested by Jim Downie and Will Atkinson of the creative team.’ I understood that they had not, however, spoken to the

Thursday

Stephen Walsh

Did Leonard Bernstein do too much to be a great artist?

Nigel Simeone’s title for his edition of Leonard Bernstein’s correspondence rings compellingly, novellistically, through the force of the definite article, as in The Aspern Papers, or The Scarlet Letter. The reality, though, is more diffuse. Bernstein was a man of enormous endowments. One correspondent, after listing his talents as a composer, orchestrator, pianist, conductor, lecturer and general all-round musical functionary, ends by enquiring ironically, ‘Can you cook?’ The list might have been extended. It could have included a wild diversity of sexual activity, a seemingly limitless gift for affection and friendship, an inexhaustible capacity for work, and a genius for self-promotion. What it could hardly have included was focus. ‘Is

Friday

Steerpike

Political philosophy, Harry-style

Boy-band super-hero Harry Styles proclaimed on Twitter earlier today: ‘All social change comes from the passion of individuals.’ His shrieking fans were enthused by this insight. Some even asked if they could quote him in their exams. How sweet. Mr S is pleased to see little Harry channelling American anthropologist Margaret Mead. She is alleged to have said (although I can’t discover where and when she said it), ‘Never ever depend on governments or institutions to solve any major problems. All social change comes from the passion of individuals.’ Clever lady, that. But what could all this philosophising from Styles, a self-confessed Labour supporter, mean? Mr S has a theory. One Direction have been writing songs recently with Gary Barlow. Perhaps some

Thursday

Matthew Adams

‘If I can barely speak, then I shall surely sing’

A few weeks ago, I was wandering with a friend around West London when our conversation turned to the reliable and inexhaustible topic of Morrissey. We were discussing his gestures, in particular when he augments the percussive spondee that opens ‘Sheila Take a Bow’ with two magnificent jabs of his right elbow. So back we went to my friend’s flat to study it again. In goes the DVD; bang go the drums; jab goes the elbow, and my dear friend gives a small cheer of delight, dancing his dance of Rumpelstiltskin glee. ‘Genius!,’ he declares. And he is right. It is a small moment, one of those preposterously arcane details

Tuesday

Steerpike

Help! | 15 October 2013

When did Sir Paul McCartney become so shifty? The ‘National Treasure’ has been on Sky News promoting his latest album. There were more than a few awkward, if not downright embarrassing, moments. Take when he was talking about young talent today. ‘I think these bands are great. I like One Direction,’ the former Beatle said. ‘They’re young beautiful boys and that’s the big attraction, but they can sing and they make good records.’ Leaning in, he added: ‘so that’s what I would see in common [with the Beatles], you know, that girls love them and you can fantasise that you’re going to marry them…or whatever.’ Macca’s trademark cheeky look worked when he was a

Saturday

Rod Liddle

Welcome to the Randy Newman Hate Club

There was a line in Randy Newman’s very funny song ‘Short People’  that I couldn’t quite work out, so I looked up the lyrics online. There were some observations about the song posted below the lyrics – I thought I’d share a selection with you.  ‘This song is just really f****d up… freedom of speech doesn’t protect you from honest criticism or boycotts. People are allowed to express their disdain for stuff like this and even choose to not support it monetarily’. ‘because of that one song…it made my life and a lot of others harder than it should have been. it should have not been released….i am 4 ft.

Thursday

Damian Thompson

Music at Mass is theological warfare by other means

How many battles have been fought over sacred music throughout history? The noise you make when you worship is a big deal: those who control it can shape everything from clerical hierarchy to intimate spirituality. And there are patterns. Deep suspicion of music is the mark of the puritan. Fundamentalist Sunni Muslims teach that all music except for chanted Koranic passages is forbidden; instruments in particular encourage lust. Strict Calvinists take a similar line. Even the Catholic Church considered banning original compositions during services after the Council of Trent. Legend has it that polyphony was saved only by Palestrina’s Missa Papae Marcelli of 1567, which demonstrated that rich harmony could

Monday

Steerpike

Ban the word ‘twerk’

Jesse Norman MP, who used to lead the Prime Minister’s policy forum, is using his spare time to write for ConservativeHome. About twerking. For those of you who have missed this craze, the Oxford English Dictionary, in a shameless PR stunt, added the term to their latest edition: ‘To dance to popular music in a sexually provocative manner involving thrusting hip movements and a low, squatting stance.’ Turning to Jesse’s piece, apparently ‘the press have started to scrutinise’ Norman’s ‘public remarks with all the fervent enthusiasm of a group of Miley Cyrus fans at a twerking convention.’ How could we not? After all, Norman is the author of such deathless prose as this:

Friday

Camilla Swift

Spectator Play: The highs and the lows of what’s going on in arts this week | 13 September 2013

As the new artistic director of the Royal Shakespeare Company, Gregory Doran might be expected to lie low as he settles into his new role. But on the contrary – Doran is full of ideas about how to develop the company, as Robert Gore-Langton finds when he interviews him in this week’s Spectator. As well as a plan ‘to stage every play Shakespeare wrote over the next six years’ – that is between now and 2018 – he has also banned Shakespeare from Stratford’s Swan theatre, deciding instead to put on plays ‘by his contemporaries’. Top actors and top ideas are all part of his plan – which you can

Thursday

Kate Chisholm

Immigrant songs: Radio 2’s My Country, My Music

Five women, five very different stories of arriving in the UK, often unwillingly and always alone. How did they cope with the loneliness, the poverty, the loss of everything they once knew? What do they now think of the country that has become their adopted home? Jeremy Vine talks to them next week in a new lunchtime series on Radio 2. In My Country, My Music (produced by Chris Walsh-Heron) Vine and his five guests try to work out which country they now belong to, not through work, beliefs, hobbies or family but through the music they listen to. By putting music centre-stage, as the focus, the heart of the

Thursday

Roger Scruton

Roger Scruton’s diary: Finding Scrutopia in the Czech Republic

Hay-making was easy this year, and over in good time for a holiday. I am opposed to holidays, having worked all my life to build a sovereign territory from which departure will be a guaranteed disappointment. However, the children have yet to be convinced of the futility of human hopes, and therefore must be taken for a week or so to places that renew their trust in Scrutopia, as the only reliable refuge from an alien world. As always we choose the Czech Republic; and as always it disproves my point. I don’t know what it is about Brno, but I am as home there as I can be anywhere.