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@Grieve-not Lake

Category Archives: Arty stuff

No Comparison

10 Wednesday Oct 2018

Posted by grievenotlake in Arty stuff, Language, Philosophy & Religion

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comparisons, Photography, portrait

Dost thou compare me to a summer’s day?!
Dost think that I am nought but birds and flowers?
That I am hot and tiring dost thou say,
And only lasting four and twenty hours?

What is it with this current thing of indignantly accusing all comparisons of being simple identities? If I say you have a moustache that looks like Hitler’s, I am not saying you have any desire to slaughter whole ethnic groups in gas chambers. And ‘comparison’ can be shorthand for ‘comparison and contrast’, surely, anyway.

To be sure, such comparisons can be used to hint that there is more you have in common than just the facial hair, especially in a case where I could as easily have made comparison to a silent movie comedian, similarly arrayed.

But for fuck’s sake people, enough with the mindlessly sheepish and rhetorical indignation. It doesn’t help the argument get anywhere, which carefully chosen comparisons can (as long as we all accept they only apply for the qualities/hary lips under consideration).

And yes, I am comparing all of you to moronic sheep and yes I do mean you eat grass and go baa a lot. And taste good with roast tatties and mint sauce.


Meanwhile here are some portraits what I is doing on the monochrome camera in my trusty Huawei. They be going on Instagram to publicise the Scottish Portrait Awards 2018 exhibition commencing on November 3rd at the Scottish Arts Club.

Be there or be square format.

 

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A Visit to That London [1]

01 Wednesday Aug 2018

Posted by grievenotlake in Arty stuff, Edinburgh, Travel

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Cabaret, Edinburgh Fringe, Grayson Perry, Lamb Cutlets Reform, London, London Clubs, Royal Academy, William Orpen

Day 0 (17th July 2018)

I have never really felt myself to be one of nature’s travel bloggers. Nor indeed a food blogger, even though I ‘tweet what I eat’. There’s no denying my dream job would be restaurant reviewer, but it’s equally true that the review-writing part would be the drag that paid for the pigging-out aspect that would be its sole appeal. I just want to be paid to eat well, basically, not waste energy writing about it.

Even so, having recently spent four days in the South East of England, partly on a gastronomic pilgrimage, I felt I should give it a go. Maybe I’ll actually get a few readers, as this sort o’ thing seems awf’y popular. I think I’ll even break it into instalments (it could get quite lengthy, as the Bishop said to the actress), to give the illusion that I have much of interest to say … so here goes.


My recent visit down South was a mixed bag of goodies and no mistake. Ludicrous extravagance, high society drifting, and all rounded off with a bit of my more customary ‘slumming it’. From the sublime to the ridiculous, as they rightly say.

On Tuesday night I caught the Caledonian Sleeper, having got a great deal on a first class berth (less than I could have paid for a standard class single the next day). But ’twas not the best start, as the promised boarding time of 10:30 came and went and disappeared over the horizon, long before we were allowed onto the train and even longer before us first-classers were allowed into the saloon car, despite the whole thing sitting there when I arrived at ten fifteen. Not many of the waiting passengers had much gruntle left as we accessed our cabins a mere ten minutes before the 11:35 departure.

Nonetheless a blether with some Yanks and a Ginger Laddie cocktail improved the mood no end, and I turned in for a wee read and sleep about 12:30. I slept none too badly and was sufficiently refreshed to enjoy my bacon roll and coffee in bed before heading out into Euston at 7:30.


Day One

Oh, I do miss That London. I feel a kind of energy in the air that is absent from many other cities. It could be a feeling of endless possibility or maybe it’s a feeling spiced with nervous caution, as one wonders if everyone who passes is a pickpocket and every moped carries a potential mugger, I don’t know. But at that time in the morning, I felt happier walking through the waking streets than I might have late in the evening.

 

I strolled happily through Fitzrovia into Mayfair, and, but for a brief stop for a cappuccino in a typical side street Italian caff, went straight to the Savile Club near Grosvenor Square to leave my bags. Taking advantage of the reciprocal arrangements with the Scottish Arts Club (and a recent and essential financial windfall, which I’m forbidden to explain for now) I had planned my visit round two of our affiliates. Despite its sexist membership policy (it has had only one female member, when an existing male member had his existing male member removed, without, after much discussion in committee being him, sorry herself de-membered), it has a policy of conviviality and amenability which gives it compensatory appeal. And it’s in an excellent location between Grosvenor Square and Claridges (looking at whose £500+ a night room prices also makes it feel very reasonable).

Then to the RA for the Summer Exhibition. Very bright, very Grayson Perry. Art as feel-good experience. Actually I’ve always found the SE a feel-good experience as there are always lots of paintings by amateurs and ‘lesser’ professionals which have me saying “I can actually paint a bit”. If I go round a Goya or a Picasso show, I wonder why I even bother.

“Take photos and post them on our site,” said the posters. But when I tried to photograph one of David Hockney’s large composite pieces,  I was beaten to the ground by attendants who sat on my chest and wrested the Huawei from my cold dead hands (ie told me not to). I expected better of Bradford’s finest. His works which celebrated and summarised much of his career were particularly interesting, as they quoted and referenced his dictum that perspective is tunnel vision. With this in mind I was keen to photograph them with the long gratings in the floor stretching towards their wall. So, also in t’spirit o’ t’man ‘isself, I bought the catalogue containing the pics (which are already in the public domain all over the web anyway), photographed the gratings from the other end, and photoshopped (well, GIMP’d) them all together, to make a much better and more in keeping piece (also without all those pesky visitors), which I like to call Tunnel Vision …

And then for part one of the gastronomic pilgrimage. To the Reform, club of Churchill, Lloyd George, Asquith, and the starting point for Phileas Fogg’s literary circumnavigation. As well as the place where, c.1840, Alexis Soyer invented the eponymous lamb cutlets, a dish I have often cooked for guests. Of course I had to sit in the expansive garden with a pink gin (traditional drink of the English gentleman’s club: Plymouth gin, Angostura bitters and Malvern water) before my cutlets (with excellent house claret), all rounded off with a fine trifle.

And those cutlets? As my little Chinese friend, would say, ‘so-so’. The chops and the crust on them were spot on, but the sauce lacked the tang of a good poivrade and the beetroot (not actually in the original, but a standard part of the garnish now) rather dominated, not to mention over-coloured it. Delicious, but it’s nice to know I can do better. And, seeing it on Facebook, master chef Brent Castle said he was “a little shocked at the presentation standards” (not to mention the lack of truffle), which he would not let out of his kitchen. But as Woody says, club food is and should be a strange mix of haute cuisine and public school dinners.

Back to the Savile to check into my room and nose around. Good to find the Fly Fisherman’s Club on the top floor. As a friend commented, he won’t catch much there (another said he looked pleased to see me).

I loved the rules in the snooker room for ‘Savile Snooker’ played annually against the Garrick for over a century now. Fifteen reds in the usual triangle and the colours placed around them, some at a ‘Buckle’s Length‘ from the points. One point for potting a red, but penalties of 5, 10 or more points taken off for anything involving contact with the coloured balls. Rules involve gathering one’s team members when the opposing team is striking, so as to spot fouls and try and put them off, and, when any foul involves the yellow ball, a compulsory cry of Bollocks! from everyone watching. Apparently new, young members tend to win easily until they realise that none of the older contingent gives a hoot and nor should they. Love it.

Then to the Prom for Turangalîla. Nice to see the old place again, though there seem to be even more stairs than ever and it was very warm. Some of the old crowd are still there too. Not sure if that’s a good or bad thing; as long as they’re happy.

Old favourite Polish eatery Daquise is still there in name, but a posh restaurant from the Old Town in Warsaw took it over years back, so the hoped-for stuffed cabbage, sausage or bigos are no longer on the menu (nor are the old prices), so I went round the corner to the really good Italian place, now under new owners but still with the excellent pizza oven in the basement.

Then back to ‘my Club’ for a good night’s sleep under a print of a work by William Orpen, a former member and an old favourite of mine, since I discovered the full range of his works in Dublin’s National Gallery.

To be continued…


Meanwhile, anyone in Edinburgh wanting an evening’s great entertainment should get along to our wee show, Well, It’s Woody. More on which also next week …

Art and Artifice

07 Thursday Jun 2018

Posted by grievenotlake in Arty stuff

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art, elsies, Glasgow School of Art

A thousand apologies, effendi!

I was sweltering and schlepping in Glasgow yesterday, for the annual GSA degree show. Since the iconic Mackintosh building went up in a blaze of performance art, it’s been a matter of going from the Trongate in the South East (BA art) to the Glue Factory (MFA), up beyond the M8 in Cowcaddens, via the new college building on Renfrew St (design and stuff).

So, a great day out but well-knackered by the trane back to Ed.

So here’s a few pics of scenery, artwork and installasions trouvées:

And a page of graduating Elsies …

…who can be seen on my Elsie pages at my site

Which’ll have to do for now. See ya!

Swings and Roundabouts

11 Wednesday Apr 2018

Posted by grievenotlake in Arty stuff, Loosely literary

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art, dentist, Flash Fiction, Photography, portrait

It’s been a busy week at Lake Grieve-Not

So you come into a bit of money and think maybe you’re on a roll, but it turns out the only roll you’re on is a bread roll, smothered in onions and about to go on a hot griddle to warm up in preparation for a slice of bacon and loads of unnameable sauce. Good job I bought me a ketchup gun.

I was also going to buy a vacuum cleaner, a cajon and a ticket for the Trans-Siberian Railway, but the best-planned lays and all that …

‘Cos between all the work being admin wallah for four competitions, teeth have gone wrong on me and expensive, gifted phones have gone awol. So that’s a few grand to sort out those problems. Two removals with the possibility of expensive implantation, possibly in Poland.

But in the midst of all this self-pity, I thought I should enlarge on those competitions I just mentioned.

Yes, as an eminence chauve of the Scottish Art Club, and one of the few members who can spell IT, your humble blogger gets to receive, collate, file and distribute for judging the entries to our ever-growing portfolio of fun competitions. And you, gentle reader, might well be a potential enterer. If you write, paint or photograph, that is.

If short stories are your thing, you’re too late. Sorry. The Short Story Competition closed for entries a couple of weeks ago, keeping me up all night as the last flood came in.

But if even shorter stories, aka Flash Fiction are more your style, and you have any masterpieces of 250 words or fewer, you might want to check out the website…

https://www.storyawards.org/aboutflashfiction/

But maybe you makes pics of people? With cameras, pencils or paintbrushes … even marble and chisels? In that case, the glorious Scottish Portrait Awards, now in its second year after an amazingly successful start in 2017, is calling for entries. And of course we has a site for that too, where you can have a look at the stuff that did well before and see if you think you have what it takes to win a big prize and a high profile.

https://www.scottishportraitawards.com/

And what’s kept me busy for the last few days is the arcane subject of embedded forms. It has made life a lot easier and led to fewer problems (and disqualifications) for entrants, having a form to fill in, rather than asking them to attach umpteen things to an email. But it ain’t plain sailing, no no no. The compromise of using a service to build and embed the form does mean accepting limitations a laboriously hand-coded solution could avoid (eg we can’t limit the file types of attachments, which is easy enough in php code). And it doesn’t handle mobile devices separately, which can lead to formatting issues. But who the hell wants to write stories on a phone?

But on the whole, the form facility offered by the lovely people at Wufoo (though on occasion I have called them similar-sounding but ruder names) is a boon and their support people have been top-notch, so I’d recommend them.

The problem we had, though, was that some users found they couldn’t see the whole form. No submit button. So they paid their moneys, which I immediately spent on riotous living (or teeth), and found they couldn’t send me no stories. Or pictures. Whatevs.

And it turns out that’s cos the embed code has a ‘height’ parameter. Plenty for most windows on most kit, but insufficient for narrow screens that bunched up the info.

So that got fixed but now most users have an acre of blank space after the submit button. Fuck it, they can live with that.

And maybe I can get some of my own writing done, while I anticipate the terror of next week’s lower right six extraction and worry about the infection down the side of the upper right five.

Life, eh? Who’d have it?

 

Three Steppes to Heaven

10 Wednesday Jan 2018

Posted by grievenotlake in Arty stuff, humour, Travel

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art, Channel Four, china, Cossacks, Countess, documentary, Kalinka, Russia, Trans Siberian Railway

So, yeah, the painting is back home now and I even bought a small wooden thing (she’s a wood person, she claims, being born in a cocky year, but the site I looked at said she was an earth rooster, which means I should have sent her pottery; me being a water dragon doesn’t bode well for exciting presents — anyway I don’t believe in any of that crap, being a typical Libran).

So the small wooden thing can go in the post and I must turn my attention to repainting a face. And getting it to Chinaland, in a safely packed A1 crate of some sort.

If you waded through last week’s entry (Taiga Economy), you’ll know I’ve considered but bottled out of taking it on a slow boat, and have been considering the Trans Siberian Railway.

A bit of research showed said train runs a couple of times a week from Moscow to Beijing, via Mongolia or Manchuria (Mongolia has more appeal). Getting to Moscow from Scotland, and the final leg from Beijing to Hangzhou should be un morceau de pis, even if the UK leg will be plagued by replacement bus services. The TSR takes a week and there were visions of going in the cheapest carriage, open plan with curtained bunks. Then the visions of pissed-up, lively Russian folk, filling the long nights with vodka-fuelled Cossack dances round the samovars, led to a more disturbing vision of a booted foot, during a spirited rendition of Kalinka, going straight through the middle of the very masterpiece this form of escorted transport was supposed to keep safe from damage.

So the first class option seemed essential. One could always lock the pic away in the compartment and join the drunken revels in pauper class anyway. And there was the added possibility of meeting the glamorous member of a once-aristocratic family, no doubt with shady connections, over a plate of blinis demidoff, and beginning a great amour de fou.

Trouble is, said first class option brings the price for that leg alone to around £500. As the lady is only offering £400 for the painting, that’s an expensive bit of work for the artist. True, she did say she’d pay the shipping costs too, but I think she was rather assuming that would be care of our old friends at Crystal Sky Trading who usually take care of these matters. Not three times the base cost of the picsh.

As ERNIE failed to fling any Premium Bond winnings my way to start the year, it looks more and more likely that the adventure simply ain’t gonna happen.

Maybe the one remaining hope is that I can interest a tv documentary crew in turning the journey into a ten part series, send a small crew to accompany and film me (or at least give me the necessary state-of-the-art kit to film myself), and, I need hardly add, pay the fares. There’d be plenty of time to do a blog (I assume the TSR has wi-fi) and work on the book of the series, on those endless days where the view is an unchanging vista of open steppes or gloomy forests. That’s if I wasn’t too busy canoodling with countesses or carousing with Cossacks.

Can’t think of a snappy title just yet, but the sub is “a crazy English guy takes a painting of Italy to a Chinese lady via Siberia on a series of trains”. And I’ve no idea how to go about finding who to pitch the thing to. So, if you happen to have the right connections and think there’s any film maker out there who doesn’t feel the barrel of train-related programmes hasn’t quite been scraped clean, do get in touch.

Anyway, before any definitive travel or posting plans can be made, there’s still the impossible task of making her face ‘lovely enough’ …

Landscape Pardoner

29 Wednesday Nov 2017

Posted by grievenotlake in Arty stuff

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Assisi, Carcassonne, china, landscape, Lord Dunsany, oil painting

They say — well, someone says — anyway I’m sure I once heard someone say — that you never finish an art work, you just decide to stop working on it.

So I have. 

Walking to Assisi
[oil on canvas, 85x60cm]

There’s an obscure intertextual reference to the once extremely popular Irish writer, Edward Plunkett, aka Lord Dunsany. In his short story, Carcassonne, the protagonists never get to Carcasonne, and my little China girl never actually reached Assisi, as her bonkers itinerary meant visiting three cities on that one day, and the bus stop on the outskirts of the town was the nearest she got, as she headed for city two. As the shadow shows, this walk was taken very early in the morning, at a time your humble blogger still refuses to believe exists outside fairy tales.

The pic will be on display at the Scottish Arts Club from December 6th, after which it will be varnished and shipped to Chinaland, if she decides she looks ‘lovely enough’ for her to buy it. As capturing loveliness is not my strong suit (if I even have one), I just hope she’s not too hard to please.

More Than Real Ravens

25 Wednesday Oct 2017

Posted by grievenotlake in Arty stuff, Loosely literary

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Tags

aneurysm, Assisi, british realism, Edinburgh, elsies, Laura Knight, Modern Art Gallery, Painting, Stanley Spencer, The Raven

Went to the British realists exhibition at Embra’s Modern Art II today.

As a Nottnm lad, I’m obviously a fan of Laura Knight, whose Dawn so grabbed me when I first set foot in the admin office of the RA in That London.

Not that there’s more than one picture by her, a rather idiosyncratic circus scene. But it is a fascinating show with so many paintists what was new to your correspondent. It ends on Saturday, if you was thinking of going. And if you’re wondering what to buy me as a retirement pressie (as I mentioned before, last week I hit OAPdom and the Scottish NHS scanned me for abdominal aneurysm by way of celebration), the catalogue is a snip at £20, but I still can’t afford it, at least until I hear I have housing benefit and don’t have to start looking for a large cardboard box to sleep in.

It’s not all Stanley Spencer, that era (though I have always had a soft spot for his brother Gilbert, since a print of one of his landscapes hung in my paternal gran’s retirement gulag); there’s also Hilda Carline, aka Mrs Spencer Mk I: another fine brush wielder in her own right. And a large painting by her of their maid at Cookham hangs on one wall, rather too high up for a photo … in fact photos aren’t allowed, but had her head been a about the same height as my own, I would have said to hell with these ‘rule’ things, and snapped her as the most apt yet of my Elsies. That being her name.

The problem with looking at all these competent and occasionally brilliant paintings is that it makes me feel like giving up on my own, which are neither.

I’ll be an artist — nevermore, he added, referring to the fact that he’s nearly learnt the whole of Poe’s pome ready for Saturday night’s soiree. Maybe a video will follow.

But the Assisi effort is coming on. Held up not only by chasing benefits and pension, laziness and feelings of inadequacy, but also the fact that one or more paint tubes had oozed linseed oil into the paintboxes (cheap, inadequately-blended shit) since I last did any oil painting and dried-on oil is sticky and nasty and hard to shift. Thank heaven for meths.

 

I need a random title here etiquette

31 Thursday Aug 2017

Posted by grievenotlake in Arty stuff, humour, Loosely literary, Music

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china, concrete poetry, facebook, messages, Music education, poetry, scams, spam

I love the way that scams and spams come in waves. The next big thing, the bandwagon all the sad little wannabe crooks jump on to, despite the fact that folks might smell a rat rather quickly if they get ten mails telling them they’ve successfully cancelled an Amazon order they never made.

Yeah, I’ve been getting that one a lot lately. And the one where someone tells me they got my address (and presumably that of the other ten random addresses in the ‘to’ box) from a site where I registered to make money online. So even if I had ever done such a thing, would I not wonder why so many people were sending me similar offers to take my money off me at the same time?

But my favourite now is the one that tells me I have unread facebook messages (to an email that doesn’t even have a linked facebook account). But it doesn’t just say, “You have three unread messages on facebook” or that these will soon be deleted. Oh no, it also adds a random word on the end. I assume this is to fool spam filters looking for set phrases. The extra word is probably chosen at random from a dictionary and appended.

Some might think this would make the average user wary. But it is a known fact that these mails are full of bad English and spelling and stuff to make the smarter (or at least more fastidious) folk delete right away, rather than spark investigations and traces. So a stupid extra word will hardly be noticed by the less tech-savvy target audience who will think Oh dear, I hadn’t noticed the messages, I should go on fb more often, I’ll click here to … oh, shit!

 

But what I love most about these things is that the extra words provide me with a novel source of randomly generated concrete poetry.

This interest goes back ages. At university, we used to cut up newspapers and place the words on active hot plates, writing them down in the order they caught fire. Sadly none of the poems still exist (rather like the hall of residence in question); but these things, like Tibetan sand mandalas, are meant to be ephemeral.

As is this one, being the extra words of a week’s worth of such emails, in order of arrival. Not sure who Ripley is (except Sigourney Weaver in Alien or the dog in the very wonderful Edinburgh gelateria, Affogato), but it’s right on the money (see what I did there) about Mike Pence’s ‘cursive’ ambitions.

(you have) unread messages

paragraphing topics
attackers jaunts beggary
boulders
trucker ripley
delegation forward
cursive ambitions
pence littered fiddler
acute

Ripley

 

 

By the way, while I’m here, if anyone (especially in Europe or UK) would like to look at my chum’s questionnaire about music and the arts in education, we’d be so grateful we will kiss the statue of your choice at the next opportunity.

Some Things for Jing

02 Wednesday Aug 2017

Posted by grievenotlake in Arty stuff, Music

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BBC, Musicals, Proms, Radio 3, West End

As my houseguest keeps making demands on me to download this, tell her about that or write something about the other, I might as well share some of the fruits to save the trouble of writing a blog per se

London’s West End

London’s ‘Theatre Land’ is the area known as the West End (the East End being found in the financial City of London and beyond).  Although companies in Shakespeare’s time had played at venues in less central parts of London, the first permanent theatre in the district opened in 1663 on Drury Lane (where the Theatre Royal now stands).

The West End is now the largest theatre district in the world, covering more than a square kilometre and containing about forty venues.

All types of theatre are performed, from classic drama to modern plays and stand up comedy. The West End also boast two of the World’s top opera houses, the Coliseum and the Royal Opera House (home to the Royal Opera and Ballet companies). But the area is best known for its musical theatre, from the Classics like Oklahoma and South Pacific to modern favourites like Phantom of the Opera, Cats, Blood Brothers and Les Miserables. Another popular genre in recent years has been the ‘juke box’ musical, where a story is constructed around the songs of a famous band or singer, such as We Will Rock You (Queen) and Mama Mia! (Abba).

Going to a West End show is now a feature of many tourists’ visit to London, and the area sells over 14 million tickets every year.

 

BBC Radio 3

The British Broadcasting Company Limited was founded in 1922. It was a private company, owned by a consortium of radio equipment manufacturers. In 1927 this became the British Broadcasting Corporation, a body under the ownership of the UK government but largely independent of their control.  The main source of funding was a fee paid by all who bought a license to use a radio receiver (and later a television).

By 1946 the BBC had two radio channels (and one television channel, the only one in the UK). The Home Service was mainly speech programmes (factual and drama) and the Light Programme provided ‘light entertainment’ (popular music, comedy, quiz shows etc). The Third Channel was formed to carry ‘serious’ music, drama, poetry, prose and discussion, a more intellectual content than the other channels or television. Leading philosophers such as Bertrand Russell and Isaiah Berlin as well as historians and other academics were regularly featured.

It was involved in the first broadcasts of some major works, such as Dylan Thomas’s ‘Pay for Voices’, Under Milk Wood, and many of the compositions of leading British and International composers, such as Britten and Shostakovich.

In 1967 the BBC made major changes, not only introducing a second tv channel, BBC2, but also responding to the challenge from commercial (and illegal) stations transmitting pop music for a younger audience, by introducing Radio 1. As part of this shake-up, the Light Programme became Radio 2 and the Home Service became Radio 4. Logically, the Third Programme became Radio 3. It still broadcasts predominantly classical music, with some programmes specifically dedicated to ‘early’ music (Bach and before), contemporary music, both mainstream and radical, Jazz and ‘World’ music. It has weekly drama programmes and opera broadcasts, and a nightly hour of debate, discussion or talks on a range of cultural subjects. Its main, commercial ‘rival’ for classical music is Classic FM, but this has a more mainstream agenda, concentrates on the less ‘demanding’ repertoire, and doesn’t often play whole symphonies or operas.

The Proms

The BBC Proms, or Henry Wood Promenade Concerts, are a music festival that goes back over 120 years. The idea of ‘promenading’ or strolling around while listening to music began in the mid eighteenth century. It was a regular feature of London’s ‘pleasure gardens’, public parks where orchestras or bands would play on the covered bandstands. Such stands, usually dating from the nineteenth century, can still be seen in many UK parks.

From the 1830s, indoor Proms, where seats were removed and the audience was free to move around were popular. In 1895, the conductor Henry Wood was invited by the impresario Robert Newman to begin a series of such concerts with the aim of ‘training the public by easy stages’, introducing them to classical music with popular pieces at first, then longer, more complex and modern works. Because there were no seats, larger audiences could be accommodated, and thus tickets could be much cheaper.  This meant a wider section of society could have access to top quality performances.

The Concerts were originally held in the Queen’s Hall, next to the BBC’s Broadcasting House in London, just north of Oxford Street. In 1927, after the death of Newman, the BBC itself took over the running of the concerts. At this time, Monday concerts were usually of music by Wagner, Fridays, Beethoven and a mixture of other works, especially by living composers, on other nights (no concerts on Sundays).

During the War, the BBC withdrew support and concerts continued with whoever was available under private sponsorship, until German bombs destroyed the Hall in 1941. The BBC resumed ownership and Sir Henry died in 1944, and the Proms moved, first to the Royal Albert Hall and then to the town of Bedford for a while.

After the War, the returned to the Albert Hall, where they have stayed eve since. A significant event was the appointment of Sir Malcolm Sargent as chief conductor, a post he held until 1966.  A very flamboyant man, he was nicknamed ‘Flash Harry’ He always wore a carnation in his buttonhole and made speeches to the audience, full of humour. As he was born a few months before the first Proms in 1895, he claimed that Henry Wood heard of this and invented the Proms, “to give me something to do when I grew up”. His speeches on the Last Night of the Proms, the big, fun concert, full of patriotic songs and silliness, set the standard for all conductors who have followed. When a critic accused him of making concert audiences act like football fans, he replied, that this was a good thing!

So now the Proms run for about eight weeks each summer and the number of concerts has steadily grown. This year there are 75 concerts, at least one a day for 58 days. As well as those in the Albert Hall, there are regular chamber music concerts in the nearby Cadogan Hall and, for the first time, a Proms in another city, as an extra concert comes from the UK City of Culture 2017, Hull. Concerts still concentrate on the ‘core repertoire’ of Western classical music, composers from Bach and Vivaldi to Shostakovich and Britten, but there are plenty of more recent (and earlier) pieces; the Proms commissions a number of new works from living composers each year and gives the UK premieres of many more. In recent years, the content has become even broader, with special concerts of film music, music for Children or based on popular tv series, like Dr Who. Pop bands, jazz and folk musicians are also featured, with special concerts dedicated to performers like David Bowie or Scott Walker. Some say this is ‘dumbing down’, others claim that it brings a whole new audience to the experience of concert-going, which is what Henry Wood and Malcolm Sargent intended to do in their times.

Nothing to see here. Go away.

12 Wednesday Apr 2017

Posted by grievenotlake in Arty stuff, Bloggy basics, humour, Loosely literary

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Cannes, Father William, Lewis Carroll, Mad Hatter, poetry

Lots on the old plate this week, two paintings on the go, poems to write for a project I promised my little Chinese friend,

and a book to be getting back to getting on with.

So all you get is a pic of me as the Mad Hatter and a link to me performing, You Are Old Father Peter, from Parodies Lost (still available at £5) at the Scottish Arts Club’s tea party.

 

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