Anna Meredith & 59 Productions: Five Telegrams

The First Night of the Proms this year concluded with the premiere of a specially commissioned piece, Five Telegrams by Anna Meredith, themed around WWI communications and accompanied by a lights display. The five movements combined to around 22 minutes; it should be possible to find the video on iPlayer for the next few weeks, and who knows? Maybe it will be on YouTube after that.

The first movement was energetic, with lights that could have come out of a disco; it was fun, but I don't have any particular desire to hear it again. The second was quieter and more contemplative, with lights that were more obviously designed than random, but still leaving it unclear what actual value they were supposed to add beyond pretties. Perhaps there was something deep or interesting going on in the music; if so, I didn't catch it.

The third and fourth movements, however, were much better. The third, themed around the redaction of postcards sent home by WWI soldiers, had a driving flow with fun little lights going on and off in time; there was a rhythmic interplay between plucked strings and some Javanese-sounding percussion, with snatches of woodwind joining in. The fourth, themed around codes, had a similar energy but was much more showy about it.

The final movement was in some ways less enjoyable than the two which had preceded it, but nonetheless had clear musical merit. It portrayed the feelings of people experiencing the armistice, and after a truly wonderful opening with a cello solo built up towards a kind of climax, never clearly in either a major or a minor key: both present, neither overwhelming the other. It died away in what felt like a bit of a disappointment after twenty minutes of music, but was perhaps appropriate to the subject.

Overall I'd be very enthusiastic to hear the last three movements again, and for their sake would sit through the first two.

The Cult of the Composer: in lieu of an essay

NB: This is something I want to write as a proper essay, but have no idea about how to phrase. For this reason, I am simply stating the main claims and arguments here, with a view to converting them into an extended piece of writing at a later date.

• Music is like cookery, and different from most other art-forms, in that it is (a) reproduced from a "recipe", (b) generally not seeking to represent anything in particular - and even when it is, does so in a very abstract way
• There are very good reasons for not messing with non-reproducible artworks (such as the originals of paintings). There are good reasons to be careful about how we treat many representational artworks (such as poetry).
• However, when these do not apply, we are generally very happy to modify, deface, and do whatever we like to artworks. Example one: we are happy to adapt cooking recipes, even when they come from very good chefs. Example two: we are happy to deface posters and prints of paintings. (Remember the Joseph Ducreaux meme from a few years back?)
• We should be more willing to carry out this kind of modification for music. By this I mean not just the kind of wholesale changes we already make (e.g. remixes, various classical pieces) but micro-changes.
• By micro-changes I mean deciding that a certain chord is wrong and changing it, modifying a tune slightly, and all sorts of other small changes.
• Composers are presumably good judges of what is good music, but the judgement of the composer is not infallible, and we should be willing to overrule them in cases where we think they have erred (or where tastes have simply changed!)
• See for example these eight beautiful bars in Schubert's Unfinished Symphony, and the two-bar fart that follows them. (from 1:20 in) I don't have a ready suggestion for how to continue the tune, but am quite certain that there are option much better than what Schubert went with.

• Obviously if you are performing pieces for the public then you should make changes only after careful consideration, but this does not mean you should not make changes at all!
• A good performer or composer can definitely improve on an already good piece, and this need not entail any disrespect to the original composer. See, for example, Marc-André Hamelin's excellent cadenza to Liszt's Hungarian Rhapsody no.2 (cadenza starts at 8:26, runs to around 11:40):

• We're past the days in which books are the ideal medium for this, but it's sad that there's no book of "Mozart's piano works, as adapted by __". Nowadays, why not have a website of suggested micro-changes to pieces?
• Try to come up with more suggestions for micro-changes. e.g. I reckon we could improve the descending lines at the climaxes of Finlandia (occurs more than once, e.g. at 3:56)

Two brief thoughts

Some thoughts that I really ought to write up properly, but don't presently have the time for:

-Many people appear to think either that (P) all social constructions are bad, or (P*) that belief in (P) is central to SJWism. Hence much mockery has aimed not to point to clearly beneficial social constructs (e.g. respect, love, money) but to suggest that almost anything can be a social construct (e.g. the penis).

A more sophisticated view is that something's being a social construct points not to it being bad, but to it being replaceable or at least malleable. But even this is perhaps too simplistic. Musical harmony is a social construct - while in the West we use a 12-tone scale, many other cultures (or composers within the West, e.g. Harry Partch) use different scales with greater or smaller intervals between notes - it is hard to see how we could overturn many aspects of harmony. (Though we could of course tweak it in particular ways, e.g. moving from equal temperament to just intonation).

(edited to add: this is probably old hat to anyone who reads my blog. I'm not trying to say anything especially original here, but it occurs to me that it would be useful to have something to point to, making this point, which isn't the length of a Slate Star Codex post or three)

-In a liberal society, we want both a principle of exclusion and a principle of inclusion. Thus our society can take in and integrate outsiders, but need not roll over in the face of those who threaten it. A "Propositional Nation" goes much of the way towards this - anyone who affirms the key propositions can become a citizen, people who do not affirm those principles cannot. Contrast this with historical or blood-and-soil nationhood, as exists e.g. in UK and Scandinavia. (France is a weird case - it ought to be a kind of propositional nation given the way French nationhood developed after the revolution, but it's still more of a blood-and-soil nation). Blood-and-soil has practical advantages - among other things, a country can hardly expel native-born citizens for their political views - but lacks such an easy criterion of inclusion. Should places like the UK aim to become more "propositional" in terms of their national spirit? Can they do so without abandoning their present identities? (Can "loyalty to the queen" function as the kind of proposition that would bind a nation?)

Hey, Remember When I Used To Do Regular Links Posts? Neither Do I!

In the spirit of cleaning out my "links" folder, a dump of things I found interesting at the time and hopefully you will too:

Perhaps you have plenty of time to get where you want to go, but are tired of dull and ugly routes. Look no further than this tool for identifying not the quickest, but the most beautiful route between two places! The only catch: it's for Yahoo rather than Google, so no-one will ever use it.

An 88-year-old man has found the ultimate trick for getting to sleep with young women under hegemonic capitalism: market yourself as a commodity! "Grandfather Busted For Prostituting Himself To Young Women".

An article about one of my favourite albums of recent years, The Lyre Ensemble's The Flood. The Flood is an attempt at recreating, or at least composing in the spirit of, ancient Babylonian music; more about the album can be found here and the album is on iTunes, my personal favourite songs are "Enkidu Curses the Harlot" and "Ishtar's Descent".

Staying on the topic of music, "Towards a 21st century orchestral music canon". Various enthusiasts chip in with their thoughts on modenr long-from orchestral music and why there's relatively little of it.

The collection of Wellcome Library, Euston Road, includes an impressive selection of calling cards for London prostitutes. Fascinating both because sex and as a reflection of the social history of London. "Until the mid-190s, the typical tart was of apparently English stock. From around 1994 onwards, we see Oriental beauties, busty Amazons and Jamaican Dominatrices. Raunchy photographs become common at this point, but are often cribbed from magazines and bear little resemblance to the goods on offer. The production values improve as well. One lady poses next to an inset that shows her recent endorsement by the News of the World."

Another library I'd have been interested to visit: that of the IRA prisoners. People are often surprised at how well-educated and middle-class most terrorists are, but you have to remember that terrorism is a fundamentally political act, which means that it is most popular among the political classes. In this light, the greater surprise is not that the prisoners were so interested in Marxism, but that they were able to establish such a remarkable compendium of works in the tradition.

Only the true Messiah denies his divinity! (via this 2009 Marginal Revolution post)

Stewart Lee defends the German sense of humour. Incidentally, a dirty Hungarian joke I heard last night about Transylvanians, but which could be about many other nationalities too:
A young Transylvanian man is getting married, and asks his father for advice concerning the wedding night. The father tells him: "First, you must pick up your new wife, to show that Transylvanians are strong. Then you throw her on the bed, to show that Transylvanians are masculine. Then you remove your clothes, to show that Transylvanians are beautiful. And I'm sure you can work out what to do from there."
After the newlyweds return from their honeymoon, and the delighted son checks in with his father. "It was just like you said! I picked her up, to show that Transylvanians are strong. I threw her on the bed, to show that we are masculine. I removed our clothes, to show that we are beautiful. And then I stood next to the bed and masturbated, to show that Transylvanians are independent and autonomous!"

Robert Wiblin has one of the most interesting Facebook feeds I know, and this is a particular highlight: a discussion of "What's the strongest argument against a political position you hold dear?"

Everyone likes to joke about homoerotic readings of the relationship between Batman and Robin, but this is an impressively thorough history.

The complaint that English people only know England, and have no idea of how the world works or of how they are perceived beyond their borders, is a familiar one: I hear it all the time from Scots and Northern Irish. If I had any Welsh friends they'd probably say the same thing, the British-but-not-English countries are all basically the same anyway. In any case, an expat skewers this mentality from a more international perspective, with regard to our beloved "athlete" Eddie the Eagle.

Braess' Paradox: adding capacity to a road network can increase congestion, without changing the volume of traffic!

Edward Feser explains a particular view of the nature of heaven and hell, according to which people choose to go to hell. Warning: relies on kooky metaphysics (though nonetheless fascinating if you have an interest in theology).

A defence of Napoleon, portraying him as a great reformer who sought to avoid war, at least following his return to power in the Hundred Days. In a similarly revisionist but less hot-takey, more plausible vein, various instances of private violence being taken over by the government as a way to restrain and control it. "Many southern states tightened "Jim Crow" racial codes between the World Wars as part of an attempt to stop lynchings"!

Since I may have just defended governments, better even it out with a reminder that many of them are literally evil: as famine is declared in two counties of South Sudan, the government increases the fee for work permits for foreign aid workers from $100 to $10,000.

Some people just hate progress: an argument against colonising Mars. That said, perhaps the problem is that Mars is the wrong target and we should aim for Venus first.

A takedown of certain elite views that war with China is inevitable. Convincing as an explainer, I particularly enjoyed the section suggesting that the same argument imply inevitable war between the US and Europe.

Review: The Music Man

The Music Man is a fantastically catchy musical set in 1912 Iowa, in which conman "Professor Harold Hill" persuades a town to purchase large numbers of musical instruments and uniforms on the pretense that he will operate a marching band for their children, but his plans to defraud the town go awry when he falls in love with the town's fierce but socially unpopular librarian and music teacher, Marian Paroo. It won five Tony Awards in the year of its release including Best Musical, despite having as a competitor the greatest work of music ever written. More pertinently to how I first encountered it, it plays a minor role in the Rorshach's Blot classic Larceny, Lechery, and Luna Lovegood! as the play to which Fred drags Angelina on every one of their dates. eso theatricals were recently putting on a run of the play, and having previously enjoyed their Sweeney Todd, I was eager to see this too.

Again, the performance was clearly that of amateurs rather than professionals. That said, the set and costume design were absolutely fine, the acting and music adequate and the singing good (except for some unfortunately consistent disharmony in the school board barbershop quartet, whose source I was unable to ascertain). The weakest part of the performance was the generally unimaginative choreography, which often was nothing more than characters marching round the stage and raising their arms in synchronisation. To be fair, it is my understanding that someone had to step into the role of choreographer at a late stage, which suggests that they probably didn't have all that much time to rehearse the dancing either, and therefore had to remain on the easier side of things.

There were odd moments - for example, when a very Dutch woman exclaimed of herself and her two children (both played by Hungarians) "Oh, but we are Irish!" But overall, the performance was enjoyable; it did a better job of conveying the energy of the musical than its beauty, but did a quite reasonable job of the latter too.

(Incidentally, a more mainstream reference to The Music Man than Harry Potter fanfiction: Marge vs. the Monorail)

Review: Sweeney Todd

Eso Theatricals is an English-language theatre company operating in Budapest, who this weekend put on a series of performances of Stephen Sondheim's classic musical Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street. I had a passing knowledge of the musical from various sources, but this was my first time seeing it; the performance was in various ways sub-professional, but nevertheless well worth the 3000Ft ticket price and time.

We'll start with the good: Tamás Pál and Dóra Stróbel were fantastic in the lead roles of Sweeney Todd and Mrs. Lovett. They both sang and acted well, bringing across the characters of an intelligent but haunted Sweeney and a Mrs. Lovett who is independently psycho but nevertheless driven into true depravity by her love for Sweeney. They bounced off each other magnificently, with "A Little Priest" being unsurprisingly a highlight of the show.

Similarly, Chris Hunter put on a stellar performance as Anthony, while Hans Peterson and Mario Cossu were convincing as the Judge and the Beadle respectively. The music was played well enough not to stand out, which is precisely what is wanted in musical theatre. The lighting was understated, and resisted the temptation to play up to the dramatics of the rest of the piece. (The play did in some parts feel too dramatic, but perhaps that is unavoidable when you're adapting a Victorian penny-dreadful).

The setting was well arranged. We entered to a ghostly organ piece, with various cast members standing in position around a darkened and smoky room with old-fashioned lanterns. The aesthetic of Dark Old London was well captured (though this aesthetic of course belies the fact that the London of the Victorian era was considerably safer than the London of today).

Moving on to the forgivable: the sound was in the early stages poorly balanced, but was corrected within the first ten minutes. Non of the accents even came close to cockney, but with the exception of one obnoxiously-American-accented extra this did not especially hurt the performance. Dóra Stróbel in particular came off as motherly and yet at the same time pragmatic largely as a result of her Hungarian way of speaking. Viktória Pászthy as Johanna was often difficult or even impossible to understand, but ultimately Johanna isn't really an independently interesting character so much as a Ms. McGuffin, so not understanding her hardly detracts from the rest of the play.

Overall I enjoyed the play, and would recommend going to see it were it not for this having been the last showing, and for this blog having o Hungarian readers.

Towards a Realistic Cultural Canon

There are various lists of literary works that everyone ought to know. For obvious reasons these lists tend to be written by people who are themselves literary scholars. This is could because it allows them to be more comprehensive and to choose from a wider range of works, but it leads to lists that are utterly unrealistic for anyone who either has little spare time or who wants to be well-informed about other aspects of culture.

To this end, I think that there need to be some more limited lists which cut across different cultural mediums, combined with stretcher lists that allow people to focus solely on what interests them. The point is that I want there to be a basic list where you can consume everything on that list, remember large portions of that, and have this be sufficient to be considered cultured.

My thoughts are that a basic list might include works of literature, music, visual art, some films, and whatever else is considered vital. I'd be aiming to have the combined basic lists clock in at somewhere between 500 and 1000 hours when combined, so that given a modest investment of perhaps five hours per week one can finish the list in five years or so.

On #FreeKesha: Why You Can't Skip Due Process

NB: This article was written as an attempt to persuade social-justice types. As such, while there is nothing here that I actually disagree with, the emphasis on certain issues is different. This notice may be removed if I become happy enough with the state of the article to publicise it at all. Currently I feel that it needs more feminist shibboleths. It could perhaps do with an actual defence of the presumption of innocence rather than merely its assertion, but I'm wary to include that since the way that I think about this (roughly: how much sense does it even make to speak of this once you accept a Bayesian epistemology, in which all beliefs are probability distributions?) is so radically different from the way in which most people, including most intelligent people, do.

I

Currently in the news: pop singer Kesha (formerly Ke$ha) has attempted to get her contract revoked by court. The contract obliged her to work with producer Dr. Luke, who she alleges raped her on several occasions. The court, however, found that she is still bound by the contract which has predictably resulted in great uproar across the social justice movement under the hashtag #FreeKesha.

If you accept the claim that she was raped, this is entirely appropriate. If he is a rapist, then Dr. Luke ought to be in prison and the contract torn up entirely. But there's a large problem with this, in the form of a thing called "the presumption of innocence". We can't just assume he is guilty of rape - and in this case, that means we have to assume that any alleged intercourse between the pair was consensual, or at least in a sufficiently grey area that Dr. Luke cannot be held legally culpable. This is hard to do, but in the case of every crime except rape the presumption of innocence is held to be a fundamental part of living in an enlightened, civilised society.

Time for a musical break!

II

Let's clarify exactly what is at stake. #FreeKesha is not about a woman being forced to work with her rapist, it is about money.

One of the basic legal limitations on contracts is that while a party may be entitled to compensation, they cannot be entitled to specific performance. That is to say, if Ana agrees to pay Bob £50 in exchange for Bob mowing Ana's lawn, she pays him the £50 and he then decides that he really doesn't want to mow the lawn (for whatever reason): Ana will usually be entitled to get her £50 back, often with extra money on top since she has lost out by not knowing that she would need to employ someone else to mow her lawn. What she is not entitled to, however, is to force Bob to actually mow the lawn.

So while the question of whether Dr. Luke raped her is about whether he ought to go to prison, the question of whether the contract should be rescinded is really about money: it is about whether or not Kesha should have to pay compensation in order to be free of the contract, or whether Sony and Dr. Luke should be obliged to release her for free.

This isn't to say that money is unimportant. Is Kesha was raped, there's no reason why she should have to pay her rapist in order to be released from the contract. But it's important to be clear about exactly what the issue is.

III

Now it's obvious how the presumption of innocence applies to the question of whether or not Dr. Luke raped her. While we ought to express sympathy for every person who claims to have been raped, this does not mean we should skip the procedure of going through a fair trial before we declare the accused party guilty and imprison them. Imprisoning someone merely on the basis of an accusation is a clear breach of their basic civil rights - indeed, their basic human rights - but merely having a contract rescinded? What harm can that do?

In this individual case, not much. As I have already said, all this is about is the matter of a few million dollars. If we rescind the contract without a court case Kesha is a bit richer, if we maintain the sanctity of the contract until Dr. Luke is proven guilty beyond reasonable doubt in front of a jury of his peers, he and Sony are a bit richer. Unless there's some inherent reason why one of them deserves the money more - a topic about which there will be a thousand and one arguments, all of them awful - there's no way to answer the question of which ought to get it without first answering the question of whether Dr. Luke did indeed rape Kesha. Which takes us back to the presumption of innocence.

To be honest I'm not really familiar with Kesha's music, so here's a

cover of one of her songs by one of my actual favourite bands.

What about the wider effects, though? Rescinding the contract without a full trial would send a clear and public message that if you're in a contract which you want to get out of, rape accusations - whether true or not - will do that for you. False rape accusations are not something we should want to encourage, since quite apart from the effects on those who are falsely accused (overwhelmingly, by the way, men from ethnic minorities) their stories, when they fall apart, cause actual rape victims to be taken less seriously. Anti-feminist articles like "13 women who lied about being raped" are short on genuine statistics about the low incidence of false rape accusations, but nevertheless they are only made possible by the fact these incidents do happen.

Might such accusations become common? I don't know enough about the music industry to know if this might happen more widely, and there aren't that many other industries where a single individual is likely to be bound by a contract for years on end. But you can think of other cases. A woman wants to move out of her rented apartment at a single day's notice, contrary to a contract requiring her to let the landlord know a month before so her can sort out the next tenant. Most women would never even think of making a rape accusation here. But, as much as we may dislike this fact, there are some who will. And if we decide to support every alleged rape victim, we will end up supporting these people among them.

IV

What can we do then? Play whist from the side while Kesha has to endure a painful trial to obtain justice? Well, first I think we should be conscious of how little most of us can do in this one case. The fact that there's no way to short-cut the legal process in this particular case doesn't mean that there aren't a whole load of other good causes that we absolutely know the right side of: FGM, implicit bias and racial prejudice, and Islamophobia, to name just three. These are causes which we absolutely can and should protest about loudly, where there simply aren't the same contentious legal cases which have to resolved before we know exactly what we should advocate.

Secondly, if you feel so strongly about Kesha's situation, I daresay you could help crowdfund her to buy out of her contract. Presumably (NB: I am not an expert!) this would be returned to her if Dr. Luke were indeed found guilty, and then it could be returned to the crowdfunders. Maybe Kesha could put her first independent album on Kickstarter, with proceeds being used to buy her independence and contributors receiving advance copies of the album as a reward. This is what the internet is for.

The key point I hope I've made is this: you can't circumvent the need for legal process. Taking the presumption of innocence seriously means making hard choices - the urge to advocate for Kesha is the urge for justice, the very noblest urge of all - but it is a cost we have to bear for being a civil society.

Reading the Best of 2015: part one

The Browser has a list of what it suggests are the top 100 online essays of the last year, and is conducting a survey. A handful of them are familiar, but the vast majority are not, so I'm going to attempt to read through them all - and what is more, subject the readers of this blog to my mini-reviews of each and every essay.

For the most part I'll follow the order they appear on the website. However, I'll start with Four and Twenty Bluebeards by Matthew Spellburg, which caught my eye because last month I saw Bluebeard's Castle at the Hungarian State Opera. (I didn't tremendously enjoy it, though having given some of the music a second listen I think that may be more to do with the performance than with the opera itself).

It's a magnificent tribute to Matthew Aucoin that Four and Twenty Bluebeards is still only an Honourable Mention for my "most pretentious essay of the year" award. (What is it with these musicians?) Numerous sections making points which are typically unrelated to the actual opera; musical analysis barely more complicated than that available on the opera's Wikipedia page; bold, sweeping claims made with an air of disdain for the notion of empirical support; and above all, the notion that opera is somehow a humanistic venture of the first importance:

Opera can only teach us to be who we are not, to demand a complete transformation, in which the whole of experience undergoes a great estrangement. Only once we’ve stepped into the circle of transformation—a kind of spiritual transvestitism—can we learn something. Opera says: you must believe this is the way the world is, even though it obviously isn’t like that at all. And this is why it mirrors a culture, the total sum of a society’s reinvention of the world. And this is why it is at once the most complete and most impossible of art forms.

I can't recommend reading this essay.


Geeks, MOPs, and sociopaths in subculture evolution by David Chapman makes similarly grand claims, although is perhaps more justified in doing so. Indeed, the claim which makes me most suspicious is his suggestion that the ideal ratio of Geeks (i.e. content creators and service providers) to MOPs (members of the public) within any subculture is about 1:6. Until this point I had been reading the article mainly as an exercise in abstract reasoning which might turn out to usefully model actual subcultures; the injection of an actual number, but as a conclusion, was very jarring and came across as unsupported and arbitrary

There were a couple of other things which made me sceptical. First, the claim that "subcultures died around about 2000". I could just as easily claim that subcultures exist, and are more common than ever - if perhaps shorter-lived on average. The internet is an incredible tool for creating subcultures, and even if it also accelerates their collapses then so long as they create positive social value - as Chapman thinks they do - I would be very surprised if they were indeed to die out. Perhaps Doge is a less iconic subculture than Prog Rock, and perhaps the role for Chapman's "fanatics" is reduced to providing publicity, but until there are concrete statistics showing a decline I will be highly sceptical of one of Chapman's key theses.

Second, suppose Chapman is right. His solutions are at best vague, and at worst impossible to practise.

“Slightly evil” defense of a subculture requires realism: letting go of eternalist hope and faith in imaginary guarantees that the New Thing will triumph.

Perhaps deliberate creation requires faith in the value of what one is doing. In this case, the option may be between delusion, which leaves subcultures vulnerable to sociopaths, and having no subculture in the first place.

With all that I've said in criticism, though, the piece is worth reading and its insights are worth adding to your mental armoury.



Charles Pierce's The Death of Evan Murray should be filed under "Taboo Tradeoffs". I don't necessarily disagree with the object-level campaign - at the very least, the cost to human lives of American Football seems to render it a poor "choice" for a national sport of choice - but one could just as easily argue that sending children to school will inevitably lead to some dying in car accidents, etc. The answer, in both cases, is that there is a good to be had in children's playing sport and in their being educated. Would it have been so difficult for Pierce to make the extra bit of argument showing that American Football could be replaced by a sport (more baseball or basketball? Soccer?) with lower human cost?

Review: West Side Story, Hungarian State Opera

West Side Story
Hungarian State Opera, Erkel Theatre

3/5

West Side Story is dominated by two themes, both of them as recognisable and as powerful now as they were in 1957: love, and racial tensions. Racial tensions are particularly salient in the wake of the Syrian Refugees crisis, so what would be the reaction to such a politically charged musical, at a theatre less than ten minutes' walk from the very epicentre of the crisis?

Keleti Palyaudvar, one of Budapest's main railway stations: left, on 1st September 2015, right, on 26th September 2015. Left photo from the Evening Standard.

If you want an answer, I'd suggest asking someone who speaks Hungarian. Since I speak perhaps two dozen words of it at most, my review shall focus on the music, drama and staging of the performance.

The Erkel Theatre is unquestionably ugly. By contrast with the State Opera House, which is an ornate and elaborate declaration of the power and grandeur of the 19th-century Austro-Hungarian Empire, the Erkel Theatre is a shell of wood painted in brutalist colours. This doesn't matter too much during a musical, since your attention is on the stage, but it makes a bad first impression.

The scenery was similarly sparsely decorated. There was no particular background; merely a set of blocks which were used interchangeably as balconies and as platforms to separate the singers from the dancers, a table, and a rather grubby mirror which was lowered over the stage from time to time. The director alone knows why, since the aforementioned grubbiness of the mirror made it near-useless as a reflective surface.

To top off the soviet nature of the stage, the screen used to display Hungarian translations of the songs was a petty little thing, a board with dim-orange lights that would have been much more appropriately placed at a bus stop.

From some Hungarian website or other. The blue stuff is - I think - painted wood,
though going by appearance it may as well be concrete.

With that said, the lighting was fine - not having much of a clue about this matter, this is the highest praise I am ever able to give - and the costumes were used well. Whereas an American performance of West Side Story would typically use Hispanic actors, if not actual Puerto Ricans, to play the Sharks, and a British performance might struggle for Hispanics but would have no difficulty finding enough skilled actors of ethnic minorities to make up half a cast, this performance used costume to separate the groups. Hence the Jets wore chavvy clothing with a white-and-black theme, while the Sharks' garb was colourful verging on the flamboyant. An easy way for the audience to tell the gangs apart, although it made a mockery of Riff's instruction that, when challenging their rivals, the Jets should dress "sweet and sharp".

Sergeant Krupke patrols in front of the Jets. This, and all following photos, are
taken from the official website.

The orchestra was good - not up to the standard of the Hallé Orchestra, perhaps, but generally competent and with enough confidence to inject their own character at parts - holding longer onto the brief cello solo in "Tonight", for example.

Unfortunately the size of the theatre meant that, at least for those of us sitting near the back, the key advantage of live orchestral music was missing: one could not pick out the different parts and explore the subtleties, since the sound of the orchestra came as a single impression rather than a melange of different ones.

It's sometimes said that people lose their accents when singing, and had you told me that a couple of weeks ago I might have believed you. The actors on stage didn't; not one of them, for example, could pronounce the letter w. This wasn't too much of a problem during the solos, but it did sometimes impede clarity when there were groups singing.

While none of the singers could have been confused for a native speaker of English, the people playing Tony and Anita were at least fluent enough to emphasise certain words above others, and to do so intelligently - to inject that large amount of communication which comes from things other than our exact words and body language. The rendition of "A boy like that" was genuinely the finest I heard, beating even that of the seminal West Side Story album released last year by Michael Tilson-Thomas and the San Fransisco Symphony.

Perhaps it's unfair of me to criticise their accents - after all, singing in a Hungarian accent may well have been more clear for most of the audience (though not for me personally). What I do feel ought to be criticised is the gross overuse of vibrato, which seemed to pop up in every note which could possibly sustain it. Vibrato sounds silly when used to this extent, and ought to be saved for those notes which really must be held on to.

The dancing was another thing that, not being qualified to offer even basic commentary on, I shall have to report as merely "fine". It was, though, rather odd to see Tony dancing with Bernardo and Riff even after the latter two had been fatally stabbed.

Tony (centre) stabs Bernardo (right), to avenge Riff (left).

Overall the evening was worth seeing, especially given that tickets start at the bargain price of 300Ft (about £0.70) and spiral up to the heady heights of 3500Ft (about £9). For someone who has been in love with West Side Story for several years but had never seen it live, though, it was something of a let-down: I could have tolerated poor playing of the music, having heard it all at least fifty times before, but the performance offered little, dancing aside, to improve upon just staying at home and listening to Spotify.

Two Opera Reviews

(The normal purpose of reviews is to guide the reader as to what is worth seeing/doing. Both of these were one-offs, which makes this rather redundant, but feel free to read anyway.).

The final concert I attended in Manchester was Venus and Adonis and Dido and Aeneas, performed by the New London Consort, Anna Dennis, Roderick Williams, and Penelope Appleyard. The musical performance was done on period instruments, and beyond that there is little to say. For an opera, this need not be a bad thing, since the focus is after all the singers. The playing was competent, if uninspired. I didn't notice any errors, but nor did the instrumentalists at any point make me sit up and think "That's amazing!"

A picture presumably of a rehearsal: Roderick
Williams left, Penelope Appleyard left, and one of
the backing singers in the middle. Taken from
Appleyard's website.

Anna Dennis played Venus and Dido. I can't remember a great deal, this being a full month ago now, but her singing was fine - at times unclear, but that's always a risk with sopranos. Roderick Williams played Adonis and Aeneas with gusto - aside from a touch of grey hair (he is 50, after all) he looked every inch the besotted young hunter as Adonis, and just as much the sharply dressed, confident statesman as Aeneas. Penelope Appleyard was a playful Cupid and a sympathetic Belinda, and played both roles well. (As a side note: she looked pretty as Belinda, but this was as nothing compared to how attractive she looked when cross-dressing in order to play Cupid. I'm not certain whether this is a fact about her appearance or about the tenuousness of my heterosexuality).

The background singers were for the most part competent. I wasn't a great fan of the performance of the Spirit disguised as Mercury, though the use of sunglasses to indicate when the singers were evil spirits and when they were court attendants was a nice touch.

The operas were both interesting enough - neither would make a list of my favourite operas, but I am glad to have heard them and would happily listen to them again.


Earlier this week I was at a church in Stourbridge to hear "Opera: The Best Bits!", a concert put on by a local community choir and orchestra who give a charity concert each year with a different theme. I was there due to a family friend being in the choir, and to be honest it was about as mediocre as you would expect. The performers were for the most part competent but not professional, and it showed. Most obviously there was a lack of confidence among many members of the orchestra, which made the slips (when they happened) very easy to hear. The compère was a local boy made good, who is now an actor down in London, but he was horrendously under-prepared: he introduced every song in the exact same way ("This piece is from [opera], which was first performed at [opera house] in city [in year], and tells the story of [frequently inaccurate two-sentence summary]. The hero/heroine does/doesn't die at the end.") and clearly hadn't looked up the pronunciation of some of the names - my mother was struggling to avoid laughing at his reference to "Oh fondue temple saynt".

The choir were barely audible above the orchestra at time, but were otherwise in good tune. The soloists were perhaps the most variable part of the evening - one was a professional soprano who gave genuinely excellent interpretations of Habanera, the Flower Duet and other overplayed mainstays of opera collections, while at the other end was a member of the choir who ambitiously but perhaps unwisely attempted (among other songs) Nessun Dorma but completely lacked the strength of voice to pull it off. It wasn't a waste of an evening, but had I been required to pay for my ticket (aren't parents wonderful?!) I would have baulked at it.

Desert Island Discs

The BBC Radio 4 program Desert Island Discs features a different famous guest. The guest is asked to imagine that they will be stranded upon a desert island and must choose what they will have with them. In particular, they are asked to pick:

• eight pieces of music
• a book. (They receive the Bible and the complete works of Shakespeare in addition to whichever book they choose).
• One luxury item of no use for escaping the island.

I do not anticipate being invited to the program any time soon - for one thing, my life hasn't been at all interesting enough yet - but have worked out a list of what I would choose were I in this position. It is not entirely complete - several of the choices are merely a choice from two or three different pieces - and is of course subject to change, but here (in no particular order) is my rough list.

Gaol Ise Gaol I/Lisnagun Jig (The Eilidhs) or Llongau Caenarfon (trad.) 

I want at least one folksy tune, and these are both lovely songs. Gaol Ise Goal I also has the distinction of being the only piece on here that I first heard live, at IVFDF 2014 in Edinburgh, so there's a personal-interest angle on that one.

Something from West Side Story (Leonard Berstein & Stephen Sondheim). I don't know what, because there are so many incredible songs from which to choose: Something's Coming, Maria, Tonight, America, One Hand One Heart, Tonight (reprise), I Feel Pretty, Gee! Officer Krupke!, I Have a Love... For the sake of having something here, I'll choose one which came out well in the original film.

Appalachian Spring (Aaron Copland). I would expect to be allowed the entire ballet, but if I'm not then I would go specifically for the fourth section, which contains what is in my opinion the single greatest moment in all of classical music. In the video below, the suite starts at about 2:05, while the moment I love so much is at 16:05 (although to appreciate it you need to listen to the thirty seconds or so leading up to it).

Incidentally, the seventh section (an adaptation of Simple Gifts, a Quaker song known to generations of pupils of Anglican schools as Lord of the Dance) is something I detested a few years back, thinking it overwrought and pretentious. I still think that it doesn't work on its own, but now that I listen to it as the climax of a half-hour ballet rather than as an isolated piece overplayed by Classic FM, I have very much come to appreciate it.

White Blank Page (Mumford & Sons) or The Sea and the Sky or I was an Oak Tree (Jonathan Byrd)
This choice allows me to combine folksiness with modernity - twice the signalling!

Symphony no. 6 "Pastoral" (Ludwig van Beethoven) or Symphony no. 9 "From the New World" (Antonin Dvorak)
Two of my favourite long pieces of classical music. Other alternatives would have included a number of works by Elgar (Cello Concerto, Enigma Variations), Tchaikovsky (Violin Concerto, Swan Lake), and probably a whole bunch of other things.
The Pastoral Symphony is just such a happy piece, a such a joy to listen to! The New World Symphony, on the other hand, can in no way be described as happy, but has some wonderful tunes. For example, the first movement conjures for me mental images of early settlers arriving in the New World during a sea storm and looking at the villages of the Iroquois. This is completely anachronistic given that Dvorak was writing several centuries after this, but then again he was a terrible ethnomusicologist so perhaps it is what he had in mind.

The Light at the End of the Tunnel (is the Light of an Oncoming Train) (Half Man Half Biscuit)
I thought I ought perhaps to include something by a slightly out-of-date band. Both of the possible bands, HMHB and the Rolling Stones, are still active, so I just went for my favourite song by one of the two.

Varen or Wedding-Day at Troldhaugen (Edvard Grieg) or Bailero (Joseph Cantaloube)
Varen is a lovely song, while I am determined to fit Wedding-Day at Troldhaugen into my own wedding somehow. (See also). I have no idea what Bailero is about, but it is the most soothing song I have ever encountered.

Mary's Room (Claude-Michel Schoenberg & Scott Alexander)
Les Miserables has nice music, but that's not really why I'm including this. It's more because the Effective Altruism/ Less Wrong community is so fun to be part of, and this song would give me a connection to that (however tenuous). If someone did a well-produced version of Philosopher Kripke then I would be tempted to take that to fill both this slot and the West Side Story slot.

Be Thou My Vision (trad.)
I may not really believe the Bible any more, but you can't tell the story of my life without mentioning the church. This is my favourite hymn, so in it goes. An alternative would be When I Survey The Wondrous Cross.

The book would be Rationality: from AI to Zombies, which taught me how to think; the luxury item would have to be a piano.

Who Type Out Their Setlists

Last night, I saw Igudesman & Joo performing at Bridgwater Hall. Alexsey Igudesman and Richard Hyung-ki Joo are professional violin and piano soloists respectively, who do musical comedy skits on YouTube and various places.

The playing was top-notch; the orchestral balance and the comedy, less so. They introduced the first number, a mash-up of the Molto Allegro from Mozart's 40th Symphony with the James Bond Theme, with a dialogue which consisted of little more than them yelling "Mozart!" "No, Bond!" at each other.

This was followed by an unusual rendition of Mozart's Rondo Alla Turca, which was highly enjoyable but demonstrated two issues which were to plague much of the concert. The first was the use of blue humour: there was a fair bit of comedy which, if not performed by a man of east-Asian extraction, would have been viewed as a relic of the late 1800s, not to mention not-too-subtle references to certain parts of the male anatomy. The second was that the balance in the accompanying orchestra could be off so as to make it difficult to make out anything beyond the brass and percussion. This only seemed to be a problem when both of the soloists were playing, which suggests to me that they may have rehearsed without listeners. I understand the desire to avoid a "proper" conductor and the third on-stage personality this would almost inevitably require, but some sections were simply not up to scratch.

After a ridiculously overdramatic performance of All by Myself, they turned to a "new work" - a love ballad sung by a lonely farm boy to his favourite cow. It was credited to one "Joseph Frizell Kerr", which at first I suspected to be a joke about sexually deviant Austrians but turned out to refer to a person who only exists on Twitter.

The next few songs, during the course of which there was an interval, were mostly big-band types - Fistful of Dollars, Gonna Fly Now, etc. Towards the end they reached the second work of the evening which was at the standard it ought to be - a demonstration of the only way the average person can play Rachmaninoff's piano pieces. Sergei Rachmaninoff had famously massive hands, each of them able to span two octaves. (For comparison, I can comfortably play one-and-a-third octaves, squeezing to a semitone short of an octave-and-a-half if I flatten my hand in a way no pianist ever should). To play the gigantic chords required, Joo had a set of wooden planks with bits sticking out to play the chords, which Igudesman would juggle behind him in order to pass the right one at the time it was needed.

After an orchestral version of Gloria Gaynor's I Will Survive and a couple of encores, the evening finished. I didn't regret going, but it would be fair to describe it is one of the worse concerts that I have been to.

As a final point, I would like to ask: how is this commercially viable? There were perhaps 1200 people in the audience (the total capacity of Bridgewater Hall is 2,400, but the upper levels weren't in use) at a ticket price of £15 (£8 for students). That implies total takings will be approaching £18,000, and at least a third of that will have gone on hiring the venue. Include pay and accommodation for the orchestra - a couple of days' labour at semi-skilled or higher wages for 40 or more people, plus the costs of transport and accommodation, will probably at the very least in the region of £8000. That doesn't leave a great deal spare, especially after administration, insurance, and the myriad other costs which are difficult to remember but cause hell for small businesses.

Links, June 2014

A proposal to reduce distracted driving, by making things less distracting rather than banning them.

Middle Ages prohibitions on people having sex.

Tom Lehrer is, in my opinion at least, the greatest musical satirist to have existed - equally competent as a bitingly sharp critic of society and as a composer of wonderful melodies. This is a fascinating article on his life  - I was vaguely aware that he'd invented a drink of sorts, I didn't realise it was the FREAKING JELLY SHOT. I knew he'd studied at Harvard, but he went there when he was FIFTEEN. And I (grade eight piano, grade seven cello) would struggle to play a Rachmaninoff Piano Concerto, if I even could; he would do so, with his hands playing in different keys!

It's probably too late to make this change for the 2014 World Cup, but Lindybeige's suggestion to replace the penalty shoot-out makes a lot of sense. I'd quibble with some of the details, but so far as I can tell it would a) better represent actual football, b) involve a larger proportion of the team, c) generally take less time than 30 mins of extra time plus 5-15 mins for a shootout.

A tour of British accents. It's far from complete - indeed, none of the three accents which I most regularly encounter (Estuary English, Brummy, and Mancunion) appear - but it does an excellent job of bringing out the differences between accents.

"Factors that were independently associated with increased probability of extra-marital partnerships [included]... spouse longer erect penis." Also, boys contribute more to marriage stability than girls.

Suppose Tyler was right when he wrote this post, which argues that libertarians will never achieve their goals but will always be intellectually important. That's probably bad for people in general, but possibly good for me personally, as an aspiring libertarian intellectual.

"Normal" people are strange. That has consequences for the rest of us.

As a former RPS champion, it's nice to see that I was automatically doing much of this in my normal gameplay.

Evolution, destroying all that is natural, beautiful and loving. This week: motherhood!

Poetry of Afghan women. There are some excellent lines in there, I'll quote a couple of my favourites:
When sisters sit together, they always praise their brothers.
When brothers sit together, they sell their sisters to others.

My lover is fair as an American soldier can be.
To him I looked dark as a Talib, so he martyred me.
See also the accompanying podcast.

A fascinating attack on home ownership. There are obvious good reasons for home ownership - principal-agent problems regarding landlords, tenants and maintenance, for example - but there are serious downsides too.

Sporting governance - all the idiocy of real politics, but without the constraints of people having ever though about economics or ethics!

I read Scott Alexander's Piano Man parody by singing it while playing along on my piano. I frequently had to stop, torn somewhere between laughing and being utterly horrified.

A genuine success of government. It'll be interesting to see if this can be replicated on a wider scale: it seems silly to me to think that government can never improve things, the key question is whether it can do so on a predictable basis without spiralling out of control or large unintended consequences.

Speaking of unintended consequences, the assault on the Bin Laden compound has led to an outbreak of Polio.

Frozen and higher education? I just had to link to this...

A new arrangement of Siegmund's Horn Call.

Is there a poster version of this really pretty picture of Elsa's ice palace?

It's often remarked when looking at maps of Africa that whole national boundaries were created by lazy bureaucrats with maps, pencils and rulers whereas "real" borders - those determined by genuine links of language and culture - are far more complicated and nuanced. This analysis of actual borders shows this to be the case largely for the Americas too. I'm quite fascinated by the tendency towards horizontal borders in the more "natural" continents or Europe and Asia - perhaps it's just a chance result caused by the existence of Russia, but I don't see any a priori reason why countries should tend to have greater variety of longitude than latitude so this is an interesting thing to think about.

Another thing I need to turn into a poster.

One of the most common arguments in favour of a need to equalise incomes and wealth is that unequal distributions lead to unequal political influence. There's a crucial problem with this: they don't.

"Because he composed the music without the benefit of knowing what the title was going to be, Copland was often amused when people told him that he had captured the beauty of the Appalachians in his music".

A profile of Paul Krugman. Reading this was what led to me deciding to actually read Pop Internationalism, as opposed to merely keeping it on my Amazon wish list.

Going by the books on this list which I have actually read, I come out as four parts Ravenclaw, four parts Gryffindor, three parts Slytherin and only one part Hufflepuff. From the same author, One Direction's What Makes You Beautiful as a Goedel sentence.

Despite what this says, The King's Gambit seems (to me) to be pretty popular online. I personally play the King's Bishop's Gambit as one of my favourite openings (others of my favourite openings include the Benko, the Queen's Gambit, the Sokolsky, and the Grand Prix Attack).

Pakistanis would rather turn down free money than fill in an anonymous form acknowledging gratitude to the Americans giving it to them. At first I assumed this was a failure of US soft power caused by the War on Terror, although thinking over it I wonder if it has more to do with cultural factors - I'm reminded of responses to the Ultimatum Game where people would turn down generous offers for fear of acquiring costly obligations.

Andrew Cuomo might not be so terrible compared to many other Democrats - what with cutting spending and promoting civil rights he could even be one of the small-l libertarians (stereotyped as right-wing on economic policy, left-wing on social policy) thought to make up around 20% of the US population. My key worries is that he could end up running against someone like Rand Paul, in which case I daresay most self-described libertarians would flock to the Paul banner and do a lot of damage to those of us who are trying to reclaim the whole "compassion for the poor" thing from the left.

Very hi-res picture, very pretty.

Harry Potter, as Ayn Rand might have written it.

Sweden, utopian model of income equality, turns out to have high wealth inequality. I'd be interested to see the level of social mobility alongside these.

Eurovision Song Contest Entries 2014

I have been looking over some of the videos for entries to the Eurovision Song Contest, and thought that I would note some of my reactions here. It should be noted that I adore the contest, even though I consider the vast majority of music it produces to be absolute dross. My recommendation is at best very week evidence that a song will do well, since my tastes do not seem to chime with those of the European public as a whole.

Basim (Denmark) Cliche Love Song

Seems to be a Bruno Mars impersonator. The song has little if anything to reccommend it. I assume it's supposed to be a satire, but the lyrics don't really suggest it. If only they'd enlisted Weird Al as a co-writer.

Ruth Lorenzo (Spain) Dancing in the Rain

What a boring song.

Emma Marrone (Italy) La Mia Citta

Better than the last two - it could have made a perfectly reasonable 90s rock song. Listenable, but you can probably find some better way to occupy your time.

Twin Twin (France) Moustache

Another satirical song - their profile at the contest website describes them as "firmly of the YOLO... generation" which is annoying enough to start. The lyrics are better than the others songs so far, and it's quirky enough that it could score a fair few points. I don't know how well it'll do without the music video, however, since the music itself is eminently forgettable.

Molly (United Kingdom) Children of the Universe

Actually a pretty good song. Unfortunately, the arrangement is absolutely dire. Honestly, it would be better with no backing than with this mess.

Elaiza (Germany) Is It Right

One of the things I love about Eurovision is the crazy combinations of instruments which get pulled out each year, and this does not disappoint with Accordion, Drums and Double Bass. The song is alright, but I really can't see it winning, again, it's just too forgettable.

Aram (Armenia) Not Alone

There's only so much intensity you can build up when you have only three minutes, and this goes from calm singing (accompanied by some incredibly hammy acting) to screeching violins to screaming voice far too quickly.

Aarzemnieki (Latvia) Cake to Bake

A very fun song - certainly my favourite so far. Clever lyrics, clever chordal progressions, well worth a listen.

Tanja (Estonia) Amazing

I was expecting more club-dance-numbers, given the success of Euphoria in 2012 and Only Teardrops in 2013; surprisingly, this is the first one so far. It's not a particularly interesting song.

Sanna Nielsen (Sweden) Undo

Rather dull. That said, the singer appears to be the First Lady of the United States.

Pollapoenk (Iceland) No Prejudice

The last two Icelandic entries were both very good; this fails to live up to those, instead competing with France for the Strangest Music Video award. It's not a terrible song by any means, but the politically-correct lyrics are very boring and it feels a bit disjointed.

Hersi (Albania) One Night's Anger

There's a solid twenty seconds of good song before it goes the same way as Spain.

Tolmachevy Sisters (Russia) Shine

Yet another non-descript song, not really going anywhere, and without any particular musical merit.

Dilara Kazimova (Azerbaijan) Start a Fire

At two-and-a-half minutes in, I thought this a reasonable quiet song which - unusually for Eurovision - resisted the temptation to head for a big climax. Then, a climax came out of nowhere, but at least it didn't go too overboard - the piano was unnecessary.

Maria Yaremchuk (Ukraine) Tick-Tock

In the wake of massive international sympathy this is an excellent chance for Ukraine to take advantage of the massive political aspect to voting in Eurovision, and the song isn't half bad. I would not be at all surprised to see a Ukrainian victory.

Axel Hirsoux (Belgium) Mother

Another high-pitched, quiet and forgettable song - the only difference being that, rather than having a female singer, it uses a male castrato.

Cristina Scarlat (Moldova) Wild Soul

Yet more overwritten modern claptrap.

Valentina Monetta (San Marino) Maybe

A respectable song, but certainly one that would not get significant exposure without this kind of event. (I do not regard giving arbitrary exposure to songs as a good thing). I would pick on the lyrics, but the sad thing is that by modern standards they're not all that bad.

Suzy (Portugal) Quero Ser Tua

It's getting very hard to think of new ways to describe the phenomenon of songs with no particular musical merit using modern arrangements. Basically, rather boring.

The Common Linnets (Netherlands) Calm After the Storm

Most of this is pretty good. The problem is with the singing, which is entirely wrong for this and clashes with the rest of the music - something far more subdued is called for.

Sergej Cetkovic (Montenegro) Moj Svijet

Another good song, but one which could do with another couple of minutes to develop towards a climax. I understand the desire to bring things to a climax, but three minutes simply isn't long enough to do that in without just sounding pretentious. (Incidentally, I've always wondered why we never try to enter Muse - they'd be perfect for Eurovision stylistically, where the whole flamboyant and over-the-top thing that is there shtick is the generally accepted norm). That said, I genuinely enjoyed this song.

Kallay-Saunders (Hungary) Running

Another serious contender to win. That is to say, it's catchy, modern, and I found it tolerable rather than enjoyable.

Firelight (Malta) Coming Home

Mumford and Sons have defected to Malta! I enjoyed this song, although it could have done with some classical references rather than the same-old platitudes which make up the lyrics to most pop songs.

Mei Finegold (Israel) Same Heart

I would mark this as a possible contender, were it not the Israeli entry. (That is, I don't expect other countries to vote for Israel, not that I personally dislike it more than I hate states in general and therefore am biased against it). Again, it's modern, and fairly bland but not completely so.

Carl Espen (Norway) Silent Storm

Another respectable song that I can listen to but generally wouldn't choose to.

Possibly to be continued. That's most of them anyway.

IVFDF 2014 Recap, part 2

Following on from here:

The first dance I headed to on Saturday afternnon was a Contra dance, with music by Vertical Expression. Unfortunately I didn't make any notes, but from what I can remember two weeks on it the music was fine and the calling was by Rhodri Davies, who is the best dance caller I have yet to encounter.

Pictures of the Contra Dancing, taken by Arctica Lsdnwikwnef (many thanks!)

I wanted to do a range of different dances, so at about 10:15 I headed across to McEwan Hall for a Scottish country dance with music by the Ian MacPhail Band. The description of the dance in the event program notes that earlier in the day there were workshops on Scottish country dance at which people could "try the footwork and become experts in some of this evenings dances!" It also notes that this is merely optional and is not in any way necessary, but perhaps this is not entirely truthful: it involved the most mentally taxing dancing I've ever done. It was still enjoyable, but I felt rather a lemon trying to get right all the approaches and turns and reels and repeatedly failing. McEwan Hall was an incredible location, though. Obviously I don't have any of my own pictures, my camera having gone by this point, but the one below is from the internet; imagine it without any of the chairs and steps in the middle.

After this, I headed back to the sports hall in order to plan Sunday and to sleep. The first workshop I went to on Sunday morning was the annual "Dances with a Difference" session, which was great fun. The most memorable dance was one in which the eight dancers of a set pretended to be a helicopter, although the one which most impressed me with its design was a long-wave sets dance with many turns and do-si-dos, each leading immaculately into the next. The venue was another good one, the debating hall at Teviot House - very  elegant and neatly furnished. I had fun trying to imagine Adam Smith and David Hume on the stage.

Following on from this, I went to a session entitled "Songs of Scotland" taken by a young guy from the university. It was a good session, although at first the singing was weakened by the lack of handouts of the words for some songs. This was one of the songs we sang, though as you would expect it was considerably less polished. The session is also notable for having produced the only photo of the weekend in which I can find myself (centre-right, just to the right of the guy on the chair):

Again, credit to Arctica Lsdnwikwnef

The final workshop I went to was one about how to call for ceilidhs. It was something of a mishmash of advice, but helpful nonetheless - considerations like how to hold a microphone, how far ahead of an action to call it, and the necessary communications you need to make with the band and the organiser. We were invited to ask to call dances at the Survivor's Ceilidh, which I decided against on the grounds that I couldn't think of any dances which I know well enough to be confident calling them out for 200 people, even with a card with the moves written on it, but I'm planning on trying to memorise the steps of a handful of dances and looking to call a dance next year.

After the workshop, I made my way to the Hobgoblin stage for the Survivor's Ceilidh. This is the final dance of the weekend, starting at 13:00 and lasting three hours although most groups tend to leave early in order to be home at a reasonable time. Usually, the Scots would be first to go but of course this year, as hosts, they stayed right to the end. Another consequence of the location was that we ended not with a polka - as would happen south of the border - but with everyone standing in a circle, joining hands, and singing Auld Lang Syne.

After the ceilidh had finished, I made my way in the direction of the city centre but there were still a couple of hours to kill before my train would leave. After a brief look round an art shop and a conversation with a couple of other people from the Manchester Folk & Ceilidh Society who I happened to meet coming out of the shop, I once again went to Greyfriars. Unfortunately, it was once again locked, so I made my way over to Holyrood Park for a walk. The hills in the park offered some impressive views of the city and of the North Sea, which made me even more annoyed at my failure to charge my phone before coming. Here are couple of photos I found on Google:

Finally, I made my way to Waverley station and got onto the train, eventually getting back to my house in Manchester at about 10 PM, covered in mud from a couple of falls in Holyrood Park (I considered dipping into the Scottish Parliament building with the intention of cleaning up, but reasoned that they weren't worthy of my dirt) but having thoroughly enjoyed the weekend. I'm now very much looking forward to the next IVFDFs, in Exeter (2015) and Warwick (2016)!

IVFDF 2014 Recap, part 1

Last year, an event called IVFDF was mentioned in one of the Ceilidhs I went to as a weekend devoted to folk dancing. I decided to go along, and had a brilliant time (despite some infuriating bureaucracy relating to train tickets) so I was determined to return this year. The event circulates around the country, and this year it was held in Edinburgh. Again I had problems with my train tickets, although this time I can't really blame anyone else - in order to get there with some time to spare on the Friday, I had intended to miss an economics lecture which turned out to be a test worth 30% of our mark for the module, and missing it would entail giving up about 1.7% of my degree. Instead I rebooked my ticket and headed across on a later train, arriving after the dancing started but not to late to dance for most of the evening.

The first Ceilidh had music by Norman Mackay's Ceilidh Experience, and was set in South Hall at Pollock Halls. It's hard to imagine a better venue for a Ceilidh - a large, elegant, moderately lit hall with a side stage for the band, tables around the outside and a flight of stairs at one end from which I was able to take a few photos from above of the dances in progress. Unfortunately, I accidentally deleted all of the photos on my phone and can't find any online, so you'll just have to imagine it. The dancing was great fun, and there were some excellent beard/kilt combinations on display.

At about 10:30 PM I headed across to the South Side Community Centre, where at the Hobgoblin Stage the Climax Ceilidh Band were performing. The place was a town hall of the sort I assume they stopped building in the 50s, replete with outmoded decor. There was a large seated area behind the band and there were chairs around the outside of the dancing area. The band seemed fairly good - in particular, I remember a jig version of Gotye's Somebody That I Used To Know. I headed off to get to bed before the end of the Cielidh in order to avoid wearing my legs out at the beginning of the weekend, and in order to plan for the next day without needing to keep people up with the light.

A dance in progress at the Hobgoblin Stage, taken from where the band would have been. Note the wheelchair, it'll come up again later.

The traditional way to stay at IVFDF is indoor camping - last year I spent two nights on a church floor, this year in a sports hall. There were showers, which was a significant improvement upon last year.

The next morning, I headed off to Teviot Hall for a session dedicated to playing folk music from the Auvergne, taught by Duo Mistral. The session was enjoyable - I don't remember much of the music now, and I've asked them to email me a copy of the recording of the session which they took but it has yet to come. After this I walked to Pleasance for a Latin-American dance workshop. I only attended the first half of this, bowing out in order to buy the largest water bottle I could get, but in that time we did an Incan or possibly pre-Incan dance for couples, a religious rite whose purpose I forget. It was very improvisational, the only constant being that the dancers were circling around.

Following this, there was a session on wheelchair dancing - how to dance in a wheelchair, and how to dance partnered with someone in a wheelchair. This had numerous amusing moments, beginning with an attempt to Thread the Needle, leading to an attempt to Duck and Dive (couples stand in a queue, lead couple facing all the others; all couples join hands, and the lead couple walk down the line alternating between arching over the approaching couple and ducking under an arch formed by the approaching couple - in wheelchairs, this manifested itself as a two-way slalom) and culminating in a Suicide Square, in which the tops and bottoms of the square gallop into the middle before retreating, and have to be certain to be out in time for the oncoming side couples.

After grabbing lunch, I headed into town in order to observe something of the Morris-Dancing tour of the city and to visit the city centre myself. Morris Dancing is something which I thought was silly until I actually saw it live for the first time, at IVFDF 2013 in Sheffield, and now it is something I really want to try. After watching the dances which happened outside the Scottish National Gallery, and taking a few photos of the dancing, the inner-city gardens and the Scott Monument, I had a look round the Scottish National Gallery, which had more worthwhile paintings than I have the time to find pictures of. Here are just a couple of the paintings I enjoyed:

Sir Henry Raeburn

Reverend Robert Walker (1755 - 1808) Skating on Duddingston Loch

Arthur Melville

A Cabbage Garden

William McTaggart

The Storm

After this I had intended to go to Greyfriars Kirkyard in order to visit the grave of one of the great Scottish poets, inspired by a friend of a friend who had also recently visited. Unfortunately, the gate was locked, so I had to just give up and head over to Teviot where there was a concert being given by various local singer-songwriters, plus a group of pseudo-Georgian bellowers.

The first performer was The Muldrew, performing three songs from his new LP. I thought his production held him back - that is to say, his use of live-recorded sounds prevented him from doing much of interest with the music - it would just be the same two or four chords played repeatedly for several minutes, with the mix changing a bit over time. It also sometimes added up to  rather unpleasant sound. That said, he demonstrated proficiency on the guitar (if not on the keyboard, which was nothing but bass chords). In the end, I didn't enjoy it and didn't feel enriched by it.

Next up were The Eilidhs. Consisting of harpist and singer Eilidh Munro and fiddler Eilidh Steel, they were my favourite act of the concert. They performed a variety of traditional songs, and also had an LP coming out soon although it has yet to appear. Munro performed the finest singing I can remember hearing. Needless to say, when the LP does come out I will be getting hold of it.

"You know Bacon Numbers? Well, I have a folk music number of two." With those words, Charlotte Repton introduced her brand of baritone-ukulele light-comedy (?). I don't have a particular desire to listen to her again, but it was a perfectly reasonable way to spend half an hour of a Saturday afternoon. If you want to listen to her, I'd recommend starting with either Clockwork Heart or Alley Creepin'.

Finally, the pseudo-Georgian bellowers. Actually a group of Edinburgh men who happened to enjoy Georgian mountain songs, it fit pretty much exactly the description of Ogre music from Warhammer Fantasy. I didn't enjoy it, but I do feel enriched for having heard it. And at least it's killed my interest in composing a piece entirely of shouting, which had been mulling around in my head for quite some time. The group can be found here, and here is an excerpt from a piece which they sang in this concert.

Following on from this, I had a terrible meal in the Green Mantle pub - if you are vegetarian, avoid that place because all they have is some rather unpleasant soya. The complete absence of salad did little to help the already dubious culinary reputation of Scotland. After this, I headed off to the evening dancing.

To be continued... hopefully.