A Curious Case

 The first day of 'Meteorological Spring' at last – and it's St David's Day, and the birthday of Frederic Chopin (born on this day in 1810). Wouldn't it be good it Chopin had, like Mendelssohn, Beethoven, Schubert and many another, written a piece of Spring-themed music? Alas, he didn't – but there is still the curious case of 'Chopin's Spring Waltz', a piece which, despite not being by Chopin, not sounding like Chopin, and not even being (for the most part) in waltz time, has had a huge internet success, and can still be found under that false flag. It first attracted attention – and 34 million views – when it turned up as an erroneously titled YouTube video. After that was taken down, it kept turning up again and again, in one iteration attracting over 160 million views. The piece known as 'Chopin's Spring Waltz' is actually 'Mariage d'Amour', written by Paul de Senneville in 1978, and popularised by Richard Clayderman, whose repertoire it fits perfectly. Here is the piece (arranged by George Davidson), on which I shall pass no further comment...

I remember buying my first Chopin record, in the local W.H. Smith's, when they still sold such things. The girl behind the counter had some difficulty with the word 'Chopin', which I had to write down on paper for her, but eventually I came out clutching a Music for Pleasure EP of the great Fantaisie-Impromptu, played, I think, by Benno Moiseiwitsch. Here he is (in another recording) showing how it's done...

Carlyle on India Paper

 I'd been eyeing it for months as it sat unpurchased on the shelves of my favourite local antiques shop – a single-volume, pocket-sized edition of Carlyle's The French Revolution, printed on India paper and published by Chapman & Hall in 1901. Finally, the other day, I actually bought it, and for the very fair price of £6 (it's in excellent condition for its age). But am I going to read it, after all these years of meaning to? Reader, I am (though perhaps in instalments – there are many, many pages in that India-paper volume). I have begun, and I'm loving it. It's history writing at its most exhlilarating and colourful, the work of a writer bursting with energy and ideas, with a brilliant, fervid style and a very definite philosophy of history. Every page is peppered with exclamation marks and question marks (the latter most often appended to rhetorical questions) and every page drives the narrative along with irresistible force. It could, indeed, hardly be more different from the way history is written today. Even though I cannot pretend to understand Carlyle's every reference and allusion (I don't know enough of the history of the period) I'm hugely enjoying being carried along on the great surging rollers of Carlyle's prose.  
  Here is a representative passage, about the 'decadent' age into which Louis XV was born. It has, I think, a certain contemporary relevance...
'But of those decadent ages in which no Ideal either grows or blossoms? When Belief and Loyalty have passed away, and only the cant and false echo of them remains; and all Solemnity has become Pageantry; and the Creed of persons in authority has become one of two things: an Imbecility or a Macchiavelism? Alas, of these ages World-History can take no notice; they have to become compressed more and more, and finally suppressed in the Annals of Mankind; blotted out as spurious, – which indeed they are. Hapless ages: wherein, if ever in any, it is an unhappiness to be born. To be born, and to learn only, by every tradition and example, that God's Universe is Belial's and a Lie; and the 'Supreme Quack' the hierarch of men! In which mournfullest faith, nevertheless, do we not see whole generations (two, and sometimes even three successively) live, what they call living; and vanish, – without chance or reappearance?'
Phew.

Myra Hess and the Compton-Burnetts

The pianist (Julia) Myra Hess was born on this day in 1890. Dame Myra, as she became, is rightly remembered for her extraordinary achievement in staging lunchtime concerts at the National Gallery throughout the Second World War, when evening concerts were impossible. These performances undoubtedly did much to boost wartime morale, and gave a platform to promising newcomers as well as established artists. Dame Myra herself performed (for no fee) in 150 of them. But there was more to Myra Hess than the National Gallery concerts – including a surprising association with the family of Ivy Compton-Burnett.
Ivy herself deeply disapproved of music, as of so many things, but at least two of her sisters, Vera and Judy, were seriously talented, and Myra was their friend and teacher. The sisters chafed against the domestic tyranny imposed on the family by Ivy after their parents' death, and were desperate to escape and live independently. In the end, unlike so many of the victims in ICB's novels, all four sisters managed to get their way, and escaped to set up house in St John's Wood – with Myra Hess. The house was, as Ivy's biographer Hilary Spurling puts it, an 'art house ... with music, painting, modelling, eurhythmics, all activities that Ivy flatly deplored'. Vera and Judy thrived in this environment, took up Theosophy, and went on to become Steiner teachers, but it seems the other two sisters, Primrose and Topsy, became increasingly detached from reality, and ended up dead in their shared bedroom in an apparent suicide pact.
There is a passage in Samuel Butler's Notebooks that Ivy marked with no fewer than six heavy pencil lines in the margin: 
'The Family – I believe that more unhappiness comes from this source than any other – I mean from the attempt to prolong family connection unduly and to make people hang together artificially who would never naturally do so. The mischief among the lower classes is not so great, but among the middle and upper classes it is killing a large number daily.' 

[The image above is of Myra Hess in her youth, looking very different from the Dame Myra of later years.]

'Remembering the ocean, So calm, so lately crossed'

 The tribe continues to increase, the latest addition being a great-niece (bringing the tally of great-nephews and nieces to nine, by my calculations). The baby was born rather late, though not as late as the one addressed in Donald Justice's beautiful poem, To A Ten-Months' Child (this is the long version; often the first two triplets only are printed)...

Late arrival, no
One would think of blaming you
For hesitating so.

Who, setting his hand to knock
At a door so strange as this one,
Might not draw back?

Certainly, once admitted,
You will be made to feel
Like one of the invited.

Still, because you come
From so remote a kingdom,
You may feel out of place,

Tongue-tied and shy among
So many strangers, all
Babbling with a strange tongue.

Well, that’s no disgrace.
So might any person
So recently displaced,

Remembering the ocean,
So calm, so lately crossed.

'The only drink you want after it is more of it'

 In the supermarket yesterday morning I found myself talking whisky and Kingsley Amis with the chap behind the till, which was a pleasant surprise. I'd bought a bottle of Chivas Regal 12-year-old (vulgar, I know, but very drinkable – and, more to the point, on offer), and somehow we (the chap and I) got onto whisky brands you don't see any more – Haig, Vat 69 – and he came up with the MacAllan 10-year-old, a whisky that enjoyed a big vogue in the 1970s but was way beyond my means at the time. It was, he told me, the favourite whisky of toper supreme Kingsley Amis, who apparently slipped references to it into all his novels – I hadn't noticed, but will keep my eyes open in future. At least he didn't do any adverts for it  – unlike Sanderson (remember 'Very Kingsley Amis, Very Sanderson'?) – but it was clearly a drink he loved from the moment he discovered it, on tour of Speyside distilleries. The MacAllan 10-year-old, matured in sherry casks, was 'widely regarded in the trade as the king of malts,' Amis declared. 'The flavour's rich, even powerful, but completely smooth, as smooth as that of a fine Cognac, and immediately enjoyable ... The only drink you want after it is more of it.' 'No spirit known to me,' he raved, 'can touch it for sheer quantity of flavour, for smoothness and for – what would you call it? – duration, lastingness, the ability to go on hanging round the mouth and nose.' High praise, and from someone with unparalleled experience in the field. Despite Sir Kingsley's heartfelt endorsements, MacAllan discontinued this particular malt more than a decade ago, and bottles are only available at eye-watering prices. I think I'll be sticking to Chivas, or whatever else is going cheap. 

'I listen to money singing'

 On this day in 1973, Philip Larkin's mind was on money, that most concrete of abstractions. He wrote, or completed to his satisfaction, this poem, which was published in the collection High Windows. The last stanza is beautiful, I think...

Money

Quarterly, is it, money reproaches me:

    ‘Why do you let me lie here wastefully?

I am all you never had of goods and sex.

    You could get them still by writing a few cheques.’

So I look at others, what they do with theirs:   

    They certainly don’t keep it upstairs.

By now they’ve a second house and car and wife:

    Clearly money has something to do with life

—In fact, they’ve a lot in common, if you enquire:

    You can’t put off being young until you retire,

And however you bank your screw, the money you save

    Won’t in the end buy you more than a shave.

I listen to money singing. It’s like looking down

    From long french windows at a provincial town,   

The slums, the canal, the churches ornate and mad

    In the evening sun. It is intensely sad.

The Feeder Dilemma

 Back home after a weekend over the border in Derbyshire, I am, as usual, keeping an eye on the bird feeder action out there in the garden. It's been a disappointing winter, with the house sparrows doing their best to monopolise the big feeder (yes, we're lucky to have them – many towns and cities have none) and the starlings muscling in from time to time, no one having told them they're on the Red List of endangered species. Great tits and, to a slightly lesser extent, blue tits come and go, and the odd coal tit nips in from time to time (their long-tailed cousins prefer to feed in the trees). The goldfinches that were so abundant last year have hardly shown up, even at the nyger seed feeders I put up especially for them, the ingrates, and I've seen very few chaffinches and even fewer greenfinches, one of the dominant feeder-habitués last year. Of course, like practically everyone else, I enjoy watching the garden birds – and, in my case, the squirrels which are still trying to foil the squirrel-proof feeder, and failing ignominiously. Watching the birds gives us all great pleasure, it feels good, and it surely does us good – even Science tells us so (measurable benefits to mental and physical wellbeing, etc.) But does it do the birds good? Probably not. I keep reading and hearing unarguable evidence that feeding birds in the garden encourages the bullies and predators at the expense of more timid and vulnerable species which are already having enough trouble hanging on. The bold, aggressive species thrive on our largesse, which makes them still bolder and more aggressive, and that is bad news for many of the rest  – and, sadly, feeders can spread avian diseases, one of which recently had an all but exterminating effect on greenfinches. Bird feeders also act as an all-day buffet for sparrowhawks, but that's fine by me – I'm always excited to see one of them in the garden. 
Am I going to carry on feeding the birds? I expect I am, but probably in a more limited way. The birds, or most of them, will still come to the garden. And I'm going to clean the feeders thoroughly to make sure they don't spread disease among my feathered friends.