An Unexpected Hallelujah

 L'Arpeggiata's CD of improvisations on Purcell, Music for a While, ends with a bonus track – not another Purcell, but, rather surprisingly, Leonard Cohen's 'Hallelujah', given a very distinctive treatment by alto Vincenzo Capezzuto and members of the company. I can't say that I like Capezzuto's voice very much (he also sings ''Twas Within a Furlong', 'Wondrous Machine' and 'One Charming Night'), but the overall sound of this 'Hallelujah' is, I think, rather lovely...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CWHsJhwC4So&list=RDCWHsJhwC4So&start_radio=1

Why 'Hallelujah'? Well, Purcell's music is not short of Hallelujahs – the beautiful sequence at the end of the Evening Hymn, for example. And consider this, from a commemorative Ode (by Henry Hall) in the Orpheus Britannicus collection of Purcell's songs – 

'What art thou? From what causes dost thou spring,
O Music, thou divine, mysterious thing?
Let me but know, and knowing give me voice to sing.
Art thou the warmth in Spring that Zephyr breathes, 
Painting the meads and whistling through the leaves?
The happy season that all Grief exiles,
When God is pleased, and the Creation smiles?
Or art thou Love, that mind to mind imparts
The endless Concord of agreeing Hearts?
Or art thou Friendship, yet a nobler flame,
That can a clearer way make souls the same?
Or art thou rather, which does all transcend,
The Centre where at last the Blest ascend,
The Seat where Hallelujahs never end?'

 

Wheatley's Letter

 Dennis Wheatley (born on this day in 1897)was a phenomenally successful and prolific novelist, one of the world's best-selling writers from the 1930s through to the 1960s – after which his star sank swiftly below the horizon. He specialised in thrillers with occult themes, of which The Devil Rides Out is perhaps the only one anyone has heard of now (and maybe The Haunting of Toby Jugg). His books were still everywhere when I was a boy; I vaguely remember trying to read one and finding it unreadable. A staunch conservative, to put it mildly, Wheatley wrote in 1947, by hand, 'A Letter to Posterity', which he sealed in a bottle and buried in the foundations of his country house, Grove Place, in Hampshire. He envisaged it lying undiscovered for generations, waiting to be found and recognised as a startlingly prescient warning of things to come. But events didn't quite work out that way: after Wheatley sold Grove Place, it was demolished and, in the process, the Letter to Posterity was discovered, a mere 22 years after it had been buried. 
  Wheatley wrote the Letter on the day of Princess Elizabeth's wedding to Philip Mountbatten, pointing out, rather unnecessarily, that Elizabeth was the heir apparent, therefore in line to become Queen Elizabeth II. 'Yet,' Wheatley continues, 'our present monarch being just over 50 and in good health with a normal prospect of another 25 years of life, many people would lay heavy odds against his daughter, or any other member of his family, ever being crowned at Westminster.' So much for Wheatley's prescience (the King was dead and Elizabeth on the throne within five years). But his main purpose in writing the Letter was to warn of the consequences of socialism, a creed he heartily loathed. A Labour government was in power, and Wheatley felt that the threat of communism was growing, and that a future of subjection to leftist totalitarianism was on its way, aided by political control of the mass media. He predicted the abolition of the monarchy, national bankruptcy, and an altogether deplorable state of affairs in which all were subject to socialist planning, the 'lazy' working class were 'pampered', and the enterprising few obliged to devote their lives to making things easy for the rest. He was even appalled at the prospect of the school leaving age being raised to 16, and a five-day working week being introduced in many industries. It is perhaps just as well he's not around to see what's going on today...

Five Years Ago

Five years ago today – on the very day of Epiphany – I got up in the morning and found myself apparently unable to see with my left eye. I say 'apparently' because, when I covered my right eye, I found I could see perfectly well with my left; the problem, as I soon discovered, was with my brain. In fact, I had had a transient ischaemic attack (which my doctors have ever since referred to, unhelpfully, as a 'stroke'). It felt weird at the time, but only for an hour or two, and I was back in rude health by the next morning. 
As it happens, that day was also the day on which the third nationwide 'lockdown' of the Covid epidemic began. Our government, doggedly following 'The Science' (i.e. Chris Whitty and Patrick Vallance, the Pet Shop Boys of public health), continued to propel the nation down the slippery slope to social and economic ruin – and if Starmer had had his way, there would have been yet more lockdowns. All of this was, as we now know, to no good effect whatsoever. How long ago it seems – or does it? I am pretty sure that if the right virus came along now, the whole grisly shebang would kick off again, with lockdowns, masks, social distancing and tiers (remember tiers?). We got a whiff of it earlier this winter, when various medical experts were barely able to contain their excitement as they declared that the new 'superflu' variant would crash the NHS unless drastic measures were taken. Oddly, this did not come to pass. 

'Mystery's toys'

 It's Epiphany Sunday today. Here is something typically chastening from our best religious poet of recent times, R.S. Thomas – 

Epiphany

Three kings? Not even one
any more. Royalty
has gone to ground, its journeyings
over. Who now will bring

gifts and to what place? In
the manger there are only the toys
and the tinsel. The child
has become a man. Far

off from his cross in the wrong
season he sits at table
with us, with on his head
the fool’s cap of our paper money.


And here is an Epiphany poem by Geoffrey Hill (the setting of which is the grand parish church of Kidderminster, the largest in Worcestershire) – 

Epiphany at Saint Mary and All Saints

The wise men, vulnerable in ageing plaster,
are borne as gifts
to be set down among the other treasures
in their familial strangeness, mystery's toys.

Below the church the Stour slovens
through its narrow cut.
On service roads the lights cast amber salt
slatted with a thin rain doubling as snow.

Showings are not unknown: a six-winged seraph
somewhere impends – it is the geste of invention,
not the creative but the creator spirit.
The night air sings a colder spell to come.

This evening, having been obliged to miss all Christmas services, I shall be making my way to the cathedral for the Epiphany carol service. I look forward to being duly asperged...

Mystery Pheasant

 Well, here's a little Christmas mystery. Looking out of the window this frosty morning, I saw a scatter of white feathers on the lawn, and an avian corpse of some kind – a pigeon, I assumed, fallen victim to one of Lichfield's ubiquitous sparrowhawks. But no – when I went out to investigate, I found that what I had taken for a dead pigeon was actually an oven-ready, or almost oven-ready, pheasant. It was clearly not a bought one, as it was only partially plucked, and the weird thing was that it seemed to be pretty much untouched by crow or magpie or any carrion eater.  Perhaps, I thought, it was from someone's freezer, and was still frozen hard, the morning being so cold – I didn't care to investigate too closely, but it certainly felt hard. But how did that partially-plucked bird get from that freezer onto my lawn? Did someone throw it out? They certainly couldn't have lobbed it into my garden, even if, for some bizarre reason, they had wanted to. I don't think any bird could have carried it – maybe a fox? But why would it bother lugging a solid, uneatable bird some distance, then leaving it exposed on a lawn for any passing carrion-eater to peck at? Anyway, I moved the corpse into a more sheltered spot, where I'll keep an eye on it and see what happens next.

In other news, I saw my first snowdrops of the year yesterday – the first day of the year. This was rather more cheering than finding a frozen pheasant on the lawn.

Happy New Year

Happy New Year to all who browse here (and no, I've no idea what's going on in this image – something deeply French, no doubt). I managed to see 2026 in, despite relapsing into prostration more than once during the day. My first wish of the new year is for this cold/flu/whatever to go away and leave me in peace. As for resolutions, I just saw a rather good one online: 'This year I resolve to be less condescending (condescending means talking down to people).'

'We know we dream, we dream we know'

 Year's end, and I'm still coughing and still prostrated by this wretched 'cold' or whatever it is.
I thought I might post a poem – last year it was Richard Wilbur's wonderful Year's End – but this year it's going to be, of all the unlikely candidates, Ella Wheeler Wilcox, whose poem 'The Year' seems to me blessedly free of the moralising good cheer we'd expect from this hugely popular (in her day) versifier. In fact, this one seems notably clear-eyed and unsentimental – and rather a good poem...

What can be said in New Year rhymes,
That's not been said a thousand times?

The new years come, the old years go,
We know we dream, we dream we know.

We rise up laughing with the light,
We lie down weeping with the night.

We hug the world until it stings,
We curse it then and sigh for wings.

We live, we love, we woo, we wed,
We wreathe our brides, we sheet our dead.

We laugh, we weep, we hope, we fear,
And that's the burden of the year.