—
For The Emigre

— The Nelson Evening Mail, Thursday, September 6 1906
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Wicca is the fastest-growing religion in the UK after Islam.

The Dutch term for a sex buddy is ‘seksbuddy’.

George I and his prime minister conversed officially in dog Latin.

Irish 6th-formers know what The Communist Manifesto is called.

Right-wing New York slumlord Fred C. Trump’s middle name was ‘Christ’.

The stranded prawn is in danger of dying out.

Nations Trust Bank is now in Kalutara.

Those whose bunks are in Port Said suffer the worst.

Walter Rothschild opened his first museum when he was 10.

A garbage man is much cheaper to hire than a dirty magistrate.

Plenty of Unitarians were also Utilitarians.

There is no longer room to park a car in Harvard Yard.

Irony don’t care if you’re a fan or not.
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Colombo. The Galle and Pallakele matches lately over, the series lost, and the selectors falling back on Maitland Place in hopes of inspiration for the third and final test.

The last of the erratic rains now gone, the water in the half-uncovered sewers stagnant, rank with garbage. One might not be surprised to see a starving crocodile shamble desperately inland from the Beira Lake. Sea-misted smog drapes, sulkily, along the coast, the Chinese dock work hurling dust into the air as it claws land back from the ocean’s warm insistence.

The sun still harshly present, if hardly visible. The town about its routine business. Stray dogs, all indistinguishable pariahs, lying panting on the pavements; the beggars scarcely better, heat-blasted, all-too-grateful for the slightest splash of generosity. Foot passengers in moistened Bata slippers, keeping extremities beyond the reach of swerving auto-rickshaws and on-rushing omnibuses; office secretaries in saris, umbrellas jostling with a cordial lack of urgency; clerks in unsympathetically-soled city shoes, tripping occasionally on broken paving slabs and buckled tree roots, like thousands of their countrymen before them. Leather-faced, rough-stubbled sweepers fighting valiantly to remove the day’s detritus (if indeed this day is distinct from the one before it), crows, bats and other fauna adding new deposits to the crust, the compound interest of existence.

But cricket – everywhere. Cricket from the high Anglican environs of Mount Lavinia to the long-venerable sports clubs of Havelock Town and Cinnamon Gardens; cricket at the well-kempt forces grounds across Slave Island, and on north to the Premadasa stadium, which casts its shadows on the shunting yards. Cricket up the Galle Road, in narrow lanes and private driveways, and over empty strips of road at poya; cricket down the Baseline Road, at union workers’ grounds and prison yards, in the college and the vidyalaya sports facilities, and on the hardened dirt tracks of the public playing fields.

Cricket drifting in and out of windows on the airwaves; cricket dressing building sites, on half-torn fliers; cricket wrapping short eats in stapled newsprint. Cricket in the ears of the bus conductor as he counts out change; cricket in the day-dreams of white-bearded elders as they journey homeward; cricket in the oversize bags of tiny schoolboys, conveniently kitted out in pristine white.

Cricket in the afternoon on Galle Face Green, and in the lobbies of two- and three-star boarding houses. Illicit early-evening cricket in the temple courtyard, played by the young monks, after duties. Night cricket on the roofs and in the gardens round the international schools. Cricket the length and breadth of this sprawled, and sport-obsessive city.

Come rain or shine, defeat or victory, cricket on billboards, bus shelters, projector screens in pool halls. Cricket in bookies’ shops (the formal and the more informal kind), cricket on telephones, cricket in conversations at the grills of bottle stores, and in communications outlets. Cricket as a base commodity – as film, as hardware, as ritual vestment – in commercial streets, department stores and markets. And cricket peddling in its turn: the heroes of the bygone age, their names and faces writ large on the sweetshop hoardings, street signs, walls of emporia, viaducts, lending their lustre to the jewellery trade, assurance firms, vendors of soft drinks, chain stores, and providers of sundry other services.

But when the hot afternoon is at its hottest, and the bright glare is brightest, and the thirsty cricket-loving gentleman is at his thirstiest, there is, in truth, but one appropriate destination. Here, hard by the Bambalapitiya Junction – well-served by railway and stagecoach, equipped with automobile spaces, and known to every hansom driver – just across from the stately, vaulting dignity of the British Council, on Queen’s Road, at the very beating heart of all this cricket – here sits The Cricket Club Café.

Never can there come a cricketing occasion too big, never can there be a match too early or too late, which The Cricket Club, this primary temple to the gods of cricket – itself pre-eminent among the sports – is not ten times more than a match.

On such a day, as on so many like it, the Proprietress will herself be bustling about – as indeed she is now – within her avocado-painted palisade, in the garden beneath the flowering frangipani, or inside the white-walled, red-roofed bungalow, endeavouring to attend to the administration of her establishment without being drawn into a conversation with a journeyman of the enthusiastic class, who thinks – and talks, need it be said – of nothing but the cricket. On such a day – as here they are – some twenty or so members of an English village touring side will be dining at one agglomerate, unwieldy table, attempting to trip one another up over technicalia, reminiscing, in detail, on their own and international lifetime batting figures, feigning ignorance of their own grosser misdemeanors in preceding seasons, and all in all pretending to a comradeship that might be even less sincere than it is mutual. On such a day – as are they not? – at least one large Sri Lankan family birthday party will be in progress, some two or three perhaps contending to take on the business from their father, who made a fortune by it, ranged in a line, discussing legal and financial quandaries, the aptness of their academic training, headmasters’ reports, their mountainous expenditure on tuition classes, their swimming certificates… the younger offspring keeping their eyes on the unfolding innings – or folding up, as might too often be the case.

Well may the back bar be ill lit, and pervaded with the stale fug of cigarettes; well may the propinquity of the front parlour be so cheek-by-jowl that one’s conversation is clearly audible to every man, woman and child seated therein; well may the chilly, over-punkah-wallah’d family room, on the East side, be deleterious for anyone not drinking hot soup; well may each and every room have conflicting journalistic coverage (present or archival) of two or more unrelated sporting contests performed at any given time; and well, indeed, as the hours wear on, may the assembled drivers, vagabonds and passers-by out on Queen’s Road be decidedly deterred from entrance by the hearty chuntering of much-contented, moneyed folk.

But this is The Cricket Club, which has its signposts directing travellers to Newlands, Lord’s and Eden Gardens; which has its vitrines stocked with Botham’s bat, Greg Chappell’s shoes, Wasim Akram’s shirt, and caps from every franchise on the subcontinent; which has long-sleeved jumpers worn through yeoman innings; which has its signed photographs of youthful Indian legends and hard, West Indian enforcers; which has its telegrams from national premiers to their leading batsmen; which has its clocks telling the time in cricketing capitals (sometimes as much as twice a day); which has its framed newspapers celebrating Sri Lanka’s World Cup victory; which has virtual shrines to Bradman, Warne and Muralitharan; which has its punning menus, randomly apostrophised and intermittently updated, but never – like the laws of the great game – changing too radically in the fundamentals; which has its ‘slash outside the off stump’ mural in the gents; which even has that tea towel explaining cricket to ‘a foreign visitor’ (though who has given that a second glance?). From floor to ceiling, North to South, and port to starboard, these are the glories – howsoever intangible and fleeting – of cricket, the whole cricket, and nothing but the cricket, which among lesser men exhausts the finances, patience, courage, and hope, but which among heroes so overflows the brain and impassions the heart that there is not an one among the patrons here who would not – does not – hasten in and cry, with heedless confidence: “I’ll have the ‘Punters’ Pepper Chicken, please. And a pint of Lion Larger.”

—
Also published at The Oldie

An avowed and much-loved masterpiece from its earliest performances – Vienna, 1798 – ‘whose appeal [I read from A Peter Brown’s DECCA sleeve-notes] was irresistible to the noble and leisured classes, amateurs and connoisseurs of different nationalities’, Die Schöpfung tells the story of (duh) the first week or so of the creation myth, in three parts.

It opens simply, in the humming potential of the void, moves to the first, dramatic, sunrise, and then gradually builds in complexity, as the forces of darkness are cast out and the cosmological items, flora and fauna, are created, one by one, until finally Adam and Eve walk hand-in-hand in the Garden of Eden (which is Kent, right?), Man- and indeed Womankind enjoying a somewhat brief respite before the Fall.

The whole thing runs to 1h45 – which given the amount of ground it has to cover (no pun), is quite efficient, really.

It is said that, inspired by (the success of?) Handel’s oratorios, Haydn asked a friend for ideas for something he could set to music. The friend picked up a Bible and suggested that he “Take that, and begin at the beginning.”

Less romantically, its genesis was in a Handel hand-me-down, an English poem called The Creation of the World (author unknown), which the crowd-pleasing Georgian didn’t care for on the grounds that setting it would have meant a piece that lasted four hours.

The eventual libretto, abridged and translated by the Esterházy’s Imperial librarian/diplomat/musician/Everything Else, Gottfried van Swieten, comprises bits of Genesis, the Psalms, and Milton’s Paradise Lost (the angels, mostly). It was officially published, in simultaneous translation, as twere, in 1800; but with Handel-worshipping English audiences in mind, both texts incline peculiarly towards the Anglican, especially where Biblical quotations are concerned. Metrical considerations have left us with some more-or-less irremediable ‘English’, and surely nothing has ever been so translated-from-ze-German as the line ‘In long dimension / Creeps with sinuous trace the worm.’

Musically, the word-painting is less than subtle, but perfectly in keeping with the standards of an oratorio (un-acted operas for Lent, essentially). And it achieved a trick of ‘universal’ synthesis: French-style overtures, Italian dramatic structure, English verses/religious formulae from the KJV, and psalm-based choral numbers with which the Germans would have been conceptually familiar.

Certainly it captured the zeitgeist (or whatever they call that in Germany). With 45 performances in Vienna alone in the ten years following its composition, and in capital cities throughout Europe, by ensembles routinely measuring in the hundreds, The Creation was the stadium-seller of its day.

My own introduction to it was, predictably, as a chorister in the Church of England (Maidstone, actually), singing the only stand-alone anthem to have emerged from the complete work, ‘The Heavens are Telling (the Glory of God)’. As a classically-inclined young fellow (read: ‘squit’), I would have been one of the younger kids to be aware that Gabriel was not the only archangel; but I also acutely recall one Sunday morning, autopiloting my way through its uncomplicated joy, and brassily attempting to ‘Display the firmament’ one time more than everybody else in the rehearsal room.

By secondary school I’d twigged that there was more to The Creation than just one anthem – i.e. solos, for would-be soloists – and I proposed it for our Choral Union concert. Seeing through this, no doubt, the choir director said he couldn’t be doing with all those Adam-and-Eve arias (‘This world so great, so wonderful’) which, it is widely held, are some of the best music Haydn ever wrote. He was a wise man, that director, and a first-class teacher: but he was wrong on that occasion. Wrong and a spoilsport.

I auditioned for a university choral scholarship with the Raphael ‘rage’ aria about the waters ‘Rolling in foaming billows’, but I don’t recollect our ever performing it while I was there. No doubt such things were thought crass. See also: ‘enjoyable to sing or listen to’.

So I think the first time I ever sang the whole Creation was with the Oxford Spezzati, a group of a few dozen of us who go back, at a music festival in West Kensington – my good friend Al playing the flatulent bass notes of the ‘immense leviathan’ with ill-disguised bassoonist’s gusto.

And the last time I sang ‘The Heavens are Telling’ was in the Chapel Royal, at Hampton Court. I had the bass ‘verse’ part, which I now suspect means, over time, that I’ve sung all the parts of that particular movement. (Aled Jones, eat yer heart out.)

The German is the lesser-trodden path these days (what even is a ‘Finsternis‘?). There’s something a bit uncomfortable about the opening tenor aria’s repetitive insistence on ‘Ordnung‘… But for all its sober origins, the English text is pretty silly. ‘Finny tribes’; ‘flexible tigers’; and I’ve heard at least one soloist word-paint the hell out of the ‘fleecy, meek and ble-e-eee-eating flock’. A note to nature writers: if I find ‘purling’ and/or ‘limpid brooks’ in your work, we will not be going home together.

I assume it sounds quite foolish to the Germans, also. But for all that, it is usually quite fun. (Or it had better be. I’m about to miss the first match of the cricket season.)

Per Prof. Brown, though, the romping tunes and memorable – or, perhaps more accurately, ‘easily- learned’ – choruses make this also a fairly sensible choice for choral societies, whose concerts are, in the majority of cases, a pragmatic combination of the amateur and the professional. The choruses are repetitive (both internally and externally), often interrupted by long solos, duets, trios, etc. (there’s only one that isn’t, in fact), and relatively few and far between. I’m not suggesting that the idea of a choral society is to keep the dues-paying members as quiet as possible… but it helps to know one’s limitations.

In 1808, amid the blast of the Napoleonic Wars, an ageing Haydn made his last public appearance at a gala do of The Creation, attended by royalty and, allegedly, Beethoven. At the creation of light, the audience broke into spontaneous applause, causing Haydn to deflect the adulation heavenwards – but by the time they reached ‘The Heavens are Telling’ his ill-health and emotions had got the better of him, and he was carried out. Fifteen months later, the French entered Vienna, and the last rendition of his music Haydn heard came from the mouth of a French officer:

In native worth and honour clad,
With beauty, courage, strength adorn’d,
To heav’n erect and tall he stands
A man, the Lord and King of nature all.

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For The Oldie, in a different edit

1. So, what’s with the beard?

After I graduated from the War Studies Faculty at KCL I rather fancied myself as a war correspondent, so I grew the beard. Then I just rather fancied myself.

2. We somehow get the impression that you are always very sarcastic and cynical about most things. Is this truly the real you or is it an image that you are projecting?

Yeah, I’m just one of those really nice, cuddly people who just longs to be disliked for who they really aren’t.

3. How can you, in a few words, describe the real you?

I’m the sort of person who can’t help noticing you’ve left out Question 4. Sorry – I was born with a red pen in my hand. (True story: it was a Chooty.)

5. What can you tell us about the many talents you possess, for instance singing and playing the piano?

Two isn’t ‘many’ – unless you’re an Amazonian tribesman. Or a bigamist.

6. Are you as passionately interested in sports, or is it just PE instructors?

It’s true. When I was a schoolboy I had a terrible – and unrequited – crush on our Head of Sports. But something told me a 20-stone former rugby international might not appreciate me ‘being honest about my feelings’.

7. You’re always with a book in hand. Who are your favourite authors, and how has reading influenced your life?

Reading has been the bane of my existence. I blame my parents. As for favourite authors, see (parts of) Question 13.

8. What made you come to Sri Lanka and what keeps you here?

First time, unemployment. Second time, unemployment. What keeps me here? The threat of continued unemployment.

9. Do you enjoy teaching? Why did you take up this profession?

I do. Some people are just born with the instinct to bully kids and bend folks’ ears.

10. What are some of the worst moments in your teaching career? 

(Other than this one? Boom boom!) I hate every moment in which pupils seem unwilling to learn. The fault could be mine, or it might be theirs. Either way, it’s unbelievably depressing.

11. We are sure you are aware of your popularity among mainly the female student population of the school. What, in your opinion, about you appeals to the opposite sex?

You mean it’s not the beard?!

12. Did you have wild crazy days in college or were you the “good” student? Tell us of your college life. 

Tragically, all record of my undergraduate ‘career’ was destroyed in a freak blaze…

13. Who are your idols, if any?

Many. Jacques Kallis; Roald Dahl; Bruce Chatwin; the 2^nd Earl of Rochester; Jeffrey Barnard/Peter O’Toole; Philip Seymour Hoffman; Alexander (‘the Great’); Dr Gregory House; Dr Hannibal Lecter; Geoff Dyer; Maurice Bowra; John Forbes Nash, Jr.; Christopher Hitchens; Toby Ziegler; Jim Morrison; Sir Ranulph Fiennes; Radiohead (all of, but mostly Thom); Arthur Rimbaud; Russell Crowe; GF Handel; L v Beethoven; WG Sebald; TE Lawrence; JM Coetzee; Margaret Atwood; Lydia Davis; Yasmina Reza; Helen DeWitt and Wendy Cope. (Google ’em.)

14. Well, now, for the famous last words…share with us a phrase/line/quote you live by? 

‘ho me on met emou kat emou estin’ – George W Bush. (And Jesus.)

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When William Gardiner lamented in 1832 that ‘the Deity seems to have left music in an unfinished state’ he was referring to a seeming paradox of tuning: if you start from C and keep adding fifths, twelve steps later you’re back at C… but out of tune.

Thank heavens, then, for the stroke of mathematical common sense that is equal temperament (ET), the elegantly efficient twelve-note, equally-spaced octave, which facilitates roaming modulation without endless re-tuning.

Surely?

Not in Ross Duffin’s opinion. For Duffin, ET is nothing less than the bastard offspring of our musical ignorance and laziness, and is responsible, with its over-wide thirds and too-too-sharp leading notes, for hopelessly warping harmony in both its vertical and linear senses.

In this long essay Duffin complains that few musicians have ever actually experienced unequally-tempered music, and argues that we should once again embrace the many alternative tuning systems (Mozart heard ‘richer, more dramatic chords’, etc.). He narrates the struggles performers have maintained, even recently, to avoid ET. He explains why so-called enharmonics really cannot be the same note (just as A- and B+ are not, alas, the same grade), and why even voice and strings, themselves not shackled to ET, are constrained when accompanied by instruments which are.

Notwithstanding his distracting and oddly patronising info-boxes (which make the eye skip constantly, offer frequently irrelevant detail, and imply a quite implausible non-academic readership), the prose is as free-flowing as could reasonably be expected in a tract on acoustic physics, and the charts, scores, cartoons and other illustrations are a great boon when the going gets tough.

The big problem is Duffin’s basic street-preacher hysteria. Like all fundamentalists, of course, Duffin claims he’s on the side of reason (while melodramatically comparing ET to lethal sonic weaponry); but, rather like the geek-advocates of vinyl records, he fails to convince that the musical characteristics of alternative temperaments are actually preferable, rather than simply unavoidable.

In his academic isolation, he waxes wroth about the ‘excruciating discrepancy’ of the rigged ET. (An error, for the record, of a quarter of a semitone across the entire keyboard. A slip of 0.014%. You could get trial drugs certified with worse odds.) Practically speaking, he ultimately wants every piece of music played in the composer’s preferred temperament – a lovely idea, so long as you’re not running a school orchestra.

At best, Duffin’s argument is theoretically fascinating, but essentially irrelevant; at worst, it reads like an argument in defence of oral poetry which ends up clamouring for the abolition of the printed word. So we ask the age-old question: isn’t progress called progress for a reason? Of all the various and considered attempts to ‘balance euphony with utility’ it was ET that won out. The democracy of tuning systems, equal temperament is flawed as a direct result of its inherent equality, comprehensible to all (in principle, if not in detail), and the least bad – and most practicable – of the available options. It is also, to borrow a phrase, the end of harmonic history.

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For Music Teacher