Another version of the Rapture

I often encounter people who are a little baffled by my not having a Facebook account.  When I say it's a matter of principle -- not wanting my private information to be trawled any further than necessary for the benefit of advertisers -- most of my questioners nod sagely and remark what a wise principle it is.

I've spent years waging a quiet campaign against telemarketers (I know the poor souls who make the calls are but cannon fodder), ranging from launching the discussion into a bizarre world beyond the script to simply asking them to tell me more and putting the receiver down until they go away.  Then there are the more direct methods, such as telling them to take my number off the list.

Telemarketers are an intrusive presence in our lives, but Facebook is something altogether more worrisome.  Their business model is data mining, often obtaining information by less than completely open means.  I also have a strong objection to the effect it has on the way people interact in the real world.

This is why I commend the following event to you:

Quit Facebook Day -- 31 May 2011

Music for Sunday 29 May 2011

Readings for the week can be found here.  The psalm will be sung using a home-made setting.

The service setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns as follows:

Introit: O worship the King, all glorious above [133]
Sequence: Christ be my leader by night as by day [624]
Offertory: Love is his word, love is his way [534]
Communion: A new commandment [699, sung twice]

Red letter day

This has been a big week so far.  On Tuesday I finally saw my grant application through final submission, which means that I now sit in wait until November for a decision.  It also means that posting should return to something like normal service here.

Today is the feast of St Dunstan of Canterbury.  My main connection to the saint is that the Anglican church in Violet Town, where I grew up, is dedicated to him.  It's not a parish I know, as I was brought up in the Uniting Church in town.  There is a website, but it's very poorly maintained with a lot of information that's at least five years old.  My entry to Anglicanism came about as a result of the family moving up the road to Benalla, but that's a story for another time.

The other anniversary today is Dame Nellie Melba's 150th birthday.  Melba was a symbol of Australia's cultural maturity in the late-nineteenth century, even if that maturity was measured by European standards.  I've always found it interesting that we find it easier to valourize cricketers, bankers, crooks and politicians, yet we find it difficult to extend the same prestige to exponents of the high arts.  There's been an interesting debate on this point over on The Age website in response to an article by Peter Craven today.  At the end of the day, it's the connection of one Melburnian to another that I'd like to take the opportunity to celebrate here.

In addition to her memoirs, Melodies and Memories, there are three non-fiction biographies of Melba.  A further, fictional, account was published by Beverley Nicholls, who had ghost-written Melodies.  Of the three (or is it really four or five? one looses count) standard biographies, I would say that John Hetherington's book withstands rereading very admirably, with its chatty style and breezy narrative interspersed with some very pungent character sketches.  Therese Radic's book provides an interesting account of Melba's relationships in Melbourne, and how she brought her international experiences to bear on cultural life here.  One of the most useful aspects of this book is Radic's painstaking lists of Melba's recordings.  Ann Blainey's biography is very interesting, more up-to-date on methodology, and makes use of source material previously unavailable , but I found it left me feeling a bit undernourished reading from a musicological perspective.  Perhaps it didn't help that I read it on a long-haul flight.

My encounters with Melba have been filtered through my research work.  A few years ago I delivered a paper looking at Melba's art patronage, and she loomed up in one of the chapters of my Ph.D. thesis.  But even this encounter rests on older foundations: from 1992 until 1995 I was a student at the Melba Memorial Conservatorium.  Even then I was intrigued by Melba, and around the building one could find the odd relic of the lady herself, such as a dumb piano that she used for practice on long sea voyages, a very fine copy of the Tom Roberts portrait, various photos and other ephemera.  To the modern mind the idea of a cult of relics is a little difficult to fathom, but in that setting I quite understood how the relationship between an object and its original owner might serve to enchant the present moment: to touch the keys of a dumb piano once played by Melba was a heady thought.

Actually, even that encounter has an earlier foundation.  The first funeral I attended as a small child was that of an elderly uncle who had lived most of his life in Ballarat.  My father recalled visiting him when he was young, and described how the evening would be passed either in reading, conversation or listening to records of Melba.  Her presence therefore might be said to go back into my ancestral sound world.

Coming into the here-and-now, my present work place is about a stone's throw away from the Richmond City Hall.  This was the place where Melba sang in public for the first time as a young girl.  Melba was born in Richmond, and much of her early life was spent in the area.  Within a short walk of my office I can pass the Dame Nellie Melba Kindergarden, Dame Nellie Melba Memorial Park and Doonside Street, the latter named for the house in which Melba was born.

Melba is fortunate to have lived through the period where recording technology was becoming reliable.  Such was the pace of innovation that it is clear from her biographers that she was reluctant to record using methods that might quickly be superseded.  Some of the recordings are better than others, on technological and vocal grounds, and you have to be patient with the whooshing sound that comes with old records.

Here's a couple of recordings of Melba from the archives of youtube.  I've chosen items from her 1904 recording sessions.  There is a simple reason for this: Melba's voice was still very much at its peak, and the quality of her performances come through on these recordings very clearly.  The first recording is something for which Melba was famous: the mad scene from Lucia di Lammermoor.  Listen carefully for the flute part.

Melba's ancestry was Scots, so it's most appropriate to have Comin' thro the Rye.

Music for Sunday 22 May 2011

Readings for the week can be found here (the parish uses the Catholic options).  The psalm will be sung to an Anglican chant setting.

The service setting will be Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns are as follows:

Introit: Lead us, heavenly Father, lead us [580]
Sequence: Thou art the way, by thee alone [226, tune 247]
Offertory: Christ is made the sure foundation [432]
Communion: Sent forth by God's blessing [531]

One of the most banal reader polls like ever

The Age has a good column from Kenneth Davidson today.  Why this guy isn't front-and-centre with getting policy about carbon right is beyond me.

At the foot of Davidson's column is a little reader poll.  There's a disclaimer about it being non-scientific and so on, but you really have to ask what level of stupidity it takes to formulate such simplistic propositions as the one below.  It would have been better to ask readers whether they think Davidson's column advanced a good viable idea.

For the record, I fall in the minority below.  As it happens, the Australian electorate gave Labour a mandate for a carbon tax way back in 2007.  It's just that lack of co-operation from the opposition and idiotic shriekers and scribblers have made things so difficult that they've never seen fit to meet the bother with doing anything head on.

As Fox News says, "we report, you decide..."

Poll: Should Julia Gillard call an early election to get a mandate for the carbon tax?

Yes  69%

No   31%

Total votes: 3386.

Poll closes in 16 hours.

An aphorism

Opinion polls are conducted chiefly to reinforce whatever the people commissioning them wish to think.  It is the equivalent of saying that "everyone" believes a particular thing when the only person to whom that statement can truly be applied is the one making it.

Here's an example of what I mean.

A petty obsession

I received a document from a university research office where I'm having a grant application reviewed.  One of the themes of this process has been the importance of good and consistent formatting of documents, and use of a particular writing style.

Those wonderful pedants have had their way with my six weeks of toil, and what do I receive?  A document which puts dates in the following formats:

1. Monday 10th May at 9am
2. 9am on Monday the 10th of May
3. 9am, Monday May 10th
4. Monday 10/5 at 9

One of my more memorable encounters with a research supervisor was being flamed out for incorrect date formats (albeit applied consistently).  Since then, I've mended my ways in accordance with the MLA Handbook (6 ed.).  This is the writers' book on the laws of style.  Nobody should be permitted to enter the second year of an undergraduate degree without having acquired it in the first.  It's even online now, although you have to subscribe.

The essence of the rule about writing dates is very simple: hybrids of numbers and words are forbidden.  Thus, the big bloopers above should be:

1. Monday 10 May
2. Monday the TENTH of May
3. Monday, May 10

I don't think any editor worth his or her salt would allow the fourth example.

My preferred style is #1 above.  It gives the information in the order in which you would say it, which makes it a logical sequence that doesn't require a mental backflip to process.  I never add the suffixes -st, -nd, -rd, -th to a number when writing a date -- reporting the placing of contestants in an athletic competition is a different matter, of course.  How you write a date is not the same as how you say it.  I just can't bring myself to appreciate these little superscript numbers.  They are the bane of good formatting.

When adding times, it's a question of asking how you would say the thing, and expressing it fully.  9am looks a bit incomplete to me, 9.00 raises the question "which one?".  9.00am seems about right -- you'd say "nine o'clock in the morning" (OK, antemeridian for you unreconstructed Latinists out there).  Then it becomes a case of the following sequence:

Number, word number word = 9.00am, Monday 10 May.

Is that elegant, or what?

Why is it so few people see the light?

Music for Sunday 15 May 2011

I'm back on the coalface this week, having enjoyed two weeks of relatively quiet bliss.  That is, the sort of bliss that comes between completing a major grant application, conducting for two concerts, carrying on with a new job and failing to take the planned gap of two or three days out of Melbourne.  I feel hindsight teaching me that the best-laid plans ought to be made some months in advance.

This Sunday conjures up a series of images, all connected with livestock.  You can find the readings here.

The big declaration in the Gospel is one of the most famous sayings of Jesus: I am the good shepherd.  Combined with Psalm 23, you'd think that this would make hymn selections relatively easy and straightforward.

But think about it for a moment.  I am is not as simple as it first appears.  Think of the encounter between Moses and the burning bush: God refuses to be identified by a name, and when pressed tells Moses to say that he's been sent by I am who I am.  This makes that series of sayings in John's Gospel a little more complicated: Jesus isn't claiming the water, light, shepherd, and way of life as a personal attribute, but as something that strikes off into a much larger framework.  They are ultimately a deeply eschatological sayings.  There is a message here that goes beyond the merely pastoral world of sheep and fields and shepherds, and if one wishes to explore it more deeply through hymnody there's a lot of material to work through.

Music this week will include Philip Mathias's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns are as follows:

Introit: Dear shepherd of your people [444]
Sequence: Christ be my leader by night as by day [624]
Offertory: I danced in the morning [242]
Communion: Author of life divine [506]

The parish choir is back to work again after their recess.  Beginning from this week there will be no Wednesday rehearsals: until the end of the year practice will all be done on Sundays.

Here's an anthem idea for those of you who like these things:

The best thing anyone said this week

I'm now doing two nights a week for the Australian Youth Choir.  One of these involves trekking to the backwoods of the south-eastern suburbs.  I'm becoming more familiar with the outer reaches of our freeway system than I would have thought likely at the beginning of the year.

Every AYC rehearsal has three parts -- one hour with the probationers, one hour with the training/performing choristers, and the final half hour with the performing group.  It can be a very intense two and a half hours.

Because they're the first off the rank for the evening, I usually make a bit of time in the five minutes before the start of the rehearsal to ask the probationers what they've done this week, or if they've done something exciting.  There's the usual gamut of answers ranging from school excursions, trips to the zoo or other amusement parks, reading a good book and so on.  It gives you a good picture of what your choristers enjoy beyond the rehearsal room, and helps them to feel that you take an interest in them beyond singing.  In a new group -- such as last night, which was my second week with the new rehearsal venue -- it also helps to break the ice.

Anyway, last night I was in the middle of this pre-rehearsal conversation when one of the choristers put her hand up.  The answer to the question "have you done something exciting this week?" was as follows:

"I haven't done anything exciting at home or at school since last week, but I'm really excited that I've come here tonight."

What could I say, apart from "That's the best thing I've heard all week!  Give this young lady a hearty round of applause!"

Music for Sunday 8 May 2011

Readings for this week are linked from here.  The psalm will be said.

The service setting will be Philip Mathais's Christ Church Mass (Together in Song, 757).  Hymns as follows:

Introit: Glorious things of you are spoken [446, tune 772]
Sequence: O for a thousand tongues to sing [210, tune 425]
Offertory: All my hope on God is founded [560 i]
Communion: We have a gospel to proclaim [245]

The choir returns to its normal duties next week.

And we rejoice at this?

It's been a big weekend for the world.  Friday saw the wedding of the year in London.  There was a time when events like these would have been marked with auto da fe and other bloody amusements.  We like to think our civilization has moved on.

On Sunday it was reported that an attack on Muamar Gadaffi's home brought the death of his youngest son -- the Libyan announcement stated him to be a martyr -- and some of his grandchildren.  More fuel to the fire.

Today we hear the news of the death of Osama bin Laden.  Would it not have been better to have him alive?  As it is, the violation of the principle of rule of law is surely now complete.

The fighting season has begun in Afghanistan.  One incident involved a twelve-year-old suicide bomber.  Apart from the immorality of dealing thus with a child, what have the forces of the West done this weekend to offer a better way?

For the month of May

In honour of yesterday:

I think it's about time for a new version of the Internationale.  The clip above struck me for how it represents the 'has been' side of the current state of left politics.  With notable exceptions, left wing politics remains on the outer in our public discourse.  For most people, left means some of the pictures you see in the video above: frankly, this is all very kitsch and not at all imminent to our present predicament.  It's a simulacrum of politics that appeals to people passing through the rebellious phases of life.

This is a sad predicament, for only the left is able to ask some of the most urgent questions facing us right now.  After all, what's the point of freedom when we live in times characterized by social atomisation and global climate change?  The two are symptomatic of our underlying inability to address the really big issues that go in to living together.

And now for something a little more sublime:

"In beautiful May, when the buds sprang, love sprang up in my heart: in beautiful May, when the birds all sang, I told you my suffering and longing."

Quotable

At the moment I'm reading Jeremy Begbie's Theology, Music and Time.  There's a wonderful moment during his discussion of musical resolution and how it might be drawn on to consider the nature of salvation that's worth sharing:

It is worth nothing in passing that much of the music currently employed in Christian worship deploys remarkably little in the way of delayed gratification.  Admittedly, a congregation must be able to grasp quickly new hymns and songs if music is to enable and release their worship, but...rather often goals are reached directly and predictably with a minimum of...delay...Could we be witnessing here a musical articulation of the tendency in some quarters of the Church to insist on immediate rewards and not to come to terms with the (potentially positive) realities of frustration and disappointment?  One of the most significant challenges for any composer for worship today is to offer music which can reflect the conviction that intrinsic to salvation is a process of learning in which we are led towards goals by paths which are not easy, straightforward or expected.  (pp. 105-06)