Apostate!

“Stephen,” Mike Ross once said in an NUT meeting, “It’s not that we want you to agree; just don’t speak.” It was one of those times when I found myself in the position (not for the first time) when in the words of the Queen in one of the Alice books, “I've believed as many as six impossible things before breakfast.” If not impossible, then at least contradictory. It was the usual debate in the NUT when we went from the national to the parochial. I have been a long time member of CND and passionately opposed to the use, production and flaunting of nuclear weapons. Well in keeping with the most radical ideas of our noble union. The second issue was one of corporal punishment.

Here, I carried the legacy of generations of real teachers and was (at that time) whole heartedly in flogging ‘em till the blood flowed! I spoke passionately on the subject and was well received by the more reactionary elements who had been generally dismissive of my anti nuke attitude. Hence Mike’s despairing ejaculation at the end of the meeting.

Going to get Toni just before five pm today and listening to Radio 3 I had another one of those moments when I could hear some misquoted version of Wittgenstein’s dictum ‘Whereof We Cannot Speak, We Must Remain Silent’ which seemed to be translating itself into a sort of admonition to the effect that ‘You don’t know what you are talking about, so shut up before you make a fool of yourself.’

The occasion was a piece of music which I listened to with growing irritation. It had all the self indulgence of a composer who knew he had a massive number of musicians obeying his baton. It was a mish-mash of disparate musical forms ill stitched together. The portentous gave way to the melodically trite; the simple to the bombastic. Percussion was used with the subtlety of the neophyte orchestrator who felt that everyone had to have his moment of glory. The repeated motifs were ploddingly pedestrian and made one scream for the obvious conclusion that one hoped, yet feared, was waiting at the end of the score.

And I knew that it was Mahler. I didn’t recognize the symphony, but all the tricks of the trade were in tedious evidence.

It was the last movement of the Seventh. And I take back nothing!

I do like Mahler, especially the first and the fourth. The fifth passes me by somewhat, and the eighth is only overwhelming when experienced in concert. But that period in the car really showed up the qualities of the composer which allows others to dismiss him as a self indulgent poseur. I know that listening to part of the last movement of a symphony on a car radio is hardly the fairest way to listen to the work, but surely if the work is great then even under difficult circumstances the essential quality should shine through. And my car radio isn’t bad, you know.

I think it was the sense of virtual blasphemy is thinking these treasonous thoughts against such an iconic composer that livened up the waiting period of Toni to step towards the light and home. The sacrilegious thoughts coursing through my mind and the chuckling frisson of knowing that my dismissal of such a canonical work would case something like physical pain to a number of music aficionados that I know were, I think, a great part of the pleasure.

And what if they knew that I liked (I mean really liked) the music of Philip Glass!