Friday Night May Be Music Night...but Saturday?

Saturdays are for sport! Today we've had a one-day cricket international (or - another chance for England to show how inept they are), a full football programme plus golf and US Open tennis! I didn't even get to catch a minute of the last two...so where the opportunities for music?

It just happens to be that there always is time! A day without music at all would be unthinkable! Lewis and I (still on the inevitable Beatles kick) found the time to watch an old 1965 Tv special I've had on DVD for a while... The Music of Lennon & McCartney. Essentially, this was a showcase for the group's new double A-side single, Day Tripper/We Can Work It Out - and that such a pristine condition copy still exists nearly half a century later is somewhat amazing (especially coming from an era in which tapes were routinely wiped for re-use).

An unusual and very diverse set of artists appeared to perform their own cover versions of Beatles songs - some good, some not so...and one or two were nauseatingly toe-curling! The execrable Flamenco annihilation of 'She Loves You' really had to be heard to be...suffered - and the dual manual jazz electric organist with St Vitas' dance may have sounded interesting...but to watch his twisted gyrations almost made me laugh uncontrollably...and reminded me that I suppose a donation to SCOPE is probably overdue! Peter Sellers, as Richard III, was very funny, of course!

Now it's time for a great British tradition - The Last Night of the Proms...so more music! The first item in the finale was an overture for orchestra and...hoovers! Composed by Sir Malcolm Arnold in 1956 the 'Grand, Grand Overture' is surely one of the great musical jokes! Lewis reckoned is was meant to depict someone trying to listen to music while another (maybe his wife?) did the cleaning...it ends with the errant vacuumers being shot by four handily-placed riflemen! I was reminded at once of that awful 'anti-programme-music' quote by Stravinsky that music does not have the quality in it to be able to speak for itself...I thought it was nonsense when I first read it and still do! Igor wrote some extraordinary music...but should have left philosophy to his betters in that field!

'In A Monestary Garden' came next...I haven't heard that 'nightingale-soaked piece of cheese' for decades. I was playing it at college back in 1982 when dear Eric Stanley (an elderly professor from Dagenham who regaled us week by week with wonderful tales from the days when he taught Dudley Moore at Trinity College) came in and shouted me down. "What are you doing with THAT old chestnut?" he demanded before advising me that it might make a better piece of music if I turned the sheet music upside down! I did...and won a prize for my piano piece in the next composer's competition! Thanks Eric!

A trumpet tango and some Gershwin followed and, as I type, we're on the first of 5 newly-composed fanfares...if the other 4 are as bad as the first I might go have a bath before the real fun starts! Really...it's horrible!

LNOTP is the one night of the year, it seems, when it's OK to 'like' classical music (don't get me started on what 'classical music' is...that's another blog topic waiting its chance to burst from my fingers!). Tens of thousands of stable-minded Brits who spend the other 364 days of the year making sure that Lady Gaga and Pixie Lott clog up the charts suddenly acquire temporary taste-chips and crowd into parks, castles and City Squares to listen to Handel, Beethoven ("didn't he go blind?") and the rest without losing their 'cool'. The reason? Well, LNOTP ends with some good old-fashioned jingoism! 'Rule Britannia', 'Fantasy on British Sea Songs' and Elgar's 'Pomp & Circumstance' are being joined tonight by 'Jerusalem', fresh from its Ashes series overkill* and, surely the best English patriotic tune ever to have been composed by a WELSHMAN!

So there we have it...plenty of music on Sporturday and still finished in time for Match of the Day! Life is good!


*Jerusalem was played and sung loudly before the start of play on all 25 days of the test series between England and Australia this summer...we were actually quite good for some of that and won the series...its just the one-day stuff we're so bad at, obviously!