Beethoven failed

Last Friday was intended to be a mainly St. Luke's day, with the main item on the programme being Beethoven's Op.20 septet, a work I have heard a fair number of times, sometimes paired with Schubert's Octet, and which has generally worked well.

Bullingdons

City Road

I had a call to take at noon, so left a little early and parked up at Old Street to take some fizzy water at the Wetherspoon's there while I waited for my call. And admired the old photograph of a public house in the City Road, hanging on a wall near me. I think the 'Windsor Castle', rather than the 'Eagle' of pop goes the weasel, still there last time I looked, albeit a place for casual dining rather than serious boozing.

The programme

Then off to St. Luke's churchyard to take my bread and cheese, while a chap probably living in social housing smoked his fag exercised his dog, off its lead, probably a terrier of some kind. Why do some people feel the need for this sort of protection? Why do they choose to make pets of such dogs - which are often ugly and sometimes dangerous? But then, I don't really understand wanting a dog at all. Don't mind other peoples', but have no desire to have one of my own.

On into the church itself to find no less than ten microphones, not counting a pair of large coloured ones for the mistress of ceremonies - who was not Fiona. Her stand-in was not nearly as florid, didn't put her heart and soul into the (not very good) script.

Some children were present and there was some fidgeting. One child was holding a large elephant and I wondered whether a need for elephants was consistent with a love for Tippett.

Of the four horns deployed for the Tippett horn sonata, two were highly polished, one was shabby and one was in-between. A variety of mute arrangements. I wondered whether all horns are the same, without coming to any conclusion: they all looked the same, state of polish apart. It was the shabby horn which made it to the septet following.

Maria Teresa of  Naples & Sicily

I was not greatly taken with the horn sonata. And for some reason, the light, the magic had gone from the septet, to the point where I was nodding a bit in the middle. Was it the fact that my usual routine with the bacon sandwich had been disturbed? Which seems more likely than any failing on the part of the musicians. But I was interested to read in the programme that the septet was regarded as easy listening for the masses, and Beethoven subsequently came to be rather annoyed by its popularity and the continual requests for something like the septet - from which he had long moved on. And I understand that the empress dedicatee - the first of eighteen children and snapped above - was with the masses on this one. With colours of the picture varying a good deal from image to image, with this one being the most highly pixelated that I could find. Don't suppose I shall ever get to see the original, not least because I can't find out where it is, just an unconfirmed suggestion that is in the Musée Condé in Chantilly, our twin town, as it happens. But I did find out that she was also the dedicatee of a mass by Haydn.

Metaphor

Out the bank to the Bullingdon stand by the Finsbury Leisure Centre, to be greeted by a sight which might be a metaphor for the future state of public services - in particular the National Health Services  - if the Tories get another mandate, which seems all too likely. Decaying infrastructure, no money to cover running costs (and so no bicycles on the stand) and with private contractors taking great bites out of the action (orange bicycles starting to appear on the scene).

Off to the Royal Festival Hall, from where I went to the Hayward Gallery, to see the newly opened Bridget Riley exhibition. Reasonably busy, but I did get straight in. I shall be reporting on the exhibition properly in due course, but a few observations in the meantime.

A sample of Riley, not necessarily from this exhibition

Riley, following the august footsteps of the likes of Dürer and Breughal, makes extensive use of assistants, thus considerably increasing her output and profitability. Not unreasonably, given the nature of her work, she delegates a lot of the actual manufacture of the finished article to her assistants, preferring to concentrate on concept, design and experiment.

Some of her pictures, particular the black & whites and the coloured stripes (these last mostly like that included above), moved about as you looked at them. It seems that there was something about them, entirely deliberate on Riley's part, that meant that the brain did not form a stable image to present to consciousness. While others moved about in an odd way if you swayed about a bit while standing in front of them. I presently ponder on why this might be so. See reference 1 for previous ponderings.

Some of her more recent pictures involve dots, which I did not find so interesting, although I did associate to Hirst, who does, I believe, do dots as well as dead animals and carved up people. But I rather doubt if his dots as are principled and informed as her dots. That said, I seem to recall that the colours he uses are taken from the restricted palette used, for some reason, by the manufacturers of prescription pills. Deeply significant?

I shall be back for more.

PS 1: presently puzzled as to why I cannot find the second post of reference 1. It clearly exists, but does not seem to appear in the listings you get right. Maybe I will get to the bottom of it later in the day.

PS 2: the answer turns out to be that I got myself locked onto July 2017 rather than June 2017. See reference 2. I suppose that, written down, the two dates are close enough and I was too careless to check everything that could possibly have gone wrong - and perhaps preferring exotic solutions which are false to simple solutions which are true. A charge sometimes levelled by Lewis against Morse. I dare say also by Jones against Barnaby, although I cannot presently recall an instance of this last.

Reference 1: https://psmv3.blogspot.com/search?q=bridget+riley.

Reference 2: http://psmv3.blogspot.com/2017/06/on-scenes.html.