Thursday 26 June 2014

From Singing Lines





SINGING  LINES  

WITH WOODEN STRIDES  

POWER  ON  THE  HILL


WOODEN RHYMES 

WERE     STRIDING    WIDE 

WHERE ALL THE WORLD STOOD STILL



ON A SUMMER'S DAY





Tuesday 24 June 2014

What no War?








The 1st Queen's Dragoon Guards from their home in Cardiff Castle in Wales came to Austria to mark 100 years since the outbreak of the Great War, the war known as the 1st World War and also the war to end all wars in which something like 17-20 million people died. And it must be added they died as so often is the case to no purpose. In Hitler's war which began 21 years after the war to end all wars had ended an estimated 60 million people died.

The third picture is the photo of the Kaiser Villa in the town in Bad Ischl in the Salzkammergut (the Austrian Lake District) where Franz Joseph I spent his summer holidays hunting deer and chamois and visiting his mistress. It is said by some that the Kaiser married his mistress in secret sometime between 1909 and 1912 following the murder of his wife Princess Elisabeth at a railway station in Switzerland.

The octogenarian Kaiser, under pressure from his ministers, signed the declaration of war one month after the assassination of the heir to the throne Franz Ferdinand in Sarajevo.

The intended conflict, as all Austrian declared wars up to this point ( and there weren't very many as the Austrians preferred to expand their Empire by marriage) was  intended to be a limited affair and the word "it would all be over by Christmas" soon echoed all around Europe.

Unfortunately almost whole of Europe and also several nations outside of Europe decided, for reasons best known to themselves, to throw their lot in.  The result was a mega-carnage.

One infamous incident took place near Ypres in Belgium. This is where  the world's first WMD (weapon of mass destruction) was brought into play by the Germans. This event was the start of what I call "the 3 ironies":

The first irony was that it was a Jew from Breclaw who developed the chlorine gas weapon and supervised its use for the first time against the French on the Western Front. The second irony was that this enthusiastic pro-German scientist was awarded the Nobel prize despite having fled to Switzerland to avoid justice. The third irony was that he died before he could see how poison gas could be used to kill millions of his fellow Jews.

The visit of the Welsh to Austria was summed up for me by the choice of a piece of music; The World in Union. 

I spoke to some people close by about the music and I think the message was lost on some of the so-called intellectuals. Maybe the proletariat got it. We can only hope so.

Tonight in a TV Special the Austrian president and the Russian president talked about Ukraine. They answered questions from the media. There was a lot at stake financially. A big topic was the South Stream Gas Pipeline. At these events it might be better if you or I could ask the questions I often think.


Wednesday 18 June 2014

Behind the Lines with Anna Prohaska


Meet Anna Prohaska HERE


It was her Vienna Konzerthaus debut and I didn't know what to expect.

It turned out to be the most articulate and accomplished performance it has been my privilege to witness in the Mozart Saal of the Vienna Konzerthaus for several years. And I include many so-called big names in my list.

War is the subject of Anna Prohaska's Behind the Lines. She was accompanied on the Steinway by Eric Schneider. The audience, constantly surprised and delighted by this young lady's singing ability and her delightful interpretation of difficult themes, fell into raptures.

Prohaska's songs of war were many and various and included poems and ballads by William Shakespeare, Bertolt Brecht, Walter Scott, Georg Trakl, Maurice Fombeure, Walt Whitman and many others as well as  traditional and anonymous words set to music by a veritable army of composers including the likes of Sergej Rachmaninoff, Hanns Eisler, Charles Ives, Wolfgang Rihm, Francis Poulenc, Roger Quilter, and Kurt Weill, to name but a few.

And here from the programme a trio of poems (including my own translation of Georg Trakl's Untergang) for the reader to appreciate:


My Luve's in Germanie 

(words by Hector McNeill 1746-1818)

My Luve's in Germanie, send him hame;
Fechting brave for royalty:
He may ne'er his Jeanie see - send him hame.

He's as brave as brave can be - send him hame;
He wad rather fa' than flee;
His life is dear to me - send him hame.

Your luve ne'er learnt to flee, bonnie dame;
But he fell in Germanie,
In the cause of loyalty, bonnie dame.

He'll ne'er come ower the sea - Willie's slain;
To his love and ain countrie:
This warld's nae mair for me - Willie's gane!


Wand'ring in this place (Anonymous)


Wand'ring in this place as in a wilderness,

No comfort have I nor yet assurance,
Desolate of joy, repleat with sadnesse:
Wherefore I may say, *O deus, deus, 
Non est dolor, sicut dolor meus. 


*O God, O God,

there is no pain like my pain.


Untergang (Georg Trakl 1887-1914)


Over the whitewashed pond
the wild birds flew away.
From the stars the evening sent an icy wind.  

Over our graves
the broken brow of the night was bent.
Beneath the oaks we rocked within a silver boat.

The white walls of the city rang again.
And under the thorns o my brother
the blind hand climbed towards midnight.

Then my Kaiser rode over my grave,
with many swords rattling and flashing;
 I climbed with my sword from the grave
for the Kaiser, the Kaiser to save!



Tuesday 17 June 2014

Ragtime for Tommy


YouTube here

The illustration is Pablo Picasso's 1919 title page for Igor Stravinski's composition "Ragtime for Eleven Instruments" which is a work of insight and genius originally composed as a piece of music for the street, for the amusement of poverty stricken Russians who couldn't afford to go to concerts.

As depicted by Picasso it's a wandering line that has one end beginning within the musician's hat and unravelling at the other end with a guitar's dangling string . . .

I often reflect on what might have been when Stravinsky and Dylan Thomas discussed composing an opera together. But sadly Dylan died before the work could begin.

-----------

Tommy was what you might call a syncopated, or off-beat cat. Sometimes here, sometimes there, but there was always a kind of harmony to his comings and goings. He would habitually turn up on special days and anniversaries. He'd greet you like some unexpectedly sublime moment.

Or now and then he'd snub you and strut by with his nose and tail in the air, as if you'd committed some grave offence. Some mornings he'd look as if he'd spent the night in a coal cellar or maybe he'd have a mysterious new scratch or a wound to one of his ears or to his nose.

And now he's gone. It happened this morning as he was crossing the street that a car suddenly ended the last of his 9 precarious lives.

Tommy will be sadly missed in our neighbourhood.

Tommy (2000-2014)



Monday 16 June 2014

Lest we forget . . .



George Washington
served good food and light 
shone in a doorway


Tuesday 10 June 2014

Stray thoughts in Whitby, Yorkshire, GB


I graced Whitby
In the course of my holidays. 
It's a wonderful place 

To seek out. 

I understand now 
How Bram Stoker 
Came to pen Dracula here

Without having set foot in Rumania. 

The clifftop graveyard 
 And abbey ruins 
Are here to behold in the mists

Where the sea cuts into the cliffs
 And the past falls 
Into the sea. 

Today the authorities 
Are doing what they can
To control it. 

But why? 
What is wrong 
With reburial at sea?


The Prince of Darkness Picture Poem :

By abbey ruins with darkening stones
where dark cliffs face the hungry sea
 where in bijou -  a man partakes
with napkin black and gleam of knife
 more dark reflections
 and blood  red wine

War belongs in the Museum


Detail from sign outside Austria's Military Museum

One future day
  On a planet far away
They will say,
  Not sigh and pray,

But really say,
  And say it loud and clear
In every language
  Far and near:

No more war
  Permitted here.
And that, my friend will be the end
  Of that;

Warfare's collateral euphemisms
  Catalogued
And in museums on display.

 And there upon the shelves
to stay
 for good.




Thursday 5 June 2014

Postcard from Wales



Dear Readers

The Duke of Lancaster is aground in North Wales somewhere between the Point of Ayr and Flint. Between a rock and a hard place. It is protected by razor wire, locked gates and the tide. It is a prominent landmark and a wall for graffiti artists. I like it, this incredible rusting hulk, this colourful piece of the unfathomable hiraeth puzzle. It stands like a monument to splendid isolation somewhere between the steel industry and the holiday caravans. It serves a purpose. 

There are several Duke of Lancaster videos on Vimeo and YouTube. By the time you receive this postcard I will be back at my desk or as they say in landlocked Austria the arbeitstisch,

Iechyd Da! 
Gwil W


On Tiananmen and other squares



yesterday the weedkiller 

today the plant food
these yellow flowers know no fear


Wednesday 4 June 2014