Slow train

I love trains. Or, if not the things themselves, then at least travelling on them. I’m sure it originates in experiences from my first few years. Thomas the Tank Engine played some part. I had some of the books and, if memory serves, a train set with a wind-up Thomas, attachable Annie and Clarabel and possibly other engines too. It all seems utterly soulless now, but it must have held some appeal at the time.

My early experiences of train travel itself were more viscerally exciting. I remember the thrill, when going to see Cats in London at the age of 5, of using the tube – very dangerous, it seemed to me, for such a small person as I was then, even with adult supervision. The gap, which I was urged to mind, seemed almost infinite. Cats is also part of the mix. Trendy (and sometimes easy) though it is to sneer at Andrew Lloyd Webber, Cats more than any other of his musicals contains much that is praiseworthy, and in “Skimbleshanks” possesses one of the great romantic songs about trains. The passion inpired in me by “Growltiger’s Last Stand” and tube travel for London place names is a subject for another day.

Then there were the trips to Bristol on inset days to visit the much lamented Exploratory, and occasional family train journeys to Leeds when we couldn’t go by car. The excitement of a four-hour journey stretching out ahead, of the games in store, of the prospect of sitting at a table are all still vivid, as is the sequence of stations as we moved further north, through Birmingham New Street, Derby, Chesterfield (crooked spire visible from the train window), Sheffield, Wakefield Westgate (a mixture of excitement and disappointment at being nearly there) and finally Leeds.

The romance persists. I still get excited at the prospect of a long train journey, and have happily been spared so far the routine of commuting which I expect often induces fatigue and disillusionment. One of the most beautiful and saddest songs written in the English language is Flanders and Swann’s “Slow Train”, which consists largely of a list of railway stations that fell victim to the cuts imposed by Dr Beeching in the 1960s. These include the enigmatic Trouble House Halt in Gloucestershire, the only British railway station constructed specifically to serve a public house. The stations mentioned are catalogued fascinatingly here.

How is it possible to feel such an aching nostalgia for something one hasn’t experienced oneself? The social historian Joe Moran has already analysed the question insightfully in this blog post. For me, much of it has to do with the place names – Mortehoe, Four Crosses, Mumby Road, Cheslyn Hay – which are so indescribably and inescapably English. If occasionally I feel frustrated with Britain and the people who live here, it is songs like this, which could not possibly have been written by anyone from another country, that make me realise how much in my national heritage I have to be thankful for.

John Cazale, 1935-1978

In the course of little more than a week, purely by chance, I have watched four films featuring John Cazale: The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Conversation and The Deer Hunter.

Cazale’s filmography consists of only five features: the four mentioned above and Sidney Lumet’s Dog Day Afternoon. It’s a remarkable list – incontrovertibly five of the greatest films of the 1970s – and it makes Cazale unique among actors in having had every film he acted in nominated for the Best Picture Oscar.

Cazale in Dog Day Afternoon

Striking in his physical appearance – the high forehead, haunted sunken eyes, angular nose – his presence on screen is often unassuming, but always magnetic. He was frequently cast as naïve loser characters – in the Godfather films as Fredo, the slow-witted Corleone brother, in Dog Day Afternoon as Sal, the bank robber whose concern that the media should not portray him as gay provides some light relief to the overlying tension, and finally in The Deer Hunter as the lovably downtrodden Stan, who never has any of his own kit for the friends’ hunting trips. The scenes where he overcomes his reserve and speaks out against those he feels have done him wrong – Al Pacino’s Michael in The Godfather Part II and Robert De Niro’s Mike in The Deer Hunter – magnificently exploit the innate vulnerability of his appearance.

Director Michael Cimino arranged the filming schedule of The Deer Hunter specially so Cazale’s scenes could be filmed first, in the knowledge that Cazale was suffering from the advanced stages of terminal cancer. Cazale completed his scenes but died before filming was completed. Meryl Streep, his partner at the time, was more pleased to land a role in the film because it meant she was able to nurse him on set than because of any artistic consideration.

Cazale’s name belongs alongside those more glamorous stars who died before their time – James Dean, Marilyn Monroe, Judy Garland, Natalie Wood, River Phoenix – and his legend and reputation have surely been enhanced by his tragically early death. His recorded legacy, though, is arguably the greatest of all. I must dig out Dog Day Afternoon, which I haven’t seen for years.

Russian roulette

On Monday I attended a new production of Prokofiev’s The Gambler at the Royal Opera House, directed by Richard Jones. It’s the composer’s first full-length opera, based on an 1867 novella by Fyodor Dostoevsky.

Dostoevsky’s Gambler is a slight work by his normal standards, enlivened by a rude old woman and some exciting scenes of gambling. These are the two things that lift Prokofiev’s opera above the level of banality. The old woman has the best music of the opera, its translucent beauty anticipating later works like Cinderella or the seventh symphony, or the magical orchestral opening of the third piano concerto. The roulette scene in the final act is the dramatic climax of the piece and finds Prokofiev, happily, in the driving, rhythmic mode of his most exciting music. Sadly, the rest of the opera contains little of the inspiration one is used to finding in Prokofiev’s music. It’s tempting to dismiss it as a valiant but unsuccessful early attempt on his part at writing an opera. He hadn’t composed anything on such a large scale before, and his greatest works were still ahead of him. All the same, that’s no excuse for one of the greatest melodists of the twentieth century not to bother to include any tunes.

Happily, the shortcomings of the music were redeemed by the production, which was excellent in all respects. Susan Bickley was imperious as the old woman, John Tomlinson a fine General, and Roberto Saccà an excellent Alexei. The orchestra under Antonio Pappano was reliably precise, and the set for the roulette scene particularly vibrant. It was an unorthodox decision to present the opera in an English translation by David Pountney, opera in translation being traditionally the province of ENO, but it mostly worked, if Angela Denoke did struggle with her vowels at times.

The ROH has lowered its prices for this production, selling the most expensive seats at £50. It’s a strange production to choose to do this for, if it wants to encourage loyalty from new patrons. Why not lower the prices for Cinderella (top price £97), The Cunning Little Vixen (£110) or Così fan tutte (£197) instead? Perhaps it was decided that this was the only way to get people to buy tickets for The Gambler. I’m quite prepared to be labelled lowbrow, but I’d happily swap the whole thing for the few minutes of casino action from Bernstein’s Candide. There’s never been a better gambling song than “What’s the Use?”.

These are first impressions, though. Prokofiev expert David Nice, whose fascinating traversal of Romeo and Juliet for Radio 3′s Building a Library I listened to en route for London, has written this review, which gives cause for encouragement. Maybe I’ll come round to it in time.

I think some people would describe Prokofiev’s score for The Gambler as ugly, but if I failed to be captivated by the opera I don’t think that’s the reason. Ugliness in music, as a rule, I like. Judging solely by his musical legacy, Ravel was one of presumably many composers who felt similarly. The same goes for art and architecture. I rather like sink estates, for instance, at least from a distance – but then it’s easier to find such things romantic if they’re not a constant part of one’s life. The most mesmerising thing I saw on Monday was out of my train window as I was waiting to leave Cambridge. A dilapidated building near the station was being slowly demolished by diggers. There is a poetry in destruction, I thought, as the metal pincers dislodged bricks from the building’s walls and swept debris from its upper floors.

Funny music: an incomplete survey

The subject of humour in music is one that has been much on my mind recently for some reason. The variety of musical jokes is as interesting as it is wide, so let’s take a very cursory look at some choice examples.

As a rule, I suspect, newer jokes are funnier. As a child I remember being entertained (if not convulsed) by the surprise in Haydn’s Surprise Symphony when it was pointed out to me, but more in the self-satisfied way in which I feel amused when I understand a Shakespearean joke, whether it’s objectively funny to modern sensibilities or not. The quodlibet at the end of Bach’s Goldberg Variations, where Bach ingeniously quotes two popular songs of the time, including one about not liking turnips, isn’t funny because, as a rule, the modern listener doesn’t know the songs beforehand, but Bach’s ingenuity is, as ever, to be praised. I think Mozart’s Musical Joke falls rather flat, though in his defence ‘joke’ is a mistranslation. The German title, Ein musikalischer Spaß, has different connotations.

There is a rich vein of parody and pastiche to be explored – Prokofiev’s Classical Symphony, with its affectionate nods to Haydn, and Ravel’s piano pieces imitating Borodin and Chabrier are endearing. More incisive is Dudley Moore’s Beethovenian treatment of Colonel Bogey:

There seem to be just as many if not more instances of famous composers quoting others to humorous effect. One thinks of Saint-Saëns’ witty recompositions of (I am tempted to say improvements on) Offenbach and Berlioz in his Carnaval des Animaux; Stravinsky’s outrageous quotation of Schubert’s first Marche Militaire towards the end of his Circus Polka for a Young Elephant; Satie’s unexpected inclusion of the middle section of Chopin’s funeral march in his Embryons Desséchés, accompanied by the customarily absurd acknowledgement, “Citation de la célèbre mazurka de Schubert”… Perhaps the wittiest of all is Debussy’s inclusion of the opening of Wagner’s Tristan prelude in the “Golliwogg’s Cakewalk” from Children’s Corner. It communicates so much of Debussy’s warmth. Jokes in Wagner’s music are scarce. Compare and contrast:

Jazz presents all manner of possibilities for jokey recompositions of classical music. Names like Jacques Loussier and Uri Caine spring to mind. Stéphane Grappelli and Eddie South’s interpretation of Bach’s double concerto with the Hot Club of France is a favourite. Perhaps most joyous are the arrangements of the Belgian pianist Clément Doucet, who with Jean Wiener formed the piano duo at the Parisian salon Le Boeuf sur le Toit, where Cocteau and Les Six traditionally congregated. Doucet’s stride piano version of Isolde’s Liebestod has to be heard to be believed. This is a performance by the immortal Marc-André Hamelin of Doucet’s take on Chopin:

Deliberately bad composition is another source of amusement. There are Saint-Saëns’ Pianists practising their scales, either well or not depending on the performance, and an embarrassingly incompetent violinist at the end of “Wie lange schon war immer mein Verlangen” from Wolf’s Italienisches Liederbuch. Pieces which exploit the possibilities of wrong-note composition such as Schnittke’s delightful (K)ein Sommernachtstraum, which begins as a sedate pastiche of the Viennese Classical composers and quickly deteriorates into chaos, are fun.

And of course, one doesn’t need musical instruments to be funny. Rowan Atkinson, one of the most gifted physical comedians of this or any age, has in his repertoire not only a marvellous interpretation of Beethoven but also this. He is evidently possessed of an innate musicality:

I wondered if much had been written about music and humour before. Alongside the inevitable journal and magazine articles, there is this transcript of one of Leonard Bernstein’s celebrated Young People’s Concerts. The examples he chooses are excellent – Prokofiev Classical Symphony, Kodály Háry János (sneeze), Mahler 1 (minor-key Frère Jacques, drunken klezmer clarinettist), Rameau Poule… One can buy a box set of 25 of these television programmes, happily preserved for posterity, on Region 1 DVD. Twenty years after his death, Bernstein’s ability to educate and inspire is still greatly missed.

I haven’t reached comic song yet. Watch this space…