kultural korner (a kwik reflektion)

Each year, the BBC Proms inspire in me a fit of dissatisfaction with anything other than "classical" music that lasts for a couple of months before I return to my usual mixture of Meat Loaf and Monteverdi, Loreena McKennitt and Alison Kraus, Shostakovich and Bob Seger . . . You get the idea.

This year, though, my "classical" binge has gone on for far longer than usual: between the end of the Proms and now, I'd be surprised if I've played a half-dozen non-"classical" albums. I've discovered that, beyond the Beeb, there are sites galore which allow you to listen to music by composers of whom you -- or, to be more accurate, I -- have never heard, some of whom prove to be astonishingly damnfine. Just for starters, try last.fm and, astonishingly, myspace.com.

In the midst of this binge, I've discovered some Truths. Here are a few:

(1) While bits of Mozart are astonishingly wonderful, far too many of them are just plain irritating.

(2) Whatever it was that Schoenberg so wonderfully discovered about sound, Berg didn't.

(3) Beethoven should have left vocal composition well alone.

(4) At least 50% -- probably more like 70% -- of the very best of liturgical compositions are Stabat Maters.

(5) There are more Bachs in heaven and earth, Horatio.

(6) Most of Hovhaness's audiences are stuck in elevators.

(7) If you have not heard Gliere's Symphony #3 , anything by the Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain, the sonatas of Anna Bon, Arutiunian's Trumpet Concerto, and several hundred other things whose names and composers I cannot offhand remember (think Boccherini, Tartini, Druschetzky, Cherubini, Dutilleux, Graupner), your life is emptier than it should be.

(8) Richard Thompson is not without his merits.

jus' wondering

Tony Blair has today been defending in front of the Chilcott Inquiry his decision to support the invasion of Iraq on the grounds that, after all, the world's a better place without Saddam Hussein.

That this is so is difficult to dispute.

What none of the entirely unbiased members of the Inquiry seems to have thought worth asking is this: Is the world a better place without all of the other one frigging million Iraqis killed in consequence of Blair's self-righteously defended war?

You've got the blood of the innocent on your hands, Blair. When people ask how it got there, don't insult us by answering a different question.