Peter Warlock - The Curlew

So, Peter Warlock (1894-1930) - here's someone you might call a 'character'. Composer, musicologist, critic, friend, champion then enemy of D.H.Lawrence, a man who enjoyed riding around naked on a motorbike, student of the occult and fan of the black magic of Aleister Crowley (he changed his name from Heseltine to Warlock), and, to quote Alan Partridge, part of a circle who were 'sex people'.

It's the latter which shows him up as being a bit on the vile side, especially if he happened to be your father. In the 1980s, years after pestering his elderly mother, former Christie's art expert turned gobby commentator Brian Sewell discovered that the father he never knew was Peter Warlock. Sewell, in his own words, was an illegitimate bastard, whose mother had been given a fiver by Warlock to have him aborted. Because he was one of those 'sex people', it seems as though Warlock handed out fivers quite frequently, and to the women who didn't spend the grubby note on a back street abortion, he just disowned them.

Sewell is justifiably angry and perfectly in his rights to tear Warlock's reputation to shreds. But as obnoxious as some of Warlock's actions may have been, Sewell is wrong to say that his old man was a 'minor composer', as in this interview. Having committed suicide aged 36, Peter Warlock almost certainly didn't reach his peak, but the originality of the music he did write has secured him a top spot in the development of British music in the early 20th century.

The five songs that make up The Curlew were written between 1916 and 1922, using poems by W.B.Yeats from two volumes of his poetry written at the turn of the 20th century - In the Seven Woods and The Wind Among the Reeds. Yeats grew up in County Sligo, where Curlews would have been a constant background sound, although very sadly not in the 21st century. When Warlock wrote the songs he was living in the middle of Wales, and again he would have been hearing Curlews all day long. Throughout the music you'll hear the instruments playing the cries of Curlews and Lapwings (peewits), and there's an unsettling and desolate bleakness to this whole musical texture evoking the wind-battered, barren uplands of Curlew territory.

For Yeats the poems were all about the melancholy of a young man trying to fall in love (God only knows what Warlock was thinking), you know, allegory and so on. Everything in art usually is about stuff like that. But who cares about that? Not me. I wish all these artists would just cheer up, for Christ's sake. It's not as though they have to go to work or anything.

I. He reproves of the Curlew

O Curlew, cry no more in the air,
Or only to the waters in the West;
Because your crying brings to my mind
Passion-dimm'd eyes and long heavy hair
That was shaken out over my breast:
There is enough evil in the crying of wind.

II. The lover mourns for the loss of love

Pale brows, still hands and dim hair,
I had a beautiful friend
And dreamed that the old despair
Would end in love in the end:
She looked in my heart one day
And saw your image was there;
She has gone weeping away.

III. The withering of the boughs

I cried when the moon was murmuring to the birds:
'Let peewit call and curlew cry where they will,
I long for your merry and tender and pitiful words,
For the roads are unending, and there is no place to my mind.'
The honey-pale moon lay low on the sleepy hill,
And I fell asleep upon lonely Echtge or streams.

[Refrain]
No boughs have withered because of the wintry wind;
The boughs have withered because I have told them my dreams.

I know of the leafy paths the witches take
Who come with their crowns of pearl and their spindles of wool,
And their secret smile, out of the depths of the lake;
I know where a dim moon drifts,
where the Danaan kind
Wind and unwind their dances when the light grows cool
On the island lawns, their feet where the pale foam gleams.

[Refrain]

I know of the sleepy country, where swans fly round
Coupled with golden chains, and sing as they fly.
A king and a queen are wandering there,
and the sound
Has made them so happy and hopeless, so deaf and so blind
With wisdom, they wander till all the years have gone by;
I know, and the curlew and peewit on Echtge of streams.

[Refrain]

V. He hears the cry of the sedge

I wander by the edge
Of this desolate lake
Where wind cries in the sedge:
Until the axle break
That keeps the stars in their round,
And hands hurl in the deep
The banners of East and West,
And the girdle of light is unbound,
Your breast will not lie by the breast
Of your beloved in sleep.


*

Iron Maiden - Rime of the Ancient Mariner

In 1984, when Steve Harris started work on Iron Maiden's fifth album Powerslave, I like to think that he foresaw the huge swelling of public opinion that would haemorrhage in anger at the injustice of crimes against our wildlife. I like to think that that's why he wrote Rime of the Ancient Mariner, as an allegory of the curse that shall befall any scumbag who pointlessly kills a bird as spectacular as an albatross.

That's what I like to think. I have no idea whether what I think is in anyway true. But that's great art, isn't it, it's all about individual interpretation - one man's rant against wildlife crime is just another man's excuse to wear spandex. And yes, Iron Maiden's Rime of the Ancient Mariner is great art.

On Saturday I went to Buxton to attend the first conference by Birders Against Wildlife Crime, BAWC. I watched in amazement as Chris Packham uncovered a copy of the Hay Wain by Constable, spraypainted over it, slashed it with a Stanley knife and then smashed it up on the floor. This subtle demonstration was to suggest that people seem to be totally, and justifiably, outraged by the vandalism of our cultural treasures, like Banksy's vandalism of beautiful brick walls, and yet don't seem to be as concerned by the equivalent vandalism of our natural treasures, like poisoned Golden Eagles.

I listened to Labour MP Chris Williamson and the Police and Crime Commissioner for Derbyshire Alan Charles get really wound up over wildlife crime, genuine concern that almost restored your faith in the reputations of the tainted institutions they represent. And, having finally met him, I was delighted to discover that Mark Avery is just as unruly in the flesh as he is in print and on his blog - he's a very naughty boy! I met over a hundred people from all over the country, of all ages and pretty much an equal gender split (though only one female speaker!) who defied the stereotype that people who care about stuff like this are vapid, disorganised and from the fringes of society.

And back to the music. Of all the bands I listened to when I was a wee kiddy, Maiden are really the only band I can still appreciate. In my late teens I had a revelation, like many do, that 99% of rock and pop music is sort of identical: verse - chorus - verse - chorus - instrumental interlude - final anthemic chorus - fade to silence. And it's usually about one of three subjects - going out and having a really good time, falling in love and having lots of sex, or falling out of love and not getting any sex anymore.

That's why Maiden and a song like Rime of the Ancient Mariner is so impressive. Its subject matter (the poem by Samuel Coleridge Taylor) and approach to musical form brings it close to what you would define as 'classical music'. Had Maiden dressed like penguins and ditched the sweat bands, they'd have easily passed as middle-class posho classical musos. Scruffy long hair is fine - just look at Simon Rattle and Gustavo Dudamel.

The lyrics (libretto?) are below, and the legendary live version from Long Beach Arena at the bottom - and no, it really isn't a Spinal Tap spoof.

So the message - just don't kill an albatross.

Hear the rime of the ancient mariner
See his eye as he stops one of three
Mesmerizes one of the wedding guests
Stay here and listen to the nightmares of the sea.

And the music plays on, as the bride passes by
Caught by his spell and the mariner tells his tale.

Driven south to the land of the snow and ice
To a place where nobody's been
Through the snow fog flies on the albatross
Hailed in God's name, hoping good luck it brings.

And the ship sails on, back to the North
Through the fog and ice and the albatross follows on.

The mariner kills the bird of good omen
His shipmates cry against what he's done
But when the fog clears, they justify him
And make themselves a part of the crime.

Sailing on and on and north across the sea
Sailing on and on and north 'til all is calm.

The albatross begins with its vengeance
A terrible curse a thirst has begun
His shipmates blame bad luck on the mariner
About his neck, the dead bird is hung.

And the curse goes on and on at sea
And the curse goes on and on for them and me.

"Day after day, day after day,
we stuck nor breath nor motion
as idle as a painted ship upon a painted ocean
Water, water everywhere and
all the boards did shrink
Water, water everywhere nor any drop to drink."

There calls the mariner
There comes a ship over the line
But how can she sail with no wind in her sails and no tide.

See, onward she comes
Onward she nears out of the sun
See, she has no crew
She has no life, wait but here's two.

Death and she Life in Death,
They throw their dice for the crew
She wins the mariner and he belongs to her now.
Then, crew one by one
they drop down dead, two hundred men
She, she, Life in Death.
She lets him live, her chosen one.

"One after one by the star dogged moon,
too quick for groan or sigh
each turned his face with a ghastly pang
and cursed me with his eye
four times fifty living men
(and I heard nor sigh nor groan)
with heavy thump, a lifeless lump,
they dropped down one by one."

The curse it lives on in their eyes
The mariner wished he'd die
Along with the sea creatures
But they lived on, so did he.

and by the light of the moon
He prays for their beauty not doom
With heart he blesses them
God's creatures all of them too.

Then the spell starts to break
The albatross falls from his neck
Sinks down like lead into the sea
Then down in falls comes the rain.

Hear the groans of the long dead seamen
See them stir and they start to rise
Bodies lifted by good spirits
None of them speak and they're lifeless in their eyes

And revenge is still sought, penance starts again
Cast into a trance and the nightmare carries on.

Now the curse is finally lifted
And the mariner sights his home
spirits go from the long dead bodies
Form their own light and the mariner's left alone.

And then a boat came sailing towards him
It was a joy he could not believe
The pilot's boat, his son and the hermit,
Penance of life will fall onto him.

And the ship sinks like lead into the sea
And the hermit shrives the mariner of his sins.

The mariner's bound to tell of his story
To tell this tale wherever he goes
To teach God's word by his own example
That we must love all things that God made.

And the wedding guest's a sad and wiser man
And the tale goes on and on and on.

*

Villa Lobos - Uirapuru (The Musican Wren)

August 2006, and I was in south-east Peru with my wife at the end of the Manu Road at Pantiacolla Lodge. On our last full day there, we decided to walk the entire length of the Mirador Trail up to the Shintuya viewpoint, a 5 hour walk through thick forest up to edge of the Andean foothills. And at the top, through a gap in the trees, we saw this

No exaggeration, but that view is quite literally the most amazing thing that exists anywhere in the entire universe and beyond. Fair enough, that last sentence was a massive exaggeration. The view's okay. But looking out from the viewpoint, you are on the very eastern edge of the Andes, and then below you the Amazon sprawls a couple of thousand miles all the way to the Atlantic coast of Brazil.

After eating a boiled egg and a couple of chicken legs, we set off back down the trail to the lodge, and as the sun set and all sorts of invisible and terrifying things starting screaming and grunting around us, near the bottom of trail we heard this




 
Now, this really is no exaggeration, but that song is quite literally the most amazing thing that exists anywhere in the entire universe and beyond. It's the song of a Musician Wren, and I've never heard a bird singing so impressively. I think what knocked me sideways when I heard the song (we then heard a few more elsewhere), was that they sing clearly audible musical notes, they're notes that we can interpret as being music - if you wanted, you could write a Musician Wren's song out onto manuscript paper. However, the order of notes, the rhythm and the phrase structures are totally alien to how humans compose music.

Uirapuru is the Brazilian name for a Musician Wren, a name that's instantly associated with fabled magical birds of legends and fantasies and myths and stories and all that other stuff that used to occupy people's time before the invention of the television and the internet machine. It's no wonder, having a song that's so unbelievably good, that Uirapurus are in many ways South America's equivalent of a Nightingale. Trust me, Nightingales are great singers, but Musician Wrens are even more greaterer. Sell a lung if necessary, but whatever you do, don't end up aged 92 in a care home watching back-to-back episodes of Murder She Wrote and Only Fools and Horses, without having been to South America to hear a live performance from a Musician Wren.

Brazilian composer Heitor Villa Lobos (1887-1959) was one of the last century's most original composers, and in a century which was full of people who were constantly trying to be "the most original composers of the century", it was a pretty impressive feat to become one of the most original composers of the last century. Does that make any sense? No, I thought not. New paragraph ...

Villa Lobos

In 1917, Villa Lobos had the first idea of writing a ballet based on a particular legend of the Uirapuru. He thought that by using a plot based on a native folk legend, it might catch the attention of Sergei Diaghilev in Paris, a lover of anything exotic, and the man behind the Ballets Russes who had helped to turn a number of young composers into global superstars, Stravinsky being the most famous.

It wasn't until 1935 that Uirapuru was finally performed, by which time Villa Lobos had dropped the idea of it being a ballet and presented it as a concert piece, but the ballet's plot still defines the structure of the music. The story is set amongst a native Amazonian tribe who wander deep into the forest lured by the song of the Musician Wren (which you'll hear on flute). A tribal girl finally tracks the bird down and watches it transform into a great male warrior, who can't have been all that great a warrior because he's killed and then transforms back into the Musician Wren.

I absolutely love this piece. And I hope you do too. Though if you don't I'll try not to lose too much sleep over it. I've got a couple more pieces of bird music by Villa Lobos to come later this year. So that's something to look forward to, unless you hate his music.

Rachmaninov - The sea and the gulls

Winter is about gulls. Nothing else matters. And in Britain and Ireland it's been an interesting winter for birders who like their gulls, well interesting if you like your birds dying of botulism and riddled with lice. There's been another Slaty-backed Gull

http://dermotbreen.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/slaty-backed-gull.html

... two Thayer's Gulls in Yorkshire

http://birdingfrontiers.com/2015/01/08/the-thayers-gull-in-west-yorkshire/

... a possible American Herring Gull in Yorkshire

http://timsbirding.blogspot.co.uk/2015/02/gulls.html

... and this thing in Cheshire is causing a big argument. Lots of people think it's an Audouin's, but I think it's a hideously deformed Herring Gull

https://twitter.com/rbnUK/status/574230931868884993


Unfortunately summer migrants are now arriving - nice birds that sing and don't throw up and die in front of you from having been drinking out of a tin of emulsion on a rubbish tip - and that means people will stop looking at gulls and return to a normal existence, away from rubbish tips and parking illegally to look in fields by dual carriageways. Roll on winter 2015-16.

Gorgeous

So, in tribute to the magic and wonder of gulls, here's the Études-Tableaux (Study Pictures) for solo piano by Sergei Rachmaninov (1873-1943). I'm only interested in the second étude from the second set, which he wrote in 1917, and that's because it's about birds, about gulls, and the others aren't about birds, so they're not worth listening to.

Rachmaninov said about the Study Pictures, that he shouldn't have to explain the inspiration behind them, that listeners should be left to imagine these things for themselves. But when the Italian composer Ottorino Respighi took a selection of the Study Pictures and arranged them for orchestra, Rachmaninov helped him along by letting him know what they were actually about. And this one is all about The Sea and the Gulls.

I don't know every single movement that Rachmaninov made in his life in Russia prior to writing these studies, but he did travel to America in 1909, and so I'm going to completely make all this up and say with 100% confidence that this piece is inspired by the sea and the gulls he saw on his trans-Atlantic crossing. In which case, he will have definitely seen American Herring Gulls, possibly seen Thayer's Gulls, and almost certainly will not have seen either Slaty-backed or Audouin's Gulls. But let's just lie and say he saw all four.

The first recording is of the original version for solo piano, and underneath is Respighi's orchestration.
 

Mahler - Symphony no.1

As I type this, it's actually snowing here in Glossop, even though it's officially spring. Well it is according to the Met Office. Summer migrants are on the way, and in the next couple of weeks there will be the first UK records of Wheatear, Sand Martin and Little Ringed Plover, and then by the end of the month they'll all start piling in. The average earliest arrival dates of summer migrants are listed here by the BTO.

There's about seven million pieces of music about spring, but the best (and I know this because I've listened to every single piece of music ever written about spring. Every one of them without exception), is the opening movement from the 1st Symphony by Gustav Mahler (1860-1911). Of course when I say it's the best, that was a throwaway sentence, next week I'll probably have another piece of bird-music about spring, and I'll say that's the best. The 'best' thing for you to do is to just dismiss everything I say.

The origins of Mahler's music about spring can be found in this song Ging heut Morgen übers Feld (I walked across the fields this morning). It's all about birds starting to sing, fields full of bluebells, and the world warming up and getting some colour back after a miserable winter. Have a listen to it, it's great, and there's a translation here. Mahler wrote that song in 1885 (it's from the Songs of a Wayfarer) and then used the melody in the first movement of this symphony, which he initially finished in 1888, but then over the next decade he made some big changes to it, until it arrived at the 1896 version which is played today.

Just in case the musical references to spring are too obscure, Mahler hammers the fact home for a quarter of an hour by having a Cuckoo singing throughout the whole movement. It first sings on clarinet after about two minutes in the video below, then you just can't shut it up.

As much as I love this piece, it's the Cuckoo that actually annoys me a bit. Cuckoos are brilliant, they're first class birds, but (and I'm aware that what I'm about to write makes me look like a bit of a twat) Mahler makes his Cuckoo sing the musical interval of a perfect fourth, whereas Cuckoos actually sing an interval of a major third. Honestly, have a listen to these Cuckoos on Xeno-Canto - from far eastern China, through Central Asia, Europe and right across to Scotland, they all sing a major third. Even Beethoven knew that, and he couldn't even hear anything. What's that, you don't care? Fair enough. Just enjoy the music then.