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Nevaeh ot Yawriats

Posted in Bad Statistics, Music, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , on July 12, 2012 by telescoper

I just remembered hearing this a while ago at a public talk given by Simon Singh. I guess many of you will have come across it before, but there’s no harm in repeating it. I don’t know why it popped into my head at this particular moment, but perhaps it’s because I’ve been reading some stuff about how my colleagues in gravitational wave research use templates to try to detect specific patterns in noisy data. The method involves cross-correlating a simulated signal against the data until a match is obtained; the problem is often how to assess the probability of  a “chance” coincidence correctly and thus avoid spurious detections. The following might perhaps be a useful warning that unless you do this carefully, you only get out what you put in!

This is an excerpt from the classic  track Stairway to Heaven, by the popular beat combo Led Zeppelin, played backwards. I suggest that you listen to it once without looking at the words on the video, and then again with the words in front of you. If you haven’t heard/seen  it before, I think you’ll find it surprising…

Of course the proper way to interpret (or dismiss) matches like this is to use tools based on  Bayesian inference….

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Dr Dee

Posted in History, Music, Opera, The Universe and Stuff with tags , , , , , on July 10, 2012 by telescoper

Last Friday evening, after my afternoon shift at the Royal Society Summer Exhibition, I took the chance to go and see something a bit different, in the shape of English National Opera’s production of  Dr Dee at the Coliseum. I hadn’t really known what to expect of this beforehand, actually, but needed to find a bit of distraction in London and was fortunately able to persuade my lovely friends Joao and Kim to come with me to try it out.

Dr Dee is based on the life of John Dee, the famous Elizabethan mathematician, astrologer, courtier, and spymaster. Written by Mr Damon Albarn, former lead singer of the popular beat combo Blur, it’s not exactly an opera but more of a renaissance-style pageant depicting the life of this mysterious character in a series of dramatic tableaux. Not being at all naturalistic in style it would have been quite difficult to follow what was going on without the programme notes, but each episode was brilliantly realised with dramatic staging, dancing and stunning visual effects. Rufus Norris was responsible for the overall direction of the piece. Hat’s off to him. I wasn’t really expecting the music to be so interesting, either; mixing pop vocals with orchestral music from the period could have been awful, but actually I warmed to it very quickly.

An influential polymath, Dee was, for a time, a trusted confidante of Elizabeth I and he was recruited by Sir Francis Walsingham to set up a network of informants and decipher Catholic codes in the build-up to the attempted invasion of England by the Spanish Armada. Dee is also purported to be the inspiration behind Prospero in Shakespeare’s The Tempest. What’s particularly interesting about him from an historical perspective is that lies at the crossroads between magic and science. A gifted mathematician, Dee developed an obsession for the occult after meeting a very dodgy character called Edward Kelly, who persuaded Dee that he could talk to angels in their own language with the help of a crystal ball, a technique known as scrying. Dee eventually went mad and was alienated not only from Elizabethan society but also from his own family. Had he lived at a slightly different time, he could well have ended up burned as a heretic. His story reminds us that the distinction between rationality and irrationality has not always been so clear. Alchemy and the occult could co-exist in many great minds alongside mathematics and empirical study so it should not surprise us that science and pseudoscience both seem able to thrive in modern culture.

The run of Dr Dee at ENO has now ended, but I’m definitely glad I plucked up the courage to go and see it. It’s a truly imaginative work and produced a memorable theatrical experience.

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Trouble in Mind

Posted in Jazz with tags , on July 10, 2012 by telescoper

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Stravinsky, Dutilleux and Beethoven at RWCMD

Posted in Music with tags , , , , , , , on June 30, 2012 by telescoper

I’m a bit ashamed to admit that, although I’ve lived in Cardiff for almost five years now, last night was the first time I’ve ever been inside the Royal Welsh College of Music and Drama, which is situated by the side of Bute Park. The occasion that took me there was a concert in the fine Dora Stoutzker Hall by the Orchestra of Welsh National Opera  under the baton of Lothar Koenigs. When I arrived for a quick glass of wine before the concert there was some nice jazz playing in the lobby which made me which I’d got there sooner, but that wouldn’t have been possible because there was a leaving do had to attend beforehand. I didn’t catch the names of the musicians but I guess they were students from the College.

Anyway, the first half of the programme for the evening consisted of a short piece called Ragtime by Igor Stravinsky and a longer suite called Mystère de l’instant by Henri Dutilleux. The first item was played by a small subset of the Orchestra and involved only 11 instruments, including a cymbalom. Written around 1918, Ragtime is Stravinsky’s personal reaction to his experience of American popular music. It’s a quirky and entertaining piece, clearly influenced by ragtime and jazz, especially in Stravinsky’s deployment of  lots of interesting rhythmic devices, whilst remaining quintessentially Stravinsky.

After a bit of reorganization of the stage a larger section of the orchestra, still including the cimbalom, returned to play the Dutilleux piece.  This was another work that was new to me. I found it absolutely gripping. It consists of a series 10 relatively short pieces played without interruption, each of which has its own distinct identity. Overall, this work put my in mind of a gallery full  abstract paintings, each having it’s own palette and texture, and the whole effect being rather cryptic and undefinable. You can actually hear a performance on Youtube here, which I heartily recommend if you’ve never heard this work in full before.

The hall at RWCMD is much smaller that at St David’s and with a seat just a few rows back from the stage I had no difficulty reading the music the violinists were playing. It’s clearly a very demanding work, pushing the limits of not only the string instruments but also the rest of orchestra. When the interval arrived I nipped to the gents for some much-needed micturition and found two of the musicians doing the same thing. I asked if the piece was as difficult to play as it looked from the music. He said “yes”…

One of the excellent things about Lothar Koenig’s choice of programme for the Orchestra of WNO is that he’s very good at choosing contrasting pieces that work very well together. After the interval we returned to a much more familiar work, the Symphony No. 4 in B flat Op. 60 by Ludwig van Beethoven. This piece is much better known than the others we heard last night but it’s worth saying a couple of things about it. The first is that Beethoven wrote it extremely quickly, over a few months in 1806. I find that pretty astonishing in itself for such a beautifully crafted piece. The other thing is that its opening – an elegaic Adagio passage – would have seemed very unconventional at the time it was written, even more so because it suddenly leaps into a jaunty Allegro for the rest of the first movement. There’s a tranquil Adagio second movement, but the rest of the symphony is filled with that sense of purposeful exuberance in which Beethoven was something of a specialist.

The 4th Symphony isn’t as well known as the 3rd and the 5th, perhaps because it’s a bit less fiery, but the full Orchestra of Welsh National Opera gave it the  vigorous and characterful performance it deserves, while the rest of the programme reminded us that classical music didn’t end with Beethoven!

And that was the end of a very enjoyable evening. Leaving the RWCMD I discovered that the gate into Bute Park was still open – the gates usually close at twilight – so I was able to take the short cut home to Pontcanna.

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A Little Bit of Hummel

Posted in Music with tags , , , on June 24, 2012 by telescoper

I came across this bit of music a while ago. It appears in the very first (pilot) episode of the detective series Lewis. You can find it at the start of this clip and later on about 6.30 into the clip. It’s the central Andante movement of a Trumpet Concerto by Johann Nepomuk Hummel, of whom I knew nothing at all before hearing his name on this programme.

It turns out that Hummel is actually a leading figure in the history of classical music and in his own lifetime was every bit as famous as Haydn and Beethoven; he was a pallbearer at the latter’s funeral, in fact. He died in 1837 with his musical reputation apparently secure, but was quickly forgotten. Always a bit overshadowed by Mozart, when the romantic era dawned Hummel’s classical style was considered extremely old-fashioned. It’s just another illustration of a fact that applies not only in music but also in many different spheres of activity: popularity in one’s own lifetime is by no means certain to turn into renown thereafter…

I don’t usually like the sound of the classical trumpet that much- I prefer the broader and more expressive way the instrument is used in Jazz, whether it’s the brassy brilliance of Dizzy Gillespie or the moody melancholia of Miles Davis – but this piece is really lovely, especially when played with beautiful clarity by Norwegian trumpeter Tine Thing Helseth.

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My Little Suede Shoes

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , , on June 23, 2012 by telescoper

If this wonderful video is anything to go by, the late great Johnny Griffin had splendid taste in footwear..as he got these shoes from Charlie Parker himself.

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Mozart and Strauss, and the End of Term

Posted in Music with tags , , , , on June 16, 2012 by telescoper

Yesterday (Friday 15th June) was officially the last day of teaching term at Cardiff University. I think most of our students toddled off  some time ago when their last exams were finished,  so for us on the staff side the teaching term has fizzled out gradually rather than go out with a bang. Yesterday I met with a couple of next year’s project students to give them some background reading to do over the summer and that was that for another year of undergraduate teaching.

There was something of an “end-of-term” feeling too to last night’s concert at St David’s Hall, which was also broadcast live on BBC Radio 3; you can listen to it yourself by clicking on that second link. This was not only the last concert of the 2011/12 season by the BBC National Orchestra of Wales, but also  last concert at St David’s Hall to be conducted by Thierry Fischer, who has been principal conductor for the BBC NOW for the past six years. Next year Thomas Søndergård will take over.The concert turned out to be a fitting finale to the season and a fine farewell to Thierry Fischer.

The first item on the agenda was Mozart’s Piano Concerto No. 22 played by none other than the wonderful Angela Hewitt.  I wasn’t all that familiar with this piece beforehand, and was surprised to see such a large orchestra on stage before the start. Apparently  this work was the first time Mozart had used clarinets in a piano concerto, and the larger force than I’d normally have associated with a Mozart piece of this type gave the performance a much more opulent sound than I’d expected. It’s an interesting work, with a particularly fine Andante second movement which is both sombre and expansive sandwiched between two quicksilver Allegro movements, the last being a kind of rondo. Angela Hewitt played it with crisp elegance and perfect articulation. Some people find her playing a bit fussy and punctilious, and indeed there were times when I thought the performance could have had a bit more fire in it, but for my part it was a treat to get the chance to see a great artist in the flesh; she has an engaging presence on stage too, clearly enjoying the performance, and smiling from time to time in appreciation at the orchestral playing. We even got a nice little solo encore, which is quite unusual for a live broadcast from St David’s.

Then there was an interval so we could all check the football score, and guzzle a quick glass of overpriced wine before returning to hear the Alpine Symphony, Op. 64 by Richard Strauss. If the orchestra for Part 1 had been large by Mozartian standards, then this one was immense! Well over a hundred musicians, with a huge brass section (supplemented by many more standing off-stage and just visible to me through an open door), harps, percussion (including cow bells and a wind machine), and some unusual instruments including a Heckelphone (what the heck?…). Oh, and the fine organ in St David’s Hall got a full workout too.

Strictly speaking, this is not actually a symphony; it’s more of a tone poem. But Strauss was rather good at them and this one is a wonderful evocation of a day’s journey in the Bavarian Alps, from a resplendent dawn to a tranquil sunset, with summits to be scaled, thunderstorms to be endured, glaciers to be traversed, and so on. It’s certainly a very vivid piece of programmatic music.

As you might have inferred from huge band gathered on stage, this is a work that gets very loud, especially when the organist literally pulls out all the stops. What was especially fine about the performance was that, although the musicians of BBC NOW weren’t afraid to give it some welly whenever it was called for, their playing never became wild or ragged. I don’t know what it sounded like on the radio, but it was a thrilling experience to be in the hall.  I lost count of the number of towering crescendo passages, and just let the waves of wonderful noise wash over me. At times I could feel it through my feet too.

There were cheers at the end, and a standing ovation for Thierry Fischer not only for this performance but for his service to the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.  And that brought the term and the season to a close; both start again in late September 2012. There are some cracking concerts in store in the next season in St David’s Hall.

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To the dark, and the endless skies….

Posted in Music with tags , on June 14, 2012 by telescoper

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Port of Call

Posted in Jazz with tags , , , , on June 9, 2012 by telescoper

This morning I was listening to a classic jazz album recorded in 1960 (in New York City) and called The World of Cecil Taylor. I’ve had for a very long time, but haven’t listened to it for ages. I don’t know why that is, because it’s brilliant. I haven’t posted much about Cecil Taylor on here so I thought I’d do a quick post about it with a sample in the form of my favourite track, Port of Call.

The 1960s saw a number of crucial innovations in the development of jazz, e.g. removing the bar stucture, making improvisations no longer dependent upon recurrent chordal patterns, and getting rid of fixed tempos. Looking back of the evolutionary history of this music, it’s clear that this album should be placed right at the spot where the old coalesced with the new. Throughout, Cecil Taylor’s solos are built by mixing paraphrases of thematic elements with very free improvisation but on Port of Call you can see more obviously signs of the transition between past and future. On the whole, this track conforms more closely to past keyboard transitions than the others: Taylor’s solo divides cleanly into 8-bar segments, with his left hand accentuating the harmonic shifts while his right supplies the melody. But there are also dazzling parallel runs which still sound strikingly modern and which few pianists could pull off so effortlessly at such a fast tempo. His total command of the instrument allows his imagination to find expression through it. Idea after idea comes flooding out as his solo progresses, quicksilver clusters of notes falling like heavy rain on crystal. Awesome.

P.S. The other members of the trio are Buell Neidlinger on bass and Dennis Charles on drums.

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The Rain Falls Down

Posted in Music with tags , on June 3, 2012 by telescoper

The rain falls down on last year’s man, 
that’s a jew’s harp on the table, 
that’s a crayon in his hand. 
And the corners of the blueprint are ruined since they rolled 
far past the stems of thumbtacks 
that still throw shadows on the wood. 
And the skylight is like skin for a drum I’ll never mend 
and all the rain falls down amen 
on the works of last year’s man. 

I met a lady, she was playing with her soldiers in the dark 
oh one by one she had to tell them 
that her name was Joan of Arc. 
I was in that army, yes I stayed a little while; 
I want to thank you, Joan of Arc, 
for treating me so well. 
And though I wear a uniform I was not born to fight; 
all these wounded boys you lie beside, 
goodnight, my friends, goodnight. 

I came upon a wedding that old families had contrived; 
Bethlehem the bridegroom, 
Babylon the bride. 
Great Babylon was naked, oh she stood there trembling for me, 
and Bethlehem inflamed us both 
like the shy one at some orgy. 
And when we fell together all our flesh was like a veil 
that I had to draw aside to see 
the serpent eat its tail. 

Some women wait for Jesus, and some women wait for Cain 
so I hang upon my altar 
and I hoist my axe again. 
And I take the one who finds me back to where it all began 
when Jesus was the honeymoon 
and Cain was just the man. 
And we read from pleasant Bibles that are bound in blood and skin 
that the wilderness is gathering 
all its children back again. 

The rain falls down on last year’s man, 
an hour has gone by 
and he has not moved his hand. 
But everything will happen if he only gives the word; 
the lovers will rise up 
and the mountains touch the ground. 
But the skylight is like skin for a drum I’ll never mend 
and all the rain falls down amen 
on the works of last year’s man.

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