Monday 18 April 2011

Counterpoint, Indeed

Seconds before Radio Four's musical quiz came on, whoever was presenting The World At One managed to pronounce the first syllable of "Haydn" to rhyme with "clay", to pronounce the first syllable of "Zadok" to rhyme with "car", and to attribute Zadok The Priest to Haydn. Time to widen the talent pool, Auntie. Time to let in people who cannot simply assume a place by birthright.

4 comments:

  1. We got our dose of him at the end of Mass a couple of weeks ago. I was going to ask Bill if we could have some every week, but I never got round to it. But did he introduce Mozart to his Masonic lodge, or was it the other way round? So why is he not subject to the censures on liturgical use that Mozart is?

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  2. Mozart introduced him, but he seems to have stayed hardly any time, if he was ever inititated.

    Handel to round off on Sunday, no doubt. From that Hanoverian triumphalist oratorio, but never mind, it's a great tune.

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  3. I was once told thatHhaydn only ever went to one lodge meeting, whereas of course Mozart's work is shot through with Masonic lore. But you would know better than I.

    That is what you do, knowing better. There is a reason why you are President of an SCR and your main Durham critic was kicked out of a JCR presidential election before nearly getting a student newspaper closed down by an alliance of the university, the police and the social services. Good luck to him in the law, doubt he will bothering you for a reference.

    Now, have you read Professor Geoffrey Hull's latest book, on liturgical traditionalism in conflict with overweening papal authority and how that conflict is nothing new? And why, since you have mentioned how the tune of Thine Be The Glory Comes From Judas Maccabeus, have we had nothing on Jacobitism from you for a while?

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  4. Oh, I wouldn't dignify him with the name of "critic".

    I have put off reading Hull until some time after Easter, but I am looking forward to it.

    As for Jacobitism, I am waiting to hear about a little something for publication. For now, I will say that the Hanoverian triumphalist tune at Easter is balanced by the coded Jacobite references in the lyrics of the Adeste at Christmas.

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