Though the music of both Schumann and Chopin similarly represent highly romantic, tuneful and expressionful pianism on a firm structure, Chopin vehemently rejected all attempts to hear stories in his music while Schumann positively courted such. This work, titled "Carnival Jest from Vienna" (and described as fantasy pictures in the Breitkopf edition), was largely composed in Vienna in 1839, towards the end of the long and frustrating battle with Clara Wieck's father who did everything he could to prevent her marriage to Schumann. In name and subtitle it harks back to "Carnaval", his earlier set of fantasy pictures and musical riddles composed in 1834/5 which we hear next, but its moods and its battles are different. Nor are these fantasy pictures named in the same way; they are more like the movements of a "grand romantic sonata", as he subsequently described it. (You will see the significance of the title when we come to Carnaval: (F(asch)ing(sch)w(a)nk).) It is in five movements. 1. Allegro (Very lively; B♭ major) by far the longest movement, a rondo in 3/4 time, notable for its innovative rhythms and a brief reference to "La Marseillaise". 2. Romanze (Rather slow; G minor) a short, simple, sad piece largely in G minor but resolving into G major for the final bar. 3. Scherzino, (B♭ major) a playful respite between the two sombre movements. 4. Intermezzo (With the greatest energy; E♭ minor) a slow melody against a rush of background notes. 5. Finale (To the highest degree lively; B♭ major) the sonata-form finale is reminiscent of Beethoven with the melody moving in both hands. This is the second longest movement.
Carnaval, Op. 9 (1834/5) is one of Schumann's most characteristic and frequently played works. The 24 year old Schumann was studying piano with Friedrich Wieck, a difficult man whose first wife divorced him. Schumann was secretly betrothed to a fellow pupil (17 year old Ernestine von Fricken). Carnaval is subtitled "Cute (or dainty) scenes on 4 notes". The 22 tiny sections mostly begin with musical cryptograms, possible because of the German names of notes (As=A♭, Es(=eS)=E♭,C=C, H=B♮; Fricken's family lived in Asch (Bohemia); Robert A SCHumann). Many of the "scenes" are named after a real or imaginary characters (Chopin, Paganini, Harlequin, Pierrot, Pantalon & Columbine, Ernestine herself and Clara Wieck (at 15 still only girl, though already famous throughout Europe). Eusebius (adagio) and Florestan (passionato) were two sides to Schumann's own personality. Other scenes were named preamble, valse noble, coquette etc. (Trying to identify them distracts the listener from the music.) The work ends with the triumphant "March of the band of King David's men against the Philistines" which represents an important element in the philosophy of Schumann's band of young music critics who recognized the genius of Chopin, Paganini, Mendelssohn, Berlioz and Bennett but resented the popularity of Cramer, Thalberg, Henri Herz, Czerny, Meyerbeer and others they classed as artistic Philistines.
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i. Grave-Doppio movimento, ii. Scherzo, iii. Marche funbre (Lento), iv. Finale (Presto)
This sonata, though finished at Nohant, was mainly composed during the miserable winter of 1839 in Majorca where Chopin had gone for his health with George Sand and her two children, though the third movement, famous for its 'funeral march', was composed two years earlier. The unmarried pair were not welcomed by the islanders and their eventual accommodation was stark; a deserted monastery. There is a bleak quality about the whole work lightened occasionally by contrasting lyrical sections, but a vigour and inventiveness also. (Chopin was working concurrently on his set of 24 preludes.) The extraordinary technical demands in this sonata never seem to be virtuosity for its own sake but seem absolutely necessary to carry the emotional content of the work. The first movement contains a highly agitated motif, a lyrical 2nd theme and a 3rd element in 6/4 time; then a fusion of all three elements. The agitation, the minor keys and the hammering octaves give the movement a somewhat brooding aura. The second movement (scherzo) opens as a devilish waltz with both hands hammering away in octaves, but contains contrastingly lyrical 'trio' sections (in G♭ major). The third movement begins and ends with the celebrated funeral march (in B♭ minor), but it also has a calm interlude (in D♭ major) reminiscent of the "raindrops" prelude of the same period. The finale is a bewildering and unremitting moto perpetuo of triplets in parallel octaves, without rhythm or harmony; or dynamic until the final two chords.
i. Allegro maestoso, ii. Scherzo: Molto vivace, iii. Largo,iv. Finale: Presto non tanto; Agitato
Chopin's 3rd (and last) piano sonata was written in 1844 towards the end of his happy years with George Sand at her country estate of Nohant. It is a vastly different work from the previous sonata; altogether sunnier; much bravura passage work but exuberant rather than shocking; and the lyrical passages so many and lovingly indulged as quite to dominate the whole work. It is far more often played than the opus 35 sonata.
(Programme notes compiled by Ian West, from numerous sources. )
It is well known that Felix Mendelssohn had a musical older sister (Fanny), but he also had a younger sister and an even younger brother, Paul, who followed their father into banking but who played the cello to a good standard as a hobby. Felix dedicating two cello works to him, today's op. 17 and op. 45, a sonata for cello and piano written in1838. (He also named his own son 'Paul', who became a distinguished organic chemist.) Today's opus 17 was composed early in 1829 when Paul was 17 and Felix, aged 20, was on the brink of his first visit to England, and at the same time that he was famously re-introducing the German public to Bach's choral music after its being forgotten for a century. The (French) word concertante signals a virtuosic piece showcasing solo instruments. There is an original theme followed by 8 variations, played without repeats (c.f. Mozart) and flowing seamlessly into one another. The first 7 variations are short; cello has the tune, piano has the tune, piu vivace, con fuoco, then the cello plays pizzicato and the piano seem to go off after two unrelated tunes. This is followed by a tranquil 6th and a minor 7th variation, ending with a little cadenza for the cello. The 8th is much longer, starting with a recapitulation of the tune but that is followed by an accelerando and some florid pianistics; and a quiet ending.
i. Allegro moderato, ii. Adagio, iii. Allegretto.
The Viennese guitar maker J.G. Staufer in 1823 invented an instrument he called the 'arpeggione' or 'bowed guitar'. Schubert's friend Schuster bought one and within a year had acquired a facility on the instrument. He urged (there is no evidence of a fee) Schubert to write a sonata for arpeggione and fortepiano that would exploit the instrument's special features; the tone was not as strong as that of a cello, but the six strings (tuned in 4ths and 3rds like a guitar) gave the instrument a wide range, and a facility with arpeggios. The frets minimized vibrato and gave the instrument a viol-like purity of pitch and tone. The sonata (in A minor) was finished in November 1824 (around the time of the "Death and the Maiden" quartet) but not published till 1871. No other work for the instrument survives and within 10 years the arpeggione was forgotten (though there is currently a revival, and contemporary instruments are being made.) However, the popularity of this sonata owes little or nothing to the instrument. It is 'suffering Schubert' at his most lyrical, with his piquant swings from sweet despair to forlorn gaiety.
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i. Allegro vivace, ii. Adagio affettuoso, iii. Allegro passionato, iv. Allegro molto.
This is Brahms' second sonata for cello and piano, written in 1886 after the completion of all 4 symphonies, and with the 53 year-old Brahms in mid career; successful, popular, single, gruff. Like the 3rd symphony completed in 1883, this sonata is in F. Its inspiration was probably the cello playing of Robert Hausmann (cellist in the Joachim quartet). The first movement, in F major and 3/4 time, opens with tremendous energy. The bustling, almost orchestral, piano writing supports wonderfully sustained tunes in the cello. There soon appear Brahms' signature cross-rhythms, and contrasting quieter passages. The second movement, in the (technically) remote key of F sharp (i.e. raised a semitone), opens with the cello providing a pizzicato accompaniment, but eventually it is the sustained lyricism of the cello that sets the tone of the movement; it is less outwardly compelling that the 1st movement, and requires more concentration from the listener. The third movement is essentially a 'Scherzo', opening and closing in F minor but with a central 'Trio' section in F major. The last movement opens sweetly on the cello. The piano imitates, but after a few bars gets distracted by a tempestuous piano subplot. These two elements play off each other energetically; emotion perfectly structured; the height of European romanticism.
(Programme notes compiled by Ian West, from numerous sources. )
The West, I mean the non-Chinese world, is in danger of hustling Liu Xiao-Bo into a martyrdom that is more dramatic than the merely heroic stance he intended. To spend 11 years in prison, from age 54 to 65 is a heavy sentence; but perhaps even that is not heavy enough for the ghouls who rub their hands and gloat at the awfulness of the Chinese regime. 'We few, we happy few' who live under representative democracy with a free press, and central heating, are well cushioned against the realities of life in the monolithic communist or ex-communist states of China and Russia, and remain happily ignorant of those realities. We flaunted capitalism and encouraged the dismantling of the Russian communist machine with whoops of triumphant glee, and look at the devastation that has resulted! Are we now setting-to to repeat that devastation in China?
How many of our experts in democracy and penmanship remember the Taiping rebellion, and the awful success of the messianic Hong Xiu-Quan, self-styled brother of Jesus, who stormed through southern China in the mid-nineteenth century in an attempt to establish the 'Heavenly Kingdom of Great Peace' ? Millions slain, 20 million dead. Or even the more recent 20-year long struggle between Chiang Kai-Shek and Mao Ze-Dong when "more than a million died"? China is a different place, with a different history, and above all a different psychology. It is foolish, presumptuous, and dangerous, to interfere; to inject little bits of 'foreign' thinking into a country that has for millennia governed itself by its own laws for its own perceived benefits.
It is not since 'time immemorial' (which, incidentally, is defined as 1189 A.D.) that we in Britain have enjoyed free speech; that is a relatively recent innovation. Today we can call for the abolition of the monarchy, if we want to, or make jokes about the prime minister, because no-one will pay any attention. Some person could doubtless call himself the younger brother of Jesus without raising a revolution, or much more than a frown. During the 17th century that would have been a step too far. In 1697 the 20 year old Edinburgh student Thomas Aikenhead was hung for 'blasphemy'; it was a cold night and the lad, walking home from a drinking session, said he wished he were in the place Ezra called 'hell' so he could warm himself. Even riding into Bristol in front of a crowd of enthusiasts crying "Holy, holy, holy" got James Nayler thrown into prison in 1656. However, both these punishments can be judged as harsh, even for their times, because, though people were offended, neither episode led to armed rebellion, public disorder, or loss of life.
I doubt that "freedom of speech" was ever won by violent protest; it is surely won by exactly the opposite; by quiet listening and mature reflection. So, instead of clamouring about Liu Xiao-Bo, crying "holy, holy, holy", and placing medals on empty chairs, why don't we indulge in a little mature reflection. Charter 08 draws attention to the fact that the Chinese government signed two important international human rights conventions in 1998; in 2004 it amended its constitution to include the phrase "respect and protect human rights"; in 2008 it promised to promote a "national human rights action plan." So, what is that action plan? We are listening.
Occidentis, MORPETH
(Please comment direct to Cawstein@gmail.com)
(Born: 1926; FRS: 1974; Died: 22nd Nov 2010)
It will be well known that Professor Kenneth Burton was made a Fellow of the Royal Society in 1974 (incidentally, the same year as Stephen Hawking); a distinction that marked him as lying in the top 1,200 scientists in Britain, at that time. I see it as my first objective to explain, in non-technical terms, what Kenneth's achievements amounted to that were so valued by his peers, and what mental qualities and circumstances allowed Ken to make those contributions. I shall then refer briefly to his years as Professor of Biochemistry at Newcastle, and end by quoting a short paragraph from Professor George Petersen, Kenneth's second research student and a lifelong friend.
The American golfer, Arnold Palmer, famously remarked that the more he practiced the luckier he became. In this sense there is an element of luck in science as well as in sport. Many scientists have one stroke of luck; geniuses like Sir Hans Krebs strike lucky over and over throughout their lives. Kenneth Burton had three occasions when he struck lucky.
The best known of these was his citation classic of 1956 in which he described a sensitive and reproducible assay of DNA which proved so popular that it is known as "the Burton Method". This paper has been cited by other scientists 17,000 times, and is still being cited 50 years later; that is some 1000 times more often quoted than the average scientific paper. His 'stroke of genius' on that occasion was to leave the half-completed assay tubes on the bench overnight instead of staying late and finishing the experiment properly. Ken Burton observed that the colours developed by themselves overnight much better than by the traditional protocol. He next observed that the colours that developed with Chicago acetic acid did not develop in Oxford. Well, that was the serendipitous part; the rest of the achievement was having the curiosity and the ready mind to interpret and exploit the observations; for example, by adding acetaldehyde that presumably contaminated the Chicago acetic acid. [Burton K. (1956) Biochem. J. 62, 315 - 20; "A study of the conditions and mechanism of the dipehnylamine reaction for the colorimetric estimation of deoxyribonucleic acid."]
Much more important, scientifically speaking, was Ken's paper of the previous year in which he showed that viral DNA synthesis (in bacteria) required viral proteins to be synthesised first. This is a very fundamental point in understanding viruses, and of course anti-viral medicines. Virus reproduction requires viral proteins.[Burton, K. (1955) Biochem. J. 61, 473–483; Relation between the synthesis of deoxyribonucleic acid and the synthesis of protein in the multiplication of bacteriophage T2.]
It is argueable, however, that Ken Burton's greatest achievement was his publication of the following year, i.e. of 1957. He wrote an appendix to a massive paper by Krebs and Kornberg, in which he calculated and listed the free-energies of formation of all the compounds of energy metabolism, from the sugar we eat to the CO2 we breath out, and everything in between. Things fall downwards, in biochemistry as in every other field. Ken's tabulation allows us to see which direction is downwards (in this metaphor.) It allows us to understand why thing happen, everything, from the contraction of muscle to the synthesis of protein. Countless students of biochemistry learn and quote the values from that table and never realize they are quoting Ken Burton. Were it possible to count citations in this case I think it would run to millions.[Krebs HA, Kornberg HL, Burton K (1957) Ergebnisse der Physiologie; 49: 212-298; "A survey of the energy transformations in living matter"]
Some of this may be news to Ken's friends, for I never heard Ken talking proudly about his successes. He was a singularly un-boastful man. Most of us are motivated, at least in part, by self-love, prestige, and scoring over ones contemporaries. This can get so bad, in a mediocre department, that one person's success is generally bemoaned, as implying failure for the rest. Ken rose above that. His objectives were more remote, more absolute; he was motivated, I think, less by the glory of doing science, than simply by the fun of it. Characteristically he liked to tell, not of his fame, but the story of a failure, or of bad luck; of how he missed identifying the role of co-enzyme A in citric acid synthesis, thus allowing Fritz Lipmann to announce that discovery a year or two later and share the 1953 Nobel prize with Hans Krebs. Ken's mistake (he said), on that occasion, was too much veneration for the opinions of colleagues; a fault I believe he subsequently corrected![Novelli G. D., Lipmann F. (1950) J. Biol. Chem. 182:213–228.]
Ken's were significant achievements! But why did they happen to Ken Burton? Well, he was very sharp; he was well grounded in chemistry, physics and maths (his undergraduate subjects); he had a roving curiosity, a sense of enjoyment in science, and persistence. He studied for his PhD under a master of benchwork biochemistry in Malcolm Dixon; a legendary enzymologist, an intensely shy man, but a very considerable pianist . It was said of Malcolm Dixon that he was as happy fixing a gas boiler as doing biochemistry. When Kenneth moved to Sheffield in 1949 he came under the mantle of one of the worlds great scientists; Hans Krebs was hard-working, methodical but imaginative. He was remarkable amongst scientific bosses in not letting his name get onto the papers of colleagues merely because he was their boss. Krebs encouraged Ken's independence of mind. Kenneth was remarkable too, in a similar way, in that a high proportion of his papers were single author papers. He did his own thinking and his own experiments. Medawar pointed out that to achieve a big answer you have to tackle a big problem; Krebs gave Ken Burton access to the big question of Free Energies.
Following those 3 classic papers of the mid fifties Ken Burton followed two other major projects, with equal tenacity and skill, but to less acclaim. He and his students followed up the diphenylamine reaction for several years, developing methods for cleaving the long threads of intact DNA in the hope of finding a way of determining the sequence of bases and thus "reading" the genes. In this they initially had some success. Last year, in her Nobel acceptance speech, Elizabeth Blackburn admitted using Ken Burton's depurination reaction in her 1975 investigations of "satellite DNA". But much more powerful methods of sequencing were developed by others and "Burton's depurination method" has been forgotten.
[Burton K. (1965) Essays Biochem. 1, 57-89. Sequence determination in nucleic acids.].
In 1966 Ken Burton became the first professor of Biochemistry at Newcastle upon Tyne. Designing the course and selecting staff took over his time and energies, but did not completely prevent active research, nor indeed bench work. Ken soon started an investigation into the mechanism by which adenine is actively taken up by bacteria, a project he pursued almost single-handedly till retirement. It was not fashionable. ('Bacteria take up everything; so what?') The trend in science was towards progressively bigger research groups getting more and more of the money. With great ingenuity and a "shoestring", Ken eventually brought the subject to a satisfactory conclusion with his last scientific paper in 1994, identifying a gene and proposing a proton-linked uptake and intense product inhibition.
[Burton K. (1994) Proc. R. Soc. Lond. B; 255:153-7; Adenine transport in Escherichia coli.]
I have tried to show Kenneth Burton the scientist; but that is only one aspect of the whole man. I understood that Ken had enjoyed building the department from scratch but had found the deeply entrenched Medical Faculty aloof, if not actually hostile. Successful integration of Biochemistry into the Medical School only came in 1985 when Ken was Dean of Science. "Prof Burton" was universally regarded as completely fair, singularly unaffected by egotism, unusually given (for a head of Department) to working at the bench, and an enthusiastic walker. Malcolm Page, who did his PhD with Ken and subsequently worked with me, writes: "Having now supervised a few students myself, I realize what a special quality [Ken] had and I have endeavoured to give my students the same freedom". Thus we see the baton passed on.
George Petersen, one of Kenneth Burton's first research students and a lifelong friend has written a charming and well balanced personal tribute from which I shall quote a short paragraph. It shows how well George knew Kenneth. Professor Petersen writes:
"Kenneth Burton had an endearingly impish sense of humour and many little human quirks. In conversation, he had a disconcerting way of drifting off while speaking and going into some sort of trance. Whether he actually lost consciousness, I don't know. But, after a short interval of gazing into space, he would return to continue the conversation as though nothing had happened. And it has to be said that he was not the world's most lucid lecturer. Basil Smith, another DPhil student in Ken's laboratory, once said, "Ken could mystify for England". Perhaps this was part of the same phenomenon. Ken told us once that, after a lecture, he could not recall much of what he had said and could only conclude that he had fallen asleep during his own lecture."
I concur, but would not have dared say it.
Ian West, 12 Longhirst,This 'Tuition Fee Fiasco' is threatening to become the present government's 'Poll Tax'; a tax however sensible, that is so misunderstood and loathed it has to be revoked. Heads and windows are being broken and thousands of well intentioned youngsters are wasting time and energy protesting, but in ignorance of the true nature of "the beast".
Shaun Ley on 'World at One' (Thursday 9th Dec., 2010) tried over and again to get the coalition minister Danny Alexander to explain how the present proposals for student loans is progressive; i.e. how it comes harder on the better off than on the less well off. Shaun Ley could not see it. The minister could not explain it, so he quoted the Institute for Fiscal Studies. "No!" said Shaun Ley, "I am asking you, as Minster." It turns out that we (the public) don't yet know enough of the detail to make a sensible decision. Let us hope that Parliament does.
The media flash a headline, alarmist or scoffing depending on the political colour of the owner. But they seldom give us the proposals. I think this could be done quite simply in a 10 x 10 cm2 advert; not the analysis, justification, spin, excuses, apologies, etc.; just the proposals.
The Institute of Fiscal Studies does a good job, in websites that are available, but not accessible, to all. Even there one has to read between the lines ("we calculate that total the taxpayer burden.. " presumably means "…the total taxpayer burden.. "); and guess at the meaning of 'levy', 'discount' etc.
It turns out that the 'fairness' question hinges on [1] the rate at which the loan is paid back (9% of earnings), [2] the interest rate that is charged on the outstanding loan for every point on the salary scale above £21,000 pa, below which no money need be repaid, and [3] the number of years after which the debt is wiped (30). Without this information the question cannot be discussed as to of how "Fair" or "Progressive" the education burden is. Given only a 30 second 'sound-bite' the best that ministers can do is to shout over and over that "the bottom 25% of students will be better off", and that education is "free at the point of use", till they are hoarse and we are bored.
Nothing is free. The government's proposals aim to place the cost of education on the presumed beneficiaries. But the entire discussion presupposes that the 'benefit' of an education is a financial benefit to the educated. Were that the case, the proposals make a lot of sense. The system would adjust; graduate salaries would presumably rise to allow the loan repayments. But is that the only 'benefit', or even the main benefit of education. The benefit of street-sweepers is not the salary it brings the sweeper, but the clean streets it brings everyone else.
Occidentis, MORPETH
