Fake News

In the Epic of Gilgamesh, written on clay tablets, Ea (a Mesopotamian god) tells the Babylonian Noah, known as Uta–napishti, to promise his people that food will rain from the sky if they help him build the ark. Once the ark is built, Uta–napishti and his family climb aboard and survive with the animals. Everyone else drowns. Dr Martin Worthington, senior lecturer in Assyriology at Cambridge suggests it may be the earliest example of fake news.

a fragment of the Epic of Gilgamesh

However, the Mesopotamians were not a literate society and no society achieved anything like our present day rates and it was a gradual progression dating from the invention of the printing press in around 1440 CE and it probably would have taken a lot longer here but for the English Civil Wars (which affected the whole British Isles).

From the moment the fighting started in 1642/3 there were a great many fake and forged publications. Declarations, speeches, letters, and sermons began to be printed with completely spurious claims made on their title-pages regarding their provenance, who had composed them, where they had been published, and why. I’m not saying that most people could read them but paper was easily transported and relatively cheap unlike clay tablets or parchment or vellum. Thus those who could read in the towns and villages would read these papers to the mass of people.

a printing press

The neutrality of the English people presented a challenge to both sides and both rushed to find a way to bolster their popular support. The Royalists took the initiative and published their own newspaper, the Mercurius Aulicus, to help spread their political message. In response, the Parliamentarians set up their own weekly newspaper, the Mercurius Britannicus.

Both these newspapers initially followed the dry and factual style of the few pre-war publications, but the problem was that this style was unpopular with the public. For a start, people didn’t trust newspapers for the simple reason that you could never know who wrote them.

The dry, factual style also failed to hold many people’s attention, especially those who weren’t already politically engaged. Both sides moved quickly to adapt, and the style of newspapers rapidly changed into one that might be recognisable now. To keep their reader base engaged and supportive of the war effort, the two newspapers also slowly began to twist the truth to bolster support for their own sides, leading to a proliferation of fake news.

The Britannicus was notorious for doing this, and in the early months of the war was known to report small Parliamentarian defeats as victories, calling for days of public thanksgiving to celebrate. This led to the Aulicus to report that “never have men been so thankful to be beaten so often or so thoroughly”.

Mercurius Civicus

Fake news during the Civil War took a variety of forms, and one of the most popular forms was character assassinations against members of the opposing side. A popular target for the Britannicus’ was the King’s wife, Queen Henrietta Maria as she was not only French but also Catholic. These two factors meant that the English public was already suspicious of her, and didn’t need much convincing when the Parliamentarians spread fake news about her.

The Royalists lost no time in slandering prominent Parliamentarians. The Aulicus published several stories about the brutality of Parliamentarian officers, mixing fact with fiction to make the fake news harder to discern from the truth. One notable story that contained a grain of truth involved Oliver Cromwell who had ordered the arrest of a Royalist-sympathising priest in London but the Aulicus exaggerated the story. They asserted that the priest’s son had pleaded with him to show mercy, and Cromwell had ordered the boy’s tongue to be burned through with a hot iron poker to silence him.

There were thousands of such fake news in the newspapers and pamphlets being distributed during the Wars and as stated earlier most of the time no one would have a clue who was printing the stuff. Or in these days liking it.

Trumpe Weekly Intelligencer

Some information above was taken from Michael Walters writing in the Yardstick Agency and William White at the University of Oxford.

The following poem was written ages ago and I’ve rewritten parts to fit this week’s theme. A few points I should mention. The first is that the ‘Forlorn Hope’ is a term used to describe the first troops into a battle. The second is that ‘this war without an enemy’ is a quote from Sir William Waller, a Parliamentary officer. The third is ‘self-denying ordinance’ whereby MPs had to resign their military commands.

New Model Poetry

There will be a turning point,
a time when the forlorn hope
of a poem dies
in the glazed eyes
of a people tired of reading
of this war without an enemy.

There will be a time
when all seems lost
truth deserting lines
in times for action
for acts by action passed,
this self-denying ordinance.

There will be a new model poetry
that knows what it writes for
each word advanced on merit
each verse a body
that refuses to be subject
to this state of introspection.

              (First published in Troubadour, 2010)

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Make A Wish

How many of you read Peter Pan as children? Who remembers Chapter 3: Come Away! Come Away! in which Peter teaches the Darling children to fly?

"It looked delightfully easy, and they tried it first from the floor and then from the beds, but they always went down instead of up.

"I say, how do you do it?" asked John, rubbing his knee. He was quite a practical boy.

"You just think lovely wonderful thoughts," Peter explained, "and they lift you up in the air."

He showed them again.

"You're so nippy at it," John said, "couldn't you do it very slowly once?"

Peter did it both slowly and quickly. "I've got it now, Wendy!" cried John, but soon he found he had not. Not one of them could fly an inch, though even Michael was in words of two syllables, and Peter did not know A from Z.

Of course Peter had been trifling with them, for no one can fly unless the fairy dust has been blown on him. Fortunately, as we have mentioned, one of his hands was messy with it, and he blew some on each of them, with the most superb results."

I was very taken with the idea as, of course, have human beings been for millennia. To be able to soar like the birds would be so useful sometimes.

In Greek mythology, Daedalus (master craftsman and architect of the Cretan labyrinth) was imprisoned along with his son Icarus after Theseus, King of Athens, had escaped from the labyrinth. King Minos was convinced that the pair had revealed the labyrinth's secrets to Theseus, so he locked them in a high tower overlooking the sea. There Daedalus fashioned wings for Icarus using feathers that birds had moulted, some threads from their blankets, leather straps from their sandals and beeswax to hold the feathers in place. According to legend Icarus was advised not to fly too near the sea (for water would soak the feathers making them too heavy) nor too high, at risk of the sun melting the beeswax. Off Icarus flew from the window of the high tower, but he became so enamoured of his ability to fly that he forgot his father's instructions, soared upwards, the wax melted, the feathers all became detached and the foolish young man plummeted into the sea and was drowned.

Icarus

Until I saw the film, I always imagined that the Birdman of Alcatraz had attempted something similar. (Silly me).

When I was a boy in Peterborough, there used to be a 'Birdman' competition every year to fly off a bridge over the River Nene using just manpower and home-made wings. I think that many cities around the world have staged such competitions. They are entertaining but the attempts, though often ingenious and vigorous, are all destined to meet a similar wet end to that of Icarus (minus the drowning part, for health and safety is taken seriously).  

Unless one is an angel (I had to get them in somewhere), then something more than mere manpower is required, namely the appliance of science, and Leonardo da Vinci in the late 15th century famously designed - on paper at least - crafts that might be capable of sustained flight.

The next significant leap came nearly three hundred years later, with the creation of hot air balloons big enough to support manned flight. These were based on a principle that had been known and in use for centuries, the Chinese sky lantern, warm air being lighter than cold air. But balloons only go where the wind wills, and to truly wing it like the birds requires powered flight.

Enter the age of the combustion engine. In December 1903 the Wright Brothers achieved the first manned and controlled powered flight in a heavier-than-air machine when their Wright Flyer (sometimes also known as Kitty Hawk Flyer from the locale) undertook four short flights powered by a 12 horsepower gasoline engine providing thrust to two rear-facing propellors. History had been made, though in truth the Flyer was relatively unstable, difficult to fly and was severely damaged by strong winds when landing after its fourth flight. It never flew again.

A much more credible, though far less famous step forward was taken by Glen Curtiss and the Aerial Experiment Association when in response to a competition funded by Scientific American, June Bug became the first craft to make a public flight (the Wright  flights had all been rather secret events) of over one kilometre, in June 1908. June Bug (so named by Alexander Graham Bell) won the trophy and the $25,000 prize money.  

June Bug

What made June Bug more worthy of a place in the lineage of aircraft development were a couple of crucial refinements that the Wrights' craft did not possess: wheels and ailerons. The Wright Brothers launched their plane by catapult (much like we used to fire balsawood gliders into the air). Kitty Hawk could not take off under its own power and it didn't properly speaking have an undercarriage, just a couple of sledge runners. Landings were precarious at best. June Bug in contrast had a proper undercarriage with wheels. Also Kitty Hawk was not easily manoeuvrable having just the two fixed wings and a rudder. June Bug possessed both a rudder and ailerons (flaps on the trailing edge of the wings), designed by Alexander Graham Bell, making it remarkably easy to control and direct when in the air. Ailerons became a standard feature of aircraft design henceforward. Only just over sixty years later, the Americans managed to land men on the moon.

I absorbed all of this information as a lad, for like many boys, I was plane mad into my teens, visiting airports with school friends on plane-spotting days out, making model aircraft from Airfix or Revell kits and hanging them from the ceiling (see below), writing off to aircraft companies like de Havilland, Handley Page, Hawker Siddeley and Shorts for photographs and technical material, taking out a subscription to Flight magazine. 

Aichi D3A1 'Val'

I even once, in my late teens, took a flying lesson from Cambridge aerodrome in a little dual-control de Havilland Chipmunk training plane. It was a wish come true. However, being at the controls was the most frightening experience of my life and I never repeated it! I do still love flying though, as a passenger. I must have racked up thousands of (now considered not very green) air miles both on business and as a holiday-maker. and will continue to fly as long as economics, health and passport allow. 

I wish to finish this Saturday's blog with a poem which requires a bit of a preamble. I've written before about Lyall's wren, also known as Stephems Island wren. Stephens Island is a small island in Cook Strait, the channel between New Zealand's north and south islands. It was home to colonies of Lyall's wren until near the end of the nineteenth century. Having no natural predators, Lyall's wren over millennia had adapted to its peaceful environment (like several other species in New Zealand) and had evolved into a flightless bird, earning it the nicknames 'rock wren' and 'walking wren'. Flight takes energy, so if you don't have to do it.... 

Lyall's wren

Anyway, these lovely wrens had lost the power of flight hundreds of thousands of years ago and their wings grew stubby and ornamental, which wasn't a problem until 1894 when a lighthouse was built on Stephens Island and a lighthouse keeper took up residence with his pregnant cat. By the turn of the century, and well before Kitty Hawk and June Bug took to the skies, there was not a single wren left alive on the island. The cat and its descendants had killed them all, rendering Lyall's wren officially extinct. Did I mention that Lyall was the lighthouse keeper? 

What a grim legacy. What must those poor little birds have thought? Here's the poem, for what it's worth.

In Our Dreams We Fly

They have finally come, as we were told they might,

in small boats across the narrow sea, our safety zone.

They couldn't do it on their own. Lyall brought them

to be our downfall, to ravage us in our little paradise,

an invasion of killer cats cruel in eye, tooth and claw,

practised and merciless hunters. We will be no more.

In our dreams we fly, as once we must have done but

our stubby wings are useless now. We flap them as if

to rise into the skies and safety, a muscle memory but

quite pathetic. So we scurry round the rocks like mice. 

We're quick but they are quicker, Seems we're nothing 

in the scheme of things and this is a godless universe!

Thanks for reading, S ;-)

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Resolutions: Wishful Thinking?

I am sure that I have been making New Year Resolutions since I was about ten which probably means I have made at least fifty or more. I can’t remember a single one of them and I probably failed to meet any of them anyway.

New Year’s Resolutions are said to date back to Ancient Babylon. They also seem to have featured in Ancient Rome. Julius Caesar introduced a calendar in 46 B.C. which declared January 1st as the start of the new year. The date honoured Janus, a two-faced god, who symbolically looked back into the old year and forward into the new.

New Year’s Resolutions, as we would know them, appeared to be common by the 17th century. By 1802, the tradition of making (and failing to keep) them was common enough that people satirised the practice.

In 1813 an American newspaper featured the first recorded use of the phrase ‘New Year Resolution’:
“We believe there are multitudes who will sin all December, with a serious determination of beginning the New Year with resolutions with the full belief that they shall thus expiate and wipe away all their former faults.”

Of course, the history of making and breaking New Year’s resolutions continues to this day. Most of us will probably make one at New Year. Somehow the practice has become somewhat similar to making a wish as you blow out the candles on your birthday cake hoping, just hoping, that the wishes come true.

Words and ideas become institutionalised over time and can often move away from their original and real meaning if all be it by custom and practice. Take the word Resolution itself as defined in the Cambridge Dictionary:  the act of solving a problem or finding a way to improve a difficult situation.

That’s the last thing a wish is. We can wish to resolve all our dreams and wishes and all the problems in the world. But blowing out the candles won’t do it, neither will making a resolution on New Year’s Eve as the clocks tick around to twelve.

The real meaning of the word necessitates a plan as to how we get to the resolution. Resolution is surely a word that looks back on something that has been achieved. The suffix “re” ensures that. We can only get to a resolution if we know how to get there. And there’s the rub. We have no plans- just wishes.

The question that we perhaps should be asking is,” How I can be resolute?” Thus using a word firmly related to the semantic meaning of the word resolution itself. “What steps can I take to ensure that I reach where I want to go? How can I get to the resolution I wanted in the first place, way back on New Year’s Eve?

Take the tortoise in the Aesop’s Fable “The Tortoise and the Hare”. We all know the story. The hare taunts the tortoise whilst dashing and running and soon burning out. Meanwhile the tortoise has a plan and is resolute. I will be resolute in keeping to the plan. Slow and steady wins the race. We all need, perhaps, to have a plan that will take us to our resolution, whatever it may be and be a little more resolute in ensuring that we reach our goal. 

Resolutions apart, I'd like to share with you a poem that attempts to articulate wishes for our daughter as she leaves home to study abroad. I would suspect the feelings are universal. You want your offspring safely sprung, because they are not children anymore, far from it. Sometimes it is hard to grasp that. There will always be a part of you that sees them as tiny, fragile and innocent.

There, of course, is the rub. Nevertheless you know in your heart of hearts, they have grown, have become what kids these days, call “rock” and they will surely walk side by side with experience, sometimes for worse but mostly for better, as they become their own person. And it’s at that point they will send you the songs, the pictures, stories and poems to show they have caught the light in rainbow fashion...

Catch the Light in Rainbow Fashion

The autumn rain runs down the airport window
as we wait for the screen to show your flight.
The rain stops for a while, pooling on a ledge,
finding its own way down the pane.
Catching the light in rainbow fashion.

The flight is called and you stand to go.
You won’t look back as you walk through the gate.
It would be easier to pilot jet planes
than control emotions at this precise time.
So we’ve left a note in your backpack.

Sing us a song of what you hear.
Paint us a picture of what you see.
Tell us a story about what goes on.
Write a poem and send it home.
Catch the light in rainbow fashion.

Thanks for reading. And a week or so late, Happy Resolute New Year!

Bill Allison

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Make A Wish

I am writing this on my usual afternoon at my usual time but this morning T’s dog, Annie, went to the vet for what could be a serious operation so I am going to make a wish that Annie comes through ok….

...three hours later. We just picked her up from the Vet and she is fine and now I can get on with this blog

Of course that wish I made was of no significance but people have been making wishes for many centuries and for most of that time it was a real act of belief. For instance making wishes on wishbones dates back to the Etruscans in around 500 BCE in Italy. They believed that chickens could predict the future. The wishbone of the chicken was laid out after the chicken was eaten so that they could still access a chicken’s prophetic powers. Why? Because a hen clucks before laying eggs, and a rooster crows when the dawn is near. Obvious.

How about candles on birthday cakes? Well, this tradition was started by the Ancient Greeks, with the round cake and a candle to symbolize the moon and pay homage to Artemis, the moon goddess, with the candle representing the moon’s reflected light. The smoke from the candles is believed to carry the wishes up high to where the deities live. That is why a birthday celebrant is often told to silently make a wish before blowing out the candles.

I’m sort of vaguely aware that coins dropped into a fountain will be used to assist a local charity so I’ve often thrown a penny in and made my wish.

This practice originates from the Celts and the Germans who were the first ones to use this belief system, and their explanation was simple, they thought the water inside wells was accommodating gods, and had been put there by the deities themselves as a present. Throwing coins in was, therefore, a way of giving thanks to the gods.

Since 2021, excavation of an ancient wooden wishing well has been underway in what is now the town of Germering in Bavaria. More than 13,500 artefacts have been found, dating from the Bronze Age to the early Middle Ages. The Celtic clootie well tradition and the English well dressing tradition appear to be related to this kind of ancient well veneration. However, it was surprising when I read that this can gather around 3 million pounds a year in Europe alone when the coins are collected.

It was also surprising that I’ve got it all wrong. Apparently you make the wish first and then throw the coin in. And the wish would only then be granted by the guardian or dweller, based upon how the coin would land at the bottom of the well. If the coin landed heads up, the guardian of the well would grant the wish, but the wish of a tails up coin would be ignored.

I’ve never heard of the following before but there are several sources. Wishing on eyelashes began in the 19th century. A fallen eyelash would be placed on the back of one’s hand and then thrown over one’s shoulder. If the eyelash got stuck, the wish did not come true.

11:11 was a number sequence that some neurologists believed we saw more frequently than could be determined by chance. Because of this belief, many held the number sequence to a higher regard. It is not clear as to why that translated into people making wishes on the number. No, I don’t believe in those.

To finish off, as I do in letters. Why do I write Best Wishes and then sign my name? I rarely mean a lot of wishes, usually I mean just the one, if that.

P.S. And then, excuse the going off topic, but what does signing off with Kind Regards mean?

For the poem I’m going back a few years and a trip I made to the Narodni Museum in Prague. The morning stroll around was really dull. Stuff stuck (literally) behind glass. The first half of the poem set out to be dull. I tried to make this second half not dull:

afternoon

It was finally right,
third step from the top and turning,
the red carpet falling away,
Wenceslas Square framed
through arched windows,
imagining an arm in mine
stepping down slowly
to the music of a string quartet.

In that crowd it couldn’t last
but it took me to a door
where the sound of rain was curious,
a temporary exhibition,
The Waters of the World,
curtained by a wall of water,
lively and alive,
a curtain falling and falling again,
splashing and hiding,
a waterfall splashing and hiding
The Waters of the World.

Excited children ran around
turning to show their Dads
who were turning to show their Moms
who were trying out displays
in the free and easy rooms.
Sea life, water life,
marshes and working mills.

So when I found the Wishing Well
I knew what my wishes would be,
one coin for that arm in mine,
one coin for the music
and one coin for a stream of silver
spilling on marble floors
with limestone falls and lava pools
washing away Museum.

First published in ‘away’, by Poetry Monthly Press in 2010

Thanks for reading, Terry Q.

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Rock And Roll Music

Just let me hear some of that rock and roll music
Any old way you choose it
It's got a back beat, you can't lose it
Any old time you use it
It's got to be rock and roll music
If you want to dance with me.

Those are lines from 'Rock and Roll Music', one of the tracks on Beatles For Sale, released sixty years ago just in time for the Christmas market. Of course, it wasn't one of their own compositions. Chuck Berry had written and released the song back in 1957, the year that John Lennon and Paul McCartney commenced a musical partnership (in the Quarrymen) that was destined to change the world in 1964, a sort of annus mirabilis (wonderful year) in so many ways. More on that later.

Beatles For Sale was, however, the group's second LP in a year (and in fact their fourth in just under two years - the sort of recording and release schedule that would be unthinkable nowadays), so only eight of the fourteen tracks were originals, the balance being favourite covers that had been part of their repertoire during those Hamburg residencies of 1960 and 1961

Surprisingly, Beatles For Sale has its detractors, seemingly because nearly half the material is cover versions, in comparison to A Hard Day's Night earlier in the summer, which had been their first LP to feature all original Beatles compositions. 

The Beatles' excuse, as if one was needed, was that 1964 had been such an intense year for the Fabs (as they were becoming known), what with touring the UK, Europe and 'conquering'  America, making a feature film, writing a book of poetry (in Lennon's case), that they just hadn't had the time to write half a dozen additional songs for Beatles For Sale. (It must also be remembered that they chose not to include the contemporaneous hit single 'I Feel Fine' c/w 'She's A Woman' on the LP because they wanted to give their fans value for money.)

Beatles For Sale album cover photoshoot, Hyde Park 1964 (Robert Freeman)

Commentators have added that the LP's artwork, photographs of the group taken by Robert Freeman in Hyde Park, makes them look somewhat world-weary, and the ironic title for the album (surely Lennon's suggestion) encapsulated their frustration at being seen as 'product' as the downside of becoming a global phenomenon, theories which have contributed to a sense that Beatles For Sale is somehow below par in the group's canon. All I can say is that those detractors really need to listen to the record with fresh ears. It's time for a revaluation.

Some of you will be familiar with Philip Larkin's wryly ironic poem about the social changes in motion at the beginning of the Sixties. (I'm supposing he named it after an earlier poem by John Dryden celebrating London's survival in 1666 after the twin threats of plague and fire). 

Annus Mirabilis

Sexual intercourse began
In nineteen sixty-three
(which was rather late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

Up to then there'd only been
A sort of bargaining,
A wrangle for the ring,
A shame that started at sixteen
And spread to everything.

Then all at once the quarrel sank:
Everyone felt the same,
And every life became
A brilliant breaking of the bank,
A quite unlosable game.

So life was never better than
In nineteen sixty-three
(Though just too late for me) -
Between the end of the Chatterley ban
And the Beatles' first LP.

                                               Philip Larkin (1967)

Larkin pinpoints 1963 as the crucial year, but for me personally 1964 was the momentous one, for all of the following reasons. As mentioned earlier, it was the year in which the Beatles became a global phenomenon (starting with their appearances on the Ed Sullivan Show in the USA in February), the year in which Labour ended thirteen years of Tory misrule, the year in which I stepped up from Junior to Secondary school (and from short trousers to long), the year of our family's move from industrial Peterborough to academic Cambridge, the year in which I first went to bed with a girl (see my poem 'Stephanie Re-Maps The Stars'), the year when it began to seem that all was change for the better and all things were possible. Optimism was boundless and the Beatles, ensconced in EMI's Abbey Road studio number 2, were busy laying down the soundtrack of our unshackling.

Beatles For Sale recording session, Abbey Road 1964 (Robert Freeman)

I think that's one of the reasons why Beatles For Sale, released at the end of my own annus mirabilis, remains one of my favourite Beatles records, right up there with their best LPs. I'm pleased they chose to give needle time to those cover songs, as a reminder of their roots, and of what a terrific beat group they were. But that record also provides the first hints of them transitioning into the complex artists they would become, a foretaste of that brilliant run of recordings from Rubber Soul to Revolver and Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band. 

Beatles For Sale opens with one of the strongest trio of songs on any of their albums in 'No Reply', 'I'm A Loser' and the sumptuous 'Baby's In Black' (all essentially Lennon compositions). It's followed by John's infectious rendition of 'Rock And Roll Music', the Paul McCartney's ballad 'I'll Follow The Sun', another top notch cover by Lennon of 'Mr Moonlight' before the side closes with a ridiculously rocking rendition by Paul of 'Kansas City'.

Admittedly, side two with its country and western influence dips slightly after the opener 'Eight Days A Week', including as it does the obligatory George Harrison and Ringo Starr vocal spots, but 'Words Of Love' and 'I Don't Want To Spoil The Party' are great songs, the rockabilly Carl Perkins covers are inspired and the musicianship is excellent throughout. Beatles For Sale has so many wonderful memories for me and still gets played to death annually in the run up to Christmas and New Year. It's long been a family tradition to play it while the Christmas tree is being decorated, and I've been listening to it in the gym for several days in a row recently as well. 

As Derek Taylor wrote in the sleeve notes: "There's priceless history between these (LP) covers. When in a generation or so, a radio-active cigar-smoking child picnicking on Saturn asks you what the Beatles affair was all about...just play the child a few tracks from this album and he'll probably understand."

       

Beatles For Sale album cover photoshoot, Hyde Park 1964 (Robert Freeman)

I've no new poem for you this week. Instead, for what it's worth, gentle reader, here are my top ten albums of 2024, as trailed in the musical advent calendar I posted daily on Facebook in December (along with musical clips):

01 Natural Magick - Kula Shaker

02 Moon Mirror - Nada Surf

03 Why Is The Colour Of The Sky? - Bananagun

04 Iechyd Da - Bill Ryder-Jones

05 In This City They Call You Love - Richard Hawley

06 12 - White Denim

07 Half Cut - Sarah Gillespie

08 Daniel - Real Estate

09 Across The River Of Stars - Beachwood Sparks

10 Here In The Pitch - Jessica Pratt

Finally, as an audio bonus, that song: Rock And Roll Music as performed by The Beatles. Enjoy!

Thanks for reading. Happy New Year, S ;-)

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Music

When I first saw that the topic for this week’s blog was music, my mind immediately jumped to Desert Island Discs. I have been practising for this show for years and now have all eight tracks firmly in place and was so looking forward to giving folk a preview of my choices. Unfortunately, it appears that the producers seem to have mislaid my name and address at the moment but not to worry it would only be a list without the sounds so I’m changing track (so to speak).

I got to thinking that as this is a written piece then how do musicians read what is on the pages of their scores. And then how did the system of notes and bars etc originate. However, when I got to looking at the history I found that as a non-musician a lot of the information was beyond me so I decided to pick out some of the highlights which intrigued me.

It’s known from designs on pottery and artefacts that the use of music has been part of humanity from its earliest times in both religious and secular activities. Possibly as long ago as 60,000 years. But the first sign of some form of notation has been found in what is called the Hurrian Hymns, a collection of music inscribed in cuneiform on clay tablets excavated from the city of Ugarit in Mesopotamia (no comment) dating to approximately 1400 BCE.

Philolaus and Pythagoras

In 600 BCE Pythagoras, while walking past a blacksmith’s workshop, was intrigued that the sounds made by the smiths’ hammers sound like tuneful musical notes. He was a musician as well as mathematician so he went home does some calculations and worked out the mathematical proportions governing the notes of the music scale. He discovered that two notes which make an interval of an octave always have a ratio of 2:1. A perfect fifth is made with the ratio of 3:2, and a perfect 4th is 4:3. Combinations of these intervals then create the other notes which make up the major scale.

The scholar and music theorist Isidore of Seville, while writing in the early 7th century, considered that ‘unless sounds are held by the memory of man, they perish, because they cannot be written down.’ By the middle of the 9th century, however, a form of notation began to develop in monasteries in Europe as a mnemonic device for Gregorian chant, using symbols known as neumes; the earliest surviving musical notation of this type is in the Musica Disciplina of Aurelian of Réôme, from about 850 CE.

Guido d'Arezzo, the musical monk

The founder of what is now considered the standard music staff was Guido d'Arezzo, an Italian Benedictine monk who lived from about 991 until after 1033. The syllables Guido d'Arrezo chose to use in the system he developed as an aid in the teaching of sight-singing were based on a hymn to Saint John the Baptist, which begins Ut Queant Laxis and was written by the Lombard historian Paul the Deacon.

1. Ut queant laxis

2. resonare fibris,

3. Mira gestorum

4. famuli tuorum,

5. Solve polluti

6. labii reatum,

7. Sancte Iohannes.

And what did that become? Answer below.

By the 12th Century, we find many manuscripts with a five-line stave that we recognise today. However, the system of musical notation was not quite complete. There was still no indication of how long a note should last. Franco of Cologne was the first person to address this, creating a series of square- and diamond-shaped notes with no stems. This system was later adapted by Philippe de Vitry who created symbols that would not be entirely unrecognisable today.

The notes were named, with the Maxima being the longest, however as music has a tendency to speed up, it was equivalent to our modern semibreve, four beats.

Bar lines were added in the 17th Century. Now musicians could really write down musical ideas. This lead to more complex compositions and began shifting the music of the time from Baroque to Classical music. Around this time, notes also became more rounded, forming the symbols we know today.

There is a mind numbing amount of poems about music so I thought this might be more suitable and is the answer to my question. I bet you can’t help singing along.

The Sound of Music

Do-Re-Mi

Let's start at the very beginning
A very good place to start
When you read you begin with A-be-see
When you sing you begin with do-re-mi
Do-re-mi, do-re-mi
The first three notes just happen to be
Do-re-mi, do-re-mi
Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti…
Let's see if I can make it easier
Doe, a deer, a female deer
Ray, a drop of golden sun
Me, a name I call myself
Far, a long, long way to run
Sew, a needle pulling thread
La, a note to follow Sew
Tea, a drink with jam and bread
That will bring us back to Do (oh-oh-oh)
Do-re-mi-fa-so-la-ti-do
So-do!
                                  Oscar II Hammerstein, Richard Rodgers

Thanks for reading. Happy New Year, Terry Q.

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Music - Sounds of my Life

 

“If music be the food of love, play on;”  from Twelfth Night, William Shakespeare.

“Music was my first love and it will be my last…”  John Miles.

Throughout my life music has always been there, in various forms, and always been important. I grew up with my mother’s radio, or maybe I should call it ‘the wireless’ and I think we listened to ‘The Light Programme’. I still have my mother’s records, the singles and LPs that we spent many hours singing and dancing to in my childhood and our pubs always had the sounds of the jukebox filtering upstairs, or someone belting out a tune on a piano. My love of piano music remains. I don’t play very much now as poor sight comes between me and the sheet music, but it’s nice to have the occasional plonk about when there’s no one to hear. A familiar song or piece of music can transport me to times past in a second and fill me with joy and remind me of how far I’ve come.

 I love lots of music, not just symphonic or progressive rock. Live music is the best but I won’t bore you with all of the concerts I’ve been to. Music soothes the soul, calms the spirit, or makes us want to dance, so what I might listen to depends on what suits at any given time. Rolling Stones, Oasis, The Smiths, Mozart, Chopin, Prokofiev (especially Troika), gospel choirs, Gregory Porter, Simply Red and many more are amongst my favourites. When they were living with us, I enjoyed listening to my son playing guitar or bass; and my daughter’s wonderful singing, both of them talented. They entertain their own families now.

If you know me personally, or through my blogs, you might have noticed me mention that the music of The Moody Blues is the main soundtrack to my life. This month I have had their album ‘December’ permanently on the CD player. The track ‘December Snow’ has a wonderful piano solo in the middle and I really wish I could play that myself. I’ve lost count of how many MBs concerts I’ve attended over the years, many tours, many cities, each one a breath-taking experience. Those days are gone, the band is depleted and I’m glad I was able to be there at the time. I look forward to seeing John Lodge again, on his solo tour next year.

Here’s an old poem of mine, an attempt at capturing the essence of a magical Moody Blues concert,

The Concert.

 

The lights are lowered, silence fills the arena

As the minstrels move through darkness on to the stage.

This is the moment, breathless anticipation,

Travelling eternity road has been an age.

 

Then a flute’s haunting melody rises above

Twin guitar riffs to take lead of the symphony.

Slow, bass drum, and applause reaches a crescendo,

Orchestral rock and voices singing harmony.

 

On the threshold of ecstasy, keeping the faith,

We’ve made this pilgrimage so many times before,

To be rewarded with autographs and handshakes

After waiting patiently outside the stage door.

 

PMW  2010

 

 Very best wishes for 2025. May your dreams come true.

Thanks for reading, Pam x

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Lancashire Dead Good Poets' January Open Mic Night

The first online event of 2025 is coming up on January 2nd...

You're very welcome to join us. Just email deadgoodpoets@hotmail.co.uk to sign up to read and/or listen in. Happy New Year everyone. 

Steve ;-)

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Bottles

What do you call this run of days between Christmas Day and New Year's Day? Some label it 'Betwixtmas' , which I quite like; others 'the week that time forgot' , which I can well understand - for every day feels like a Saturday (and I should be blogging) or is it a Sunday?; and then there's 'Winterlude', suggestive of a time of calm before everything starts again, resolutions, pressure of work, 2025 already. 

It's a time for drinking wine and eating imaginatively recycled leftovers, for snuggling up warm to enjoy a new book, watching the twinkling tree lights without dwelling on thoughts of having to clear everything away.

I've shared a few bottles of wine with family and friends over the last festive days, except for the retsina (with turkey and stuffing baps) on Christmas Eve. No one wanted to share that one. Cue a debate about baps versus barms versus cobs versus buns versus rolls if you must, but I want to talk about bottles.

Specifically, with New Year celebrations just days away, I want to talk about champagne bottles, and in particular champagne that has lain in shipwrecked boats at the bottom of the Baltic Sea, in some cases (no pun intended) for nearly two hundred years. 

bottle of 1840 champagne found in 2010 off the coast of Finland and still drinkable

There have been a number of 'finds' over the last few decades of cargos that went down on ships wrecked while plying their trade between France/Germany (both big wine producers) and the countries bordering the Baltic Sea to the north and east. 

The area is noted for sudden, squally storms and many ships foundered in an age when they were vulnerable wooden sailing vessels at the mercy of strong winds and high seas. Their cargos went to the bottom in the holds of the ships and much of the produce didn't survive the calamity, but bottles were among the more durable items.

Take for instance the 168 bottles of Veuve Clicquot discovered in a wreck off Finland in 2010. That ship was believed to have been on its way to the Baltic port of St. Petersburg in Russia. In the mid 19th century, Russia was the biggest market for champagne outside of France. The consignment of champagne, 1840 vintage, had survived the plunge, bottles undamaged, corks still intact, contents bubbly and fresh as the day they were bottled, for the Baltic sea has a low saline content (it's more like a freshwater lake), the seabed is dark and the temperature down there is an almost constant 4 degrees Celsius all year round.

Experts pronounced the wine still very fine indeed. Some of it was subsequently sold at auction for ridiculous amounts, but the champagne industry as a result is now embarked on an forty year experiment to determine if storing champagne at the bottom of the Baltic Sea might be a viable green alternative to the traditional method of keeping it in refrigerated chalk caves (lower carbon footprint et cetera). 

If I were Heidsieck, Moët & Chandon, Taittinger or Veuve Clicquot, I'd worry about piracy or sabotage. With Chinese and Russian 'merchant' ships deliberately dragging their anchors along the seabed to damage gas pipelines and telecommunication cables between NATO countries bordering the Baltic, anything might happen.

But then I'm not particularly fond of champagne in the first place. I much prefer my wine without bubbles, thank you, be it red, rosé or white.

treasures from the wine dark sea

I was going to write a new poem for this blog, all about shipwrecked wine, but confess I've just not had the time and the hour is getting late. (Maybe the poem will emerge at some point, they usually do.) 

Instead, here are some lines from a long fantasy poem,  A Wine Of Wizardry, by the American poet George Sterling, written in San Francisco circa 1904. Hugely influential at the time, it is still worth reading - after a glass or two...

from A Wine Of Wizardry

But Fancy, well affrighted at his gaze,

Flies to a violet headland of the West,

About whose base the sun-lashed billows blaze,

Ending in precious foam their fatal quest,

As far below the deep-hued ocean molds,

With waters' toil and polished pebbles' fret,

The tiny twilight in the jacinth set,

The wintry orb the moonstone-crystal holds,

Snapt coral twigs and winy agates wet,

Translucencies of jasper, and the folds

Of banded onyx, and vermilion breast

Of cinnabar. Anear on orange sands,

With prows of bronze the sea-stained galleys rest,

And swarthy mariners from alien strands

Stare at the red horizon, for their eyes

Behold a beacon burn on evening skies,

As fed with sanguine oils at touch of night.

Forth from that pharos-flame a radiance flies,

To spill in vinous gleams on ruddy decks;

And overside, when leap the startled waves

And crimson bubbles rise from battle-wrecks,

Unresting hydras wrought of bloody light

Dip to the ocean's phosphorescent caves.

                                              George Sterling (1869-1926) 

Cheers, S ;-)

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Bottles

As Wednesday is my usual day for the DGP blog and this Wednesday is Christmas Day I’m betting that at sometime during the day most of us will have come across bottles of all shapes and sizes but what were the origins of these containers?

Mesopotamia. Where else. The discovery of the oldest known glass bottle in 1925 provides a window into the early origins of glassmaking. It was discovered in Uruk, which in around 3,700 BCE was a busy city-state. The bottle itself is small, less than 5 inches tall, with thick uneven walls indicating it was free-blown by someone learning the craft. Analysis shows the glass contains high levels of silica, lime, and alkali, revealing the basic recipe used over 5,000 years ago. Traces of wine residues confirm it once held a precious liquid.

Roman Glass History Museum

Similar techniques were used until the Romans pioneered the technique of glassblowing around the first century BCE. Glassblowing made the mass production of a variety of glass bottles possible. If you want to know more about glassblowing I highly recommend a trip to the World of Glass in St Helens. The process is mesmerising.

However, even with relatively high mass production, the cost of glass bottles meant that most wine was contained in animal skin or leather. However, by the 19th century, the Industrial Revolution represented a shift in this as glass bottles were put into production via semi-automatic machines. This allows containers to be mass produced. Additionally, the ease of manufacturing meant that different styles, finishes and shapes could be trialled allowing companies to start the comparing the quality of storage and chosen glass bottles.

The earliest perfume bottles date to around 1000 BCE in ancient Egypt. These perfume bottles were made from glass, alabaster, gold or ceramic. These perfume bottles were sophisticatedly designed and prized highly.

Here are a few, I think, interesting facts about bottles:

the oldest known message in a bottle

The oldest message in a bottle ever found was 131 years and 223 days old when it was discovered on Jan. 21, 2018, at Wedge Island, Australia. A German ship captain threw a gin bottle overboard on June 12, 1886 with a message written in ink, that contained the ship's coordinates and details, including departure and arrival times. The note requested the finder deliver the note to the nearest German Embassy.

The Carmona glass urn is a first-century CE find that contains intact wine. The urn was discovered in 2019 in Carmona, Spain during excavations of the city's western Roman necropolis. Analysis of the urn's contents five years after its discovery demonstrated the contents to be the oldest surviving wine in the world. This surpasses the previous record holder, the Speyer wine bottle, discovered in 1867, by three centuries.

Carmona wine vessel

According to the Guinness Book of Records the largest collection of beer bottles belongs to Ron Werner (USA) and consists of 25,866 individual beer bottles in Carnation, Washington, USA. Ron started his collection at the age of 14. On average, a 1,000 beer bottles are added to the collection every year.

Some of the info above is from Vitalie Trestianu, Southern Jar Company.

And locally the Harris Museum holds the largest scent bottle collection in Britain. These were collected by Mrs. Ideonea French, who was a collector since her early teens, but began a passion for collection after the death of her son in action in 1941 in North Africa. Mrs. French explored antique shops and dusty junk shops and her home became rather like a museum, with the collection displayed in glass cases in every room. Upon her death, Mrs. French wished not to split up the collection and the Harris received the entire collection.

Harris Museum scent bottle collection

Back in 2011 a friend had been to the event below and asked me to write a poem about it.

An Evening of Celebration and Entertainment

where a fiddler tails
the white sheet and skull
of Fari Lywd
as she snacks if she can
whatever’s left from
bottles of wine and beer
and whatever is on the plates
of an alloy of Brass
and Wenceslas
and Christmas fare

Fari or Mari
the grey mare won’t care
in English yn Cymraeg
as long as mince pies
are there for the taking

from the tables
of Pagan and Christian
and non- Christian folk
gathered in rounds
at this time and again
of singers and songs
that carol the half light
of winter’s turn
in the merry solstice
and merry Christmas in
Amgueddfa Ceredigion Museum

Thanks for reading. Merry Christmas, Terry Q.

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