When my time comes

Our parliament are debating a law for what they call “assisted suicide”. In principle that’s about helping a dying person limit the pain and suffering of their final moments. Or days, weeks, or (notionally) up to six months.

I certainly hope – as I’ve always done – that when my time comes, society will have moved away from the insanity of absolute insistence on maximally prolonging death. If and when I reach where either of my parents were in their last months, I’d like to think I’d be spared the zombie existence of severe dementia, or the final stages of cancer, or the ultimate cruelty visited on many today of having to end one’s own life painfully by refusing water when one is too feeble for anything more active.

Neither do I want to have to take extreme and perverse measures to avoid that horror. Could I (bring myself to) commit suicide today, while I’m still capable of throwing myself off a cliff? Of course not! And if not today, that same argument is going to apply every day for the foreseeable future, until after I’ve lost the physical capacity to do anything. Perhaps far beyond that: being confined to a wheelchair or even to bed doesn’t preclude living: it’s just a stage of decline. And I certainly hope that if and when I reach such a point, we’ll have widely-available and affordable robots to deliver all the help I may need with, for example, bathroom functions.

So in principle I support Kim Leadbeater’s bill.

In practice, I have severe reservations. The proposed law will require the patient to jump through impossible hoops: get signoff from two doctors (at least a week apart) and a bloomin’ high court judge! And finally, self-administer medicine. Which brings us right back to why I’m not throwing myself off a cliff right now: if and when I need the service, I’ll be far too far gone to use it! So that’s effectively no change: the available choice is still premature suicide (probably while I’m still able to travel to Switzerland, if only in a privately-hired ambulance accompanied by privately-hired nurses) or a risk of the cruellest ending. Or a certainty of the cruellest ending if dementia takes away my capacity to choose!

So in practice I can’t support this bill. It risks ticking a box in the narrative without actually delivering what’s needed.

But neither can I support rejecting the bill. That kicks the whole issue out of play for another political generation or so. The risk to me personally may be low, but there’s no guarantee the next proposal to reach a future parliament will be any use, either.

Perhaps the least bad outcome is that effective legislation comes eventually as a backlash against today’s horror? Much more liberal legislation that errs comprehensively on the side of putting “vulnerable” people at risk and moves the “grey area” to somewhere around Harold Shipman? Not at all a desirable outcome, but may be the least-bad that stands any chance of happening in my lifetime!

Classical Concert

Our next concert is pure classical: Mozart and Haydn.

There are two choral works. The more substantial is Haydn’s Maria Theresa Mass, a highly-accomplished late work whose predominantly bright, sunny music reflects the composer’s disposition. But the work I’ve most enjoyed is Mozart’s Vespers, a work that reflects not just Mozart’s musical genius but also his immense sense of fun. The old man, and the young man who never lived to be old.

Saturday evening, November 30th, at St.Andrews, Plymouth (our customary venue, the Guildhall, being closed for renovation work). I have no hesitation recommending the concert to readers within evening-out distance of Plymouth.

A Premiere

I don’t always blog about forthcoming concerts, but I try to get around to it when I feel comfortable recommending the concert to my readers. Like the last one, a couple of weeks ago.

The main work in our next concert is a UK premiere of a new work: The Creation, by american composer Dan Forrest. At around an hour and a quarter, it’s the entire second half of the concert (the first half comprises a pot-pourri of short pieces including show songs and pop arrangements along with light classics).

The first half isn’t something I’d expect to blog, and until recently I’d’ve said the same of the Creation. My first encounters with Forrest were arrangements of hymns and carols so ultra-slushy as to be cringeworthy, while his more serious works don’t have much spark of vitality. But recently we had a rehearsal with the (large) orchestra, and I’ve changed my mind. With the orchestra, the work comes to life, and I can recommend it as worth an evening. I shall enjoy it after all, despite the composer’s cruelty to his singers in denying us opportunities to sit down!

This creation comes with some spiel about being written for some anniversary of Haydn’s. I don’t quite get how that works – it’s nowhere near a round number of years – and it also bears no resemblance either musically or in choice of texts. The latter are predominantly church latin, most of them familiar from the regular choral repertoire, opening with a quasi-plainchant Veni Creator Spiritus. And I can’t help suspecting that the movement about the Garden of Eden is actually blasphemous in its claim of agency, though I never learned Latin and my understanding is probably rubbish.

The concert is at St Andrews, Plymouth, on Saturday April 20th. Tickets from (for example) here.

Concert

I’m far too late blogging this, but …

For readers within evening-out distance of Plymouth, I can recommend our forthcoming concert on Saturday evening (March 23^rd) at St Andrews. The programme is Rossini’s Stabat Mater and Puccini’s Gloria. Both lovely music that can simultaneously tug at the heart strings and be lots of fun, from composers best-known for their operas and whose theatricality shows clearly even in their ostensibly-religious works.

I’m looking forward to it. Interested readers can find information and tickets at the usual places: for example, here.

Lest we forget

Tomorrow (or, erm, today, since it’s past midnight as I post) is remembrance day, Nov 11th. I wrote here some years ago about why I can no longer support it.

But this year the day is mired in potentially-serious controversy: there’s to be a peace march in London, and some including members of our government are furious about it. At the heart of it is pure hatred coming from the Home Secretary, who tried to demand the police ban the march, only to be rebuffed by the police pointing out they have no power to do so. Indeed it seems the march organisers are working closely with police, as they did with a similar march a week ago that didn’t get the publicity generated by the calls for a ban. But the Home Secretary and Prime Minister have publicly said they will hold the police accountable for any trouble that may happen: the pressure they’re putting on looks a lot like trying to bully the police.

What we have now with all this heavily-loaded publicity is a clear incitement to criminality and perhaps violence, aimed at extreme supporters of both sides in the Israel-Palestine conflict. Those who want the march banned will feel vindicated if there are serious incidents, and may very well seek to attack and/or infiltrate it. And the publicity may draw non-peaceful elements into the march. A very plausible outcome is that the former incite the latter.

If there is serious trouble, the march organisers and the police will get a lot of blame they may or may not deserve, and the Home Secretary will be happy. If there is no trouble, the organisers and the police will deserve a lot of credit, which of course they won’t get.

A secular requiem

This evening I have been to the Exon Singers concert. After a first half comprising a number of short pieces all of them new to me (mostly by living composers), the second half was a single major work: Russell Pascoe’s Secular Requiem.

I was bowled over. This was far-and-away the most exciting new work I’ve seen since lockdown, and somewhere high on my lifetime list of new works. Pascoe goes straight onto the short list of living composers I shall now watch with an eager interest. And to complete the experience, I got to shake his hand and exchange a few words in the pub afterwards.

I won’t try to describe the work. Google finds it, and I see there’s a wikipedia entry. The programme notes tell us it’s a Gramophone Magazine Editor’s Choice. Not sure how much that accolade is actually worth, but the work absolutely merits it. Having heard it, of course I now want to sing in it!

Wow!

One more year

My birthday went very nicely. By one measure, my best ever.

I had organised a pub lunch with friends, and booked for our party at one of the best country pubs in the area. A pub that is great twice over: first in itself (great food, great beer, great surroundings), but also in that getting from here to there is a favourite walk provided I start out in good time. With the weather being bright and sunny and a very comfortable temperature, I took full advantage of the walk, and we were able to sit out in the pub’s pleasant garden to eat.

From my front door I’m on to open land in less than 15 minutes, gradually getting wilder from there. The route crosses two of Dartmoor’s tors – small rocky peaks that are a bit of a scramble but no real challenge – before dropping into a steep wooded valley and following the path of a stream down to the village and pub. Most of the route is open land, with sheep and ponies (and gorgeous cute foals), and the skylarks overhead, while the woodland/stream section was teeming with gorgeous insect life such as butterflies and dragonflies. Something under four hours neither hurrying nor dawdling, and I’m ready for a good lunch.

Having estimated my party’s size at 20 people for the purposes of the pub planning, coincidentally exactly 20 turned up. That number is helped by my advancing age, as fewer invitees have work commitments that keep them away. I was pleased to get so many (that’s the measure by which it was my best ever birthday), and also that the party’s age range now spans a full 60 years, from undergraduate students to early 80s. Reactions from those who didn’t already know the pub were gratifying, too.

I’m getting spoiled. Less than a week ago I enjoyed another great meal out in the garden of another lovely local pub that was a pleasant walk. But I’m a little concerned that all this fine summer weather is happening when our reservoirs are already much lower than they should be so early in the summer. The moorland already looks very dry, including normally-slightly-boggy bits on my route, and water in the leat was very low. Are we heading into serious drought?

Tragedy

The purest form of tragedy is when an attempt to thwart Fate – to avoid a feared outcome – brings about the very result it seeks to avoid. In the original Greek form that may be a fate that is itself entirely outrageous. Thus when the baby Oedipus is prophesied to kill his father and marry his mother, the parents expose the baby to avoid this fate, but inevitably he is found and adopted, and events take their course. Had he grown up normally (with his own family), the subsequent events would of course never have happened. Neither would his own and his childrens’ great tragedies, nor his final meeting with Theseus at Colonus and his posthumous status as protector of Athens.

I fear I am witnessing modern tragedy unfold with a family member suffering dementia. He is living a nightmare, in which he imagines people and voices, and terrible plots against him. His pursuit of these phantoms leads to the intermittent but too-frequent behaviour so often associated with dementia: paranoia, aggression, refusal to accept simple facts or help, and in practical terms, wandering off in a confused state and getting lost.

What the plotters against him are doing, and what motivation they could possibly have, is hopelessly confused. They want his money, but the plot itself involves elaborate cloning of his house in different locations – an exercise that, even if feasible in the first place, would wipe out the entire estate many times over. As I write, the time is something after 3a.m, but he refuses to go to bed because they’re out there and he’s watching. Which is, to be fair, a big improvement on 24 hours ago when I was in league with them and holding him hostage.

Refusal to be helped, and behaviour that denies my sleep and my opportunity to go out, is looking increasingly likely to bring about precisely the rational outcome we all most fear: that he’ll need to be moved to a care home. Fees for that would of course consume his estate – and a whole lot quicker than Jarndyce’s altogether more substantial one.

Proper tragedy.

And if this post reads as Pseuds Corner, I need my sleep, and my fresh air and exercise. The other family member who is alternating with me on care duty could doubtless tell a similar story.

Stick in the Mud

What is it to grow older?

Well, I’m showing many of the more obvious signs. My hair and beard have reached a colour where strangers call me “santa”. My paunch, which has gone through life with the objective of making a natural Falstaff at age sixty, is in the right ballpark. On the upside, although I’ve slowed down, I can still walk across the moors, run, cycle, swim, carry a heavy pack. Things I’ve loved doing throughout my adult life.

One other classic symptom is that you become set in your ways, less open to new experiences than you used to be. And that’s been brought home to me by a lovely piece of music and a little exploration down an internet rabbit hole. I seem to have become a stick-in-the-mud.

OK, to begin at the beginning. I sing regularly in a small ensemble (up to eight of us) doing predominantly early music: madrigals and motets. A year ago – and again this year which is what’s reminded me – our leader (and second soprano) Jane brought forth a glorious christmas motet. I enjoyed it so much I did something I never normally do: I went looking on youtube for other renditions of it. Of course I found several, and one of them stands head and shoulders above anything else I encountered (erm, including ourselves). Here it is.

The appeal there is twofold. First, the five wonderful singers and their performance. But second, the clarity of the recording compared to most. This is a full-blown studio production, in the very modern sense of a virtual studio connecting singers around the world. Having enjoyed that video, I followed up on some similar productions, following firstly the channel it’s on – the counter-tenor Simone Lo Castro – and then his regular collaborator the second soprano Julie Gaulke. He’s done a lot of good stuff; she’s done yet more and appears to be a leading light of this form of production. It was quite startling to find a video of the two of them singing several parts each in a video, but that appears to be perfectly normal in the multitrack world. Come to think of it, yes I have heard of such things before, I just haven’t paid much attention.

Which brings me to what is surely the biggest name in the world of the multitrack virtual production: Eric Whitacre, and his “virtual choir”. A community multitrack effort, in which I could doubtless have participated. But I’ve never actually paid attention to that. I’ve tended to be a bit sniffy about it: his name regularly comes up in the same context as a lot of today’s dreadful muzak, so I’ve dismissed it. Which is, on reflection, a terrible pre-judgement of the man and his work. I’ve become an old git, temperamentally resistant to a new experience. Never mind Falstaff, I should be playing Schlendrian – the grumpy old dad in Bach’s Coffee Cantata.

I shall make it my mission between now and the new year to find some of Whitacre’s work and make an informed judgement. Maybe even consider participating in his or similar future events!

Concert

Damn, I’m late blogging this. I blame the cold which kept me away from last week’s rehearsal.

We have a concert this Sunday, December 4th, at the Plymouth Guildhall. The work is Handel’s oratorio Judas Maccabeus.

It is basically a feast of Handel’s music. The story (insofar as there is one) is of the biblical warlord Judas Maccabeus and his victories in battle, and of his people going from despair to triumph. Although it’s about the glory of war and terror, it’s not such extreme and gratuitous violence as many biblical works including Handel’s. Lots of lovely music, including tunes that we all know without – until we encounter them in context – knowing where they’re from. For example, an arrangement of See the Conquering Hero Comes is a Last Night of the Proms staple.

As a singer, this is lots of fun. Most of the choruses are short, but there are a lot of them, and each has its own distinct character. And it plays with the voices in ways rarely seen in a serious score, though not unlike what one might be tempted to improvise around a score in a hypothetical rehearsal that needs livening up. I shall certainly enjoy it.

As a listener, my usual reaction to Handel is that I like him in small doses, but a whole concert of it can tend to drag. How much are we doing to maintain the level of excitement for our audience? That’s hard to say from within, but I would note that we’re taking a lot of the music at a cracking pace, which keeps up excitement in numbers that might otherwise risk feeling formulaic. Even the slower numbers, like the despairing (but lovely) opening chorus, are going too fast to wallow in it. But not according to the modern fashion with baroque, of making it almost mechanistic. And we are a large choir, something which Handel himself loved, but which is sometimes sneered at by today’s baroque aficionados.

For readers in the area, I can recommend it, if you can get tickets.