Thu, 01 Jun 2006
Rock Me Amadeus
Seb Hunter, Rock Me Amadeus:
or how I learned to stop worrying and love Handel,
Penguin, Michael Joseph, large format paperback
With a collection of review comments like 'Hilarious',
'Wickedly funny', and 'Hilarious' twice more times, you
are pre-primed to think it will be funny. Whether or not
you do will depend a little about how you feel about
dumbing-down and the idea that popular culture is actually
a good and useful thing. Oh yes, and your attitude to the word
'fuck'.
So, if you disparage the culture of yobs, casseurs, and
English soccer players
then you will already know that this is not for you at all.
Not that the author is any of these things (or at least
admittedly) and there are signs of a significant amount of reading
on the way through. The conciet of the thing is that the writer
is a full-on rock 'n' roller converting himself to classical music.
There are quite a few historical snippets that can
be enjoyed on the way through. The trouble is, if you don't
already have a very good grounding in the history of music
you're liable to be led for several circular walks in the bushes.
One case in point is that in sacred music, the protestants
stood for rich complexity while the catholics were for monophonic
drones? In fact there are historical tides which regularly
sweep puritanically over complexity in sacred music no matter
what the denomination. Another is value-judgement -- it's fine
for him to dislike Lully, for example, but to state his dislike
in pub-bore absolutes is just plain silly. Or the idea that
the Proms are some sort of apex of classical music. Please!
They might be pleasant enough but they are a fairly good
example of dumbing-down as well.
Simplicity might be the pub bore's friend but, of course,
history is rarely simple and getting a really good idea of
anything that has happened in the past is actually quite
hard to do and requires real work, and its dessemination
requires more than sound bites.
What if I lighten up a little? There are funny bits, for sure.
(Baron K)
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pre Dec 04 reviews are here