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Ron Dough
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« Reply #15 on: 12:25:52, 16-04-2007 » |
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On the titles front I guess I'd better be the first to get in with the old Scotch(sic) tune to a ground "Johnny, cock thy beaver".
There's the story told by Robert Robinson of a political broadcast way back, when the announcer (described as having a face as long as High Wycombe) came to the microphone and solemnly introduced the speaker as "Sir Stifford Crapps"....
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #16 on: 12:27:38, 16-04-2007 » |
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Well there is Britten/Auden O lift your little pinkie....
...but it is so utterly beautiful that I feel grubby about even mentioning it here and may well delete it later if the shame gets the better of me.
There's a letter from Britten to Pears about it, saying, "I think it will make you smile" Also in Headington's biography of Pears (I haven's bothered to check, but I think that's where I read it), he mentions a madrigal concert where the audience was over-solemn, and Pears did actually draw attention to the subtle (?) possibilities in the "rose without a prick". (See George's #12.) Oh dear, why do I find it so easy to remember these things?  |
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Chichivache
Posts: 128
The artiste formerly known as Gabrielle d’Estrées
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« Reply #17 on: 12:34:59, 16-04-2007 » |
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In similar vein, there is the old - probably apocryphal - story of someone ordering from a record store, a recording of the Leonid Malaskin song "Could I but express in song".
The enquirer was subsequently told that they could not fulfil his order for:
Kodaly - Buttocks-pressing song
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wotthehell toujours gai archy
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George Garnett
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« Reply #18 on: 13:07:28, 16-04-2007 » |
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Also in Headington's biography of Pears (I haven's bothered to check, but I think that's where I read it), he mentions a madrigal concert where the audience was over-solemn, and Pears did actually draw attention to the subtle (?) possibilities in the "rose without a prick".
(See George's #12.)
Oh dear. I do hope it wasn't us! Oxford Town Hall, May 1974. Can anyone help over who wrote it by the way? I tried to track it down once with the aim of having our Lay Clerks sing it at the annual Choir Party here when, ahem, Barry Rose was Master of the Music. Perhaps it was just as well I didn't succeed. I had to content myself by giving it a mention in my 'thank you everyone' speech at the end and explaining that unfortunately they couldn't perform it because the choir's parts had all gone missing. (Er...it was that sort of occasion...you probably had to be there...) Oh dear, why do I find it so easy to remember these things? Oh I rejoice in them, Mary. The great, noble and healthy British end-of-pier tradition. We would all be in far more trouble without it  |
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« Last Edit: 13:24:54, 16-04-2007 by George Garnett »
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Tony Watson
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« Reply #19 on: 14:19:27, 16-04-2007 » |
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Weber's opera Der Freischutz has been rendered in English once before as The Magic Balls. And in one translation, apparently, there was the immortal line: "Whence gottest thou such wondrous balls?"
Then a performance of a work by Walton was reported in our local paper once as Belshagger's Feast.
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #20 on: 14:25:39, 16-04-2007 » |
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Also in Headington's biography of Pears (I haven's bothered to check, but I think that's where I read it), he mentions a madrigal concert where the audience was over-solemn, and Pears did actually draw attention to the subtle (?) possibilities in the "rose without a prick".
(See George's #12.)
Oh dear. I do hope it wasn't us! Oxford Town Hall, May 1974. Can anyone help over who wrote it by the way? I tried to track it down once with the aim of having our Lay Clerks sing it at the annual Choir Party here when, ahem, Barry Rose was Master of the Music. Perhaps it was just as well I didn't succeed. I had to content myself by giving it a mention in my 'thank you everyone' speech at the end and explaining that unfortunately they couldn't perform it because the choir's parts had all gone missing. (Er...it was that sort of occasion...you probably had to be there...) Ahem....quotation from the Headington Pears biography: "Once in Oxford Town Hall, he amused a hitherto rather solemn audience by introducing a madrigal about a lady bereft of her lover by emphasising the madrigal's own metaphor of "a rose without a prick". When Barry Rose retired or left or something, didn't he programme "There is no Rose"? |
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Daniel
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« Reply #21 on: 14:27:04, 16-04-2007 » |
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Lord Archer?
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Reiner Torheit
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« Reply #22 on: 14:33:25, 16-04-2007 » |
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One strange phenomenon of working where I do is that Russian titles for works become standard... which is probably as it should be. However, sometimes translators don't realise they're actually working with a title which had an English original in the first place. One which I managed to snaffle at the proof-reading stage was a programme in which the orchestra were billed to play that favourite work for solo violin and orchestra by Vaughan-Williams...
.. "A Starling Takes Off".
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"I was, for several months, mutely in love with a coloratura soprano, who seemed to me to have wafted straight from Paradise to the stage of the Odessa Opera-House"
- Leon Trotsky, "My Life"
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Sydney Grew
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« Reply #23 on: 14:54:38, 16-04-2007 » |
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Not wishing to lead the Shortacowitch thread any further away from its ostensible topic than we have done, but since to-day is one of great joy in that we have at last found after no less than twenty years of vain searching a photographic image of the aforementioned Hugh Black, we would like to share this our joy with all the other Members. Here he finally is:  We were first introduced to Hugh Black through his admirable volume "Culture and Restraint" (1901). Let us give Members a brief taste of him: "Nothing can permanently take from man the conviction that he was meant to possess these fields which culture offers, to master them for his own best life and for the world's true joy. To ban the love of beauty, to stifle inquiry into truth, to be blind to the fascination of art and letters, is in the ultimate issue infidelity, though it seem sometimes to be in the interest of faith. Faith can not be made perfect, till she accepts the divine self-revelation through beauty, and through law, as well as through love." This comes from a chapter entitled "The Aesthetic Ideal - Culture". |
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« Last Edit: 15:06:56, 16-04-2007 by Sydney Grew »
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George Garnett
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« Reply #24 on: 18:00:39, 16-04-2007 » |
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Oh dear, it was us! (Message 20) The shame, the shame of being thought over-solemn. Thank you for looking that up, Mary!
Re. Barry Rose, yes I do believe he might have done, for good liturgical reasons at the time I'm sure. The boys also used to have great difficulty with 'O spotless Rose' and one or two others.
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thompson1780
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« Reply #25 on: 18:03:21, 16-04-2007 » |
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I always snigger at
"Come, ye sons of art" by Purcell. (Perhaps that goes with Kodaly's buttock song?)
and
"For we like sheep" from Handel's Messiah
Tommo
Age 7 and three-quarters
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Made by Thompson & son, at the Violin & c. the West end of St. Paul's Churchyard, LONDON
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Mary Chambers
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« Reply #26 on: 18:15:06, 16-04-2007 » |
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Re. Barry Rose, yes I do believe he might have done, for good liturgical reasons at the time I'm sure. The boys also used to have great difficulty with 'O spotless Rose' and one or two others.
I tremble to think what would have happened had they been asked to sing "What use a Rose that hath no Prick". |
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marbleflugel
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« Reply #27 on: 18:21:04, 16-04-2007 » |
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I think the librettists of the eighteenth century at any rate were fairly up with the doubles entendres as was the
Bard and his ilk. Which Handelian opera (or was it an affair- situation at the time in his company) cross-references the surprise of '...For unto us a child is born' ?
One from Fritz Spiegl's old press cuttings draw- 'Cosi fan Tutti' became 'They all do it with the Croydon Symphony
Orchestra'
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'...A celebrity is someone who didn't get the attention they needed as an adult'
Arnold Brown
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George Garnett
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« Reply #28 on: 18:32:27, 16-04-2007 » |
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I tremble to think what would have happened had they been asked to sing "What use a Rose that hath no Prick".
Somewhat to my horror, when I made that reference and got a gratifying chuckle from the audience of choir parents etc, it got squeals of laughter from assembled small choristers and probationers sitting cross-legged at the front. An anxious moment but I seemed to be forgiven afterwards by choir mums. Happy days, those annual Choir Parties, when the boys were able to mock authority 'Fools Day' style, a bit close to the knuckle occasionally |
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« Last Edit: 19:39:58, 16-04-2007 by George Garnett »
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alex_hills
Posts: 4
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« Reply #29 on: 18:53:24, 16-04-2007 » |
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Roger Reynolds' Fiery Wind is worth breaking my lurking for.
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