Mémoire

In recent years the nature of biography has become more honest and transparent, particularly in respect of accuracy, historicity and subjectivity. Autobiogs are more likely to be called memoirs, acknowledging a more limited scope or viewpoint. The fallibility of memory is more widely taken as part and parcel of the game.

I'm a humble chap, as you know. But in the field of memory I have been particularly reticent to blow any sort of trumpet, knowing that I have no ability to capture people, names, events or details with any degree of accuracy or reliability. I may imagine some insight into the romantic, impressionistic, artistic or literary; but try to pin me down on the who did what, when (I'm not too bad on the where) and the house of cards looks decidedly shaky.

I was reminded of this recently by my reading. Many years ago when I learned French at high school, we had a reader of selected texts - don't ask me what (that'd be detail) but I guess it was Molière and Rousseau or such.

Strangely enough, I did remember through the decades a story in French that described the death of a young prince. Author and title of this piece were, of course, lost in the mists of my impressionistic memory. But I recall a touching description of how the doors and upper windows of the young prince's grand home had been closed up. They had been closed for such a long time, presumably to keep out the cold airs and unclean mists; something was clearly amiss. Within lay the young Dauphin on his death bed, surrounded by weeping family, servants and courtiers.

One particular passage, which stuck verbatim in my otherwise perfidious memory, pictured the failing prince discussing possible alternatives with his distraught mother and sombre priest:

<< ... Est-ce que mon petit ami Beppo ne pourra pas mourir à ma place, en lui donnant beaucoup d'argent? >>

Roughly: "Couldn't my little friend Beppo die instead of me, if we gave him lots of money?"

Let's leave aside for the moment the utility of this fragment. I can't say I have trotted this phrase out regularly, as the travel dictionaries suggest, in the restaurant, at the station or at the post office. But it must have a certain ring about it to hang around.

This year, as we immersed ourselves in the French language for a while and again visited French friends - half a century in my case since the schoolboy memories of Beppo, whoever he was, were laid down - I gradually came to the conclusion that those passages must have been from the classic work by Alphonse Daudet, Lettres de mon Moulin.

This cherished little book is a series of descriptive letters, anecdotes, snapshots, supposedly written from his old grain mill in the village of Fontvieille, between Avignon and Arles in Provence - not far, in fact, from Les Baux-de-Provence whence came the name of bauxite. It is a often regarded as a classic of French literature of the nineteenth century as it is full of wholesome tales of the traditional and captivating lives of peasant and poet, miller and mayor in the south of France.

On return from France I looked up Monsieur Daudet's classic and sure enough, there was the quote, word for word. OK I got one word slightly wrong ('pourra' should have been 'pourrait'), but for accuracy, after fifty years of wear and tear, it was up there amongst the médaille d'or stuff.
Before you accuse me of reaching for my trumpet, I have an admission. I re-read the letters from Alphonse's iconic windmill with considerable pleasure only to find that my rotten memory had in fact conflated elements of two separate stories and rebuilt the imagined scene and events to suit the revised architecture.

Despite the laser-beam accuracy of my selective useless quote, it turned out that the closed doors and windows had nothing to do with the upper room where lay a suffering prince. They were actually an extract from the introductory cadences as Daudet arrives at his mill from Paris. He observes in the opening lines that the old mill had been shut up for so long the the rabbits had concluded that the race of millers was extinct (well, it does concern people dying, so there.) Seeing the grass growing in the doorways, they had made their headquarters, a sort of strategic centre of operations says Daudet, in the shade of the windmill.

Ah well. It was a nice story or two, both remembered and re-read.

PS. Lettres de mon moulin is a delightful book, but best if you ignore (or even forget and reconstruct) reality: the idealised and optimistic picture of the rural lifestyle; the more disreputable ways of the author in real life; and the fact that he left the rabbits quite undisturbed, writing the letters in the evidently seamy suburbs of Paris.

Birds and bees

We have remarked previously that birds are frequent visitors to our garden, heading for different trees according to the season. Most have their can't-see-me brown feathers on but for some reason many of our regulars, mainly cockatoos and parrots, are so brightly coloured that they would be startling if they were not so common a sight.

Here's a few pics.

The sulphur crest is a very familiar sight in (or above) our garden, and often the cockies are in this pose, tearing branches off trees around the suburbs, in this case our pistachio before the fall of the leaves in autumn. They sometimes appear singly but in more open spaces are usually in flocks of fifty or so.

Conversely, the pink and grey galahs are ground feeders, and turn up in ones and twos. This one is not in our garden but quite friendly and unafraid of my approach as I walked through the local playgrounds to the shops.

Back in the pistachio the parrots (this one is a crimson rosella) find the nuts tasty. They come in red and blue, red and green, green and red.

The eastern rosella and lorikeets have another range of bright colours some of which are recorded in earlier posts.

Winter is pretty quiet for floral colours but of course, as in any part of the world,they are there if you look. Late winter here is blessed with thousands of violets that spread unnoticed during the summer into unusual corners. I found these in the local park while chatting to the galah featured above. They were flowering profusely, perhaps not elegaically 'blushing unseen' as Gray would have it: yet the boys and girls playing football in the nearby fields were paying no heed.

Who knows, though - perhaps a young person wandered over while supposedly listening to the soccer coach's harangue and found pleasant diversion.

The biggest brick outhouse

This photo will not win the best pic of 2010 award (too pretentious or dramatic?) but for us it conjures up some back stories and is of interest on several counts.

Firstly, the lone ranger quite dwarfed by the huge cathedral is Helen, wandering along waiting for me and probably musing over some obscure corner of French vocab or grammar discussed not long previously during our immersion French course at Villefranche-sur-mer.

Second it recalls elements of the rich and sometimes bloody history of this area in the south-west of France. We are in the regional town of Albi in the departement of Tarn which, like many other administrative zones renamed after the Revolution to break down fierce regional loyalties and friction, is named after the main river of the area, in this case half an hour north-east of the major city of Toulouse.

Of particular interest here is the juxtaposition of relics from two different periods and styles, early Roman and Mediaeval romanesque.

• The finely elegant stone arch framing the large cathedral, probably built about 2000 years ago, is Roman. These few remaining spans are all that is left of what is thought to be a temple on the banks of the lovely Tarn flowing quietly in the small green valley behind the camera.

• The cathedral of Albi, then. It's simply yooje, and actually made of brick, the largest such structure in Europe or perhaps the universe or something. That does not make it any more beautiful, unfortunately, as its size and solidity, when it was built in the 13th century, were intended to emphasise the message not to mess with the church after it put down with astonishing cruelty a heresy since known as the Albigensians. In contrast, the interior is more gracious and beautifully decorated. The ceiling was completed by imported Italian painters in 1513 and remains untouched and beautiful to this day.
  

I admit I am more captivated by the cleaner lines of the Église des Jacobins in Toulouse, featured in an earlier post on Trees here and there - now 18 months ago I realise.

And thirdly, there's the bricks themselves, narrow and elongated, in rich ochres and reds and peculiar to the Toulouse region (though the Zürich contingent may well have seen similar in other places like Italy).

These bricks add a certain charm and warmth to the smaller dwellings and other buildings that cluster around Big Brother, for which no such improvement can be detected. This photo is taken from an alley near the Toulouse-Lautrec Museum, housed in the Bishop's fortress-like palace which like the cathedral radiates power and almost menace.

The good bish, it seems, was not on the best of terms with the burghers of Albi whose lips were no doubt still slightly pursed after the fatal 'supression' of many Cathars, including women and children. His architect's brief seems to have chosen self-defence over inspirational qualities. The T-L museum contents, however, are wonderful.

Of course the flat bricks are widely evident in Toulouse itself, like these in this seriously old house in the back-streets of the city. We chose not to stand under it for too long.


But after all that, it was delightful to leave the busy bricks behind and retire to a drink and dinner at our friends' chateau in a nearby village of Cestayrols.

Last Rose or Spring Sprung?

Is it the last rose of summer perhaps? Might be in Europe. The original poem by this name was written by Thomas More in 1805, according to the link. But the tone is altogether too maudlin for this blogger, who sees more cheerful prospects than did Thomas. But then, he was Irish. True, the "fond ones have flown": but that does not stop us finding a bit of fun until they return once more into our sadly depleted orbit.

Actually, it's just a dogwood in spring. Not just a dogwood, but the dogwood inspired by our first sojourn in the United States, where the dogwoods flowered impressively around us. Other flowers are blooming over there now, and pleasing; while congratulating Mr President, I join those who feel that, like judging the French revolution, it's too early to say.

And speaking of trees, which we have not for a while, the next photo, taken in Berlin some time ago, is posted to mark the closure pro tem of the Office of Family Representation in that thriving and artistic city. The Representative hopes the closure will be temporary. Central Office commends the Diasporic Outpost warmly for his outstanding achievements - and for maintaining a tight level of security on any possibly more questionable activities - and wishes him well for the next centrifugal phase of creative endeavour.

Spot the Gum

I am no expert at identifying the many different eucalypts around Australia, and do not want to bang on forever about trees.

However, in the course of the TSSS I took early morning walks before the heat of the day and enjoyed discovering unknown territories like Glebe and Annandale. The density and maturity of the housing in these inner suburbs renders the discovery of a little park or open green space a particularly delightful surprise. [The little house shown is actually blessed with more than average elbow room, many houses being narrow-fronted attached terraces in various states ranging from sad disrepair to proud renaissance - pardon the additional reference.]

Actually, I lied. I have previously explored Annandale to some extent as a potential terrorist but don't remember much other than one bathroom. I must have been 5 or 6; we were still living in Mosman in a nice half-house in Central Avenue with the black baby grand with a cracked sounding board - surely everyone does that?  I went to stay for a day or so with a cousin in (the plot thickens) Annandale. 

When time came for an evening bath, I was given instructions on the plumbing and ventured into the forbidding world of the old bathroom. A mysterious rusted gas heater with a bewildering array of pipes and pilots, vents and valves, glared down at me from the wall above a chipped enamel bath with lion's feet. One eye on the heater's frowning presence, I struggled in rising panic to get the hot water flowing, but in vain. In fear of retribution I went out to my aunt to seek further advice, to be met not by scolding but by a look of horror, followed by the rapidly disappearing rear view of aunt as she rushed towards the bathroom. The gas was flowing merrily but the malevolent heater had chosen not to light, or maybe I had not lit it, and I had almost succeeded in blowing up the house and half of Annandale.  The memory of an event of such stark terror to a small boy is inevitably a dominant one, so you will surely forgive a suppressed remembrance of its suburban setting.

Back in modern Sydney musing on these events in the distant past, I turned a corner and peeked across a fence: I was delighted to see a stand of tall trees in a college grounds, proud and peaceful amid the traffic noise and heat. Having in a previous blog mentioned the spotted gum, I could hardly resist including this little snapshot. They are surely spotted gums, if not technically Spotted Gum - good on them anyway.

Although the occasional root sweeping up on an angle at the base of the trunk is visible, such as at left foreground, on the whole many species of eucalypt emerge straight from the ground, maintaining an only slightly reducing diameter as they climb. An impression that they are cylinders or poles just standing on the landscape creeps up on you. Several Australian painters (Arthur Boyd, Fred Williams) have picked this up and represented such trees with a single straight brush-stroke.

The Renaissance Happened

If you were dedicated enough to read the earlier post 'Cats in January' about the Tallis Scholars Summer School and just can't wait to know more, rest assured that a week full of Renaissance a cappella really happened from 18-25 Jan at St John's College within the Sydney University, and read on ...

Let's start at the end: how many concerts have you given on 40 degree C days? Maybe that's why they built these traditional churches so heavily; it was cooler inside. The final show was pretty good from the inside looking out, and audience reports were glowing. What more can one ask?

Actually, a little peace and quiet during the week would be good, too, so you can really hear the ethereal tones of the beautiful people that surround you in full harmony.

Did we get it? Well no, just have a look at this construction site within the compound. Note that a stone's throw would reach the far side of the new accommodation block (ours next year?), the near side being just outside the window of my spartan 1960s style dormitory (seen in photographic evidence for artistic verisimilitude, as G and S would say). No need for an alarm clock, anyway.

Never mind - on with the workshop. Warm-ups every morning, starting often by lying on the floor, progressing to vocal exercises but finishing with weird and wonderful dances to strong beat. That's some sort of broad hint to sing in time during rehearsals, always a trick in polyphonic syncopated parts and rarely achieved to Peter Phillips's satisfaction. 

A sneaky smile at the final chord at the end of a long hard session is about as good as it gets. Then again, Peter has been doing this with notable success all round the world for decades, so he knows how it should be done. No Cats in January and we got a few nods and beams, so there. 

Here, Peter(dark shirt) rounds us up in St John's chapel for a three-hour workout on several pieces for the final concert, the White Lamentations in 5 parts; or Sancte Deus by Thomas Tallis in only 4 parts but quite a tricky little number I assure you. This year we concentrated on a theme of English composers of the Renaissance, although small groups were often heard going hard at Victoria, Schutz or Palestrina. Peter explains that one of the distinctions from the earlier era of Flemish music, together with different style of harmony, is that the English generally favoured a basic structure of five parts minimum, going up from there. 

People were left to arrange small ensembles during the afternoons. The small groups like the one shown here, singing in a circle for clarity and contact, had one or two voices per part. This is a lovely sound, demanding close connection with each other - and rather leaving nowhere to hide if you get it wrong. The Tallis Scholars themselves almost invariably sing with two voices per part, as you may have observed if you have heard them at one of their concerts. We were left to choose our own music from a substantial library and all performed on Friday night for each other - a sort of peer review, albeit before a friendly audience.

The tutors shown here (Peter, Jan Coxwell and Patrick Craig) each had a group as well. Patrick sings alto and countertenor, and gives the start notes (around 600 so far) at TS concerts. 

For family readers I now indulge in a short listing of the works and small groups in which I performed at the sharing session. Groups' names were definitely tongue-in-cheek - I rather liked Shutz first, thinks later - or conveying an inside joke, which I may or may not explain. The reader who judges such detail superfluous should skip the bullets, go direct to the foot of the page and start composing laudatory comments and arranging a world tour for us.

• The Quakers sang one of William Byrd's shortest but most dramatic pieces, Terra Tremuit. This piece in 5 parts conveys the quaking of the earth at some dramatic moment in the church lectionary.
• The AAAs without valium rolled out a masterful version of O Lord in thy wrath by Orlando (I bet he got stick in primary school) Gibbons
• Six out of Eight was in fact an octet - I'm still trying to work out whether I may have been one of the two miscreants or not but actually, I thought we pulled it off in full 101% style. We sang a piece by Giovanni Gabrieli (good English name that one) for double quartet called O magnum mysterium. Yes, it was a great mystery how we got there given the wobbles in the final rehearsal.
• Chorus Maximus (we kept adding singers to bolster the sound) knocked off Byrd's Miserere mihi Dominus; I don't think anyone noticed my bum notes.
• Finally, though many groups brought a tear to our eyes, JaEd à 12 was the pièce de résistance for me, a superb rendition of Tomas Luis de Victoria's 12-part Agnus Dei from the Missa Laetatus Sum. This is for three quartets, sometimes all voices ensemble, sometimes just four. 

Not a dry seat in the house, to be sure.

Nature calls

Not far from anywhere in Canberra you walk into open land, often nature parks or reserves.

Usually heading for open grass land, the walker's favoured destinations are hills in between suburbs. The hills are open because someone charged with the responsibility of bringing the winning town plan of 1912 into fruition (or was it Walter Burley Griffin himself?) chose to make a rule that no-one could build above a contour line around 600 metres altitude, so the hilltops are gloriously undeveloped. Good thinking, since in most other cities there's a rush to grab the high ground and charge double or put a church on it. 

The rolling grassland around the Canberra area is sparse, the topsoil of this ancient continent well weathered or non-existent, the trees various sorts of eucalypt and wattle, and the undergrowth scrubby. After a few showers of rain, however, the grass starts to take notice; and 'full many a flower is born to blush unseen', as Thomas Gray's Elegy would have it, but not to 'waste its sweetness on the desert air' - as long as we continue to walk the ridges and admire their collective efforts. 

Reminders of a serious bushfire that swept through from the west some 6 years ago, destroying several lives, properties and 500 houses, are still clearly evident. Fire is a natural, in some ways necessary (for regeneration and seed germination), part of the Australian environment, however, and the beauty returns quickly. Birds are heard and seen everywhere, usually black or brown, sometimes a startling red or green of a parrot but often, as in the case of these pink and grey cockatoos, soft and gentle colours that more readily match the smoky greys on which the Australian palette is based. 

Don't get me going on that interesting topic.  The so-called Australian impressionists of the Heidelberg school and later artist like Arthur Boyd and Fred Williams; in Canada the Group of Seven and Tom Thompson, all spent weeks in their own  countrysides trying to absorb, capture and interpret the essential colours that defined the look of their natural environment. In Australia, the heat haze, long distances, dry dusty climate and the resultant vegetation gives the palette a washed or smoky grey feel. In cold Canada by contrast (and alpine Switzerland too no doubt - but other local experts may write more authoritatively on that subject), the dark green pines, brilliant white snow, dark rock formations and deep blue lakes led artists to favour much stronger primaries and contrasts.

Meanwhile, back near the ranch, a walkers' daily encounter includes the Eastern Grey 'roo, often still carrying a well-grown joey in its pouch long after the little terror should have been turfed out of home to fend for itself ( - which Gen was that again?). It's not unusual to see the long hind legs, rather than an inquisitive snout, protruding from the longsuffering mother's (tautology?) pouch. 

The kangaroos will allow you to approach only so far before  hopping off amongst the ubiquitous eucalypts, whose iconic leaves, instantly recognisable to Aussies the world over, are surprisingly short and rounded in the young tree.  

And back at the ranch itself, the beautiful wood of this oiled bench (well known to some readers) is a spotted gum, a variety that grows in a long strip along the east coast. But then again, that depends on which spotted gum you mean, since there are several varieties amongst the hundreds of eucalypts and related species - there were 606 of them in 1934 and now running at around 800.