From Henry Purcell to Edward Elgar: the Journey

...or how Robert didn't go sailing.

[photo: the door to the Legislative Council, Tasmania]

What is immediately occupying the mind of the musical public in Sydney is "why weren't there any composers of note in the English speaking world for the period from Purcell to Elgar?" Why were the Germans and Italians predominant? In what may be characterised as the most significant time in the advance of culture in the modern world, the English were, I pose, more interested in mercantile activities and raping and pillaging the rest of the world to enhance their lifestyle, than in genuinely progressing their language and arts.

The lead up to the first performance of The Dream of Gerontius, tonight in the Opera House Concert Hall, has had the people asking two intertwined questions:

First: on the economic scene: how can you trust the government? Yesterday (metaphorically) your government was telling you to stop borrowing money, stop extending your credit card debt and seeking new household chattels. Next moment (not literally) the same Coalition of Australian Governments - State, Federal and Local, is telling us we must spend, especially in the run up to Christmas (apparently a religious festival, but honoured as a savour of economic crises). One day an arm of that government (Reserve Bank) is increasing interest rates to control inflation, then saying 'we are doing everything we can to give financial stimulus to the ailing economy'. My current prediction is another 1% point reduction in rates in December.

Second: What is happening in our schools? I'm told that a number of schools in Sydney are based around the church grammar style of education. I'm sure that used to mean a classical education with attention to 'church' and 'grammar'. Robert, my guardian whilst I'm in Sydney, tells me that there are students, nay teachers as well, who use the NZ term "ewes" to mean, somehow, the plural of the word "you".

Then there is the 'church' issue. There are, under the banner of the Christ based churches, apparently two major streams: the Anglicans and the Catholics. Now the Catholics, I'm lead to believe, themselves believe the story as retailed with much interest by Edward Elgar. I'm not very good at understanding it, but I think that is the whole point. As Craig Henderson reports on the 1970s: "If you remember them, you weren't there".

I may have to go back to my spiritual consultant, Whopper D in Melbourne. He kindly spent a decade following with some detailed consideration, the Catholic chuch doctrines.

But that isn't what the punters in Sydney have demonstrated as their interest: the words on the public lip last night were "If Mr Gerontius dies, and then becomes a soul, and is 'floating' in the heavens, moving with angels and demons, and then meets his God, and finally - as the story goes, is left wandering through the heavens, praying and being prayed for to ultimately progress somewhere (heaven?), then (and this is the question) why is it called the Dream of Gerontius?".

If it is a dream then at the end he should awake, and the alarm should go off, he would pull on his hat and coat, comb his hair, and grab a bit of toast and make the bus 'in seconds flat' (Beatles, 1970s - I don't remember being there so I proabably was). However, if it is not a dream, then it is a rendition of the man's story of the last moments of life, through death, to being able to relate to us his soul's early time in the afterlife. No dream at all, but his and his soul's particular reality.

ASK THE HARD QUESTIONS!

In order not to leave you hanging, I'm going to suggest one diversionary answer. That is, like politicians, I will respond by saying "interesting question, but that isn't the question you should be asking, and I'm going to answer the question you should have asked" (they then use the platform to enunciate some political dogma). And here is that answer:

Both the issues of the economy and the religious issues raised and the dogma exposed are employed to try to get a stable society; one where people will do things which they would not otherwise wish to do. In the religious issue, they are kind to little children, don't kick their dog, pay their bills, in order to ward off the risk of floating in pergatory for the rest of future history. In the economic arena, they are encouraged to spend money they don't have so that they can have a better lifestyle than that to which they are entitled by stint of their own endeavours, in order that, again, they will continue to adhere to a society.

So why didn't Robert go sailing? Was it because the roads were blocked for the opening of Baz Luhrman's new over-rated film? Was it because the rains were about to come? Was it because his partner in ownership of the sailing boat had, contrary to the rules of boat ownership, offered the tiller to someone who wasn't an authorised 'tongmaster'? For these and other more difficult questions, tune in later.

Love: PK