and beef-steak.
Elgar started out as being in thrall to the continental gods, ended up
as an establishment staple.
The royal family are German, you know. House of Saxe-Coburg-Gotha or
Schleswig-Holstein-Sonderburg-Glücksburg (I always wondered what the
answer to the Schleswig-Holstein question was, now I know), according
to the wikipedia.
Roger
On Jan 3, 2008 10:11 PM, Halvard Johnson <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> > 'What makes the music of Sir Edward Elgar sound so distinctively
> > English?'
>
> It has--well, you know--what a malapropistical friend of mine used
> to refer to as "that veneer of civilization": red plush upholstery
> (slightly
> worn); heavy drapery; musty, mouldy libraries; a whiff of horses
> from the stables; etc.
>
> Hal
>
> !!!!!!!!!!
> / \
> /—(c)…(c)—\
> \ ~~ /
> \ __ /
>
>
> Halvard Johnson
> ================
> [log in to unmask]
> http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/index.html
> http://entropyandme.blogspot.com
> http://imageswithoutwords.blogspot.com
> http://www.hamiltonstone.org
> http://home.earthlink.net/~halvard/vidalocabooks.html
>
>
>
> On Dec 31, 2007, at 4:09 PM, Max Richards wrote:
>
> > From a footnote [p.242]in Oliver Sacks's new book, Musicophilia...
> >
> > 'What makes the music of Sir Edward Elgar sound so distinctively
> > English?'
> > they [Iversen, Patel and Ohgushi of the Neurosciences Institute]
> > ask. 'What
> > makes the music of Debussy sound so French?'
> >
> > Patel et al. compared rhythm and melody in British English speech
> > and music
> > to that of French speech and music, using the music of a dozen
> > different
> > composers. They found, by plotting rhythm and melody together, that 'a
> > striking pattern emerges, suggesting that a nation's language exerts a
> > "gravitational pull" on the structure of its music.'
> >
> > The Czech composer Leos Janacek, too, was greatly exercised by the
> > resemblances between speech and music, and he spent more than thirty
> > years
> > sitting in cafes and other public places, notating the melodies and
> > rhythms
> > of people's speech, convinced that these unconsciously mirrored their
> > emotional intent and states of mind. He attempted to incorporate these
> > speech rhythms into his own music - or, rather, to find
> > 'equivalents' for
> > them in the classical music grid of pitches and intervals. Many
> > people,
> > whether or not they speak Czech, have felt that there is an uncanny
> > correspondence between Janacek's music and the sound patterns of Czech
> > speech.
> >
> > Sacks's bibliography is packed with research journal items, but I
> > note this:
> >
> > Patel, Aniruddh D. 2008. Music, Language and the Brain. New York:
> > Oxford
> > University Press.
> >
> > In other words, forthcoming...
>
--
My Stuff: http://www.badstep.net/
"She went out with her paint box, paints the chapel blue
She went out with her matches, torched the car-wash too"
The Go-Betweens
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