John Adams

In his book "The Rest is Noise", Alex Ross tries to describe the music of John Adams. He writes: "It is a cut-up paradise, a stream of familar sounds arranged in unfamiliar ways. A glitzy Hollywood fanfare gives way to a translike sequence of shifting beats; billowing sounds of Wagnerian harmony are dispersed by a quartet of saxophones. It is present tense American romanticism, honouring the ghosts of Mahler and Sibelius, plugging into minimalist processes, swiping sounds from jazz and rock, browsing the files of postwar innovation. Sundry sounds are broken down and filtered through an intensely recognisable personal voice, sometime exhuberant and sometimes melancholy, sometimes hip and sometimes noble, winding its way through a fragmentary culture."
Get it? Can you hear it in your head?
No, you can't - unless you've heard some John Adams work before. If you have then that description is as good as it's possible to be, I think.
I have heard some quite short works of his and enjoyed them a lot; they're fun to hear. No tunes to speak of, mostly rythms, mostly fast ones that take you along, so to speak, on a helter skelter ride. But I had not heard any of his longer works until last night when the National Orchestra of Wales played his 1985 three movement work called "Harmonielehre". It was an astonishingly exciting experience: not so much a piece which entranced you with lovely tunes or development of themes but, rather, that thrilled you with its texture and rhythmic patterns.
"Forty triple chords set the piece in motion...." writes Alex Ross - and that describes it beautifully: "sets it in motiion" indeed. The final movement is colossal with an orchestra of about a hundred players seemingly all playing at the same time with five on timpani playing everything they have there.
I think it was Sir Thomas Beecham who said something like "musical works should be such that they can be whistled or hummed by a passengher on the Clapham omnibus". That finishes John Adams then; you couldn't whistle or hum anything of "Harmonielehre" but I wouldn't have missed it "for the world", as they say.

Lon Chaney

Someone writing a column in The Times today refers to John Steinbeck's novel "Of Mice and Men" being popular GCSE material; also that the film with John Malkovich as Lennie, the subnormal friend of a normal man seeking work in the 20's or 30's America, is also popular in schools since it shows in dramatic form what it is they are reading. I prefer the old black and white film directed by Lewis Milestone (of "All Quiet on the Western Front" fame) made in 1939. In that film it had Lon Chaney Junior as Lennie and he was great.
Chaney's father was better known as a Hollywood star but he made only silent films. The son made a lot of films but due to his unglamorous appearance (just plain ugly some people might say) he was uaually cast as a villain or as a man possessed by some evil spirit or a man who changed his nature into something hoprrific and dangerous. I recall him as a werewolf, as an Iron Man - whatever that was - as many other wierd and wonderful B feature people. Then he made "Of Mice and Men" and he was superb. A trait he had often shown in his less memorable films was that of a man troubled by a conscience: an almost miserable look of someone possessed by an unwanted demon. Malkovich plays Lennie well but you can't help feekling that he's acting the part, that he's pretending to be an idiot; with Chaney you believed that he was this man; he seemed to understand the man's inner turmoil: that miserable expression of delusion and dismay at what he might do e.g. kill someone lived on him and in him.
He played another rather smaller part later, towards the end of his career: a man, troubled again by his incapacity to help the main character, Gary Cooper, in "High Noon". It was a small gem in a first-rate film.
There were two other roles in the 1939 "Of Mice and Men" film which deserve mention: Burgess Meredith as Lennie's friend George, the biggest part in the film, and Bob Steele as a nasty piece of work, Lennie's boss. Both these actors were always good whatever films they were in; Meredith usually had the big parts and Steele always small parts, always the villain: "The Big Sleep" as Canino; a killer in "The Enforcer" with Humphrey Bogart. One thing he always did well: die. He never just fell down, he staggered about, full of lead, clutching at his innards, making the most of his role, probably hoping for a supporting oscar award - which never, to my knowledge, came his way.
Became a successful business-man I heard. Like George Raft!

Charles Coburn

I am reading a biography of Howard Hawkes so I thought I'd do some personal research into his character by watching "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes". It's not a film I liked much when I saw it many moons ago but, seeing it again, it gained something in that it was fun. Good fun. And what does want more as one staggers unsettlingly into old age than something that makes one feel younger?
Another great fun thing about the film is that it presents a very old Charles Coburn doing what he usually did in his films - play the part of "a dirty old man" without making him seem dirty at all. Old yes but not at all "dirty". This time he plays an English millionaire who is attracted to Marilyn Monroe like a wasp to jam. "By Jove!" he says over and over again as he eyes her delightful body. "Would you like a dance?" he asks. She willingly succumbs to his ageing charms because he is a millionaire and possesses what she most loves in life - diamonds which, we are informed later in a number with Monroe and a heap of handsome men, "a girl's best friend".
The two female stars, Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell, were at the top of their luscious form when this picture was made and they seemed to enjoy doing the film more than they did other films; certainly Monroe seemed happier in this film that many others, enjoying herself in a role where she could, as it were, caricature herself.
But Coburn is magnificent. As always.
I have been doing some other research. I wanted to find out what film it was that starred Charles Coburn and Jean Arthur that gave me one of the best laughs I'ver had. My research took me to David Thomson's book on film people where I discovered that they made only one film together (though I may be wrong): "The More the Merrier". I then looked up Rotten Tomatoes for the reviews of this film and there it was, the film I was looking for. The film which I recalled had one of the funniest scenes I had ever seen: Jean Arthur occupies an apartment and she allows Coburn to occupy a part of it but he must meticulously follow certain "house rules": when to use the bathroom after she has used it, getting breakfast on time etc. Coburn is just superb: this overweight, bungling trudger of an almost desperate-to-please old man racing around trying to follow her tight timetable is a joy to see.
The film, directed in his earlier, less laborious style, by George Stevens was nominated for abouit 7 oscars. It only won one. Charles Coburn won it for best supporting actor.

Wyler

I was surprised to find that William Wyler's film "The Desperate Hours" was not included in David Thomson's book "Have you Seen?" Evidently he doesn't rate it as highly as the others included, like "Abbott and Costello meet Frankenstein". Again, I was equally surprised that the film was given a one star rating in "Helliwell's Film Guide". It's a good film. Maybe it suffers a little from it being an adaptation of a theatre play by Joseph Hayes and that he himself wrote the screeplay - theatre dramatists are not usually the best people to adapt work for the quite different style involved in film making, even if it is their own work; indeed this may create greater barriers to its success since the writer sees the action taking place on one set (usually in those days) and cannot visualise going outside that set. When this is done you can usually see that the action outside the "one set" is forced on the story - it is taken outside merely to show the audience that "this is a film not a play".
But William Wyler, the film's director, surely helped make it fairly presentable as a film. He had done it before in 1936 with "These Three", adapted from the play "The Children's Hour" by Lillian Hellman; she also did the adaptation to screen. He remade this film later in the 60's with a different cast, Audrey Hepburn and Shirley Maclaine. Neither of these two film are in Thomson's book and this one, like "The Desperate Hours", is only given one star in Halliwell's book.
I think Wyler is a better film director than either of these pundits claim; he made some fine films over a long career: "Dodsworth" from a novel by Sinclair Lewis is a fine study of an ageing business man; "Dead End" seemed good in its day and had a raw edge to it (another from a stage play - and it showed); "The Letter", a masterpiece (again from a play by Somerset Maugham); "The Westerner", a fine western with an oscar performance from Walter Brennan and an equally good performance from Gary Cooper; "The Best Years of your Life "; "The Heiress" with an almost frightening performance from Ralph Richardson; "Detective Story" with Kirk Douglas; "Roman Holiday", Audrey Hepburn's best film I think; "The Big Country". Those are some of them. "The Desperate Hours" ranks alongside them I believe with two outstanding performances from Humphrey Bogart and Frederick March.

Rattigan

There is going to be a resurgence of Terence Rattigan plays this year, I read. I'm not surprised: he is a master of the well-made play with its beginning when something has happened to hold the attention and when the main character is in a spot of trouble; how he/she resolves the conflict is the heart of the play. In "The Browning Version" we see a teacher at a public school, quite a tyrant in the classroom, who cannot love his wife in the way she wants to be loved, sexually; he knows she finds that sort of love elsewhere with the chemistry master at the school; he has to decide what he's going to do with his life now that he is about to retire. The problem he has is an intellectual one: while he loves her - or rather has loved her - he can only find satisfaction in the joy of literature; so when a boy gives him a present of Browning's translation of a Latin text he breaks down and "blubs". From this, after his wife tells him that the boy probably gave him the book so as to get a higher mark, he begins to find some strength of character. At the beginning of the play he was a rather pathetic character - and pathetic characters are not suitable for tragedy in dramas - but he emerges as a stronger person able to fulfill himself in the way he wishes to.
There are two kinds of love, said Rattigan: that which expresses itself in animal sexuality and that which cannot express itself other than in a sort of spirituality.
Rattigan conceitedly said of himself: "There's Shakespeare, Chekov and me." Not true. He is not on the same high level. He is a great crafstman; he can tell a story brilliantly and he can execute brilliant "coups" which make you gasp with pleasure. But he is not a great wordsmith in a poetical sense like Shakespeare and he does not fill out his characters with the warmth that Chekov does.
David Aaronovitch, writing in The Times today about the sex traders of the north of England, tries his best to make them believeable and human in that they do not understand our culture, they being mostly Pakistanis (they are, in my opinion beasts who should never have been allowed to perform this trade of young girls - nothing excuses them, they are the scum of the earth). He quotes Freud: "Where they (men) love, they do not desire and where they desire they cannot love. They seek objects which they do not need to love, in order to keep their sensuality away from the objects they love."
I think this quote applies to Rattigan's life, his homosexuality being one kind of love, his desire to love women the other kind.
I look forward to seeeing some of his plays again: "The Deep Blue Sea"; "The Winslow Boy"; Bequest to the Nation"; "The Browning Version".

Words and Music

I turned on the radio yesterday to hear something in the Mozart Marathon on Radio 3 where all, yes, ALL the music Mozart ever wrote is being played over 12 days, and I heard a most beautiful soprano aria from an opera which, when I looked it up in the Radio Times, I found I had never heard of. I didn't know what she was singing about but the tone of it made me believe it was romanttic, maybe a love song; but it could have been a song to a person or maybe to something else, a pomegranet possibly. Don't know. Didn't care. The thing is, it didn't much matter what the song's words were saying because I was listening to the beautiful sound of the music.
This is often the case I think with a lot of people: they hear an aria from an opera, like what they hear but don't really care what it is about - Nessun Dorma for example: how many people at the World Cup, or whatever it was the aria was used as a signature tune to, knew what the words were describing.
I have just been reading how the song "Moon River" came to be written. Blake Edwards wanted a song for his film "Breakfast at Tiffany's"; Henry Mancini said he'd like to write one. "You're the music director," Edwards told him, "you don't write songs." But Manciini pleaded and he was tried out. He wrote a melody, a simple one that Audrey Hepburn would be able to manage, and got Johnny Mercer to write the lyrics. It workd a treat and won an oscar.
Fast forward a year or two and Miles Kreuger, musical historian, asked Mercer "What has moon river to do with hucklberry friend?" "D'you know, you're the only one who ever has asked me that?" Mercer didn't have a satisfactory answer. Sounded good. Still does. "My Huckleberry friend" is one of those magical expressions that sound great without making much sense in the context it's in.
Then there's Sondheim's "Send in the Clowns". Does anybody know exactly what that's about? Does Sondheim? He's never come clean on that. Then there's "A Whiter Shade of Pale". "We didn't know what we were singing," I once heard one of the group that recorded it say, "but it sounded real good."
A couple of days ago I heard a recording of Dame Janet Baker singing one of Elgar's Sea Songs: "Where corals lie." Great song. Beautiful voice. But she did not at first wish to sing it because she thought the poem wasn't up to scratch. Luckily she changed her mind. Possibly she realised that the words weren't the chief quality of the work: it's great Elgar and great Janet Baker but not probably a great poem.

Nigel Slater

I used to like Nigel Slater. Obviously he's a good cook; he's a good writer too and a good speaker. His programmes recemtly on BBC 1 are pleasant to watch though the idea that they are "simple suppers" is plainly ludicrous: simple, my foot! He has more ingredients in his pantry at the ready than I have had hot dinners. Never mind, the programmes are fun to watch. Were!
Then I saw a play on TV this week about Nigel as a boy growing up with a loving mother and a rather boring father with a nasty temper; it was adapted from his autobiography. And now I can't say that I like Nigel Slater at all.
The play was finely done, well acted (especially by the boy who played Nigel) and should have been a lot of fun. The TV critics certainly thought it good - The Times critic gave the play five stars and I suppose I should have done the same thing looking at it objectively. But in my mind it was a one star play or even a no star play. It annoyed me intensely. By the end of the play I found I did not like Nigel Slater one little bit.
Why? Well I think it had to do with the other characters: the father, the cleaning-woman he married after his wife died. They were quite revolting types and I felt that they shouldn't have been. Why not, one may ask, if that was the truth. Because when a character is conceived by a good playwright he or she is brought to life as a whole human being not a collection of features like a cartoon might depict. The father was moody, nasty, unfeeling, coarse; the cleaner-woman was coarse, vile, envious of her step-son's ability to cook as well as she could. Neither had redeeming qualities as most people have unless they are outright villains which they evidently were not.
So the "hero" of the play, Nogel Slater himself, came across as moody, ill-mannered, ungrateful and a loner - not only that but a loner who rather liked being one.
The play ended with Slater, now a young man, leaving home for good just after his father had died (from over-eating it seemed) with his second wife, the cleaning woman (as Slater referred to her throughout) distraught and alone and pleading for comfort in her grief. The fact that he didn't give her any comfort but was too eager to leave left me with a nasty taste in my mouth. I had the impression that the playwright (together with Slater no doubt) enjoyed the "joke" of her despair and expected us to enjoy it too. I didn't. I found myself wondering what happened to her after this not actually wishing to know what happened to Slater. I know what happened to him: he became a famous chef.
A chef for God's sake! Not a Mozart or a Tolstoy or even a Noel Cowerd but a chef.
They say that cookery is the new rock and roll. Perhaps they're right. Just like the old rock and roll it's loud and brash and puerile.