Ny Malagasy Orkestra – The National Orchestra of Madagascar

On Saturday, at Prudhomat in the Lot, outside the Salle des Fetes it was minus 8 deg C, but inside it was hot and getting hotter.  The NY Malagasy Orkestra was performing their second set and my friends and acquaintances had the rare treat of seeing me dancing along with the rest of the audience!

These guys are really good musicians.  They come from all parts of Madagascar and play mostly traditional instruments like the strange double necked box guitar, a three string bass and a box harp.  The amplification of their acoustic instruments allowed them to perform and be heard in front of the gloriously indisciplined audience (I’m more used to opera and classical music).  They also use an accordion, a real guitar, violins and of course percussion.  They have excellent performers in all sections. 

Compared to some of the West African all electric bands that I’ve heard, their sound is more delicate and balanced. It was ideal for the smallish room where about 300 people had gathered. 
 
Justin Vali is a real virtuoso on the valiha, the instrument in the middle of this picture, which is traditionally made from a single piece of bamboo, but now often has steel strings that can be replaced when required.

The group had been in St Céré for a week and had visited the schools and the École de Musique so the kids were all there with their parents.  It was a very good night for the Lieu Commun, a local cultural organisation who promoted the residency, which is part of a winter festival they have called Madagascar en Quercy.

As well as playing African polyrhythms superbly, the members of the Orkestra  can also sing really well in harmony.

And finally, here’s a video of Justin Vali, who presented the evening, looking very cool in his Elvis shades and with his own troupe of dancing girls.  Well if you’ve got it flaunt it!

If they're ever performing near you don’t miss them!

Phillippe Jaroussky

I’ve just been seduced by Philippe Jaroussky and I’m not alone.  Just listen to this!

Philippe is naturally a baritone, and his speaking voice has that pitch, but he sings as a counter tenor.  The counter tenor voice is obtained by singing in the falsetto range and, whilst many men can do this, there are very few who are able to do so with great artistry and produce a beautiful sound. 

The repertoire for these specialist performers comes mostly from the baroque period and was written for castrati.  Italian composers like Monteverdi, Vivaldi and others, such as Purcell and Handel, wrote extensively for the high pitched male voice.

Until very recently I’ve not been a great fan of this period, because I thought that I didn’t like the long highly decorated melismatic passages that were the fashion, but listen to Philippe performing this aria, which is very fast, with lots of melismas, but so well done even all the other musicians can’t help smiling!

Andreas Scholl , probably the world’s best known counter tenor, was interviewed with Philippe Jaroussky in the Guardian when they were rehearsing for a joint concert in London’s Barbican just over a year ago.  

Andreas said: "There's always this fascination about the counter tenor voice.  But I've never really understood what that is, because I'm doing it every day – it's my voice.  Yet when we sing, people cry and we get love letters.  You get used to that." He turns to Jaroussky.  "But I experienced, for the first time, what other people feel when I heard your recording Opium.  I got goosebumps.  For the first time in my life – I'm serious, Philippe – I thought, 'A-ha! This is why people are so fascinated by our voices.'"

I know exactly what he means, because I had the same response when listening, with other members of our quartet, to “Sì dolce è 'l tormento”.   When the track had finished I turned to Quince, who sings Alto, and said “I think I’ve just been seduced by Philippe Jaroussky!”   And she said “So have I!”

I’ve sung this Purcell duet with Netty, who sings soprano, but we are nowhere near achieving the perfection of this version by Andreas and Philippe.  In fact they have given me a model interpretation to work towards.  

Quince and I are rehearsing “Et Misericordia”  from the Magnificat by JS Bach but I’m quite sure that our interpretation will be completely different from this one. Don't get confused Jaroussky is singing the upper line!

But for a final frisson or two, try this Vivaldi aria "Vedro con mio diletto"

Some more links

Lascia chio panga  Handel  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w6hjpTuA2aI&feature=related

Piangero (Vivaldi) http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YJoalfIaOz0&feature=related

A very good article about Philippe has been published in French News Online http://www.french-news-online.com/culture/music/2011/march/jaroussky.html

Here is Phillippe Jaroussky’s official website http://www.philippejaroussky.fr/

Burn's Night - An Address to the Ladies

George has kindly asked me to address the ladies -  
And where indeed would we men be today without our ladies? 
Who can naysay their particular household skill –
Which ensures that nothing stays where we mere mortal men might will?
Who could criticize such persistence in adversity –
Providing that it’s not of mechanical or electrical diversity,
Or deny their skilful observation –
Of all those tiny things we men have overlooked in aberration?
Let us marvel at their resolve and their finality –
When going shopping in the spirit of frugality.
And don’t discount how they can fill tongue-tied tranquillity with talk of topics everyday –
But perhaps only amongst the ladies of my own family is this their way.
Above all who could not but praise such womanly qualities as nurturing and protection - 
Which are their virtues most outstanding in our affection? 

.......................................

But putting aside poetic tributes to the ladies just for a moment, it must be said, that ladies were not always so valued and appreciated by men for the exceptional abilities of their sex, neither have they always taken such a prominent role in society as they do now.  Here, in our beloved Republic, before the revolution of 1789 women were considered “passive citizens” – and up to 1945 they still relied on men for their political representation.

And what should one say of the feminine qualities of Pauline Léon, who on 6 March 1792, submitted a petition to the National Assembly, signed by 319 women, requesting permission to form a “Garde National” of women armed with pikes, pistols, sabers and rifles, in order to defend Paris in case of military invasion.  Her request was, of course, denied. 

Yes, this was the era of revolution but, as Madame Defarge and her feisty female friends were practising their knitting skills in Paris, whilst eagerly awaiting the free spectacle soon to be offered by the abrupt demise of royalty and the aristocracy, at the same time, in 1791, Thomas Paine published “The Rights of Man”. 

Our hero for this night, Rabbie Burns, one of Scotland’s first gallants and proto-feminists, felt that this document was  far too one sided, so in 1792 he replied to Thomas Paine with his poem “The Rights of Woman”, which I would like to read to you now.

The Rights of Woman

While Europe's eye is fix'd on mighty things,

The fate of Empires and the fall of Kings;
While quacks of State must each produce his plan,
And even children lisp the Rights of Man;
Amid this mighty fuss just let me mention,
The Rights of Woman merit some attention.

First, in the Sexes' intermix'd connection,

One sacred Right of Woman is, protection.
The tender flower that lifts its head, elate,
Helpless, must fall before the blasts of Fate,
Sunk on the earth, defac'd its lovely form,
Unless your shelter ward th' impending storm.

Our second Right - but needless here is caution,

To keep that right inviolate's the fashion;
Each man of sense has it so full before him,
He'd die before he'd wrong it -   'tis    decorum.
There was, indeed, in far less polish'd days,
A time, when rough rude man had naughty ways,
Would swagger, swear, get drunk, kick up a riot,
Nay even thus invade a Lady's quiet.

Now, thank our stars! those Gothic times are fled;

Now, well-bred men - and you are all well-bred -
Most justly think (and we are much the gainers)
Such conduct neither spirit, wit, nor manners.

For Right the third, our last, our best, our dearest,

That right to fluttering female hearts the nearest;
Which even the Rights of Kings, in low prostration,
Most humbly own -   'tis dear, dear admiration!
In that blest sphere alone we live and move;
There taste that life of life-immortal love.
Smiles, glances, sighs, tears, fits, flirtations, airs;
'Gainst such an host what flinty savage dares,
When awful Beauty joins with all her charms ˄
Who is so rash as to rise in rebel arms?

But truce with kings, and truce with constitutions,

With bloody armaments and revolutions;
Let Majesty your first attention summon,
Ah! ca ira! The Majesty Of Woman!

Gentleman I ask you to raise your glasses to the Ladies!

Roger Penrose “Cycles of Time”

The man who tore up the rule book, which says that for each equation you include in a popular science book you will halve its sales, has published another to follow his best seller “The Road to Reality”.  It’s called “Cycles of Time” (published in 2010) and it proposes a form of cosmology in which the universe follows successive cycles of big bangs; he calls it “Cyclic Conformal Cosmology” or CCC.

Although it’s well written and the development of his line of reasoning is clear it’s not at all easy to comprehend.  I did mathematics as a secondary subject to an engineering degree and the concepts that he uses go well beyond that level.  If you really want to understand his arguments properly you need to have studied, to graduate level, Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity and his use of tensors, together with statistical thermodynamics and quantum theory, as well as have a familiarity with current and historical cosmological models and the physics and mathematics of black holes.  People have written entire books and devoted their lives to researching these subjects and he assumes that you are up to date with their findings.  I found that it was just about possible to follow the outline of his ideas and the very numerous diagrams helped a lot.

Whilst he’s prepared to speculate in certain areas he sticks rigidly to the correctness of the second law of thermodynamics.  He emphasizes throughout the definition of entropy derived from statistical mechanics.

Current experimental evidence indicates that the universe is expanding at an increasing rate.  It’s widely accepted that at the Big Bang everything was in thermal equilibrium, the entropy of the universe was low and has increased continually thereafter.   During the evolution of the universe many black holes form, some of them at the centre of galaxies are extremely massive.  At one stage Stephen Hawking thought that matter entering a black hole entailed a destruction of entropy, which is against the second law of thermodynamics, but he withdrew that opinion in 2004.  According to Stephen Hawking’s widely accepted theoretical research, a black hole very very gradually evaporates by radiating at a very low temperature until it eventually disappears altogether with a small pop”.  Thus the entropy swallowed by the black hole is eventually released in the form of radiation. 

But not all matter will end up in black holes, whatever the age of the universe.  Some matter will just cool down and stay there.  Here Penrose is forced to accept a speculation that allows him to dispose of this matter over a very long period of time.  He postulates that matter in itself has a propensity to decay and the decay products to annihilate each other and disappear as radiation, to return, if you like, to its equivalence in energy.  The reason that he is forced down this route of allowing matter to evaporate, as well as the black holes, is that his mathematical construct of Cyclic Conformal Cosmology requires that time becomes impossible to measure at the limiting condition.  If there's no matter and just radiation, then there’s no way to construct even an atomic clock, so time itself becomes irrelevant in the expression of space time, and by using conformal mathematical concepts he postulates that the cosmological cycle restarts from this state. 

I’m afraid that this is where my understanding fails me.  In the way that he presents it diagrammatically it seems possible.  Mathematically you are equating the low entropy state of the origins of the Big Bang with the low entropy state that would exist once all of the black holes and matter had turned into low temperature radiation but how the latter, in the form of dispersed radiation, turns into the former, a singularity containing the entire energy of the cosmos, leaves me perplexed.  It can be made to work mathematically, but as in many things mathematical, it does not seem to relate to any normal concept of reality.  It’s an interesting idea nonetheless.

In the very last part of the book he speculates that it might be possible to detect the results of gravitational waves resulting from close encounters between massive black holes which took place BEFORE the big bang.  These would show as ripples appearing in the Cosmic Microwave Background Radiation.  He persuaded David Spergel and his research assistant Amir Hajian at Princeton University to look for these in the CMB data and, when spurious spikes from regions around the galactic plane were suppressed, the results were not encouraging.  Then they tried using elliptical shapes instead of circles to look for correlations and they had more success but this might be due to lensing by the gravitational curvature of space time introduced by massive objects in the current aeon as the CMB radiation traverses our universe.  Roger Penrose hopes that by correcting for these anomalies he will be able to confirm his ideas about Conformal Cyclic Cosmology.  

I wish him good luck.

Meet the Politicians - Cécile Duflot

Today on France Inter it was the turn of Cécile Duflot, Party Secretary of the Europe Ecology Party (the Greens).

On the prestigious news and current affairs programme between 7am and 9am she was promulgating all the current received wisdom of this disproportionately influential minority party.
·         Nuclear power is not sustainable in the long term,
·         Renewable energy can provide all our needs and,
·         We don’t need growth because you can have prosperity without economic growth.

The depressing thing in France is that nobody challenges such statements.  Not on the radio at any rate and the result is that people are at risk of being persuaded that it’s true.

Nuclear Power is Sustainable

With the use of the right technologies, such as liquid fluoride thorium reactors, nuclear power can be both safe and sustainable for centuries to come, without increasing carbon dioxide in the atmosphere and without generating wastes which will still be radioactive in thousands of year’s time.  There are even technologies available which can safely burn existing nuclear wastes and surplus plutonium stocks, but they all need political commitment and investment.

Renewable Sources cannot provide all our needs

Renewable energy sources do have a place in the energy mix, I'm even considering an installation myself, but they cannot be a complete replacement for nuclear power, or power from fossil fuels, because they either only work during daylight hours, or when it’s windy.  There is no suitable storage technology that will enable sufficient energy storage solely from such sources for our current patterns of demand.   I didn’t hear her mention biofuels but they need huge areas of land and, unless you live in a country that has thousands of hectares of unpopulated forest, they are in direct competition with food crops.

German consumers already pay 40% more for their electricity than consumers in France because they have less nuclear power and are now going to withdraw from it altogether.  They haven’t yet admitted that there’s a problem of satisfying the base load with renewables but when they do they will make it up by burning more Russian gas or importing French nuclear electricity!  Fortunately they are unlikely to be in direct political conflict with Putin et al, who have a history of turning off the gas as a political weapon and, however high the price of gas gets, they can afford it!  They are a successful country that can export its manufactured goods and has sustained higher economic growth over the decades than its neighbours. 

Prosperity without economic growth is a myth

France is not so lucky but Cecile Duflot has an answer to that as well, “prosperity without economic growth”.  Even that might be possible in an unconnected world where we all lived in our own small isolated communities.  I suppose it would be rather like after the romans left, no economic growth but just lots of invasions.  Between successive waves of wars and invasions there was a form of prosperity, if you could call being able to feed yourself and stay alive until the Black Death arrived, being prosperous. 

Somewhat more recently we saw what happened to communist regimes following over seventy years of stifling dogma and the cold war, both of which had the effect of restricting economic growth.  Eastern European countries are still living with the economic and political legacy. 

Oh sorry!  You want an army to defend your borders, a better health service, state subsidies for failing industries and more social protection but all without economic growth to pay for it.  Clearly we need another revolution!

So if you want to pay at least 40% more for your electricity, you think economic growth is a bad thing and you have no children or grandchildren who will need jobs in the future, then vote for Europe Ecology. You know it makes sense!

The Madrigal Quartet

Last Spring Quince, an English friend who sings alto in the choir, and I thought it would be amusing to sing 16^th century English Madrigals in deepest France.  But the question was how and who with?  She suggested Netty as soprano with Jean-Louis as bass and fortunately they both liked the idea.  Jean-Louis speaks good English and although Netty prefers to speak French, she knows some English and has sung in many languages since childhood so that's not a problem.

So what’s a madrigal?  This brief definition is a good one “A part-song for several voices, typically arranged in elaborate counterpoint and without instrumental accompaniment.”   There are madrigals in French, Italian, English and other languages. For his total output, and the quality of his work, Monteverdi is a towering figure among composers of madrigals; but I think that, in terms of the wide variety of composers whose work is still remembered and sung, it’s true to say that the genre reached its full flowering in Elizabethan England around the end of the 16th century.

I found this excellent site, http://www.oldmusicproject.com/madrigals.html which has a wide collection of sheet music and midi files from many English madrigal composers and volunteered myself as secretary/librarian to the quartet.  Quince chose her favourite “April is in my Mistress’ Face” by Thomas Morley (1567- 1603).  I chose two madrigals, “Lady When I Behold the Roses” by John Wilbye (1574-1638) and “Weep O’ Mine Eyes” by John Bennett (1575-c1614).  Jean-Louis was busy and went with the flow until later, when he introduced us to some other good music, which we will be singing in public next summer.

Netty wanted to sing a sacred choral piece from the same era, “Ave Verum Corpus” by William Byrd (1543-1623).  At first I was not keen to go in that direction, and I doubted that it was possible with just four voices, but having heard it I was so impressed that I needed no further persuasion.  We've tried it in the local church, which has an amazing acoustic, and it really sounds superb.  Here it’s sung by an American amateur quartet.  Their balance isn’t completely correct but musically it’s excellent.

I don’t read music straight off the page, and I’ve only been singing for a couple of years, so learning these difficult pieces is a challenge.  We are told that, in Elizabethan times, singing madrigals was after dinner entertainment and that they used to sight read their parts!  They must have all been trained in music from childhood! 

I use Notation Composer to edit and play the midi files, so that I can see the music at the same time as I hear the sound.  You can change the instrument timbre and volume for each voice and switch them on and off, you can also transpose and print out the parts.  Midi files almost always sound very mechanical and need an awful lot of work on tempo and dynamics to get them to a standard that’s suitable to use even for a backing track.  I usually just learn the notes and then carry on with the rest of the quartet.  That’s when it gets even more difficult.  Somehow the foundation on which you have learnt the notes is now totally unstable and it has to be painfully rebuilt, but this time by the group!  We meet once a week for an hour and a half and after that I’m quite tired.  I also tend to run out of voice, but that's because I'm not singing properly and forcing the high notes!

The Performance
I had the idea of doing a short performance for friends and family before Christmas, which took place yesterday. Fortunately the others in the quartet didn’t need much persuading.  We called it a public rehearsal so that we could restart if we fell apart or didn't start together. The programme and the words are given below. I gave it the title of "A Year on the Merry-go-Round of Love" (it sounds better in French)!

By adding “Now is the Month of Maying” by Thomas Morley (1567- 1603) to start and finish it, a cycle of songs on the theme of a year of love is created. 

This version by the King’s singers of “Now is the Month of Maying” is excellent.



We adapted ours for four voices.  I later regretted this choice because there's a passage, when we all separate to sing Fa-la-la’s, that I just couldn’t get right.  Over the weeks I tried and tried, and it was becoming very embarrassing!  Finally, thanks to some very last minute work with Quince, it was almost right, and in performance yesterday I think it was acceptable but not always completely accurate.  Our short programme was well received but I made mistakes and we all know that we can do better still!

At times progress can seem slow and very frustrating, but the others all think that we have done very well in eight months.  When we get it right there’s a real sense of ensemble and we are all listening to each other.  The balance of voices is good and they blend well, but on the recording that Jean-Louis made I am lacking in volume. (When I asked some of the guests later, they said that my voice could be heard, so now I'm left wondering just how much I need to step it up).   I know, however, that I need guidance in voice production to bring the placement of the voice forward and to aid projection, especially in the higher range.  Someone from the choir has volunteered to help two of us, but I also need professional training.

The Cabaret
The Quartet has now been volunteered to sing at a “Cabaret” evening in a nearby village in February.  I had visions of being booed off the stage for singing an English madrigal at such an event, but apparently people do all sorts of things from popular to serious and there’s no stage, you just stand up at your table.  We’re only expected to do one piece and to my horror it’s “Now is the Month of Maying” but I’ve found this very short bawdy French song written by Clement Janequin (1485–1558) who is the best known French madrigal composer.  The 16^th Century French is full of double meanings, but for those of us who don’t know the language that well I had help to prepare a translation.  I think that it’s real cabaret material! This version by the Ensemble Clement Janequin is so light and airy.  I can’t imagine a better interpretation.

Ung mari se voulant coucher

Avecques sa femme nouvelle
S’en vint tout bellement cacher
Ung gros maillet en la ruelle.

« Helas, mon amy » Ce dist-elle,

« Quel maillet vous voys-je empoigner ».
« C’est, ce dist-il. Pour mieux coigner,

« J’ay », se dict-elle, « ung peu vescu,

mais coup de maillet, n’ay oncq eu.
Quand gros Jean me vient besoigner,
Il ne me coigne que du cul. »

A husband, wishing to sleep

with his new wife,
is hiding a large mallet
between the two palliasses of the bed.

"Alas, my dear”, she says to him,

“What is this mallet you have in your hand?"   
'Tis to bang better”, he replies.

"I’ve been around a bit”, she says,

“but never yet been banged by a mallet. 
When big John comes to nail me,
He bangs me only with his ...."

A Year on the Merry-go-Round of Love

Portrait of an Unknown Lady - Marcus Gheeraerts II 1595

A young man meets his true love
Now is the Month of Maying.  Thomas Morley (1567 - 1603)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LJ7VirCScp0

Now is the month of Maying, when merry lads are playing! Fa la la la la!Each with his bonny lass, upon the greeny grass, Fa la la la la!
The Spring, all clad in gladness, doth laugh at Winter's sadness! Fa la la la la!
And to the bagpipes’ sound, the nymphs tread out the ground! Fa la la la la! Fie then!  Why sit we musing, youth’s sweet delights refusing? Fa la la la la!
Say, dainty nymphs and speak! Shall we play barley break? Fa la la la la!

He writes poems to her beauty
Lady when I behold the Roses sprouting.  John Wilbye (1574 - 1638)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_sc88mtqFR0&feature=related

Lady, when I behold the Roses sprouting,
Which clad in damaske mantells deck the arbours:
And then behold your lips, where sweet love harbours,
My eyes present me with a double doubting:
For viewing both a-like, hardly my mind supposes,
Whether the Roses be your lips, or your lips the Roses.

But unlike her beauty, her love for him fades with the seasons
April Is In My Mistress’ Face.  Thomas Morley (1567 – 1603)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vtnxlPrEA2o

April is in my mistress' face,
And July in her eyes hath place.
Within her bosom is September,
But in her heart a cold December.

The end of the affair! O to drown in these Spring tides!
Weep, O Mine Eyes.  John Bennet (1575 - c1614)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ROrJ6fox9Kg

Weep, O mine eyes and cease not,
alas, these your spring tides me thinks increase not.
O when begin you to swell so high
that I may drown me in you?

But after spring, comes the summer again
Now is the Month of Maying.

Are Credit Rating Agencies Working Against Europe?

With their change of methodology Standard and Poor’s are now firmly in the political arena.  They appear to want to influence political decisions.  By putting on notice of a possible credit rating downgrade fifteen European countries at the very same time as France and Germany were meeting to discuss proposals to strengthen the financial governance of the EU, how else can anyone interpret their actions.

Instead of considering financial fundamentals they now base their assessments of the credit-worthiness of sovereign states primarily on political factors.  They claim to be able to assess the degree of political will of a continent to resolve its debt problems when they were incapable of assessing the fundamental risks of financial products associated with the 2008 sub-prime mortgage crisis!

One of the countries under threat of a downgrade is Luxembourg which has virtually no debt and no political crisis, another is Germany.  If this had no real effect then it would be laughable but, unfortunately, the credit rating agencies influence the interest rates at which countries can borrow money, and the more they have to pay, the less there is available to pay back debt and finance public services.

A decade long recession

I have been thinking for a while that we are looking at a ten year period of no growth in Europe and this week on France Inter Valerie Pecresse, the French minister for the budget, said so as well.  By destroying market confidence, each downgrade by the ratings agencies takes us one step closer to making a decade long recession a reality.  

It’s impossible to see how the US can escape being sucked into the same economic situation, they certainly can’t spend their way out of it and carry on printing more and more money.  But which country has the largest debt, and so far seems incapable of agreeing how to reduce it, the United States?  And where are the credit rating agencies located?  In the United States! 

So whilst the rating's agencies are focussing on Europe and distracting attention from the weak US response to their own debt crisis, the US also has an interest in reining in these unelected organisations, which seem to want to play politics with national governments in the big league. 

I am waiting for the first investigative journalist to publish a story linking the directors of the ratings agencies to unexpected political and financial interests.   Don’t be surprised if you start seeing stories about the clandestine affiliations of ratings agency bosses appearing on both sides of the Atlantic!  

As well as dealing with tighter regulation now being proposed in the EU, the agency's bosses should expect to be scrutinised very closely from now on.