Solar and wind

A news feature from Juan Cole, on the increasing use of solar energy usage around the planet, is very encouraging.  I'm not sure that I agree entirely with his opening statements about the predicted rise in sea levels, which have been dismissed recently with a report from the IPCC which turns some of its figures on their heads, nor that the population of the world will increase at quite the rate he states, but the information about the number of solar plants being built around the world are great.

It seems like an odd idea, but we have several places in the world where huge deserts sit doing nothing.  Shouldn't solar plants be possible in these areas?  Or would the heat actually be too much for them?  It seems odd that we build solar plants, or install solar panels, in parts of the world where the sun doesn't shine consistently, yet seem to ignore those parts where it never stops shining.  Somebody will no doubt tell me I'm not a scientist so I don't know anything, but I'd be interested to hear more on this.

You'll notice in Cole's story that wind energy is mentioned three times.  At present there's something of a backlash against wind farms, unfortunately.  Some people think they're unaesthetic, for one thing, though having seen a number of wind turbines quietly circulating in the breeze, they strike me as having a particular beauty - kind of like windmills do. (I imagine windmills were once thought to be a blot on the beautiful landscape too.) And other people claim all sorts of illnesses as a result of living near them.  This opinion piece by Simon Chapman appeared in the ODT the other day, and seems capably to debunk these concerns. 

At present we have people protesting the digging of wells in search of oil around the country - the Government just yesterday opened up several sea and land areas for this, much to the irritation of the protesters.  I think we have other options besides oil (and much of the plastic that uses oil), and I'd like to see more people getting behind solar and wind and sea power and anything else that uses natural resources that won't deplete, so it distresses me when some people seemed opposed to anything, and everything.

Dissonance

Barbara Hurd writes an article in The Sun Magazine called, Dissonance [regrettably you'll only get a portion of it online]. Here's a short extract which appealed to me, particularly in the light of my recent post about Lilburn and Whitehead:

"'For now we see through a glass, darkly,' the Bible says. For me, it's more like 'Now we hear through a thick wall, barely.' How much do I miss? How much cluck and chirp, woof and trill, burrowing, gnashing, and last breaths go on while I walk oblivious among it all, preoccupied with this or that, intent on listening only for the sweet melodies? The answer is 'plenty,' though I am hearing more these days than I used to. Maybe the biggest challenge now is to expand my notion of harmony so that it includes even the unlocatable creaks of the dying, the screeches of healthy discontents, the cacophonies of want, all the unnerving sounds that accompany so much of our jostling attempts to make sense of life."

"What seems to be leading me these days is a wish to move, ear first, a little closer to what surrounds me, to close my eyes and hear how dissonance can agitate the spirit and widen the spectrum."

I suspect that anyone who really listens to music will have opened their ears increasingly over their lifetime. Quite apart from the fact that even popular music doesn't stand still (let's not say that it's going backwards at the moment - that would make me sound like some old reactionary), music in general is in a constant state of flux: what was wonderful last century may now be old hat; what we couldn't bear to listen to a decade ago we may suddenly find we have ears for.

Certainly there are composers in the contemporary classical scene whose music didn't appeal to me a few years ago, and which I've grown accustomed to, as Freddie grows accustomed to his Fair Lady. And, as I wrote in that recent post, even Lilburn is starting to register better with my ears. Whitehead has a little way to go.

Which is a bit like dieting: there's always more than a little way to go, and products that claim you can burn fat, build lean muscle, and re-define your body merely by popping the pills are likely to be a waste of time. Which is the value of pages like oxyelite pro reviews. There's some sense there that these products may not be all they're claimed to be.

What's that got to do with music and composers? I think, even though our ears may become accustomed to music we didn't at first like, there will also always be composers who have somehow got themselves into prominence and whose music is really no more than faddish and pretentious. The proverbial Emperor's New Clothes approach, in other words. It applies to all the arts (see this article on Dane Mitchell, for example), but only time will put these people in perspective.

Hone Tuwhare and Music

I note in the ODT (the Otago Daily Times, for them wot don’t know) that the recently deceased NZ poet, Hone Tuwhare, is to be honoured in a musical composition.
Anthony Ritchie is going to work with young Dunedin singer, Matt Landreth, to create a new piece, with words by Tuwhare. Three of Tuwhare’s poems will be set to music, including the ubiquitous Rain, which is apparently his most well-known and anthologised piece. (You can find a copy of it here.)
Another young Dunedin singer, Michael Grey, is going to work with Auckland composer Jeff Linn. That piece will revolve around a poem by Li Yu, the last emperor of the Southern Tang dynasty. (It has nothing to do with a Southern Man, in case you’re wondering.)
I’ve accompanied Michael in the past, and he was also a strong and very musical member of the now defunct group, Opera Alive.
Anyway, there are six of these combo jobs going on around the country: six composers working with six emerging artists.
I was interested in this piece of news, because I wrote a song using Hone Tuwhare’s words some time ago, and only had it performed last year for the first time. (By another young and emerging artist, who also happens to be very keen on sport; it’s a moot point which ‘art’ will beat the other out.)
To have the song performed publicly meant getting permission from Tuwhare himself. At that time, for some reason, he wasn’t living in Kaka Point; he was up on Waiheke Island, and I had to contact him via an intermediary. He was pleased to have his poem used, apparently, and after a negotiation about a very small fee for the use of his words, the performance went ahead.
The poem in question was Sun O (2). I’m not quite sure what the (2) signifies. I don’t know of a poem by him called Sun O (1), but maybe there is one. Anyway, you can listen to a version of the song online at the SibeliusMusic.com site.

1964

Never give someone a challenge when they have the ability to search the whole of the Internet for an answer.

1964. That was the challenge, so I checked out to see whether I’d ever written about that year before, and yes I had: it was the year the word condominium was born.

Unfortunately it was also the year the English Sun newspaper was born, something we probably could have done without.

It was a leap year (you can divide it by four). The Winter Olympics in Innsbruck nearly didn’t go ahead because of a lack of snow. Mods and Rockers were clashing in British seaside towns and scores of them were jailed. The best picture of the year was Tom Jones, with a very young Albert Finney. (He’s always seemed a lot older since then!) And the movie Mary Poppins arrived.

There you go! That wasn’t hard.