We’ve been to hear two events in the Sound Mind series where the Cheltenham Science Festival invades the Music Festival.

The first was Does Music Make you Better?, which I’ve already written about.

The other event was The Sound of Melancholia and was billed in the programme as:

Stephen Johnson and Robert Winston explore the relationship between music and the emotions, from the ecstatic highs to the soul-searching lows. Using a range of audio samples and case histories, they focus particularly on examples of pathological sadness — historically termed ‘melancholy’, more recently called ‘depression’ — and reflect on how, paradoxically, this finds expression in some of the most beautiful music ever written.

Prof. Ray Tallis had to stand in for an unwell Robert Winston, but it wasn’t a problem as we could have listened to Stephen Johnson for hours. He talked about the experience of some major classical composers who battled with severe emotional problems, and also how they composed to help others survive depression or repressive regimes. He himself

He illustrated this with 3 examples:

Beethoven piano concerto op.110

• Beethoven helped others (particularly Brantanos) with depression by playing for them
• he consciously helped others with his compositions
• like Shakespeare’s “giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name” his music helps his listener understand their emotions better and help inspect them.

Sibelius 4th Symphony

• writing this helped Sibelius work out his darkest shadows, loosening their grip, and creating a new possible future
• therefore a help to others with depression, including Stephen himself.

Shostakovich 5th Symphony

• Shostakovich was in danger with Stalin and needed to rehabilitate himself with the murderous regime
• the Symphony was a remarkable balancing act that kept Stalin happy, but still told the people through it that life was as bad and fearful as it was (but that they couldn’t ever say for fear of being purged)
• despite the risks, he felt he had to write it to help others — and indeed many Russians report it did help them survive, despite being some of the bleakest and violent music written.

It might not be obvious, but listening to music that reflects the darkness and shadows — reflecting depression or melancholy — works better than upbeat or joyful music.

For Martha’s birthday we went to the Town Hall to hear the BBC National Orchestra of Wales.

The high point was Boris Giltburg tackling Rachmaninov’s glittering 2nd Piano Concerto – Martha’s favourite piece of music. But we liked Tchaikovsky’s First Symphony too, particularly the second half. The evening started with an Overture from Hansel and Gretel by Humperdinck. We’d not heard that either before.

The evening finished with a warning form the conductor about walking home on the ice and suggesting the best way to travel in mid-winter was to take a … Sleigh Ride. I’d forgotten what a entertaining piece it was, complete with whip sounds, and it was a lovely gift to leave on.

There was a decent-sized audience: probably 2/3 of the 900 seats were filled. But from my vantage point in the gallery I could see the tops of most people’s heads, and there was a definite grey-white colour scheme. Cheltenham has a lot of retired people with spare cash, so that isn’t a surprise. But I think there were only a handful of people under 40. (Indeed, there were more under 40s on the stage, but only just.) This should be making the orchestras nervous, particularly with a popular programme like Rach and Tchaik. Whilst they might be younger on average, if a quarter of their Cheltenham audience isn’t going to be around in 10 years, and another quarter in 20 years, can their kinds of concerts be sustained?

The other surprise was looking to see just how many of the men were showing more or less “male-pattern baldness”. Rather too many for comfort. Next time perhaps we should sit on the ground floor, so I won’t get distracted by all this audience watching!

A real treat – Martha’s favourite concerto and one of my favourite symphonies and at our favourite concert hall the same night. Wonderful playing from the CBSO under the baton of Xian Zhang.

The concert started with Ravel’s Mother Goose Suite, which I’d not heard before, but is gentle and beautiful.

Michael Collins was the soloist in Mozart’s Clarinet Concerto. The music just emerged as if he was thinking it into existence, not having to coax it from a single-reed wind instrument, with interesting register issues. Seriously impressive, and no wonder his recent recording of this has been winning awards.

And then after an interval, the orchestra doubled in size and the organ added in order to tackle Saint-Saens’ great 3rd Symphony. I was hoping for a little more volume and passion in places, but the speed was just right, and the orchestra wonderfully clear and precise. I heard lots of tones and ideas that I’d not heard before, and I realised just how many great ideas Saint-Saens brought to it, particularly interesting rhythmical differences between different instruments. No wonder that he was reported to say about it “I have given all that I had to give. What I have done I shall never do again.” Which he didn’t. Fantastic.

Xian has made the “improbably journey from a small town in China to the New York Philharmonic” [NYT] and then on guest engagements with lots of other orchestras. She didn’t draw much attention to herself whilst conducting, or in the various entrances/exits in the applause at the end, but she certainly drew some great playing from the CBSO. Difficult to know how much this is down to her, as they are a fine group, but I’d certainly be keen to watch her at work again. Shame we missed “Maestro” where she was apparently one of the tutors.

We’ve done at least 12 hours in the car so far, and without any CDs on us, we’ve listened to a lot of radio. We’ve listened to some rock, soft rock, country and Christian stations so far. UK artists get more of an airing than we were expecting, with Phil Collins/Genesis and Elton John particularly standing out. Remembering that there’s no such thing as US nation-wide radio stations (I think) we were surprised to almost always be able to find a Christian station somewhere on the dial. Shame that no Bruce Cockburn music was played yet, but at least a great Rich Mullins (RIP) track was

Time for Sunday’s update.

After the damp communion service, I stayed swaying to the beat of the Bombay Baja Indian Brass Band as they played in the Arena. Very funky rhythms, and catchy tunes. No wonder they’ve played all across Europe.

I listened to Aradhna play again, this time lying on the floor in the Centaur with Martha. Some wonderful wonderful music, this time from their 5 piece (which added tabla and female vocals to guitar, sitar and violin who I heard yesterday). Their website says:

Aradhna means worship. The group captures the beauty and dignity of india’s bhajan devotional melodies with music that blends east and west.

This is what Greenbelt excels at: reminding us how narrow our view of Christianity often is, and showing what else is around. There must be millions of Christians (Anglicans even!) in India and around that region who no other than music with some of the same flavour.

On a completely different note, the culinary find of the festival was the distinctly upper crust pieminister: pies served with posh mash, gravy and/or mushy peas. My favourite was the “PM Pie”, which was their name for a steak and kidney pie. Yum yum. So much yum yum that we decided to buy some fresh ones to stick in the freezer at home to enjoy later. We had to promise (according to their website where you can also buy them) to “to love your pie, enjoy him, cherish him and above all cook him properly”.

Greenbelt has started Here’s a very small part of the 500-strong queue for the first session I went to (a panel discussion on “What kind of church is emerging?”). It was an authentic Greenbelt experience: long queues, damp grass to sit on, thankfulness that I’d remembered to bring a mat to sit on, different accents from the panel (German, American, Northern Irish, London, Manchester …), some insights and some disagreements. But they were pleased to have disagreements, because it is there that they find deeper reflection and growth tend to come. Not unlike our Bishops were finding in Lambeth’s indaba groups perhaps?

Later I heard the Indian-inspired music of Aradhna in the CMS tent. Simple, it also struck me as complex and soothing at the same time. I’m going to checking out their CDs …

My evening finished with a Marimba Recital by percussionist Gerard Rundell. He played a mixture of traditional and modern marimba music, as well as throwing in a snare drum piece and one for drum kit. Impressive stuff, even if sometimes the musicality suffered under his speed of sticking.

One of Spring Harvest‘s aims is to be a resource to the church around the country the other 51 weeks of the year. One of the very commendable things they do is to hold some seminars on the technical aspects of making audio and visual systems work in the setting of the 10s of 1000s of churches around the country. Brian Hillson continues to lead them, and continues to be extremely scattergun in what he covers – but perhaps that’s somewhat inevitable when there’s days worth of material and only an hour available. But he is generous with his team’s time to answer 1-on-1 questions from punters like me.

Anyway, enough intro. When playing or singing in a band with more than a few others, getting the audio foldback right is always a challenge. The ideal would be that each musician can mix exactly the combination they want, normally with themselves ‘highest in the mix’. Currently it takes about 30 minutes each band practice to get this right in my band. And even then it’s still a crude approximation of what we’d really like as we only have 2 foldback channels and 7 or 8 musicians. And its controlled at the back on the mixing desk. Big name artists get a better deal – a separate whole foldback mixing desk next to the stage, with lots of channels.

So, what got me so excited was seeing a small box of tricks that gives individual control for each musician. It relies on having a Cat-5 (or Cat-6) distribution system, which is no small deal, but allows each person to mix up to ZZ inputs. Wahey! Now I wish I’d pushed harder to get a Cat-5 distribution system in for the video signals – so we could re-use it for the audio as well. Time to go and check out AVIOM’s website for more details …

@@@ Mention model name, # inputs + add picture