I know it’s curmudgeonly, but I don’t care for Halloween. As a child I remember going guising – now referred to as “trick or treating”, surely an import from North America – in Glasgow’s West End. We called in at the tenement flat of, as it so happened, the newsagent at Broomhill Cross. “Please can weez have wur Halloween?” “Can you sing a song?” “Aye.” “Well don’t bother. Here’s threepence.” I have turned into that man. Even worse. No threepence. I just got out.
And went into Glasgow. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra were playing in the City Halls. What a boon! October 31st is often starved of cultural opportunities. But here we had a programme of Mozart – Webern – Mozart. I jumped at it.
Not without encountering some minor impediments. I booked online, and was promised an e-ticket within five days of the event. It never came. Instead I got an email to inform me that the method of issuing tickets had changed, and that all I needed to do was… well, quite a lot actually, in terms of entering a site, scrolling down this and that… It seemed unnecessarily complicated. I abandoned it, and, since I was in Glasgow last Thursday for my German class, went into the Glasgow Royal Concert Hall to see if I could pick up my ticket. The concert hall was not officially open but, stroke of luck, the lady at the desk heard my plight, instantly solved my problem, and issued me with a ticket. God bless her! It is wonderful, and increasingly rare, to encounter somebody who listens to you in a humane way, and is not merely scrolling down an algorithm.
So, on Saturday, off to Glasgow. I wasn’t fazed by the fact that there was an enormous traffic jam on the M8, westbound, en route to Glasgow city centre. That has been there for years. But as I negotiated the city itself I was to discover that the entire area is a mass of bollards and one-way streets. I could only find my destination by negotiating a series of ever diminishing circles. Buchanan Galleries, the central carpark in Glasgow, has for some years now been closing at 9.00 pm. What earthly use is that? I found my way, with some difficulty, to Concert Square carpark, a dank venue suffused in a dank ammoniac aroma.
And made my way to Candleriggs, a ten to fifteen minute walk via George Square. If I had thought to avoid Halloween, I was sorely disappointed. Glasgow city centre was extremely busy, full of foul fiends and flibbertigibbets. The air was thick with the sickly-sweet stench of marijuana. I had thought that Halloween was a preoccupation of children, but, seemingly not. Everybody was dressed as some sort of witch or warlock.
It was a relief to arrive at the City Halls. They are very familiar to me, although these days my visits are rare. But it was not always so, and the arrival at the venue usually sparks off in me a surge of nostalgia for a past age. Here it was again. The Scottish Chamber Orchestra accompanied Yeol Eum Son at the piano, playing Mozart’s concertos 21 and 24. She was wonderful. It was only when she embarked on the second movement of the 21st concerto, that I remembered I had played the viola part in this concerto, in this same place, with the SNO, accompanying Stephen Bishop Kovacevich.
Between the concertos, the orchestra performed Webern’s Symphony. Conductor Andrew Manze took some time to explain the structure of this twelve note work, with musical illustrations. He had some violinists play a major scale with its eight notes, followed by a chromatic scale with its twelve notes. He described the notes extraneous to the diatonic scale as “relatives”, perhaps a “close cousin”, or perhaps a “dodgy uncle, formerly known as Prince.” I groaned. A cheap gibe. I have absolutely no opinion about the alleged behaviour of the former prince in question. I haven’t seen the apparently notorious car crash of an interview with Emily Maitlis, and I have only the sketchiest notion of what the former prince is alleged to have done. But I find the current media feeding frenzy, or blood fest, to be completely obnoxious. Let he who is without sin cast the first stone. I remember during the financial crisis of 2008 that the chief executive of the Royal Bank of Scotland was pilloried for financial mismanagement and, as a result, that his knighthood was revoked. I remember at the time thinking that this revocation of an honour was not really an act of censure, but rather an act of social distancing; that the person once the darling of the Establishment was now disgraced, and therefore had to be dropped like hot coals; simply because the Establishment, who love to associate with the glitterati, cannot abide to associate with the disgraced.
I’m not sure about the Webern. It’s very ingenious, but is it music? I wasn’t entirely unfamiliar with it, because I have Webern’s complete works on CD – six of them – conducted by Pierre Boulez. I can’t say I understand them, but I rather like them. They seem to invoke in me a sense of calm. That can’t be bad.
But it’s not Mozart. That reminds me of a scene in a Gerard Depardieu film, Green Card, in which Depardieu, a man who has found himself in a situation not unlike that of the former prince, plays the part of an illegal immigrant to the USA who forges an unlikely relationship with a woman named Brontë, played by Andie MacDowell. She is visiting the home of some very up-market people in Manhattan when he unexpectedly calls. He is a musician, a composer, and when asked, he sits down at the piano and plays the most appalling cacophony you have ever heard. Afterwards, he says, apologetically, “It’s not Mozart”, and the lady of the house replies, “I know.” He then proceeds to break everybody’s heart by accompanying himself while intoning, in exquisite French, a plea to offer succour to destitute children, while the lady of the house, much moved, translates.
My computer’s still playing up. It keeps telling me the system is viraemic, but I have a notion that all these alerts are, themselves, the virus, since my anti-viral package insists the system is clean. In my tome Click, Double-Click, it crossed Dr Alastair Cameron-Strange’s mind that his firewall was manufacturing the viruses it purported to protect him from. My astute copy-editor pointed out to me that the fictional name I had given to his anti-viral package did, in reality, exist. I kept making up names and kept discovering that they were already out there, trading. Eventually I settled for Zareba-abattis. That was obscure enough. So now I have this notion that anti-viral packages actually constitute a protection racket, and that in this instance two rival mafia families are vying for control of my computer. “This is a beautiful system you have. It would be a pity if something were to happen to it.”
Well, this ancient machine is not Windows 11 compatible, so I guess it’s time to update. I’ve been using a computer in my local library, and it occurred to me, why bother updating? Isn’t this enough? Why not eschew the digital life, and take the machine to the dump?
Ich bin der Welt abhanden gekommen.
jamescalumcampbell 