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Here is a Sup—I mean repository of the texts of my together with some readings of them. The essays were broadcast by WXXI 91.5 Classical of Rochester, NY on Salmagundy each Saturday at 9:35am Eastern Time, from the beginning of time (1985) till May 2009 when Entropa (evil Goddess of Change-for-the-Worse-or-Possibly-the-Worst) troubled the minds of the WXXIites and they retired Simon and Salmagundy, and Rochester went into a terminal decline---for ever.
I continued on that brilliant bastion of all that's good and kultured, WCLV's syndicated Weekend Radio on many (mainly NPRish) stations traditionally on the first and third weekends of the month, though weekendage varied, till the horror crept ever onward and that too was devoured (in August 2023, a date which will live in infamy or at lease mild irritation)... and only I remain, defiant though wimpering.
Richard Howland-Bolton
There are pop-up pics and links all over the place here. In text they are indicated by a double underline like this:
mouse-overing brings the pop-up up and clicking (usually) goes to the link |
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Way back, in the time of the Hundred Years Unpleasantness, when England and France had been at it marteau and tongs for as long as people could remember, a song was composed---or at least occurred. It was called “L’homme Armé”, and it was destined to have far-reaching repercussions down throughout all of musical history.
The song itself is an odd little thing. When the words are they mean something like
‘The armed man’s the one to fear!
‘On every corner they are crying
‘“Come everyone, arm yourself in a Kevlar (registered
trade mark) Vest”
‘Yup, the armed man's the one to fear’,
and scholars have never been able to decide whether there is some deep, bitter anti-war protest buried in there, or if the song isn’t after all just a commercial for a bar called The Armed Man.
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During the very first week that it came out I bought an iPod Shuffle---the more expensive and cooler one gigabite version of course---and for weeks afterwards people would gaze in wonder at the coolness of it, and even stop me in the street to ask me about it (they did! they did! and more than once!!) in fact I had hit the peak of cool! But, Oh Dear! from here on in this essay my coolness quotient is going to be seen to suffer a steep decline, because...
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Friday saw my kids (in preparation for the weekend) all dressed up in their little threadbare monks' habits with their little peg legs and hooks poking out from various orifices and their eye patches all askew: munching on raw turnips and going down the street to school chanting "kyrie-eleison! Oh-arrr me hearties!" of course the other kids do tend to make fun of them, and occasionally throw things, but at least we're getting some momentum going here...
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Some time ago I happened to mention that one of the problems with being as on-line and switched-on and obviously hip as I am is that one has a horribly unsettling and debilitating tendency to stumble onto things that are much more interesting than the things that one has already started, and that one really ought to be doing, but the hell with it I just must look at that, and then that, and then th...!
I blame it all on those damned search-engines, they make it too easy to find things on-line. Now the search engine that occasioned my aforementioned mentioning happened to be the one in Apple's iTunes online store and the actual instance of my mentioning was the stumbling upon a folksong called Tam Lin '.
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One of the most wonderfully ironic things about the latest technology is the way it makes it so much easier to live in the past. (I've had thoughts like these before, and I'm sure I must have mentioned them on this station before, probably because I'm getting too long in the essay not to repeat myself).
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Someone, Sir Arnold Bax or a mysterious Scotsman he once met or whatever, once said something to the effect that one should make a point of trying everything once except incest and folk dancing---or was it incense and folk song??
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Isn't it fascinating how words and phrases sometimes become imbued with a mystery and glamour that is more than they can justly claim. Oh I don’t just mean those holders of vast, powerful and almost meaningless concepts like “justice” or “freedom of the individual”, “love” or “doctor recommended”. No I am thinking on a more personal, a more idiolectal, level. Let me give you an example.
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Over the years WXXI has had a noble record for commemorating the great events of musical history: the births of Bach, Handle, Mozart, Beethoven have all been celebrated and, at last, finally, right now, we are going to celebrate the death of St Godric on the eve of St Godric's Day---the twenty-first of May.
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