{"id":11105,"date":"2020-05-30T06:30:03","date_gmt":"2020-05-30T06:30:03","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/?p=11105"},"modified":"2020-05-30T07:18:39","modified_gmt":"2020-05-30T07:18:39","slug":"making-music-and-poetry","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/2020\/05\/making-music-and-poetry\/","title":{"rendered":"Making music – and poetry"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Reading poetry in the pandemic is waxing, as people turn to verse<\/a> for solace amidst their grief or for expressions of their own anger at needless suffering and death.<\/strong><\/p>\n

We are not supposed to call the struggle to contain, suppress and\/or beat the coronavirus a war yet it is to war poets people often reach out on social media and elsewhere. Walt Whitman<\/a> visiting hospitals in the American civil war. Our own Sassoon and Owens in the trenches of World War One.<\/p>\n

But also to songs for our age of sorrow and, occasionally, humour (however dark and savage) to see us through lockdown.\u00a0Stewart Conn<\/strong><\/a>, Edinburgh’s first makar (2002-05), has written: “The poet\u2019s task, to seek\/significant detail\/in the face of horror.\u2019 Here below, confined to his New Town home, he writes of Schubert and birdsong in a splendid Scottish spring.<\/p>\n

\n

Making Music<\/p>\n

for Anna Crowe<\/p>\n

Franz Schubert String Quartets [Fitzwilliam String Quartet]<\/em><\/p>\n

From a review in the TLS I learn<\/p>\n

that the political climate of northern<\/p>\n

Siberia once led to the deterioration<\/p>\n

and destruction of generations of pianos,<\/p>\n

their ripped-out wires morphing into<\/p>\n

fishing-lines, jewellery-ware and garottes.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Precluding any dark train of thought<\/p>\n

the post brings a package with a CD<\/p>\n

of two Schubert quartets and a card<\/p>\n

explaining how, your musician<\/p>\n

friends\u2019 public performances cancelled,<\/p>\n

you are keen for them to find a hearing.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

From my open window the ferocity<\/p>\n

of their bowing has already<\/p>\n

made startled converts of two male<\/p>\n

blackbirds, heads cocked, while high<\/p>\n

in our cherry tree a transfixed bullfinch<\/p>\n

beats his tail in time to the music.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

httpss:\/\/youtu.be\/5NKEHosQf2k<\/p>\n

Published with kind permission of Stewart Conn<\/em><\/p>\n

Featured image: Male bullfinch, \u00a9 Francis C. Franklin \/ CC-BY-SA-3.0\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":11108,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[497,55],"class_list":["post-11105","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-culture","tag-pandemic","tag-poetry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11105","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11105"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11105\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/11108"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11105"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11105"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sceptical.scot\/staging\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11105"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}