h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

Dr Z has uttered the thought that he'd like to try some classical music. He's astonishingly tone deaf. The aural equivalent of extreme colour blindness. (http://colorvisiontesting.com/what%20colorblind%20people%20see.htm - I had no idea traffic lights were designed that badly)

Detailed question in next post....

So - what would be a good gateway?

In terms of live music, I thought opera with subtitles, or some contemporary dance or ballet. Give him something to do with his mind or his eyes while all that plinky-stuff is going on.

Recorded music's harder, but I suspect he'd prefer some of the more difficult modern music to English Pastoral which is my middle-brow failing. I don't think lush string melodies would do it for him.

Ben

I'd vote for ballet, because as dances tend to be short you usually get two or three in one evening, and they often mush together different types of music (my experience is limited, but it's something I'd like to do more).

Opera is my one huge giant gaping hole of no-knowledge, because I hate it with a passion. It's the voices.

I'd start with Radio 3. It's a good introduction to lots of different types.

As for recorded music, I campaign for my compatriot Arvo Pärt. This is something quite different.

Ha! I was just about to say the same as Hati. I've been doing the same lately...but I've decided to start with Late 20thC.

Part-with-umlaut's 'Fratres' is the most gorgeous thing I've *ever* heard, evocative of Estonian marshes in wintertime (right, hati?). Also, his Tabula Rasa.

I've also enjoyed Tippet's 'A Child Of Our Time' - lots of Miles Davis influence there, and Ligeti's 'Preludes'.

Slightly earlier...Vaughan Williams' Lark Ascending...and I can never understand why Elgar's Cello Concerto is regarded as archetypally English. (go for the Du Pre/ Barbirolli, obviously)

Top Tip: Random purchases on the Naxos label at £4.99 a (to use an inappropriate word) pop.

>> or some contemporary dance or ballet.

Rambert are touring I, believe. They're wonderful. They're what got me hooked on dance when I first saw them, aged 19.

I am the audience for contemporary dance. Me and my wife. That is...we're *the entire* audience for contemporary dance. So if you want advice on whether a company - modern or classical - is any good...I'm yer man. Give me a holler if anything's in town.

I'm a big fan of The Scottish Ballet, natch.

Hummmm. Transitions to classical music for someone tone deaf. I have a couple of suggestions. Try "Classic Wynton" by Wynton Marsalis. Fabulous. Then move to "Adagio" and "Summer Adagio" by Herbert von Karajan. There is enough variety in all three of these selections for Z to see if one of the pieces or composers grabs him.

Rambert are completely wonderful. I saw them once, and was utterly entranced throughout. Lovely variety of dance, of music, of costume, of everything.

I am mad-keen on Baroque composers, which not everybody is, and rather less keen on modern composers, so I'm probably not the best source of advice ever. But I did recently see a performance of Rachmaninov's Piano Concerto 3. It's famous for being technically terrifying, an absolute virtuoso piece. And it is magnificent. A friend was with us who has never really done classical music before (he prefers Radiohead) and who has often joked/complained he doesn't GET it. He was gobsmacked by it, came out babbling about the energy and melody and emotion and so on and so on. It was like watching someone on their first hit of something delightfully illegal.

Classic FM? ()

Well...apart from the Part-with-umlaut, Ligert, Tippett...etc...I'm more Rock'n'Roll'n'(especially!)Reggae. ...I don't get Radiohead.

>>I thought opera with subtitles>>

Here in Stockholm, we have Folkoperan. They perform various operas translated into Swedish, which makes it a lot easier to follow the plot. Is there any similar ensemble in the UK - London, maybe?

We have Opera in English here, but I thought it might be easier to read than listen to.

I guess it depends on how clearly the singers are ar-ti-cu-lating. I think Folkoperan might play some passages a little bit slower than what is common in order to make it easier to actually hear the exact words.

And although I'm used to reading subtitles, I don't find they actually help when watching opera on TV. Not sure why that would be any different from, say, a film or TV series. There must be something profoundly different about spoken words and sung words.

Hmm. Yesterday I was listening to music sung in Shona and Xhosa. It didn't bother me in the slightest that I couldn't follow the words.

There was a decent review of Scottish Ballet in this weekend's Grauniad.

One of the best things I saw them do was 'A Midsummer Night's Dream'. At the time they had some loan dancers from the Kirov (basically, the Russian equivalent of the Bolshoi, if you see what I mean.). Because they were classically trained in all the dainty pointe work, they had them playing Titania and the like. The more modern-trained Scottish dancers served as Puck and so on.

A bit I loved was when one dancer had a perspex triangle on his head, another a perspex dish. Eventually the penny dropped: Pyramid and Frisbee.

I've not been to any dance in ages (kids, work), but shortly I'm off to see this, which a friend is involved with, at a local theatre:
http://www.bipolarscotland.org.uk/information/news/black-swan-dance-theatre-present-balance
(Part of the Scottish Mental Health Arts Festival)

"Pyramid and Frisbee"

Oh dear...

Would something percussive be a good idea? There was that deaf woman who used to play the xylophone in proper concerts, and you can't get much more tone deaf than that.

Personally, I like the dissonances of Russian music of the Stravinsky to Prokofiev era (How _did_ you know I would say that?). Try him out with Mussorsky's Night on a Bare Mountain.

Or something with funny beats? Ummm. Gershwin? Very jazzy. Bernstein. That thing I sang by him with the freaky time signatures: Chichister Psalms. I never know if that sort of thing sounds as... interesting as it is to sing.

Speaking of which: I once played a thing by a Polish chappie called Lutoslawskii, which was scored so weirdly I can't but help thinking it must sound a bit odd too. Can't remember the actual peice and I've just looked him up (He's dead! He wasn't when I played it. I am old) and it didn't jog my memory but I expect it's all much of a muchness.

I like Classic FM in the morning. It's very jolly.

I can't get going of a morning unless I've had a good yell at Radio 4. My most productive days are when Ann Atkins has been on 'Anodyne Homily for the Day'.

Stravinsky, you say?

The best dancer I will ever see is Michael Clark. I saw his 'Rite of Spring' with Leigh Bowery and his (topless) mother. As well as Stravinsky it featured one of my all-time faves...Public Image Limited.

Oh what great suggestions.

I collect performances of A Midsummer Night's Dream and that one sounds wonderful. My favourite was set in a night-club, Helena was a pole dancer and Hermia was a torch singer. It opened with Hypolyta giving Thesus a blowjob and got sleezier from there on in. Bottom's head was an arse not an ass, and Pyramus and Thisbee appeared tobe cottaging: I do remember a loo was involved at that point. It was cruel and crude in all sorts of ways: the actor playing Puck was a thalidomide victim.

The Arts council took the company's funding away.

But back to the performance. The best bit was that Z's saintly housemate decided it would be a nice Mothering Sunday treat for her mother, despite repeated warnings that it was a Dream XXXTream, and then her father who is a vicar decided to come along too. So we rounded up Z's brother who's a neurologist and a doctor-pal of Z's who's gay to lighten the burden. Z's pal took a deep breath after the lights went up and said "I think that was possibly the lewdest thing I have ever seen on a stage".

Indeedio.

But the Dream is darker and nastier than anyone gives it credit for. My hope is that Tim Burton will do it as a gothic horror story with Helena B-C as Hypolita, Jonny as Oberon, and an assortment of grotesques and anorexic waifs.