Just before 11h yestermorn, the BBC played Silent Night by a composer whose skills excelled in the use of the propensity of violas to play in unison with themselves. Alfred Schnittke was a master of the improbable and novel, even taking into account the built in weakness of the tuning system of the instrument. Viola players are well known for overcoming the stiffness of the tuning pegs in their instruments by applying wax rather than chalk to their stems. They are also one of the boldest and most brash of musicians, outdoing even the infamous ‘bonists, in their ability to overcome what may appear to the untrained ear to be a mistake. In a word they are the toreadors of the musical world.
Who is on the Lord’s side? Who will serve the King? Who will be his helpers, other lives to bring? Who will leave the world’s side? Who will face the foe? Who is on the Lord’s side? Who for him will go? By thy call of mercy, by thy grace divine, We are on the Lord’s side: Saviour, we are thine!
Not for weight of glory, nor for crown and palm, Enter we the army, raise the warrior psalm; But for love that claimeth lives for whom he died: He whom Jesus saveth marches on his side. By thy love constraining, by thy grace divine, We are on the Lord’s side: Saviour, we are thine!
Jesus, thou hast bought us, not with gold or gem, But with thine own lifeblood, for thy diadem; With thy blessing filling each who comes to thee, Thou hast made us willing, thou hast made us free. By thy great redemption, by thy grace divine, We are on the Lord’s side: Saviour, we are thine!
Fierce may be the conflict, strong may be the foe, But the King’s own army none can overthrow; ‘Round his standard ranging, vict’ry is secure, For his truth unchanging makes the triumph sure. Joyfully enlisting, by thy grace divine, We are on the Lord’s side: Saviour, we are thine!
Chosen to be soldiers, in an alien land, Chosen, called, and faithful, for our Captain’s band; In the service royal, let us not grow cold, Let us be right loyal, noble, true and bold. Master, thou wilt keep us, by thy grace divine, Always on the Lord’s side: Saviour, always thine!
Who is on the Lord’s side is usually sung to at least two different tunes, but obviously not at the same time in the same place that would be anti-fermionic not to say cacophonous:
These words of Mavis Ford fit quite nicely onto Armageddon and Rachie, do you not agree?
You are the King of glory You are the Prince of Peace You are the Lord of heaven and earth You’re the Son of righteousness Angels bow down before you Worship and adore, for You have the words of eternal life You are Jesus Christ the Lord
Hosanna to the son of David Hosanna to the King of kings Glory in the highest heaven for Jesus the Messiah reigns
I thought I would say something really important. After listening to yet another performance of Götterdämmerung, and I hasten to add lest already I have given the wrong impression, that it was a very good performance apart from the ‘Bravo’ hurled out at the end. The voice, by the way, which penetrated the air was very similar to that which resounded at a different, and much reduced, performance in the promenade concerts many years ago. It seemed that the utterer of that earlier bravo may have listened to the rebukes of his peers at the quite untimeliness of the oral intrusion of his voice on the earlier occasion, ah, but me! I have been distracted and consequently left unfinished, an error which my better grammaticastic friends will not let me forget, a sentence which now lacks both a subject and a verb. Let me start again with what I really intended to say. Just for the sake of distraction: Did you notice the importance of the second comma in this paragraph?
Offences, which do not like a joke – an open letter
Have you heard the one about the Yorkshireman, the Cornishman and the man of Kent? It doesn’t quite have the ring about it as an opening line as ‘Have you heard the one about the Irishman, the Scotsman and the Englishman?’ But if Coco used the latter, Coco would get away with the rest of it in an English public house, providing none of the English liberal elite were present, and might regret the long, but deserved, stay in hospital if Coco tried it in Clonmel. What the reaction would be in Aberdeen is as clear as whether Schrödinger’s cat is alive or dead.
Have you noticed, a rant is relatively easy to produce, but have you ever thought that a rant is about as useful for the settling of the thoughts, or the removal of phlegm from the chest as a lump of sugar, which may provide the brief and passing, even less than ephemeral, notion of a greater strength and enthusiasm in the muscles than you know you have on a hot day half way through the marathon when what you really need is a glass of salted water to replace the fluids and salts than have for the past hour been flooding out of your gaping pores as if there were tomorrow?
If Coco were willing to ignore my own advice this would have been posted on the 8 September, but to have done so would be rather like a prime minister ignoring the law and refusing to obey the bill that the parliament had passed even though it had been lawfully enacted. In such circumstances Coco would deserve the most severe of censures, however, fearing an orthographic mistake more than fearing censure, Coco deferred this post to an otherwise opportune time.