This is a trail of the email service PSCO

I've only been posting once a month I see. I really can't claim pressure of work... but I can claim procrastination and distractions. However if have two more entries on the go which are being 'researched.

Tomorrow maybe.....

Together or apart

British Prime Minster , Gordon Brown is a Scotsman, as anyone who has heard him speak, can tell. Yet, unlike most of his fellow Scots, he is a Unionist, that is one who supports the continuation of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland rather than the constituent parts, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland becoming more and more independent. Historically the UK state with one parliament, is a fragile creation dominated by the English. Politically it was only created as a unified state in 1799, and southern Ireland (now the Republic of Ireland) left in the 1921.

The notion of Great Britain as a state was actually created by another Scot, King James I (and VI in Scotland) who became King of England, as well as Scotland, in 1603 on the death of the last English sovereign Elizabeth I. He told his first English Parliament, as he advocated a united state:

'Yea.. hath he (God that is) not made us all in one Island, compassed about by one sea, and of itself by nature indivisable as almost those that were borderers themselves on the late Borders cannot distinguish or know or discern their own limits,'

His new domain was he commented was 'divided by apprehension than in effect'

There is a whiff of the Court's dramatist, William Shakespere, about this speech with its echo of famous lines give to John of Gaunt Richard II, in his highly political play of the late 1590's. Maybe Shakespere was one of James's speech writers.

But James's English ministers, and his English Parliament would have none of it. Until 1707 there was only to be a Union of the Crowns (though Cromwell did take things a little further). James was able only to do two things.

One was to to insist that he was King of Great Britain and to put this on his coins. and for the next three hundred and sixty odd year that English and Scots, Welsh (and some times, Irish) were 'Subjects' of the British Crown This was very useful idea because it could be extended and was to come to be the notion that linked the British Empire together under one Sovereign (we are now citizens of the UK).

The second was to use the idea of being a British to give the Scottish Protestant settlers in the Ulster Plantation (Northern Ireland) in the early seventeenth century their link with the 'British' Crown. It is to this that Unionist In that trouble province refer to justify their resistance to becoming part of an all Ireland state.

Gordon is still following James's notion but is distracted at the moment by more mundane things. The 'apprehension' of the inhabitants of the UK on 'union' remains. In the end it may be History and the English defeat him.

Opera Scenes

Royal Northern College of Music

Manchester 30^th January 2009

Each academic session the College has a number of evenings where the vocal students present scenes from operas, old and new, to an audience of fellow students, staff, and assessors as well as the general public... parents, friends and Friends of the College. The theatre was well filled.

I popped into the fourth of these, just missing a scene from Richard Strauss's Ariadne auf Naxos. As far as I could tell the singing was good in excepts from Paisiello's 'Nina o sia pazza amore', and scenes from Mozart's “Cosi fan tutte”, Wolf-Ferrari's “Le donne curiose” and Strauss's 'Der Rosenkavelier'

What was less certain was the acting. Kee Yong Park got us believing Nina was indeed distraught with love in Paisello's piece. Louise Booker as Sophie in Der Rosenkavelier persuaded us that she was indeed seducing Octavian (but Strauss's sexy score made a big contribution.)

So as yet no evidence of the stars and divas engage our emotions but there is plenty of time for that to develop.

Byzantium 330-1453

Royal Academy London

25^th October 2008- 22^nd March 2009

I have considerable sympathy now with the Nicholas Penny,Director of the National Gallery in London, who wants fewer 'block buster exhibitions” , and to replace them with small shows devoted to a few objects, even to a single object.

This is another of the RA's culture shows, this time of the Eastern 'Roman' Empire, known by the name of its capital ' Byzantium'. Like many recent shows, Hadrian and Babylon at the British Museum for example, it is a collection of objects: 'Treasures of Byzantium ” might have been a better title. Apart from its one great building, the church of Saint Sofia, which is represented by some eighteenth century paintings, it has no wow factor. So maybe the catalogue is the best way to enjoy the show.

The majority of the objects are religious, and there a several rooms devoted to large icons, yet in the exhibition itself there is only the most sketchy indication of what the Orthodox Church believes and and the relation of the objects to the cult. More detailed help is provided by the 'Education Guide' (see link on this page). The combination of magic objects, and the rejection of nature in favour not of salvation via sacrifice but rather by identity with God is never spelt out. Nor is there, curiously, anything on the form the painting and the influences on the rest of the Eastern Mediterranean as far as Italy, and their afterlife in El Greco for example.

There are some broken plates and nice spoons to index daily life and some references to court ritual but nothing of popular culture, folk art, music and chariot races. Although the show is sponsored by Greek commercial interests there appears to be no links with the large Greek speaking community in London.