Consulting the Oracle

Tags

Acropolis, Cape Sounion, Delphic oracle, Mount Parnassus, Parthenon, Schliemann, Temple of Poseidon, Troy

A brief trip to nearby Greece, or more specifically Athens, yielded a plethora of impressions, experiences and delights that could provide material for a dozen posts like this.

Of course, setting foot on the very ground which was once the home of gods and goddesses, heroes, mythical creatures, and the famous oracle of Delphi is enough to send a shiver down anyone’s spine. However, one’s first glimpse of Athens, which is a sprawling modern city with 4.5 million inhabitants, is something of a disappointment. The fairly mundane impression it makes reminded me of some of the seedier neighbourhoods of Haifa, with many shuttered storefronts, graffiti on every available surface, and a population evidently striving to make ends meet.

And yet, at night, from the rooftop restaurant of our hotel, there on the opposite hilltop stood the Acropolis and the Parthenon in all their ancient glory, illuminated in order to display their grandeur. Luckily, the darkness hid the ugly buildings of modern Athens that lay between us and that sacred site. The following day we hastened to make our way up the Acropolis, accompanied by other tourists from all over the world and speaking every language under the sun. The panorama over the city and the surrounding countryside that the hilltop with its ancient stones affords is truly impressive. One can understand why that particular spot was chosen for the structure that constituted the religious and administrative centre of the city-state that was the dominant power in the region for several centuries in antiquity.

The culture of ancient Greece, namely, the philosophy, system of government (democracy), literature, art, sculpture, crafts, architecture, theatre and music, were considered by the ancient Romans to represent the highest achievements in those fields, and although their military prowess overcame that of the Greeks their culture aspired to imitate theirs, and that, of course, is the sincerest form of flattery. Still today we consider the culture of Ancient Greece to be among the highest achievements of humankind.

After spending two days scouring Athens’ archaeological museum, with its myriad treasures from all over Greece (except Crete, which holds on to its heritage), including the extensive gold artifacts from Mycenae discovered by archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann, we decided to venture a little further afield. Our first excursion, was to Cape Sounion and the Temple of Poseidon (of which very little is left), driving along the beautiful southern coast which hugs the Mediterranean sea and is reminiscent of the French Riviera. The remains of the temple stand atop a promontory that dominates the surrounding area as well as the surrounding sea, as is only fitting for Poseidon, the god of the sea.

Our next excursion was to Mount Parnassus and Delphi, the site of the Temple of Apollo and the Oracle. How could our legs not tremble as we ascended this sacred spot, the centre of the world? According to the legend, Apollo marked it as ‘the navel of the world,’ the omphalos, and the small museum adjacent to the site contains a large egg-shaped sculpture purporting to show just that. Sadly, the oracle and its tradition disappeared from the world with the rise of Christianity, but the site remains to remind us of the ancient myths and beliefs that once reigned supreme.

There are many fine sculptures in the museum there as well as in the one in Athens, and in many others which we didn’t get to. In them one can find depictions of the human form in all its glory, the work of artists of the highest caliber, inspiring a sense of awe and admiration. These works of art are among the most magnificent achievements of humankind, and we cannot but be grateful to the hands that created them as well as to those that have enabled them to be preserved for posterity and displayed for our enjoyment and delectation today.

Music and Nature

Tags

Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra, Mahler's Third Symphony

No end of composers have been inspired by nature, and have gone on to inspire countless audiences in turn. Vivaldi’s Four Seasons, Beethoven’s Pastoral Symphony, and the French nineteenth century composers are just a few examples of this.

But the composer whose music is above all the embodiment of nature is Gustav Mahler, and I’m writing this because my mind is still reeling from hearing the Jerusalem Symphony Orchestra’s stunning performance of his Third Symphony last week.

As is often the case with Mahler, the usual format of the orchestra has to be augmented with additional brass players (trumpets, trombones, tubas), two harps, five or six tympanists and, of course, huge string and wind sections. When they all play fortissimo together the effect can be overpowering, and I was not the only member of the audience who looked up at the roof of the auditorium at the Jerusalem Theatre at those points to see if it was about to take off and fly away. But it didn’t, thankfully.

Throughout the symphony we hear echoes of nature, and in fact of all creation, with forests and fields, harmony and dissonance, and even war and peace, evoked by the various sections of the orchestra. This is achieved by skilfull deployment of the orchestra in addition to the sound of real tubular bells at one point and a children’s choir imitating the sound of bells at another (not really nature, I know, but natural sounds all the same). The movement, in which the children’s choir is intertwined with the singing of the women’s choir provides some sublimely intricate and inspiring moments.

Putting this massive operation together is a mammoth undertaking, and the panoply of sounds, effects and surprise twists and turns was masterfully conducted – or rather managed – by maestro Frédéric Chaslin.

All Mahler’s symphonies contain one or another aspect seeking to imitate or suggest nature. I was fortunate to grow up in a household many years ago where 78 rpm. records of his First Symphony were played to me from early childhood. And so I could recognize that the symphony starts with an evocation of the forest waking up, with birdsong and hunters in the distance. I also took delight in listening to the third movement depicting what my father explained to me was a mournful funeral procession meeting a joyous wedding procession, with the encounter between the two creating an amusing mixture of sounds that is almost cacophonic.

In many of his symphonies, whether describing nature or not, Mahler treads a fine line between cacophony and harmony, but almost always resolves the dissonance by finding the path to a happy solution. Mahler’s personal life was tragic, with a troubled marriage, professional difficulties and the death of his eldest daughter at an early age, but his genius enabled him to transmute his suffering into heavenly music, and that is one of the features that marks his music as truly great.

The same is true of many other composers and artists, of course, but that is another story.

D.I.Y. in the Publishing World

Tags

A Contemporary King Lear, Goodreads, Levi Koenig

 

In my experience, writing a book is relatively easy. Choose your subject, write one page every day for a year, and hey presto, after a year you have a book that is about 365 pages long. Agreed, it may take another year or two to edit, correct, amend, etc., but essentially that’s all there is to it.

These days it’s also fairly easy to publish a book. If you can’t find a publisher but are prepared to invest some time and effort (or money), you can get published with relative ease by uploading your book to Amazon, and letting it take its chances from there.

But marketing, yes, marketing, aye, (or perhaps aiee!), there’s the rub.

There are ‘experts’ out there who claim that for a fee they can market your book and even get it onto the bestseller list. But that is debatable. Sometimes these things work and sometimes they don’t. Not even the leading publishers always know which books will sell and which won’t. Just think how many prominent writers have been rejected by publishers, including Marcel Proust and A.K.Rowling, to name but a few.

So it seemed like a good idea to try and do a bit of marketing myself. Among the various sites that promote books and reading there are several that organize promotions, free giveaways and other marketing ploys. Amazon itself is one of the foremost among these, but it is far from being alone.

Disappointed by the weak sales of my latest novel, ‘Levi Koenig, A Contemporary King Lear,’ I decided to attempt one such D.I.Y. marketing ploy. My previous novel, ‘Time Out of Joint, the Fate of a Family,’ did quite well when it was first published over a year ago, and has been selling steadily, albeit not spectacularly, ever since. Sales on Amazon consist primarily of downloads of ebooks as well as pages read in the framework of a borrowing arrangement. Paperback versions of books are also sold, but I’m not aware of any similar promotions offered by Amazon through its Createspace arm, where paperbacks are on sale.

As well as promoting recently published books, the site known as Goodreads offers authors and publishers the chance of specifying a number of books they are prepared to give away for free, and also to offer an additional enticement in the form of a prize, if they so wish.

I did not so wish, but decided that in order to encourage interest in ‘Levi Koenig, A Contemporary King Lear,’ I would give away twenty copies of the book in the course of a week. I didn’t realize at the time that this involved taking hard copies, putting them into envelopes, schlepping these to the post office and sending them to various parts of the world. It so happens that I did have about fifty hard copies of the book in my possession, so that would not have been too difficult to manage. But suddenly twenty books seemed a very large number to deal with, so I quickly adjusted it to ten, and excluded Australia from the list of countries to which I was prepared to send them, leaving Europe, the USA and Canada in the running.

While I was waiting for the result of the campaign I agonized for days on end. What if no one at all wanted a copy, even if it was free? What would this say about
me and my book? Would I ever be able to hold my head up again, or even think about writing another word?

A couple of days ago I received the result and to my surprise over 500 people entered the competition. I was sent a list of ten names and addresses and told to send a copy to each one. So, for the past hour or so I’ve been addressing envelopes, putting books in them (making sure to sign each book before doing so), and tomorrow they’ll all get sent off to the lucky winners. I hope they enjoy the result, and that they might even write nice reviews on Amazon.

Whether this will help to boost sales of the book remains to be seen, but it’s been an interesting and gratifying experience. Even if I don’t get to sell any more books as a result, the project has helped to boost my self-esteem. After all, five hundred and twenty-nine potential readers are not to be sneezed at.

 

 

Applause

Tags

Boussac, Israel Philharmonic Orchestra, Rudolf Buchbinder, Schumann, St. Martin's in the Fields

 

“Non!” Screamed the rather large and overdressed lady sitting in the row near me as the audience burst into spontaneous applause between two movements of the piece of baroque chamber music that had just been played.

Last summer we attended several concerts in the charming Romanesque church of the village of Boussac in central France. In the summer months four or five musicians from the Paris Symphony Orchestra come to the region to enjoy the peace and quiet of the countryside and also to give a few chamber concerts for the benefit of the local populace. They are all excellent musicians, and it seems that one of them, a talented cellist who also gives explanations of the music before each piece, is originally from the region, and this partly explains their presence there each summer.

The rather large village of Boussac is unusual among the villages of the region. Like most of them, it has an ancient church, but it is distinguished by its imposing fourteenth century castle perched atop a steep rock overlooking the River Creuse that gives the region its name. It also seems to have a population that is particularly keen on classical music, and the village holds its own series of well-attended chamber concerts every summer.

The custom of clapping one’s hands to display approbation and appreciation of something seems to be very ancient, possibly even elemental, in human behavior. Little children do it spontaneously, and are happy when their actions result in the applause of others. I have noticed that in recent years, in the concerts I have attended in Israel, the applause at the end of a work is sometimes accompanied by shrieks and whistles, which apparently are a positive sign. This is something new to me, but seems to be considered a sign of approval. Well, so be it.

Now, what was surprising was the response of the musicians to the applause in between movements in Boussac – a behavior pattern that is not customary in major concert halls and might be considered by some concert-goers as demonstrating ignorance of the correct way to behave in that situation. That, indeed, was the case in the instance to which I’m referring, and obviously the lady in question wanted to show her superior knowledge of what is the right way to show one’s appreciation of a performance.

The cellist, who had by now established a genuine rapport with the audience, held up his hand and made the following announcement (in French, naturally): “Applauding is a sign of approval, so please feel free to show your approval even between the movements of the pieces of music we play.”

The audience was mollified, but the stout lady was mortified, and of course the applause burst out with renewed vigor subsequently.

It’s true, it is not considered de rigeur to applaud between the movements of a piece of music, but it seems to be happening ever more frequently. At last night’s concert given by the Israel Philharmonic Orchestra in Jerusalem it could be heard between the movements of Schumann’s piano concerto, played brilliantly by Rudolf Buchbinder, and it was also in evidence at a concert we attended at St. Martin’s in the Fields in London last month.

Maybe concert-goers’ mores and manners are changing and spontaneous applause between movements is catching on to become a worldwide phenomenon. Or perhaps standards of audience behavior are dropping. And I certainly have a bone to pick with various aspects of audience behavior at concerts.

But that is another subject altogether.