The sound of silence

As I think I've mentioned before, I think, one of the stranger websites I run is a sort of karaoke hymns site. The idea is that there are decreasingly few organists out there, so this site provides CDs of an top flight organist playing the accompaniments to hymns (also some excellent solo voluntaries), which can be used to sing along to. It's not as good as the real thing, but it's better than not having an accompaniment, and they are quite popular.

There are just three tracks that aren't keyboard music. This is because we have a Remembrance CD, which apart from appropriate hymn accompaniments includes various national anthems plus the Last Post and Reveille on trumpet. These two tracks feature frequently in remembrance services and military events. The third track, though is something particularly special. This is our very own postmodernist track. It's 1 minute 52 seconds of silence. No, really, a CD track (also available as MP3) that is just silence.

However, unlike a certain 'serious' piece of music that is just silence, this one has a point. Each track has about 2 seconds silence at the end and beginning, plus there are 2 second gaps between tracks. So stick this 1 minute 52 second track between the Last Post and the Reveille and you've got an automated 2 minute silence, without needing to time it.

It was quite amusing recently when someone bought the track as an MP3 - in the end I had to let him off the payment. I really can't justify charging for silence.

Comments

Why I hate opera

If I'm honest, the title of this post is an exaggeration to make a point. I don't really hate opera. There are a couple of operas - notably Monteverdi's Incoranazione di Poppea and Purcell's Dido & Aeneas - that I quite like. But what I do find truly sickening is the reverence with which opera is treated, as if it were some particularly great art form. Nowhere was this more obvious than in ITV's 2010 gut-wrenchingly awful series Pop Star to Opera Star , where the likes of Alan Tichmarsh treated the real opera singers as if they were fragile pieces on Antiques Roadshow, and the music as if it were a gift of the gods. In my opinion - and I know not everyone agrees - opera is: Mediocre music Melodramatic plots Amateurishly hammy acting A forced and unpleasant singing style Ridiculously over-supported by public funds I won't even bother to go into any detail on the plots and the acting - this is just self-evident. But the other aspects need some exp...

Murder by Candlelight - Ed. Cecily Gayford ***

Nothing seems to suit Christmas reading better than either ghost stories or Christmas-set novels. For some this means a fluffy romance in the snow, but for those of us with darker preferences, it's hard to beat a good Christmas murder. An annual event for me over the last few years has been getting the excellent series of classic murderous Christmas short stories pulled together by Cecily Gayford, starting with the 2016 Murder under the Christmas Tree . This featured seasonal output from the likes of Margery Allingham, Arthur Conan Doyle, Ellis Peters and Dorothy L. Sayers, laced with a few more modern authors such as Ian Rankin and Val McDermid, in some shiny Christmassy twisty tales. I actually thought while purchasing this year's addition 'Surely she is going to run out of classic stories soon' - and sadly, to a degree, Gayford has. The first half of Murder by Candlelight is up to the usual standard with some good seasonal tales from the likes of Catherine Aird, Car...

Is 5x3 the same as 3x5?

The Internet has gone mildly bonkers over a child in America who was marked down in a test because when asked to work out 5x3 by repeated addition he/she used 5+5+5 instead of 3+3+3+3+3. Those who support the teacher say that 5x3 means 'five lots of 3' where the complainants say that 'times' is commutative (reversible) so the distinction is meaningless as 5x3 and 3x5 are indistinguishable. It's certainly true that not all mathematical operations are commutative. I think we are all comfortable that 5-3 is not the same as 3-5. However. This not true of multiplication (of numbers). And so if there is to be any distinction, it has to be in the use of English to interpret the 'x' sign. Unfortunately, even here there is no logical way of coming up with a definitive answer. I suspect most primary school teachers would expands 'times' as 'lots of' as mentioned above. So we get 5 x 3 as '5 lots of 3'. Unfortunately that only wor...

Search This Blog