The long winter's nap

It's the time when this blog prepares to hibernate until the new year, but before I go, I just wanted to briefly contemplate the wonder of single day songs.

I suppose the most used one day song is 'Happy Birthday to You,' though this is a bit of a cheat. It might only apply to one day for any individual, but around the world it is being used each and every day.

A more realistic choice is 'Auld Lang Syne', traditionally sung on New Year's Eve (though I have heard it sung at other Scottish celebrations, so it doesn't quite make it).

Then there are Christmas carols. Most are certainly not one day songs, designed for the Christmas season (though strangely usually sung in the Advent season that precedes it), though a few should be according to the words - for example 'Hodie, Hodie, Christus Natus Est' (Today, Today, Christ is born) - in practice, though, they are not limited to the one day.

Perhaps the most outstanding example is the carol with the one day verse. O Come All Ye Faithful is a very familiar carol but has one verse, beginning 'Yea, Lord, we greet Thee/Born this happy morning' that is only ever sung from shortly after midnight on Christmas Day. And it feels rather splendid because of it. It's like having a shared secret, a clandestine verse you only allow out on a special occasion.

To those who celebrate Christmas, have a happy one - and to the rest of you, a merry bah, humbug. And to all a happy and prosperous New Year.

I won't give you O Come All Ye Faithful, as it's more than a little over-played, but here's my idea of a beautiful carol if you have a couple of minutes to spare:

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...

Why backgammon is a better game than chess

I freely admit that chess, for those who enjoy it, is a wonderful game, but I honestly believe that as a game , backgammon is better (and this isn't just because I'm a lot better at playing backgammon than chess). Having relatively recently written a book on game theory, I have given quite a lot of thought to the nature of games, and from that I'd say that chess has two significant weaknesses compared with backgammon. One is the lack of randomness. Because backgammon includes the roll of the dice, it introduces a random factor into the play. Of course, a game that is totally random provides very little enjoyment. Tossing a coin isn't at all entertaining. But the clever thing about backgammon is that the randomness is contributory without dominating - there is still plenty of room for skill (apart from very flukey dice throws, I can always be beaten by a really good backgammon player), but the introduction of a random factor makes it more life-like, with more of a sense...

Search This Blog