Whatever happened to catchphrase quotations

Guess the composer (not Parry)

Watching the Prince of Wales' recent programme on the composer Parry I was struck by an error in an old catchphrase. It was an interesting programme - I think someone else could have presented it better, but it was good to get a bit more of Parry exposed. (I was a bit disappointed in all the mentioning of Elgar and Vaughan Williams there was no mention of the man who, I think, eclipsed Parry as an Edwardian British composer, Sir Charles Villiers Stanford.)

The catchphrase in question was one that was uttered by a friend, now sadly dead, in a choir I used to sing in whenever we did anything by Parry. He would say: 'Ah, Sir C. Hubert Harry Parry!' Which is now firmly locked in my mind as an association with Parry. The funny thing is, it was wrong. Parry's third name seems to have been Hastings, not Harry.

This made me think of other shaky catchphrase quotations, like 'Alas, poor Yorick, I knew him well.' This misquote was very common in my youth. In fact practically anyone faced with a skull (in a non-serious setting) would come out with it (or if they were better educated the actual quotation). This seems to be a dying art. We seem to be losing these literary catchphrases, which I think is rather sad. Of course it may be that only the people I was exposed to when young used to do it, but I find this hard to believe.

In the meantime, and in support of my non-existent campaign to give Stanford the same recognition that Parry now seems to be belatedly getting, take a listen to Stanford's cracking Beatus Vir. It's not a great performance, I'm afraid, but it's the only one I could find on YouTube:

Image from Wikipedia

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 recent 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 ex

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

Which idiot came up with percentage-based gradient signs

Rant warning: the contents of this post could sound like something produced by UKIP. I wish to make it clear that I do not in any way support or endorse that political party. In fact it gives me the creeps. Once upon a time, the signs for a steep hill on British roads displayed the gradient in a simple, easy-to-understand form. If the hill went up, say, one yard for every three yards forward it said '1 in 3'. Then some bureaucrat came along and decided that it would be a good idea to state the slope as a percentage. So now the sign for (say) a 1 in 10 slope says 10% (I think). That 'I think' is because the percentage-based slope is so unnatural. There are two ways we conventionally measure slopes. Either on X/Y coordiates (as in 1 in 4) or using degrees - say at a 15° angle. We don't measure them in percentages. It's easy to visualize a 1 in 3 slope, or a 30 degree angle. Much less obvious what a 33.333 recurring percent slope is. And what's a 100% slope

Search This Blog