History lessons may be awkward for Mr Leigh
MIKE Leigh has a new film to promote, based on the Peterloo Massacre of 1819, and we’re going to hear a lot about it in the coming months. The director clearly has a bee in his bonnet, and as the film stars Maxine Peake, who has rarely been shy about expressing her political opinions, which are of the Corbynite persuasion, it might be handy to invest in a pair of earmuffs.
She’s a fine actress, Miss Peake, but my word she does go on. Leigh has already fired an opening salvo, along the lines that, growing up in Manchester, he was never told about the massacre at St Peter’s Field, in which 15 protesters lost their lives and another 600 were injured. It beggars belief that a Mancunian of his vintage never heard about Peterloo, but that is his story and he’s sticking to it. It also defies credulity that the people working on his film knew nothing about the subject. Where have they been all these years?
Peterloo should be on the history curriculum, says Leigh. So it should. As many university lecturers will confirm, far too many teenagers enter colleges of knowledge to study history, yet appear to know little other than a bit of the Tudors, a bit more about the rise of National Socialism in Germany, and a lot about the civil rights movement in America. There are many gaps to fill, and Peterloo is but one of them.
The key question about Peterloo is why did only 15 people perish in the “massacre”? Yes, 15 is 15 too many, but in that tumultuous period, from 1789 to 1848, the “year of revolutions”, thousands of people were mown down all over continental Europe. England was, by European standards of bloodshed, a remarkably civil society, and there were reasons for that.
So, when teachers take up Leigh’s suggestion that pupils should know more about Peterloo, they may discover many valuable things about this country; things the bearded Salfordian may also find useful, though not necessarily convenient for a man with a “controversial” film to flog.
Most readers of newspapers enjoy reading obituaries. A survey of a person’s life, whether or not the deceased is familiar to us, engages our sympathy and is often a source of amusement. Reading between the lines of an “obit” is a skill to be prized.
Last week, in a Scottish newspaper, there was an unhappy example of how not to write an obit. The writer knew and clearly liked the recently departed, who was a musician and teacher, yet the tribute fell flat. Her friend was, she wrote, spirited, warm-hearted, gregarious, witty, committed, instinctive, original, boundlessly generous, infectiously passionate, creative, vibrant and inspiring, full of energy, wickedly funny, and a joyous trouble-maker who acted with conviction.
She may well have been all of these things but there wasn’t a single tale to support this torrent of verbiage; no story that might have enabled readers to understand something of the human being. By making so many extravagant claims, and using such dreary language (“committed” to what?) the departed was not celebrated but diminished. What a pity.
Vienna, according to one those annual best-of lists, is the finest city in the world in which to live. Well now, let us count the ways. You could start your day with a Viennese fruhstuck in Cafe Pruckl on the Ringstrasse, wander round the Graben, take a coffee at Hawelka, admire the Hofburg, spend an hour or two in the Kunsthistorisches Museum, pop into the Dominican and Franciscan churches, dine at the Imperial Hotel and end the day with a concert at the Musikverein. A day well spent, and you can spend many more like it. The Austrian capital is a delightful place, abounding in coffeehouses, art galleries and concert halls.
There is, however, another Vienna lurking beneath the surface, which is not quite so gemutlich. A friend who lived there for 12 years recalled meeting some American musicians who observed there were not many Jewish musicians in the city’s most distinguished orchestra. “No,” a Viennese replied. “We settled that matter 60 years ago.” That blighted world, described so memorably by the likes of Stefan Zweig and George Clare (born Georg Klaar), may still be found among the cobbled alleys and handsome squares of this great city.
Far too much was made of Aretha Franklin, whose death was sad if not quite the remarkable event many thought. She was a fine singer who did not always use her talent wisely.
Franklin’s problem, as with so many pop singers (using “pop” as an umbrella term) is that she couldn’t help adding layers of supposed emotion to songs that couldn’t bear the weight. Her performances became excessive and tiring. At times, with that instant access to strong feelings, it was like being sat on by an elephant.
There is never a bad time to go back to Ella Fitzgerald, another black American singer who also endured a sad life. This week it feels like a bounden duty. True, Ella was served by superior writers, lyricists and arrangers. But her voice was a finer instrument. She shaped, coloured and projected songs with greater skill.
Listen – oh please listen! – to her reading of Embraceable You, surely the best recording of that magnificent song by George and Ira Gershwin. It is the restraint that is so moving, because restraint is always more powerful than emotional excess. Vocal power must never be mistaken for true musicianship.