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Tiddley-Pom
Aug. 27th, 2007 11:37 pmI have a confession, as a classical music fan:
I hate the Proms.
Not that I've ever been to the Proms Proms - although I went to the Battle Proms last year and found it enjoyable enough, mind you it was the atmosphere rather than the music that I really liked. See, I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to the type of music that is always bunched together under the 'Classical' genre. I'm a chamber music girl, see, I tend not to like the big boombastic stuff that plays well at big events like the Proms. I don't really like Elgar. I fucking loathe Wagner with a passion. And I'm afraid what I really, really hate is what I elitistly call 'Supermarket Classical', with which the Proms seem to be stuffed. Nessun Dorma, that kind of thing. Funnily enough, I do really like to listen to a bit of Entrance of the Torreadors or Zadok The Priest whacked up on my iPod, but if they turn up in a live music thingummy it sends me to the land of nod. Oh God, not this again. Maybe it's a remnant of my teenage bloody mindedness, but I want to listen to weird twiddly shit by Grieg or Tavener or Bartok or Palestrina, or Mozart merrily dancing around a single sustained note for bar after bar after bar, possibly purely because I suspect that other people won't like it, or at least won't recognise it. Stuff that you can't 'tiddly pom' along with. Stuff that makes me feel... and this might sound weird... solitary, and gives me a feeling of immense peace and comfort in that solitude. stuff that evokes the particular smell of the churches where I used to perform, the little rehearsal rooms at College, night time drives sitting in the back with my walkman.
I'm rambling. I had a point - in fact, i had two. The first is that I'm finding BBC4's extensive coverage of the Proms very annoying, the second is that this first point came to mind while we were watching it waiting for Life On Mars to come on, and by crikey, Michael Ball's getting fat! He's starting to look like Christopher Biggins!
I hate the Proms.
Not that I've ever been to the Proms Proms - although I went to the Battle Proms last year and found it enjoyable enough, mind you it was the atmosphere rather than the music that I really liked. See, I'm a bit of a snob when it comes to the type of music that is always bunched together under the 'Classical' genre. I'm a chamber music girl, see, I tend not to like the big boombastic stuff that plays well at big events like the Proms. I don't really like Elgar. I fucking loathe Wagner with a passion. And I'm afraid what I really, really hate is what I elitistly call 'Supermarket Classical', with which the Proms seem to be stuffed. Nessun Dorma, that kind of thing. Funnily enough, I do really like to listen to a bit of Entrance of the Torreadors or Zadok The Priest whacked up on my iPod, but if they turn up in a live music thingummy it sends me to the land of nod. Oh God, not this again. Maybe it's a remnant of my teenage bloody mindedness, but I want to listen to weird twiddly shit by Grieg or Tavener or Bartok or Palestrina, or Mozart merrily dancing around a single sustained note for bar after bar after bar, possibly purely because I suspect that other people won't like it, or at least won't recognise it. Stuff that you can't 'tiddly pom' along with. Stuff that makes me feel... and this might sound weird... solitary, and gives me a feeling of immense peace and comfort in that solitude. stuff that evokes the particular smell of the churches where I used to perform, the little rehearsal rooms at College, night time drives sitting in the back with my walkman.
I'm rambling. I had a point - in fact, i had two. The first is that I'm finding BBC4's extensive coverage of the Proms very annoying, the second is that this first point came to mind while we were watching it waiting for Life On Mars to come on, and by crikey, Michael Ball's getting fat! He's starting to look like Christopher Biggins!
