All Blog Posts
The words of the Eton Boating Song were written by a master, William Johnson, at Torquay over Christmas 1862 for the school’s famous Fourth of June celebrations in 1863, an annual holiday with a Parade of Boats marking the birthday of King George 111, Eton’s greatest patron. The music was composed by Old Etonian Captain Algernon Drummond…
vICTORIAN CURIOSITIES was a book I adapted in 1995 from Everybody’s Scrapbook of Curious Facts – A Book for Odd Moments, compiled by Don Lemon in 1890. It’s a sort of Not Many People Know That from a century earlier. My original Little, Brown edition has been out of print for some years, but now a…
OH DEAR! WHAT CAN THE MATTER BE? Trad. Nursery Rhyme (1780s) O dear, what can the matter be? O dear, what can the matter be? O dear, what can the matter be? Johnny’s so long at the fair. He promised he’d bring me a bunch of blue ribbons. He promised he’d bring me a bunch…
CHRISTINA’S LAMENT is a hilariously bad song by Mrs Walter Creyke, the pen name of one Diane Chasseresse who seems to be best known for her 1890 publication Sporting Sketches. The lyrics were penned in 1909 to be sung to the tune of Dvořák’s Humoresque, Op.101 No.7. But we must be grateful to her, for it…
A short fanfare and a modest pat on the back is called for – for me! Strange how things happen in groups. This week I have confirmation that my Godowsky biography, Godowsky – The Pianists’ Pianist – is to be republished (Travis & Emery are putting it out sometime in January – the German translation appeared,…
YOU’RE THE TOP Cole Porter The best known song from the 1934 musical Anything Goes, ‘You’re the Top’ comes from Act 1 and is about a man and a woman (Billy and Reno) taking turns at complimenting each other. It inspired hundreds of parodies, most of them ribald. Here are just two following the Porter original (which,…
Danny Baker’s wonderful, heartfelt, on-air rant at being sacked from his Radio London show made great listening and rang a few personal bells. Baker is a superb broadcaster, a one-off, quick on his feet and deservedly applauded within the industry. He had a far higher profile than I ever had in the days when I…
To the Queen Elizabeth Hall on Wednesday evening for Benjamin Grosvenor’s first recital there. Barely twenty years old, he’s already a media star due to his own exceptional abilities and canny management and marketing. What makes him stand out from his peers is his complete but unfashioable affinity with the repertoire and style of playing of the…
Over forty years ago, I started collecting material about Leopold Godowsky: newspaper clippings, magazine articles, references in autobiographies, recordings and music. To cut a very long story short and fourteen publisher rejections later, the book finally appeared between hard covers in 1989 thanks to Bryan Crimp of APR. During the four years prior to…
HYMNS provide an endless source of parodies, either by imitating the verse structure or by singing alternative words to the hymn’s familiar music. Here are examples of both. Samuel Stone (1839-1900) wrote the original hymn in 1866 as a counterblast to a certain Bishop Colenso and the way he had explained the Old Testament to…