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I’m not in the habit of blogging on other people’s blogs (let’s face it, the internet is finite and we have to preserve it as best we can) – but – that culinary experimentalist Jason Fout reacted in sheer horror to Paula’s deep fried butter balls is surely enough to at least try them…

I note two things in particular:

1. Yield is about 30 balls – enough for anyone, surely?

2. The overall rating for this recipe is two out of five – perhaps because the other three died before they could record their reaction?

According to the new trailer for Doctor Who‘s Christmas extravaganza, the Doctor is 903 years old.

Oh dear – this is going to upset fans of “Time and the Rani”.

In the all-important and frightfully busy last week of the Cambridge term, I can now reveal the shocking news that at one frightfully important member of the music faculty hasn’t been entirely focussed on the job in hand.

Whilst checking through the music tripos syllabus for some details necessary to a few of my own students, I noticed that the third year courses include one on Jesuits and music, entitled “One world is not enough”. So when replying to an end-of-term party invitation from my former Director of Studies and one of the music faculty’s greatest assets, the legendary Dr Martin Ennis, I happened to enquire in a postscript whether we might expect to see any more James Bond puns in future courses.

I also gave him a list of suggestions, which were as follows:

For Your Reise Only – Schubert and Muller
On Her Majesty’s Second Service – Byrd and Elizabeth I
Dr? No. – Brahms and Cambridge University
License to Drill – the use of household objects in experimental music of the 1960s
From Russia with l’oeuf – Paul Kiang’s interpretations of Shostakovich

Thanks to my obsessive nature, the email took considerably longer to write than my busy, end-of-term schedule really allowed for, but I felt it was worth it for the depth and complexity of some of my immensely clever puns (the Brahms one certainly requires specialist musical knowledge, and the Shostakovich one is so specific that unless you are acquainted with Paul Kiang and his egg allergy it makes absolutely no sense at all). Besides which, I was fairly confident that I had done absolutely all of the musical James Bond puns there could be.

So the response came as a bit of a shock:

I’m glad to see that you’ve been able to remain at the cutting edge of musicological research. You may be interested to know that one of the Part II papers for next year is a detailed study of Scarlatti’s ‘Cat’ Fugue. I believe the provisional title is Octave-Pussy. As ever, M

Naturally I wasn’t going to let that go, so I spent some hours coming up with a fitting counter-pun.

Dear Martin, yes, I’d heard about the Scarlatti course – hasn’t it been suggested by the same person who’s thinking of doing a course based on an unreasonable prejudice against recordings of Stravinsky’s music made by the Acadamy of St Martin in the Fields – I think it’s called Never Play Neville’s Agon? James

This time Martin’s comeback was swift, but disappointing.

I believe that students of global warming are also interested in For your Ice only

Not only an extremely weak pun but one which diverges from the musical theme of the contest. But by this stage Martin was no doubt feeling the pressure of doing end-of-term meetings and running the music faculty at the same time as desperately googling James Bond films and consulting Grove’s dictionary of music, so we’ll let him off. In any case, it was a good excuse to slip in a weaker entry of my own, so I quipped that students of Bach are very much interested in The Man With the Golden Section – academically sound, but dull.

This time Martin came back with a blinder:

And students of Stanford will doubtless enjoy Thunderbore…

and I was forced to resort to:

Whilst people who end up studying the height of Farinelli’s success at the court of Philip V will be looking in depth at a Castrato Royale…

Martin’s slightly bizarre and again amusical reply was:

I believe the Welsh are very fond of Dai, Another Dai – it’s often exclaimed at christenings.

By this time I had stopped sleeping and I was spending every spare minute desperately flicking between my CD collection and wikipedia, determined not to be defeated. My own students were ignored and my important emails went on the back burner as I hunted for a pun on Tomorrow Never Dies that wouldn’t have to resort to Welsh christenings. Finally the answer came to me, appropriately enough, during Clare college’s advent carol service, and I dispatched the following before going to bed:

I’m currently undergoing a thorough study of Rutter’s* success with the working title Moneyraker.

*cf previous musings

Martin’s hasty reply this morning indicated that a pressing engagement conducting the Messiah in Japan would prevent him from making an appropriate response. I know – the lengths to which people will go to avoid making James Bond puns.

Still, there are a few titles left over and since I’m now off the hook I suggest it would make for brilliant Christmas fun if you fancy finishing off the list. You might also try finding alternatives for Martin’s two non-musical entries in the series. Let me know what you come up with!

Having tired of listening to Cavalleria Rusticana on ENO’s patently unoccupied box office line (which cost me £12 on last month’s phone bill) I went into the Coliseum in person and picked up tickets for The Turn of the Screw.

This looks like being a fine production of one of my favourite operas, featuring talented soprano Cheryl Barker in the challenging role of Miss Jessel.

I was talking to Chris Mundy about it yesterday, though, and he admitted to a blonde moment on first reading about the opera in which he had imagined it was legendary Record Breakers presenter and former singer with Bucks Fizz Cheryl Baker playing the role.

Although the latter isn’t renowned for her skilful renditions of complex twentieth century art music (and I think I can say that even without offending fans of Bucks Fizz), I can honestly say that I’d still part with my money to see her doing opera.

Especially if the part of Quint was being played by Kris Akabusi.

A month ago every newspaper was telling me that the iPhone, the very latest in mobile phone wankerism, was in such demand that people were queueing around the block at midnight to get hold of one, and forking out huge amounts of money for the privilege.

Now I get three emails a day begging me to claim my free one.

Is it really that disappointing? Have hundreds of models been returned by dissatisfied customers (certainly I’ve never met anybody with one)? Or did Apple simply build too many of the things?

So Richard and Judy is finally finishing forever, Judy presumably leaving for an old people’s home and Richard going back to school as the age gap between them widens impossibly.

I won’t miss them and I’ve already made it quite clear why.

But, as a whole era of daytime TV (apparently) comes to an (apparently) tragic close, let us just for a moment consider what a fantastic programme it would have been had it been presented by Richard Burton and Judi Dench.

If you’d like to listen to Mascagni’s very beautiful opera Cavalleria Rusticana but can’t be bothered to go out and buy the CD, you can currently listen to the whole thing by phoning the ENO box office on 0870 145 2200.

Sure, it’s not the best sound quality ever, and somebody does keep interrupting it to inform you that “we are currently experiencing a high volume of calls, please continue to hold and someone will be with you as soon as possible” – but you definitely get the flavour of the opera, and the rising frustration you’ll feel at your inability to actually book tickets coincides nicely with the hysteria caused by Lola’s adultery and culminating in Turiddu’s death, making for a much more intense experience.

Certainly it looks like it’s the closest I’m going to get to actually seeing any kind of opera the ENO have on offer.

From my 2004 diary, during the period when The Uncertainty Division were rehearsing for An Extremely Memorable Emergency:

“We thought it would be quite funny if George Carey and Jim Carrey had been mixed up at birth and ended up doing each others’ jobs.”

I’m now wondering if it would really have made that much of a difference.

Last night I was the victim of what can only be described as anti-anti-Rutter snobbery snobbery.

Let me make this clear: I have nothing against John Rutter. He is a composer who has crafted many a pretty melody and if pretty is what you want, he sure as hell gives it to you. If you want harmonic richness or depth, there’s not a lot going for it. Moreover it’s technically pretty inept. He is a songster, not a great composer – and to give him his due, he’s never claimed otherwise.

Hold fire before you call me snobbish; I don’t see “songster” as a negative word (I myself am one), there’s nothing wrong with “pretty” (it is another quality which I have at times been labelled with) and there is no reason why all music should have depth harmonic richness or depth (I am myself a particular devotee of the superficial charms of Bonnie Tyler). But personally, whilst I respect everyone’s right to get off on Rutter (and I admire and envy his impressive commercial appeal), I find most of it dull and mawkish.

(And I don’t need anybody else to sagely inform me that I “really ought to listen to his Requiem though, you’ll be surprised how good it is” – I’m listening to it now and if one of my students handed this in to me I’d cover it in red ink and give it a 2.2 for stylistic inconsistancy, directionless harmony, lack of structure and poor word-setting. It’s pretty, though.)

So at the planning meeting for the St Mark’s carol service yesterday evening somebody vaguely suggested Rutter’s particularly trite ditty the Shepherd’s Pipe Carol (I believe I’ve blogged about it before – oh yes, “cleverly chosen to rival the campness of the panto cast”), I quickly nipped the idea in the bud by hinting that if they insisted on putting that in they might need to find another choir director (particularly as my alotted quota of choir items in this year’s carol service has been slashed to just five, but that’s a different gripe).

At which point the Vicar became suddenly animated and declared “oooohhhhh, I’m so fed up of this anti-Rutter snobbery, we had some students at the vicarage last week and they were all mouthing off about him, it makes me so mad.” Another of the people present shook his head and chuckled wisely, saying “they’re young – they’ll learn.”

A judgement I presume I was at least partially subject to, having (apparently) provoked the anti-Rutter snobbery complaint. And whilst I am always flattered to be described as young, what I’d like to know is what exactly I am expected to learn? Is the theory that as I throw off the shackles of my musical education and reach adulthood I will gradually lose my objective discernment and appreciate things for their superficial prettiness whatever their technical shortcomings? Should I expect my musical tastes to become so dulled that I prefer to listen to watered-down candy floss (sorry, that is not only a mixed metaphor, it’s a stupid one as well) than to immerse myself in the complexity and richness of Bach, Bruckner, Britten or Berg?

Mind you, if last night’s company was indicative of the trajectory my old age will take, I’ll also be drinking decaffeinated coffee and getting Bible readings from The Message, so maybe Rutter will be all I can handle.

That giant of journalistic prowess, Metro, informs me that George W Bush’s biographer believes the American President to be, contrary to popular belief, extremely clever. This Robert Draper says “he has a visceral intelligence at odds with his image”.

Metro explains that Mr Draper formed this opinion when he interviewed Bush and found him to be “chatty, charming and unshakeably confident in his abilities and decisions”.

I would point out to Mr Draper that Jade Goody is also chatty, David Beckham is considered by many to be charming, and Boris Johnson is without doubt unshakeably confident in his abilities and decisions – but these qualities do not necessarily amount to intelligence, visceral or otherwise.

Draper admits that this self-assurance does have its liabilities: “a tendency for opinions to harden, an unwillingness to consider alternative points of view and also the facts”.

An unwillingness to consider the facts???? Mr Draper, the word for what you appear to be describing is STUPIDITY.