Musically an odd day and other thoughts

 My musical day came in three instalments yesterday.  In the morning I watched a recording of the first act of Brett Dean's Hamlet from Glyndebourne.  It's a clever libretto and the sound world is intense and modern while still being capable of lyricism.  It's sort of in the same world as Birtwistle's Minotaur.  Lunchtime I attended the world premiere of a song cycle for soprano, clarinet and piano by a Canadian composer, though he was educated in the US and BC (which musically is a US colony).  It was paired with a work by an American composer, largely of choral music.  I hated both pieces.  Palm court lounge vocals and piano music fused with just a hint of minimalism.  It's an attempt to be "accessible" after the "excesses" of the 20th century and it seems to be what music in the American academy has become all about.  It drives me nuts.  It's boring and patronising to the musicians and the audience and would be laughed off the court in Germany.  The evening, thankfully, found me at a memorial concert with some very nicely done Coulthard, Mahler and Tchaikovsky.

That last concert was at Christ Church Deer Park; an Anglican church in a fairly upscale part of Toronto.  I happened to take a look at the memorial plaques for the dead of the two world wars.  The percentage of officers was striking.  Maybe 50% of the WW1 dead held commissioons and more like 75% for WW2, which was a bit skewed by the proportion of aircrew.  Was it a function of social geography or of the kind of people likely to be Anglicans in Toronto (Non conformists and Catholics much more numerous in general).  Probably a bit of both.