A rave review, pleasing myself

I woke up this morning from a dream where I was being reproached, I know not by whom, that I had given up my early morning blogging starts. There was a sense that something had been lost. Lately, it's true, and for quite a while now, I have crept back to bed after letting Molly out, and often slept, dozed and snuggled blissfully until nearly 8 o'clock. If I've had twenty minutes or so to spend here, on a work day, say, I've tended just to visit a few blogs, tinker with some pictures, perhaps answer an e-mail. The days of saluting the sun, making tisane with honey, and simply spending time with my own writing, have largely gone by the board. And perhaps the counsel of the dream is a good one, although whether I can rekindle the sense of excitement I used to get at the prospect of just pleasing myself here, I'm not sure. I suppose the loss of the first flush of enthusiasm with any activity is inevitable, but I feel a little that as I have become more involved with the world of blogging, my much valued collection of friends increases, I am more caught up with their on-line worlds, and spending more time in the day involved with it, wanting much more to please and elicit positive comments, so I'm somehow putting rather less of my real self (whatever that is...) and heart into what I do here.

So with a cup of lime-blossom tea, a sleeping dog and the early blackbirds for company, I'll type up some scribblings about something that interested me, for my own satisfaction, and resist the temptation to stick in some pretty pictures because I know I always get more comments when I do that!

What we've been watching: Simon Russell Beale's series on BBC4, 'Sacred Music'. The whole series was a joy; SRB seemd at first a rather bluff and possibly bumptious personality, but he wasn't at all, and grew on us enormously. He was very knowledgeable and comfortable in the field, passionate and dynamic but without in any way imposing himself irritatingly on the programme, and he was a truly sympathetic, unpatronising, generous interviewer, just self-effacing enough. The presence of the very personable Harry Christophers and the Sixteen to interpret and explain the music provided a consistently excellent thread through the whole series.

So, all good, but the last one last night (Friday 11th April) really surpassed itself. It was principally about Bach, but in the context of Lutheran church music, quite a large chunk of it was the story of Luther. I had forgotten what a grand narrative that was; in the predominance given in our historical awareness to the venal and bloody realpolitick of the Tudors and Stuarts, the played down pan-European trauma of the wars of religion, of which the Englsh civil war was really just one episode, the deadening joylessness and vandalism of the Puritans, one tends to forget the nobler aspects of the birth of Protestantism.

There were some delightful little stories: of Luther being moved to help some disillusioned nuns escape from their convent by smuggling them out in recently emptied herring barrels, then falling in love with and marrying one of them. I wondered if she'd had a wash by the time he fell in love with her, or if she still smelled kipperish. Perhaps that was what attracted him to her...
or of Bach impulsively walking over 200 miles across Germany just to hear Buxtehude play the organ in Lubeck. Buxtehude offered him his job if he'd marry his daughter, but Bach declined. Later Buxtehude offered the same job and daughter package to Handel, whose response was the same. Poor woman, her only place in history to have been turned down by two of the great Baroque composers. Bach went on to father twenty children, and poured out volumes of music, taught with a passion, wore himself out and when he died was buried in an unmarked grave.

Aside from the sumptous music and fascinating history, though, I could have watched it for the photography alone. Dreamy, painterly landscapes, beautiful architectural detail and statuary, light-filled interiors, just enough human interest in street scenes, schools and congregations, and simply some gorgeously composed abstract pictures which could have stood completely alone - I do notice photography more these days.

So, if you didn't see it, I'd recommend it heartily. I assume BBCiPlayer will supply it, but we can't get that because their devious technology know we're not in the UK. I wonder if there's a DVD?