Music
A baleful air
Peter Phillips
The problem with touring the States at this time of year, in these post-Chernobyl days, is the total unpredictability of the weather. It is perfectly possible to give a concert in Maine on one night with temper- atures at nought Fahrenheit, and the next night to be in New Orleans with the thermometer in the early 90s. It is also possible to experience a variation in temperature of at least 40 degrees over a few days merely by staying in the same place. Quite apart from the strain this imposes on one's wardrobe, people get ill, with undesirable repercussions on their voices and general presentation, in a coun- try where one's status is measured by how wretchedly happy one looks. Blaming every- thing on the Russians is rather untrendy just at the moment, so the justification for the fact that the blossom is dropping off the boughs in sub-freezing conditions has been transferred from Chernobyl to that other obsession: the excessive consumption of physically damaging substances.
Nowhere is this more true than in Jackson, Mississippi, that most hospitable of American cities, where for reduced fees and at considerable personal inconveni- ence my colleagues insist every year on coming to perform. The attraction is the climate and the prevailing belief that re- naissance sacred music should be mixed with gin. Unfortunately, this time a serious fire in a distillery on the outskirts of Jackson coincided with a severe downturn in the weather, so that we arrived to find the locals in every way in low spirits. No amount of Tanis and Palestrina from us, however enchantingly rendered, could quite compensate for the fact that the previous day a great deal of investment and an even greater amount of liquor had gone up in flames. Even the annual game of translating the Latin titles on the program- me (Latin reckoned in Mississippi to be beside the point) had a baleful air about it, though I did elicit that `Te lucis ante terminum' could be seen as 'To you, Lucy, in front of the station'.
But obesity is a problem which distracts people even from their superstitious mis- trust of the unseasonal weather. The differ- ence between a Catholic library and a Protestant one in many of the southern churches is that the former may contain books entitled Flowers for St Francis, depicting idyllically thin children gamboll- ing about the countryside, while the latter will specialise in titles like Slim for Him. These volumes earnestly set out to unpick the weather-religion-alcohol syndrome; but not only have they had palpably little success, they have also raised everyone's touchiness on the subject. When it was noised that Tye's Euge Bone Mass in six parts is known in England as the Missa Huge Bone we were advised to make a substitution. When I argued that this was a bit thick, I was told by the organist of the church in question that his vicar had lost a lot of weight over the previous months, when the weather had remained stable, but that recently he had been 'suffering stress' and was putting it all back on again. Apparently this was bad news for all the parishioners he was leading to Jesus through slimness.
One of the bonuses of singing in Jackson is that we are listened to there by more black people than anywhere else we visit in the world. It is true that early music in general, and renaissance sacred music in particular, has not made much of a splash In the lives of the Afro-Americans of this continent, but they come to hear it in Jackson as if it were an integral part of their culture. We are at a loss to decide whether this is more surprising than, for example, the sales figures which are reg- ularly reported back by purveyors of early music compact discs in Japan. The music does seem to have an appeal which defies any particular education or background. One Afro-American enthusiast approach- ed the record stand set up at our concert brandishing his credit card and saying he intended to 'max out on the plastic'. He subsequently bought every title on offer. He also confided that if the summer doesn't play it exactly according to the rules there was going to be a lot of strife amongst his congregation, strife which even now was becoming visible.
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