I've been the happy recipient of two (more!!) books this Christmas. One is a disconcertingly 'large-print' ex-Leicester Libraries copy of a biography on Daphne Du Maurier. The family history which fills the first chapter or two is quite fascinating. The print-size leaves me undecided about whether I should just leave the book at a distance and retain my glasses or else to remove my glasses. Anyway, I am trying not to be put off by the print-size and am enjoying pondering what childhood must have been like before the days of television and light-weight 'reading books' for children with few words and many pictures. It might be hard for this generation to turn out someone of the calibre of Daphne du Maurier (OK, she had the GENES for it, but she still needed the training) because the literary experiences of our children is so very stilted. Reading weighty books, for an 8-y-old, takes time and we modern parents book so much into the schedule this also works against them . Daphne wrote a diary as a child and told about how she played 'plague' with her younger sister. She called up to the bedroom 'bring out your dead' whereupon her sister tossed out all the teddies to a waiting Daphne who was equipped with a wheelbarrow ready to recieve the corpses which were then wheeled off to a ready-dug hole in the ground for burial!! She even played at 'beheading' after reading about the Tower of London! I remember doing similar things (though prob. not nearly so educationally valuable!!) as a child during the LONG summer holidays when both parents were out at work and we three were left more or less to our own devices. Hanging teddies out of the window on lengths of wool was one of the things which gave hours of pleasure - we 'fished' them back in again - though none of us ever had any authentic experience of real fishing, nor had read any books. We had too much TV - and that was in the days when it didn't start until after 4-ish (once the school progs and 'watch with mother' were finished....). My children don't have too much TV - they just don't have enough time to 'stand and stare' - too many chores and schoolwork perhaps? It has been pleasant over the past week to see them variously building airfix models, doing target practice with air-rifles and playing board-games in a relaxed way. Only two more days for such delights then it will be 'noses to the grindstone' with schoolwork beginning again on Monday DV. It makes me look forward to the planned trip though, I shall make an effort to leave plenty of 'space' in the schedule for exploring and inventing games. I remmeber when we got to Islay last time - it was only moments before one of the children had discovered a large cardboard box and they were all taking turns 'sledging' down an enormous sand-dune. So what if they ended up with sand in their sleeping bags?!!!
The other book I recieved (thanks Timothy) was on the history of the recording industry. BEginning with Edison and his list of 'possible uses' for his new invention, the 'phonograph' , and going on to explore how recorded music has distorted the way we listen (Beethoven, for example, intended certain of his compositions for the informal 'chamber' setting and others for grand theatres) and experience music or all types. The interesting fact that the phonograph was not initially intended as a medium for MUSIC offered food for thought. Bela Bartok went round Hungary in the 1930's making recordings in various communities, of the songs which bound these groups of people together. He found that the tools available for transcribing such music were insufficient because the quarter-tones and living approach to rhythm etc meant that to transcribe would be to kill the living music. I remember hearing a record of some women from Thrace (I think) who sang together beautifully. They sang of life and death, of work in the fields and everyday struggles (not that I understood a word of it of course!!) and it was made into a record - it was powerful stuff (and still would be if I had a record-player....). some years after buying the record, I found a CD which purported to be the same stuff. The themes were the same, the 'tunes' were the same, the singers were a professional choir (from the same country as the original peasant-women) and it was perfectly exectuted - and dead. I couldn't listen to it (in fact it is one of the few CD's that I threw in the bin). I shall continue to read this book with interest and will poss quote again from it.
Edison stood back in the days when people didn't have music delivered to their ears at the push of a button, at any time of the day or night, in any location. His suggestions for the use of this new invention began :
1 for dictating letters, avoiding the need for a stenographer
2 for making books available for the blind
3 for music (!!!)
Another of his reasons was 'to record family sayings, last words etc' - funny that all of us have the wherewithal to do that in our own homes but I never heard of anyone doing it. I have an old recording made (by my Dad) on one of those old tape players. He pushed the 'record' button unbeknown to my hard-pressed grandmother whose remonstrances were drowned out by the tuning up and playing of banjos by 3 men who had caused a great deal of inconvenience by having said they would be back in '15 minutes' for dinner - and it turned out to be a number of hours!!! So, now transferred to an audio cassette, my grandmother lives on in my memory, and thankful I am that my Dad decided on his act of mischief in those years before I was even THOUGHT of!!