Two Bits – October 25, 2013

My parents listened at length to the tinklings and pinklings of Lizt, Rachmaninoff and Chopin.
Try as they might, I never managed to build up a liking for most of that kind of classical music. Although, hearing the music today evokes strong memories of my childhood home, where proudly on show in the living room was the Philips hi-fidelity stereogram. This was an ornately carved and polished half ton of the very latest, state-of-the-art, 10-valve audiophiliac’s dream.
It had built-in speakers about a metre apart, which, we post-war colonial consumers were told, reproduced the sound of An Orchestra in your Living Room! Picture in your mind the black and white ads in the Witness extolling the virtues of this modern marvel. Which it was, considering that not too long before one sharpened a needle, wound up the phonograph and strained to listen to a  scratchy recording made, apparently, at the bottom of a well. The only record I remember of that wind-up era is “Halleluljah, I’m a Bum,” a jolly, jaunty song of fun and family laughter.
Fast-forward to the 1950s, the Philips stereogram had two compartments for records: the left for our parents’ modest collection, which we were Forbidden From Touching. This of course was an open invitation to three naughty little boys to take out and play their records, simply because we weren’t allowed to. God help us if there was a scratch on the classical LPs. I know now, of course, why pinkle, click, pinkle, click drove my father mad.
The compartment on the right was for the kids’ records. My brothers’ tastes ran to Elvis (Heartbreak Hotel, Jailhouse Rock), Bill Haley and the Comets (Green Door) and Bobby Darin . . .  Oh the shark has pretty teeth dear, And he shows them pearly white . . .
My favourite records at the time – I was barely out of nappies – were Gene Autry’s Frosty the Snowman and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer, which pretty much defined that I was going to have a different taste in popular music for the rest of my natural born life. As teenagers, while my brothers took to the Beach Boys and Beatles, I preferred the Stones and Hendrix and as far as they were concerned, I could keep them.
Nothing prepared me for a visit to the movies one day in ’71 or ’72, I think it was, to see Stanley Kubrick’s groundbreaking movie A Clockwork Orange. Kubrick was The Man of the Day in movies, he being the one who made 2001: A Space Odessy. After a diet of schmaltzy stuff like Lassie and The Sound of Music, Kubrick’s vivid presentation of the Anthony Burgess novel was a hundred light years removed. Think Quentin Tarantino.
Right in the middle of this movie came this thunderbolt from the blue, the very first time I heard Ode to Joy. I bet that if Ludwig Van had been composing towards the end of last century instead of the 18th, his choice of music would have been heavy metal.
I was riveted to my seat, I was transported, I was turned upside down. You don’t have to understand German to know this was about the sheer joy of being alive. On the other hand there I was, a sensitive lad, a fugitive from the swirling tides of the mad Sixties, so maybe I was just easily influenced.
Whatever, I have listened to Beethoven’s choral symphony so many times since then it has become a part of me. And of you and many millions around the world. So I am particularly looking forward to the performance of the Ninth by the KZN philharmonic orchestra and four choirs in the Durban city hall this week. It will be the first performance in Durban in 10 years, this time to mark the 30th anniversary of the orchestra. Rose and I have been invited by the orchestra’s boss, Bongani Tembe, and we just can’t wait!
* * *
Beethoven passed away and was buried in the churchyard. A couple days later, the town drunk was walking through the cemetery and heard some strange noise coming from the area where Beethoven was buried. Terrified, the drunk ran and got the priest to come and listen to it. The priest bent close to the grave and heard some faint, unrecognizable music coming from the grave. Frightened, the priest ran and got the town magistrate.
When the magistrate arrived, he bent his ear to the grave, listened for a moment, and said, “Ah, yes, that’s Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony, being played backwards.”
He listened a while longer, and said, “There’s the Eighth Symphony, and it’s backwards, too. Most puzzling.” So the magistrate kept listening; “There’s the Seventh… the Sixth… the Fifth…”
Suddenly the realization of what was happening dawned on the magistrate; he stood up and announced to the crowd that had gathered in the cemetery, “My fellow citizens, there’s nothing to worry about. It’s just Beethoven decomposing.”