Prom snub!

Recently the BBC published its programme for the 2008 Promenade Concert Season at the Royal Albert Hall.

As always anniversaries were being marked, especially 100 years since the birth of Messaien and the 50th anniversary of Vaughan Williams's passing. One away fixture and one home, if you like.

This is all fine and good even if the death of Stockhausen last year had, in my opinion, given rise to far too generous an allocation for a composer who hardly captured the imagination of the serious music-listening public, but was a byword for the kind of avant garde nonsense that can barely be classified as music in any recognisable sense. Noises, yes; music, hmmm........?

Amidst all of this provision I am utterly appalled and astonished that the 25th anniversary of the death of Herbert Howells has been completely overlooked. Plenty of Elliot Carter, Mark-Anthony Turnage and a host of other lesser lights but not a note of music from possibly the finest English composer of his generation.

Even his teacher at the RCM, Sir C.V.Stanford, gets an outing with his Piano Concerto. Stanford, who numbered Holst, Finzi and the great VW himself amongst his pupils, himself expressed the view that Howells was the most gifted of them all.

At this most English of music festivals it is appalling that his anniversary should be ignored in this way. Too easily dismissed by many as a composer of church music, he was, in fact, better known until the late 1920s for his orchestral and chamber works.

A performance of his luscious 1st Piano Concerto, or his choral masterpiece Hymnus Paradisi would have more than graced the Royal Albert Hall. Even if this was too much to contemplate, surely there could have been space for his Phantasy Quartet, or the Elegy for Viola, Quartet and String Orchestra (a piece that owes much to the Tallis Fantasia and would have linked in nicely with all the VW hullaballoo) in one of the smaller venues.

But no, Roger Wright and his predecessor in the job have seen fit to discard the work of this English master in favour of such foreign luminaries as Demessieux, Roussel and Varese (who, indeed!). It is no use the BBC defending this on the grounds that Howells was Composer of the Week on Radio 3 earlier this year - this is a gaffe of embarrassing proportions. Shame on you, Mr Wright.

Strange title.

Some of you may have been wondering why I have named this blog Slow of Heart. the biblically astute will know that these are words of admonition that Jesus uses to the two disciples he meets on the road to Emmaus.

Newly resurrected, he is not recognised by them, and has to explain the reasons why he was put to death on a cross as they debate the subject on their journey. But they struggle to understand, being utterly cast down by his loss and they fail to grasp the significance of his resurrection. He calls them slow of heart to believe all that the prophets had taught.

It has been my experience that this story is a metaphor for the Christian life - that Christ is our unknown fellow traveller, explaining, leading, cajoling and reprimanding by turns. I have not always found the way an easy or even clear one, but he is always loving and longing for us to understand fully and banish our confusion.

Yet we are all too often slow of heart to believe or too dull-witted to follow his lead. But we should not be troubled, for he always comes to us in the breaking of bread to make himself known beyond question or puzzlement. And then I find it easy to comprehend and my slowness of heart melts away.

Greetings, Blogworld

Well, I've been meaning to do this for a long time and now I'm finally claiming a foothold in the blogosphere. Why should everyone else have outlets for their thoughts and mine remain discreetly hidden. Perhaps having a blog is more like very public therapy - if so, God help us all. I promise to keep it all legal, decent and above all honest.

I suppose I hope that my thoughts and reflections will amuse, inform and provoke in equal measure, but, frankly, if no one ever visits this blog and I end up talking to myself alone I rather suspect it will still have served its purpose - allowing me to get off my chest all kinds of thoughts and questionings, rejoicings and gripes about the world, the church and sometimes, perhaps, God too (although He usually knows all the answers and will be unfazed by any criticism from me).

Anyway it is good to be here and I hope to have plenty to say in the coming months/years. Now............which button do I press to get this post up on screen? Hmmm!