Happy Easter, Librarian!

 

Mysterious Message, left by the perpetrator

A remorseful thief repented last Easter (2022) and made amends. Whatever selfish urges which prompted them to plunder Cambridge University Library, appropriating for personal pleasure part of our common historical patrimony, was expiated in an act of remorse and restitution. Wow! - one doesn’t usually get to use words like those in a blog dedicated to science. But my guess is that the perpetrator was probably steeped in such language – it was Cambridge after all, and the Easter message is a bit tell-tale.

And a great joy it was to anyone interested in the culture and history of science! (To hard scientists, it’s the idea, not the original physical manifestation in ink and paper, that’s the thing.) The story is well told here and the joy that all-manner-of-things-were-wellis communicated in a video interview by Chief Librarian Dr Jessica Gardner. The timing was also a marvel, being in the final year of the Darwin Correspondence Project, a titanic effort to put 15,000 items of correspondence on line (I used it today!).

And such was that joy that, with a little persuading and ideation with a young historian of science academic at Darwin College, Edwin Rose, that the idea of a celebratory concert was born, including my string quartet on Darwinian themes. CUL via the Darwin Correspondence Project stumped a little money which gave rise to the concert which began this blog. It is sanely difficult to get new music programmed /performed from an unusual source. Sanely? Yes, because of the vast back-catalogue, and perfectly proper (albeit mean) funding/support structures for contemporary professional composers. So, usually, no chance to get music like this performed.

The concert, superbly programmed by Francis Knights, took place on 29^th October 2022. It was a great chance to visit the exhibition of DCP at the Library – wonderful, touching examples of the correspondence, including with the fine minds in the British Public at the time such as the Stonemason’s letter (your time will be richly rewarded by clicking on this). The exhibition is now moving to the New York Public Libraries and runs through the summer.

So it is with thanks to the Repentant Thief, CUL and DCP, and Darwin College for the opportunity to visit the exhibition and to have a funded performance of Eyenigma Variations. See Darwiniana tab for photos, quotes and links to the music. I will post more music next time, related to Darwin’s examinations of coral reefs!

And Happy Easter to you; we come from many traditions and all are to be valued, examined, and celebrated.

'The Darwins and Music' - what a concert! 29/20/22

 

David with quartet members Paul, Bruce, Juliet, Helen and concert organiser Francis Knights

Fabulous concert ‘The Darwins and Music’ at Darwin College, Cambridge on Saturday 29^th October, brilliantly put together by historian of science Edwin Rose and Francis Knights, head of music at the college. So many wonderful choices of music to illustrate talks on various Darwin generations, and great performances by the string quartet, Trinity Street Consort (led by Tammas Slater), Carola Darwin (soloist) and Marie-Noëlle Kendall (piano).

The quartet (Paul, Bruce, Juliet and Helen) gave the first public performance of Eyenigma Variations to a capacity audience of ~200 and played with great spirit and physicality, from the mysterioso beginning (the mystery of how Evolution could account for The Eye) to the ff feroce (fierce…) final bars, closing the argument. Given the fabulous other music on offer, from Cheryl Frances-Hoade and Francis Knights to Chopin and Vaughan-Williams (a Wedgewood-Darwin), I was delighted with the excellent performance and with the audience reaction.

I'd taken the opportunity earlier to go round the Darwin Correspondence Project exhibition at Cambridge University Library (joint sponsors of the concert) to see absolute gems of letters and communications casting a lovely light on this most likeable of scientists, the fascinating intellectual web of which he was the centre and his relations with family and the public (and also the famous Tree of Life - purloined & returned! - notebooks). I hope I’ve done some justice to the human aspects that came across in the letters in my ‘Three Soliloquies’ for baritone and guitar (see Darwiniana tab).

NB: no recording was possible due to the complexities and multi-strand nature of the concert.