An Inspector Calls, The Go-Between, Cider with Rosie and other BBC "autumn classics"

[ardcarp]

Cider with Rosie

Did anyone see this latest realisation of Laurie Lee's classic? It was pleasant enough, and largely true to the book. The snag is, one cannot help but compare it to the brilliant BBC film with Rosemary Leach way back in 1971.

I had a few quibbles with Sunday's offering:

1. It kept flip-flopping back and forth between 'Lol' as a small boy and as an adolescent. Agreed, the book itself tends to group things in topics, e.g. The Village School, but for a casual viewer, maybe unaware of the episodic nature of Laurie Lee's memoir, it was simply confusing.

2. The music at times sounded rather Celtic when panoramas of the countryside were shown. I expected a kilted figure to pop out of the woods at any moment. Surely a little neo-cowpat might have served better?

3. The schoolkids (in Lol's adolescent persona) all looked at least 16. IIRC, the school-leaving age was 12 before 1918 and 14 thereafter. Whilst many 12 - 14 year-olds these days might have broken- voices/large busts, it would have been the exception in under-nourished post-war England. Even in my youth, 40 years later, it would have been unusual. Here's a quote from the book:

Spadge Hopkins [....] was one of those heavy, full-grown boys, thick-legged, red-fisted, bursting with flesh, designed for the great outdoors. He was nearly 14 by then and physically out of scale - at least as far as our school was concerned.

The trouble is, the entire class had the post-pubertal appearance of Spadge Hopkins.


The film was gentle, a tad sentimental and quite harmless...but surely not a classic?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p031vh0t

[Lat-Literal]

I like David Thewlis very much and thought he put in a powerful performance as the Inspector in what I found an extremely entertaining version of 'An Inspector Calls' on Beeb 1 last Sunday.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode...nspector-calls

A very scary - and hence convincing performance - in Mike Leigh's "Naked".

I don't "do" many films but there was a period in which I was keen on the British "independents".

[Lat-Literal]

Did anyone see this latest realisation of Laurie Lee's classic? It was pleasant enough, and largely true to the book. The snag is, one cannot help but compare it to the brilliant BBC film with Rosemary Leach way back in 1971.

I had a few quibbles with Sunday's offering:

1. It kept flip-flopping back and forth between 'Lol' as a small boy and as an adolescent. Agreed, the book itself tends to group things in topics, e.g. The Village School, but for a casual viewer, maybe unaware of the episodic nature of Laurie Lee's memoir, it was simply confusing.

2. The music at times sounded rather Celtic when panoramas of the countryside were shown. I expected a kilted figure to pop out of the woods at any moment. Surely a little neo-cowpat might have served better?

3. The schoolkids (in Lol's adolescent persona) all looked at least 16. IIRC, the school-leaving age was 12 before 1918 and 14 thereafter. Whilst many 12 - 14 year-olds these days might have broken- voices/large busts, it would have been the exception in under-nourished post-war England. Even in my youth, 40 years later, it would have been unusual. Here's a quote from the book:

Spadge Hopkins [....] was one of those heavy, full-grown boys, thick-legged, red-fisted, bursting with flesh, designed for the great outdoors. He was nearly 14 by then and physically out of scale - at least as far as our school was concerned.

The trouble is, the entire class had the post-pubertal appearance of Spadge Hopkins.


The film was gentle, a tad sentimental and quite harmless...but surely not a classic?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p031vh0t

Am struck by how many of the books that were on our O'level list are now being made for/into television. "The Go-Between", "Cider With Rosie"......! I recall being disappointed with the latter for some reason. I preferred Hartley if any valid comparisons can be made. It helped to have the film with Julie Christie screened at the school film club. Strange times. It was such a remote establishment in many ways but the head teacher was very keen and related to John Schlesinger who produced "A Kind of Loving", "Billy Liar" etc.

[ardcarp]

Yes. Stange times. Interesting [in Cider with Rosie] to compare the 'playing doctors' scene from 1971 with the present version. We have become fearful and buttoned up. On the subject of school books, I have just read (shamefully for the first time) Travels with a Donkey by Robert Louis Stevenson which I found in a charity shop. It once belonged to Wilmslow County Grammar School for Girls, and inside the front cover is pasted a label declaring its readers as being Jenny A. Green and Alison Woolley, both in 3B. I can only guess what they made of it...presumably in the post-war era...and what a strange book to be a 'set work'.

[Pabmusic]

...The music at times sounded rather Celtic when panoramas of the countryside were shown. I expected a kilted figure to pop out of the woods at any moment. Surely a little neo-cowpat might have served better?...

You've hit on something that echoes with me. It seems to me that contemporary representations of 'old-time' rural England often use Celtic- or Gaelic-sounding music. It is as if that's the modern stereotype for 'folk' music. There are many examples (I know because it grates with me every time) but even I don't have a large enough anorak to want to compile a record, so this is all very anecdotal. It ought to have been easy to use genuinely English tunes - in fact, tunes collected in Gloucestershire even - upon which a score might be based. Many such tunes have a common ancestry with a lot of Welsh, Irish and Scottish stuff, it's true, but they also have their own qualities that mark them out as not Celtic or Gaelic. An example in a typical 5-beat rhythm (quite decently arranged, too):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKG3gB8tlhI

Another, collected in Dorset, in a harmonisation that might have come from the soundtrack to Cider With Rosie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR8Lf6qcSIo&list=PL5485BC3C89FD3EC6

And Julie Christie sings Bushes and Briars (a very similar version to the one that RVW collected in Gloucestershire):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuHlMn1scAI&list=PL5485BC3C89FD3EC6&index=2

And here's Joseph Taylor singing Rufford Park Poachers in 1908, recorded in Lincolnshire by Percy Grainger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f6pXtZ2EEA

[Nick Armstrong]

You've hit on something that echoes with me. It seems to me that contemporary representations of 'old-time' rural England often use Celtic- or Gaelic-sounding music. It is as if that's the modern stereotype for 'folk' music.

Yes, echoes with me too. And it inspires more than a yawn in this quarter, at the slightly lazy "that's how 'the country oo arr' sounds from W1A" clichéd soundtrack choice...

[PJPJ]

Yes, echoes with me too. And it inspires more than a yawn in this quarter, at the slightly lazy "that's how 'the country oo arr' sounds from W1A" clichéd soundtrack choice...

....with subtle references to cordwangles if only in spirit.

[Nick Armstrong]

....with subtle references to cordwangles if only in spirit.

Quite so, me deerio.

[Serial_Apologist]

Quite so, me deerio.

The most appalling Mummerset examples came from last night's episode of the otherwise wonderfully creepy Midwinter of the Spirit 3-parter currently on ITV, leading one to wonder if we were in Dorset rather than Yorkshire, as I'd originally been led to believe. Or maybe he was supposed to be Oirish? You'd think the big TV companies would take on specialists in getting local accents right in order to avoid such oral blots on otherwise picturesque landscapes.

[Lat-Literal]

You've hit on something that echoes with me. It seems to me that contemporary representations of 'old-time' rural England often use Celtic- or Gaelic-sounding music. It is as if that's the modern stereotype for 'folk' music. There are many examples (I know because it grates with me every time) but even I don't have a large enough anorak to want to compile a record, so this is all very anecdotal. It ought to have been easy to use genuinely English tunes - in fact, tunes collected in Gloucestershire even - upon which a score might be based. Many such tunes have a common ancestry with a lot of Welsh, Irish and Scottish stuff, it's true, but they also have their own qualities that mark them out as not Celtic or Gaelic. An example in a typical 5-beat rhythm (quite decently arranged, too):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aKG3gB8tlhI

Another, collected in Dorset, in a harmonisation that might have come from the soundtrack to Cider With Rosie:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XR8Lf6qcSIo&list=PL5485BC3C89FD3EC6

And Julie Christie sings Bushes and Briars (a very similar version to the one that RVW collected in Gloucestershire):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JuHlMn1scAI&list=PL5485BC3C89FD3EC6&index=2

And here's Joseph Taylor singing Rufford Park Poachers in 1908, recorded in Lincolnshire by Percy Grainger:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4f6pXtZ2EEA

I like those a lot - especially the second one.

[ardcarp]

Thanks so much for post #50 Pabs. Having lived in the West Country for most of my life I have enjoyed the subtleties of local dialects. Mrs Ardcarp can do a wonderful Somerset, typical of a certain area near The Levels where certain Saxon words and tenses were still around when she was young. Of course there is no such thing as 'A Somerset' or 'A Devon' accent, as in days before wide travel, accents were very localised. West Dorset is wonderful IMO, and the most difficult to imitate is the North Devon with a 'u' sound almost as in the French 'tu'. Not surprising actors fall back on a generalised mummerset.

But I digress. Folk songs. Many of those collected seem to use notes in the so-called Dorian mode, i.e. the white notes on the piano D - D but with notes from the C major triad just below. Most seem to be characterised by an absence of the leading-note/tonic semitone beloved of much Western music. The example that comes into my head is, "Oh the cuckoo she's a pretty bird, she singeth as she flies"...but without looking it up I don't even know if it's a West Country one!

Having had a quick Google, I'm rather surprised at the lack of info about folk songs...or maybe it's just my searching skills.

[teamsaint]

Thanks so much for post #50 Pabs. Having lived in the West Country for most of my life I have enjoyed the subtleties of local dialects. Mrs Ardcarp can do a wonderful Somerset, typical of a certain area near The Levels where certain Saxon words and tenses were still around when she was young. Of course there is no such thing as 'A Somerset' or 'A Devon' accent, as in days before wide travel, accents were very localised. West Dorset is wonderful IMO, and the most difficult to imitate is the North Devon with a 'u' sound almost as in the French 'tu'. Not surprising actors fall back on a generalised mummerset.

But I digress. Folk songs. Many of those collected seem to use notes in the so-called Dorian mode, i.e. the white notes on the piano D - D but with notes from the C major triad just below. Most seem to be characterised by an absence of the leading-note/tonic semitone beloved of much Western music. The example that comes into my head is, "Oh the cuckoo she's a pretty bird, she singeth as she flies"...but without looking it up I don't even know if it's a West Country one!

Having had a quick Google, I'm rather surprised at the lack of info about folk songs...or maybe it's just my searching skills.

Do you know this, Ards?one or two odds and ends here....

http://www.efdss.org/efdss-the-full-english

Oh look....

http://www.vwml.org/search/search-full-english?qtext=cuckoo&ts=1443732778666&collectionfilter=HHA;SBG;JHB;LEB;GB;CC;COL;GG;AGG;PG;HAM;MK;FK;EML;TFO;CJS1;CJS2;FSBW;RVW1;RVW2;AW#record=1

[ardcarp]

Thanks so much for that treasure house, teamsaint! Alas having gone through all the 'cuckoo' versions, none have the tune I know! (F>E>D octave up to D >C>A>G>E>C<D<E<F<A>G>E>D) where > is down ans < is up. Sorry can't do the rhythm. One day I'll learn how to reproduce a Ms on here. Will dig through my own song archive someday.

[ferneyhoughgeliebte]

The Cecil Sharp arrangement that ts links to is included in his English Folk Songs for Schools (no date in my copy - Curwen, Fifth Edition) where it is treated in "straight" E major - D# leading-note and all.

Reading the first five notes of ardy's transcription, I heard the big tune of Delius' Double Concerto. I suspect the rhythm of the Cuckoo is a bit sprightlier!

[Pabmusic]

The Cuckoo (or The False-hearted Lover) was a very popular song indeed. There are literally hundreds of versions, collected from all over (including the Appalachians). There are a few tunes associated with it, too. Here's one collected by Butterworth in Sussex in 1907 or 1908. His note reads, "Tune given by Mr. Wix, Billingshurst. The words to which the tune was sung were of inferior quality, and I have substituted verses which were given to me by Mrs Cranstone".




This arrangement was published in Folk Songs From Sussex.

Although it's 'modal' in a broad sense, it's not comfortably in any mode - it's more a combination of 'modal' minor and major tonalities. Very much like the last movement of RVW 8 (or indeed the Antiphon from Five Mystical Songs, which is almost contemporary with the folk song setting).

I have no link to a performance (though it has been recorded, both by Roderick Williams and Mark Stone) but here's a computer-generated one, with the vocal line played by a virtual clarinet:

http://www.mediafire.com/listen/um5jvnnixddhhnk/The_Cuckoo_clar.wav