bye bye, Nimrud, bye bye

[Serial_Apologist]

Why "receding" and "fading", S_A? (other than in the sense of "getting older, which is not the same thing?)

Because it seems anomalous to me that a country becomes more and more dependent on other peoples supporting it for what took place in the distant and fading past, RT. With the passage of time, the curiosity value will surely come to outweigh any lessons supposedly proffered, and the stories will need to become evermore mythologised to maintain any meaning or attraction, other than to cultural necrophiles.

HG seems to have left this discussion, but - just another fact, which may or may not be relevant - membership of the National Trust, an NGO which looks after a large slice of our historic built heritage (along with a goodly chunk of our natural environment) is currently in excess of 4 million, which is 8 times as many as all political parties combined. This may merely be proving HG's point, but I'd suggest it proves that heritage is important to a lot of people.

Thus vindicating my point. By all means preserve cathedrals, castles and stately mansions as aesthetic examples. Nostalgia is not a strong basis for any forward-looking culture; I think we have capitalism to thank for the commodification and any associated distortion that keeps it running.

[Serial_Apologist]

"Writing of Ronald (Stevenson) in Lewis Foreman's British Music Now (London 1977), Colin Scott-Sutherland quotes the (Hans) Kellerism that the artist of talent links the present with the future, but 'the truly great artist, the visionary, relates the future to the past'" - a Busonian ideal if ever there was one although what Busoni would have thought of the notion of heritage demolition I have no idea - or rather I have some idea...

I think there's a difference between today's attitudes - or those on the go (in jazz as well as concert music btw) - which see the past as in constant need of referencing to validate current practice, and that of the 1960s and 1970s, when, for instance, there were pathways seen as dependable through which, for example, composers travelled towards the latest means, post-serialism and electrotonics, and listeners were rewarded (I would testify) for making use of the availability of performances, R3 broadcasts and New Music concerts, to get to grips with what was then truly new, which for artists and listeners alike meant picking up from the point which music had actually reached, rather than feeling the need to go back to some past period when artists were part of cultures which experienced life differently and produced music of their times.

[Richard Tarleton]

Because it seems anomalous to me that a country becomes more and more dependent on other peoples supporting it for what took place in the distant and fading past, RT. With the passage of time, the curiosity value will surely come to outweigh any lessons supposedly proffered, and the stories will need to become evermore mythologised to maintain any meaning or attraction, other than to cultural necrophiles.

That may be your view, S_A, and I suspect we're not going to agree, but fading and receding they plainly aren't. The interpretation of the stories is changing - for instance the increasing recognition of the role of slavery.

Thus vindicating my point. By all means preserve cathedrals, castles and stately mansions as aesthetic examples. Nostalgia is not a strong basis for any forward-looking culture; I think we have capitalism to thank for the commodification and any associated distortion that keeps it running.

I'm not sure that obliterating or ignoring the past is necessarily a precondition of being forward-looking. History (I prefer the term to nostalgia) could be a way of informing our forward vision.

[eighthobstruction]

Yeah, big subject HG....too much to chose from....but a very thought provoking subject....<< Nostalgia is not a strong basis for any forward-looking culture; I think we have capitalism to thank for the commodification and any associated distortion that keeps it running>>

....steeped in it aint we me ol'son....steeped....riddled....awash....tied up by....

[Serial_Apologist]

That may be your view, S_A, and I suspect we're not going to agree, but fading and receding they plainly aren't. The interpretation of the stories is changing - for instance the increasing recognition of the role of slavery.



I'm not sure that obliterating or ignoring the past is necessarily a precondition of being forward-looking. History (I prefer the term to nostalgia) could be a way of informing our forward vision.

My ironic remark above about Georgian architecture was intended to shed a particular perspective on how I and others see the past as perceived or presented by the Heritage industry; but I strongly agree with you if you speak of history as an evidence-based repository open to interpretation.

[Richard Tarleton]

My ironic remark above about Georgian architecture was intended to shed a particular perspective on how I and others see the past as perceived or presented by the Heritage industry; but I strongly agree with you if you speak of history as an evidence-based repository open to interpretation.

In the absence of HG to see how she thinks the discussion is going, I'll sign off (for a couple of weeks )

[vinteuil]

I think the problem lies deeper - namely "our" inability to progress without constantly needing to check past examples. It speaks of an immature culture - one which always has to ask itself what mother would have done in such circumstances.

... I suspect Serial approved of the French Revolution and the intention there of creating everything from new.

Me, I think Burke's take on societal evolution was more sophisticated than that of the immature idealists behind that Revolution...

[eighthobstruction]

I've been meaning to buy this for ages ....really good write ups about it....Edmund Burke: The Visionary who Invented Modern Politics by Jesse Norman

[johnb]

As far as the destruction of ancient cities and historic buildings is concerned I always feel diminished when that happens. Yes, I know it is illogical but then again they are a part of our roots - I can think of nothing more dystopian than an environment where everything older than, say, 50 years was bulldozed.

UPVC Window! Windows are the eyes of a house - you only have to walk down any Victorian road to see the utter vandalism that has been inflicted on the vast majority of houses by owners installing dreadful, ugly double glazed plastic windows.

[mangerton]

I have thought this about some of HG's posts before, and I'd be happy to be proved wrong.

The word "troll" springs to mind. The fact that HG has disappeared from the discussion does tend to reinforce this.

[jean]

UPVC Window! Windows are the eyes of a house - you only have to walk down any Victorian road to see the utter vandalism that has been inflicted on the vast majority of houses by owners installing dreadful, ugly double glazed plastic windows.

How I agree!

If people are fortunate enough to live in beautiful houses, they have a responsibility to preserve their beauty for the rest of us to enjoy, too.

[Old Grumpy]

In certain designated areas perhaps, but the rest of us are delighted to be removed from the drudgery (and cost) of wooden window maintenance - as has been iterated elsewhere in this thread.

OG

[ahinton]

The problem with trashing the past as though some kind of opera house that needs to be burned down is how far one goes in so doing - not so much in terms of how much one seeks to destroy or undermine but how long or short a period of time might be assumed to merit escaping from such measures; imagine, for example, treating five years as a maximum - Havergal Brian's Gothic Symphony and Florent Schmitt's Piano Quintet would have had to be strangled before birth purely because their completions occupied their composers for almost 7-8 years. I'm not being frivolous here; imagine rejecting the notion of performing music of more than so many years' vintage (going back, as we would, to earlier traditions in which there was much less expectation of performance of the music of past times yet in the internet age when almost all is capable of being made available which it wasn't in the days before the concert tradition began to take shape).

Let's for goodness' sakes get rid of the symphony, for starters - though, in so doing, let's not do so for at least another week, by which time David Matthews' new one will at least have had its WP...

Totally over-simplistic, I know, but...

What a load of (I'm suddenly lost for words - which is just as well, really...)

Anyway, our now evidently absent OP does indeed seem to have qualified for troll status, which prompts me to wonder who invited said poster as a "guest" and who "honoured" said poster with what in the first place...

[johnb]

In certain designated areas perhaps, but the rest of us are delighted to be removed from the drudgery (and cost) of wooden window maintenance - as has been iterated elsewhere in this thread.

OG

Well my sash windows are around 150 years old and will probably outlive the UPVC junk that you are so enamoured with. If you don't want the bother of caring for an old house then buy a modern one but don't trash a property by installing ugly, incongruous windows.

[Serial_Apologist]

As far as the destruction of ancient cities and historic buildings is concerned I always feel diminished when that happens. Yes, I know it is illogical but then again they are a part of our roots - I can think of nothing more dystopian than an environment where everything older than, say, 50 years was bulldozed.

UPVC Window! Windows are the eyes of a house - you only have to walk down any Victorian road to see the utter vandalism that has been inflicted on the vast majority of houses by owners installing dreadful, ugly double glazed plastic windows.

And yet, oddly replacement UPVC sashes don't look so different from the wooden ones they've replaced. When I asked a previous neighbour of mine why she and her husband had decided on wooden replacements, she agreed with me on this point, but added that wooden would seem more "authentic", was her word. The problem seems to be with casements in general; apart from mullioned and diamond panes the UPVC ones seem to require much thicker frames than those they replace. I'm left wondering if this is because manufacturers have not yet invented a slimline frame capable of supporting the double pane.