Prom 75: 10.09.16 - Last Night of the Proms

[Prommer]

All this reminiscing reminds me that I must get my DVD transfer of 'The Prommers' documentary, circa 1998?, off the shelves to see many familiar faces from the front row regulars - many now in a world elsewhere - as a memory of my Promming years, from 1958. I'm always glad to view the Last Night ritual, a timely reminder of the passing years which still touches the heart, despite the Hooray Henry contingency.

Would that this were available on YouTube or elsewhere...!

[kernelbogey]

Nicholas Kenyon in today's Guardian attempts to defend the Last Night in the context of Brexit. While making the case for the internationalism of the season and of the traditions of the Proms he fails IMHO to prevent fears that it may be seen as a celebration of isolationism - or indeed hijacked as such by some flag-wavers in the audience.

[Prommer]

Nicholas Kenyon in today's Guardian attempts to defend the Last Night in the context of Brexit. While making the case for the internationalism of the season and of the traditions of the Proms he fails IMHO to prevent fears that it may be seen as a celebration of isolationism - or indeed hijacked as such by some flag-wavers in the audience.

I'm not sure it is within the power of an article in the Guardian to affect people and events in quite this way.

[Eine Alpensinfonie]

and as far as I know nobody has succeeded in building a neutron bomb yet, so you may have a long wait.

I think they have. . .

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neutron_bomb

[french frank]

Anyone wishing to discuss this year's flag-waving issues should join the Referendum debate so that the traditional aspects of the evening can be continued here.

[Prommer]

I think I was focussing on the Last Night, including the paraphernalia of flags, not on the referendum per se, on which I was not expressing any opinion whatever.

As to the programme, I look forward to JDF as I said, though I do wish he had something more interesting to sing.

The Serenade to Music is a wonderful piece, a moment of welcome calm, and entirely appropriate to the spirit of the Proms.

[ahinton]

Anyone wishing to discuss this year's flag-waving issues should join the Referendum debate so that the traditional aspects of the evening can be continued here.

But what have such flag-waving issues got to do with the Referendum? What can they tell us that is directly pertinent to whether there was any need to address UK's status as an EU member state in the first place, or whether the issue should have been subjected to referendum, or why almost everyone was so shy about admitting in advance that its outcome would not be legally binding, or how the campaign was conducted on both sides, or the various divisivenesses that it engendered, or the legal challenges to its outcome, or the lack of action in progressing Brexit since the declaration of that outcome and all the rest of it? I don't see that discussing this on the Referendum thread would add anything useful thereto; it might indeed detract therefrom.

Isn't the entire flag-waving business at the LNOTP a long outmoded "tradition" that has no place in an annual concert series featuring orchestras, artists and music from many nations and attended and otherwise listened to by similarly international audiences in a world whose map hasn't been coloured pink in decades and in which attempts to pander to such detritus as might remain of the British Oompah risk at best detracting from and at worset undermining the festival's most positive aspects?

Perhaps the introduction of the waving of EU flags might instigate a new "tradition" or introduce a variation on that old one but, even were it to do so, who needs flag waving by audience members at concerts and what in any case is it supposed to achieve and for whom, other than distracting other audience members from the music being performed?

Those other "traditional" aspects of the LNOTP, namely those eternally recycled sea songs, the much misunderstood and misrepresented Jerusalem whose music was, as NK notes, written by a German influenced composer and orchestrated by a better known one and the first Pomp and Circumstance March by said better known one to which Arthur Christher Benson's Land of Hope and Glory doggerel (for all that it was suggested by King Edward VII) was later to be appended despite Elgar's reservations are surely being allowed to make ever greater mockeries of themselves with each September that passes; this can hardly do the Proms' reputation any great favours, can it?...

[ahinton]

I think I was focussing on the Last Night, including the paraphernalia of flags, not on the referendum per se, on which I was not expressing any opinion whatever.

As to the programme, I look forward to JDF as I said, though I do wish he had something more interesting to sing.

The Serenade to Music is a wonderful piece, a moment of welcome calm, and entirely appropriate to the spirit of the Proms.

Indeed; what the motives of the possible bringers of extra flags might be is something on which I cannot speculate and will therefore refrain from trying to do so, but adding anything good to the concert is surely unlikely to be one of them.

And yes, RVW's Serenade to Music is indeed a most wonderfully moving work, to the performance of which I can only hope that flag wavers will discreetly and respectfully retrain themselves from waving their flags, whiever ones they may be.

[Beef Oven!]

Match of the day isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but Glolovkin and Kell go at it after 10.00 - so it’s gonna be Last Night on the iPlayer, I’m off to watch the fight in the pub.

[Prommer]

Match of the day isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but Glolovkin and Kell go at it after 10.00 - so it’s gonna be Last Night on the iPlayer, I’m off to watch the fight in the pub.

There could be quite a ruck in the Hall....

[mercia]

on Breakfast this morning I think we were told that Rule Britannia would be in a higher key this year so that Florez can show off his top notes. Would it have to go up a fourth to be in C major ?

[ahinton]

https://www.theguardian.com/music/2016/sep/07/from-the-classical-archive-1969-proms-ban-land-of-hope-and-glory-rule-britannia

And yes, I omitted reference to Arne's Britannia Waives the Rules piece from my last; this is perhaps even dafter in the context of the second decade of the 21st century than all those other LNOTP "traditional" items that are regurgitated annually.

[ahinton]

Match of the day isn’t all it’s cracked up to be, but Glolovkin and Kell go at it after 10.00 - so it’s gonna be Last Night on the iPlayer, I’m off to watch the fight in the pub.

How do you know that there'll be a fight in the pub? Hopefully, if there is, it won't break out as a consequence of arguments over people waving EU flags at the LNOTP.

Maybe you should frequent better quality pubs!

[ahinton]

There could be quite a ruck in the Hall....

Ruck in Hall!

[Prommer]

Eyes down... Sakari properly attired with buttonhole. Now for Raze!