Tuesday 19th May - time flies...

 Time flies at different speeds...

I'm sure that when I woke up there was almost no yellow to be seen in these rose buds, and I know they were still green yesterday.

But just look at them after this morning's rain followed by a little sunshine! They will be flowering tomorrow for sure.

.....

But where has the last half century gone?

My son went to a Steeleye Span concert recently...

I remember going see them back in about 1976, around fifty years ago when Iwas a student. Their song 'All around my hat' burst onto the music scene like a shooting star, an unmistakable and entirely different sound to everything else on the radio at the time. Even us classical music students sat up and took notice. 

I wonder how it sounds fifty years later. my son said they did play it, 'but only if you all sing too', and everyone joined in with great enthusiasm. 

.....

Music buffs will know of J S Bach's groundbreaking work, 'The Well-tempered Keyboard'. At the time there was no fixed system for tuning your harpsichord that would make it sound acceptable in every key. He wrote this set of Preludes and fugues in every major and minor key to popularise a system of tuning the instruments which has now been the standard for around 300 years. Back then, the word 'temper' meant 'tuning' in this context.

A Prelude can have any sort of structure, but composing a Fugue is trickier to manage, as it involves having a little melody that pops up at a higher or lower pitch throughout the piece. 

Here's a spoof Prelude and Fugue by PDQBach (a pseudonym) called 'The Bad-tempered Prelude and Fugue)