While Rome burns

The road back into London was eerily quiet, in stark contrast to the cars streaming past me on their way out of town.  At least 50 people are dead,  21 of those where I live in King's Cross, 13 where my father works in Russell Square. 

I was out of town with my harp quartet when the bombs exploded.  After hearing the news, we had to carry on rehearsing in order to ready everything for the World Harp Congress in Dublin next week.  At times like these I don't know if what we do is strong and professional or fiddling while Rome burns.

Back at home, I am preparing Philip Venables's Canto, written for Florica and I to premier at the Cheltenham festival on Monday.  It is always a privilege to play a new work and particularly to be given one (the Cheltenham recital is part of my prize for a competition I won last summer, and the festival has a wonderful scheme where they commission a work for their young artists from a rosta of young composers).

Philip explains:  "Canto is related to a piece titled When the house is rotten, the rats must fly.  This rather bizarre line is from The Last Suttee by Rudyard Kipling.  The Canto is a lament to the Suttee - a widowed woman who, in keeping with an ancient custom, burns herself on the funeral pyre of her husband." 

With innocent people murdered on my doorstep, I wonder if suttee is not only custom but also partly the desperate desire to do something for one's dead. 

Comments

[pink, etc.]

Wow! Glad you're ok! Now's the time that people need music the most, think of Elton John at Princess Di's funeral. Hindemith Harp Sonata, last movement... play it and weep.

[such stuff]

thinking of you
with affection

rb

[Marcus Maroney]

I'm glad to see that you are OK and have you and your in my thoughts.