British-Abwehr relations in WW2

Did British forces help Finland in the Winter War against the USSR in 1940? If so, did they cross Nazi-occupied Europe to get to Finland? If they did that, did the German Abwehr facilitate their passage? If the Abwehr did help, how was this help requested and negotiated? Were there secret communications channels between the Abwehr and the British at that time? Some people think that there may have been such channels later in the war. At that time Germany and the USSR were allies (or at least, partners in a non-aggression pact), and Britain was at war with Germany (although not with the USSR, I think).

I am motivated to ask these questions by a sentence in Richard Bassett’s book about Admiral Wilhelm Canaris (then head of the Abwehr), “Hitler’s Spy Chief: The Wilhelm Canaris Mystery” (paperback edition, 2006). Bassett says:

in Finland where the British forces sent to help the Finns against the Soviets in 1940 were actually assisted in their passage by the Germans. German air & land forces were instructed not to interfere with the progress of these British forces.”

For this claim, Bassett cites Frederick Winterbotham, “The Nazi Connection”, p. 164 (London 1978). But Winterbotham’s book seems to have nothing about the Winter War. Finland is not even listed in the index.

Basset also cites Winterbotham for a claim that Luftwaffe General Milch visited the RAF in Britain before the war. However, none of the pages of Winterbotham’s book which mention Milch say this.

Perhaps relatedly, Kermit Roosevelt (son of Teddy) was in Britain at the start of WW II and organized a group of volunteers to go and help Finland. But, according to his Wikipedia page the war ended before this expedition could get underway.

Friends in our life

James Beaufort (Damian Hardung) in Maxton Hall – The World Between Us (Amazon Prime 2024, S1 Ep6):

It takes courage to think beyond the present, but sometimes it’s another person’s gaze that shines a new light on our future.”

The etiquette and responsibilities of concert audiences

Earlier this week, at a solo piano recital in the Wigmore Hall, London, a man near to where I was seated started complaining in the interval about how poor he thought the performer was. His statements were apparently unsolicited. The people seated either side of him disagreed with his view, and asked him to be more specific. This occurred as people were returning to their seats at the end of the interval, and he could be heard several rows away.

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Jesuit Poets

I am belatedly posting about a superb address I heard given at a mass to celebrate the Fourth Centenary of the (then) English Province of the Society of Jesus, held in Farm Street Church, London on 21 January 2023. The mass was celebrated by Vincent Cardinal Nichols, Archbishop of Westminster, and the sermon given by Fr Damian Howard SJ, Provincial of the British Province. The music at the mass included the world premiere of James MacMillan’s “Precious in the sight of the Lord” (with MacMillan in the congregation).

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TBC: RIP

In a recent post I mentioned that English has no good word for the process reverse to that of abstraction. Writing that reminded me of a long and fascinating conversation in about 2002 on this very issue with my former colleague, Trevor Bench-Capon, who sadly passed on this past week (on Monday 20 May 2024).

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Music performance and morphic resonance

Rupert Sheldrake’s theory of morphic resonance posits the existence (in some metaphysical or conceptual sense) of morphic forms which arise when living beings act in the world. In this theory, these forms are strengthened with each repetition of the action, and create a force field (a morphic field) which can be drawn upon by subsequent beings repeating the same act. The theory predicts that doing the same thing should become easier over time, even when the entities doing the acting are different, in different locations or not not even alive at the same time. Morphic resonance, if it exists (whatever that may mean) is a form of action at a distance and action through time. I have been fascinated by this theory since first reading Sheldrake’s book about it 36 years ago.

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On quitting

Wendy Rhoades (Maggie Siff) to Mike Prince (Corey Stoll) in Billions, Season 7, Episode 6, minute 36:20:

Sometimes quitting isn’t capitulation. Sometimes it shows grit and wisdom.

Concert Concat 2024

This post is one in a sequence which lists (mostly) live music I have heard, as best as memory allows. I write to have a record of my musical experiences and these entries are intended as postcards from me to my future self. All opinions are personal. Other posts in this collection can be found here. The most recent prior post in this sequence is here.

  • Krius String Quartet to an afternoon audience of about 70 people in St Marylebone Parish Church, Marylebone, London on Friday 4 October 2024. The quartet comprises Alfie Weinberg (v), Louis Solon (v), Theo Hayward (va), and Frederick Carter (c), all students at the Royal Academy across the road. The programme was:

    • Haydn: String Quartet, Op. 54 No. 2
    • Puccini: Crisantemi
    • Cohen: Hallelujah
    • Electric Light Orchestra: Mr Blue Sky

    This Church has a very high ceiling, and I thought the sound tended to become lost in the vast space. The concert was billed as informal, and some audience members were moved by what they heard to react, in words or in bodily motions. The audience applauded with enthusiasm after every movement and seemed to appreciate most the last two numbers, perhaps because they recognized the theme tunes. The audience reactions were invariably warm and positive, and I found this very charming.

    The musical performance by Krius was excellent and I enjoyed the concert immensely. The Haydn quartet was new to me, and I was particularly touched by the slow movement and its melancholic chords and descant melodic line. The precision of intonation and co-ordination of Krius as an ensemble were excellent throughout, and they are a string quartet to watch out for!

    After I left the concert, immediately outside the church I crossed at the green walk signal, and came within inches of being killed by a car running a red light. If I had died then, this concert would have been the last I heard (at least in this life). I have since been thinking a great deal about this.

  • Pavel Kolesnikov and Samson Tsoy in a two-piano recital to a sold-out Wigmore Hall on Friday 4 October 2024. This was an outstanding and very moving lunchtime recital consisting of preludes and fugues of JS Bach and of Dmitri Shostakovich, interleaved with one another. The printed programme listed:

    Dmitry Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue in C major Op. 87 (1950-1)
    JS Bach: Prelude and Fugue in G minor from WTC II BWV885 (c.1740)
    Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue in D Op. 87
    Bach: Prelude and Fugue in D minor from WTC II BWV875
    Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue in D minor Op. 87
    Bach: Prelude and Fugue in G minor from WTC I BWV861 (1722)
    Shostakovich: Prelude in C sharp minor Op. 87
    Bach: Fugue in C sharp minor from WTC I BWV849
    Bach: Prelude in E flat from WTC I BWV852
    Shostakovich: Fugue in E flat Op. 87
    Shostakovich: Prelude and Fugue in G minor Op. 87
    Bach: Prelude and Fugue in C from WTC I BWV846.

    The pianists played one encore, a Bach chorale arranged for four hands on one piano. Sitting together at one piano seemed a very fitting end to a concert of such back-and-forth interplay.

    Most of us westerners have a linear model of time, with people and events in the past able to influence those in the present and future, but not the reverse. We would therefore, most of us, think of Bach influencing Shostakovich, and Shostakovich choosing Bach as an influence, or at least not resisting this influence. Bach is essentially passive in this exchange.

    Cultures with a different model of time, however, such as indigenous Australian cultures, who think of different eras or generations being overlayed, or stacked, over the same geographic location to which they are linked, allow for influences to travel in all directions – forwards, backwards and diagonally. In this view, Bach has actively chosen who will be influenced by him, through the particular music he has written.

    This may seem a strange notion, but since the WWW, we are actually quite familiar with it. Web 2.0 not only allowed people with similar interests to find each other, it helped create these groups of like-minded people, no matter where they were. If someone starts a weblog about language, such as Language Log, people interested in that topic will read and, many of them, comment on the posts. In time, this will create a community of people interested in, and increasingly expert on, the topic of the blog. The community will develop its own norms of behavior, its own assumptions and common forms of reasoning, and its own shibboleths and sometimes enemies. They will do this without being in the one place, or being online at the same time, or even being alive at the same time. As an example of such assumptions, the focus of Language Log, for instance, is almost entirely on the forms and syntax of human language, and only rarely on its semantics or pragmatics.

    Similarly, Bach’s music has created, through the centuries, a community of people who it communicates to, people who appreciate its musical sounds and its musical forms, who understand its meanings (or wish to), and who respond, in different ways, to it. This community is spread over geography, over time, and over musical abilities. Bach has, by writing his music in the ways he did, actively selected the people who will be influenced by it. They are not, usually, people who like the waltzes of Johann Strauss Jr, for example.

    So Bach is not, in fact, passive in this exchange. Has his music also been influenced by later composers? Certainly, as I have pointed out before, the music of later composers can change how we listen to the music of earlier composers, so that, for example, depending on the context and the interpretation, Bach can sound like Ligeti. Something similar happened in this concert – hearing Bach interleaved with Shostakovich allowed us to hear the influences between the two composers in both directions. For me, this was a profoundly moving experience, and it will take some time to absorb its full intellectual and emotional consequences.

    The back-and-forth nature of the performance also led me, as a computer scientist, to think of Ehrenfeucht–Fraïssé Games. I will explore these ideas in a further post.

  • The Somerset Piano Trio (Warren Mailley Smith, p, Jenny Sacha, v, and Kirsten Jenson, c) playing to about 50 people at St Mary-Le-Strand Church, London on Thursday 26 September 2024. This was a masterful performance through the darkening gloom of the church, of two fine piano trios:
    • Beethoven: Piano Trio Op. 1 No. 1 in E flat
    • Schubert: Piano Trio in B flat
  • London Firebird Orchestra with violinist Charlotte Saluste-Bridoux under George Jackson at St George’s Church, Hanover Square, London on Tuesday 24 September 2024. The program comprised just two works:
    • Beethoven: Violin Concerto
    • Mozart: Symphony No. 41 (Jupiter)

    A great concert, with superb, polished performances by Ms Saluste-Bridoux and the Firebird orchestra to a full church. The wonderful acoustics of the church compensate for the extreme discomfort of sitting on the hard, wooden pews.

    The cadenzas for the Beethoven were ones which I had not heard before, and they had a distinct twentieth-century feel. I understand they were written by Alfred Schnittke (Movements 1 and 3) and Gidon Kremer (Movement 2). The (novel) entry of the strings near the end of Schnittke’s third movement cadenza was magical – a sequence of shimmering discords that ascended, ratcheting up the tension as they rose in pitch. The choice of these particular cadenzas was inspired, and added immensely to the performance. (HT: CSB)

    As often with the Jupiter, the contrapuntal exuberance of the final movement energized me immensely, to the point where I felt capable of running after strangers on St George Street to tell them how superb this performance had been, and how much I wished I’d been a musician!

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On ambition

Chuck Rhoades (Paul Giamatti) in Billions (Season 7, Episode 2, 11:45):

If a fella doesn’t have his eye on something, how’s he gonna know where he’s going?”

Loud Living in Cambridge

I was most fortunate this week to hear Jan Lisiecki in an outstanding recital at the West Road Concert Hall, Department of Music, University of Cambridge, Cambridge, on 26 February 2024, in a concert sponsored by Camerata Musica Cambridge. West Road Hall is a fine modern hall with very nice acoustics, and was fully packed. The hall management turned off the lights over the audience (as in a theatre), which should happen more often. Perhaps that darkness helped create the atmosphere of great seriousness this performance had. I later learnt that this recital was the twelfth time in the series that Mr Lisiecki had played the Preludes program.

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