Another colourful outdoor piano, this one by Yunior Marino, spotted at 595 Bay Street at Dundas Street, Toronto. This afternoon some great stride piano was being played on it by an elderly gentleman.
Author Archive for peter
Page 36 of 83
Piano in the park
The City of London Festival’s piano-planting project in the Victoria Embankment Gardens, June 2012.
The value of an education
In a letter to Rupert Hart-Davies on 29 November 1956 George Lyttelton included this statement from William Johnson Cory (1823-1892, Master of Eton 1845-1872) on education:
At school you are engaged not so much in acquiring knowledge as making mental efforts under criticism. A certain amount of knowledge, you can indeed with average faculties acquire so as to retain; nor need you regret the hours you spent on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions. But you go to a great school not so much for knowledge as for arts and habits; for the habit of attention, for the art of expression, for the art of assuming at a moment’s notice a new intellectual position, for the art of entering quickly into another person’s thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, for the art of working out what is possible in a given time, for taste, for discrimination, for mental courage, and for mental soberness.”
Reference:
Rupert Hart-Davis (Editor) [1978-79]: The Lyttelton Hart-Davis Letters: Correspondence of George Lyttelton and Rupert Hart-Davis, 1955-1962. London: John Murray.
RIP: Ernest Kaye
While on the subject of Britain’s early lead in computing, I should mention the recent death of Ernest Kaye (1922-2012). Kaye was the last surviving member of the design team of the LEO computer, the pioneering business and accounting machine developed by the Lyons Tea Shop chain in the early 1950s. As with jet aircraft, computers were another technological lead gained and squandered by British companies.
Kaye’s Guardian obituary is here. A post on his LEO colleague John Aris is here. An index to Vukutu posts on the Matherati is here.
Computing in Cottonopolis
A 1951 article about the Manchester computer, reprinted in The Guardian today.
To think of two twelve-figure numbers and write them down and then to multiply them together would involve considerable mental effort for many people, and could scarcely be done in much under a quarter of an hour. A machine will be officially “opened” at Manchester University on Monday which does this sort of calculation 320 times a second. Provisionally named “Madam” – from the initials of Manchester Automatic Digital Machine and because of certain unpredictable tendencies – it is a high-speed electronic computer built for the University Mathematics Department, and paid for by a Government grant. It is an improved version of a prototype developed by Professor F. C. Newman and Dr. T. Kilburn of the Electrical Engineering Department, and Professor M. A. Newman and Mr. A. Turing, of the Mathematics Department.
The practical applications of the machine are great and varied, and it is, of course, of greatest use where long, repetitive calculations are involved, some of which would probably be impossible without its aid. There are also commercial possibilities as yet unexplored relating to accountancy and wage departments. It is significant that one of the largest catering firms in the country has recently installed a similar machine, which may replace the work of hundreds of clerks. Will it perhaps solve the problems of redundancy it may create? Large-scale private or national statistics can be prepared in a far more up-to-date form, in some cases in a matter of weeks rather than years. Finally, of course, there are such sidelines as teaching the machine to play chess or bridge.
There are two features that might be mentioned: the magnetic drum for storing permanent information and the cathode-ray tubes for storing information produced in the course of a calculation. These have added immensely to the “memory” of such machines. The magnetic drum will hold 650,000 binary digits and each of the eight cathode-tubes sixty-four twenty-digit numbers. It will add up 500 numbers before you could say “addition”, and it could work out in half a day the logarithmic tables which took Napier and Briggs almost a lifetime.
It is an alarming machine, in fact. A tool like a plough is friendly and intelligible, but this reduction to absurdity of mental arithmetic is another matter. Those associated with the machine stress that what it can do depends on the “programme” fed to it. Nobody knows what Manchester’s machine will be able to do, and Mr. Turing said to-day that, although it will be used on problems of pure mathematics, the main idea is to investigate the possibilities and theory of such machines. In an article in “Mind” six months ago, Mr. Turing seemed to come to the conclusion that eventually digital computers would be able to do something akin to “thinking” and also discussed the possibilities of educating a “child-machine.” One feels that whatever “Madam” can do she will do it for Mr. Turing.
The government grant mentioned in paragraph 1 was awarded to the pure mathematician Max Newman because of his secret cryptographic work at Bletchley Park during WW II. Because of that work, he knew Turing and his capabilities very well, and recruited him to Manchester to work on the project. It is interesting that even in a newspaper article published in 1951 mention was made of machines playing chess.
An earlier post on long-lived memories of Alan Turing is here. Some information about Turing’s death is here, including his mother’s theory that his death by poison was accidental, occurring while he attempted to silver-plate a spoon.
Canopis in Egypt
The Great Egyptian Hall of Mansion House in the City of London was the venue last night for a concert by the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment, under Edward Gardner. The first half saw a performance of Mendelssohn’s E minor violin Concerto by Alina Ibragimova, as well as a Rossini overture.
I discerned nothing Egyptian about the Great Hall. The decorations include various Greek statues, some in states of undress, large stained glass windows at each end of the room, and miscellaneous pottery. The hall is long and rectangular, two very tall stories high (with a gallery running around the upper story), with nine tall stone columns down each side, and all topped with cylindrical roof. Apparently, the building is 250 years old this year.
The performers were raised only slightly above the level of the audience, and sitting at one end of the rectangle. There were about 20 rows of seats of 20 seats each, all full, so the room had about 400 people present. The placement of the seats could have been much better than it was: staggering consecutive rows may not look as nice to eyes seeking symmetry, but it allows people not to be sitting directly behind one another, and thus gives the audience a better chance of seeing the performers. Likewise, allowing room between seats, rather than forcing all seats to touch their neighbours, allows for those of us with normal size bodies to sit beside each other. Only a small percentage of people – those who were at least 6’6″ and very thin – would have been comfortable with this placement of seats.
Its shape and dimensions mean the Hall probably has very good acoustics for opera, or oratorio, or trumpet concertos, where performers stand facing the audience, projecting sound outwards horizontally. Similarly, for piano concertos, at least when played on a grand piano with an open lid. When the orchestra played alone, the sound was loud, full and direct, and was quite clear even at the back. When the solo violinist began, however, her sound went up, not out, and disappeared into the ceiling, 60-odd-feet above us. Sadly, the result was perhaps the least satisfying performance of Mendelssohn’s concerto I have ever experienced. One could tell Ms Ibragimova was very good just by looking at her playing; one could not unfortunately confirm this by listening, as the sound of her instrument was so weak, overwhelmed in those passages where the orchestra played, and only ever a plaintive whisper when playing alone, like a small child trying to speak when surrounded by a party of loud-talking adults.
The third movement struck me as taken a tad too fast, with the orchestra panting to keep up with the violin. And playing original instruments always means risks, especially for those instruments which have experienced significant technological change these last two centuries. Thus, we should not be surprised that the horns entered this movement slightly sharp, since intonation was always (and always is) a problem for original horns. The technological changes of modern instruments were not introduced for no reason, a view lost on those riding the original instruments landau.
In conclusion, a very fine and confident performance of the Mendelssohn concerto for everyone sitting in the first few rows. For the rest of us, a great performance of the orchestral part, since that is what we could mostly hear. The careers of artists are not enhanced by performances in halls with poor acoustics. The acoustics could be improved greatly with the installation of a suitable canopy over the orchestra – a curved ceiling to catch the violinist’s sound and bounce it back out and down toward the audience. In the meantime, memo to self: avoid performances of violin concertos in The Great Egyptian Hall of Mansion House.
I notice that Mendelssohn himself, despite his 95 public performances in Britain, does not seem to have ever played in this room (according to the list of his UK performances in Appendix B of Eatock 2009).
UPDATE (2012-08-20): Apparently the violin sound was fine from the double bass stand. And presumably the FT’s reviewer was seated near the front, given his praise for the room’s acoustics. The reviewer for The Arts Desk, in contrast, also had problems with the acoustics of the Hall and too thought the third movement of the concerto was taken too fast for the orchestra:
The Mansion House acoustic may be fine for annual speeches from the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but it is not a solo violin’s friend. . . . . .
We also suffered in the concerto’s finale from a mismatch between orchestra and soloist, which Gardner, for all his alert gestures, seemed powerless to prevent. Mercurial arabesques flew from Ibragimova’s fingers, with the orchestra always a fraction behind, panting to keep up like PC Plod. Maybe Ibragimova just wanted to get the concerto finished, for there were certainly signs here and there of a lack of interest in what Mendelssohn had to offer. Most violinists pounce on the finale’s playful opening arpeggios as a chance to wink and scintillate. Ibragimova left them uninflected. “Boring, boring,” she seemed to be saying; “Now, where’s my Roslavetz?” “
Reference:
Colin T. Eatock [2009]: Mendelssohn and Victorian England. Farnham, Surrey: Ashgate.
Shadows
Writer Pico Iyer tells of his life being shadowed by – followed and pre-figured by the spirit of – Graham Greene, here. I’m no fan of Greene’s writing, but the shadowing I can appreciate. Many writers have spoken of similar shadowing and even possession – William Burroughs, Patricia Highsmith, Hilary Mantel, Antonio Tabucchi, for instance. Highsmith’s Ripley, she came to feel, was a real spiritual presence, existent outside her books and her imagination.
Vale: Graeme Bell
Farewell, Graeme Bell (1914-2012), legendary Australian trad jazz man. His band’s tour of Czechoslovakia in 1947 was still fondly remembered almost four decades later by patrons of JazzKlub Parnas when I first visited Prague in 1984.
English as she is spoke
From an article in The Guardian on the British monarchy.
“While I wait for that denial, I phone Ingrid Seward, editor of Majesty magazine, for the royal skinny.
“The advisers used to be these ghastly rah-rahs who were all frightfully frightfully,” she says.”
The semantics of communication
A recent incident reminded me of Nicolas Negroponte’s argument that a single wink (one bit of information) may communicate effectively between two people, and yet require a thousand words to explain to someone else.
The scene: A small group meeting of 5 people (an EC research proposal review meeting), none of whom know each other or have worked together before. The meeting chair, let’s call her Alice, wants another person, Bob, to endorse a particular outline plan of action. This plan does not entail him doing anything, but he is nonetheless resistant, and puts forward both reasonable and unreasonable justifications for not endorsing the plan. Alice tries another couple of arguments, but each of these meets similar resistance from Bob. At this point, Alice does not know what the rest of us think about her plan or Bob’s opinion of it.
Having heard the two sides, I decide that Alice is correct and that Bob should endorse the plan. But Alice, I believe, has not used the best arguments in favour of his doing so, and thus I add my voice to her side, giving a new argument to justify Bob changing his opinion. My argument fails with Bob, but leads Alice to think of a further argument, and both our arguments together have a consequence that completely rebuts Bob’s reasonable main defence for non-endorsement. When she presents this line (my argument + her argument + their joint consequence) to him, Bob wilts and agrees to endorse Alice’s plan.
However, just before Alice presents this line to Bob, she shoots me a quick look of conspiratorial deviousness, as if to say, “We got him, you and I, and in getting him, we have demonstrated our intellectual superiority and mental agility over him. Although we just met, we two have conspired effectively and enjoyably together.” It was a look of the most profound respect – a connection between equals, in the presence of someone whose persistent and unreasonable resistance to a reasonable proposal had revealed himself to be less committed to the agreed purpose of the meeting. And receiving it was the most profound of pleasures.