RULE BRITANNIA! Last night of the proms

Dennis: Color me ignorant, but what is "the proms"? And why was it their last night?

Myself, I can always go for a nice rendition of the Elgar ditty.

'The Proms' is short for 'promenade concerts'. Seating is removed from the central part of the concert hall and the audience in theory are free to walk around whilst listening to the music. The reality is that everyone just stands and there's precious little space to move around. In the traditional venue (The Royal Albert Hall in London) in fact only the central section is for standing - around the standing area are seats and boxes. However, the hardcore 'promenaders' stand.

The Proms were started in Victorian times by Sir Henry Wood, and a bronze bust of him is in the Royal Albert Hall as a permanent fixture. The aim of the concerts, held over the summer months, was (and is) to introduce the public to traditional favourites of the repertoire plus new and more challenging works.

Eventually The Proms were in effect taken over by the BBC, and *every* concert is broadcast on the radio and a smaller proportion on the television (this is one of the last vestiges of the BBC doing something cultural). Nearly all the performances are orchestral in size (e.g. purely orchestral works/concertos/oratorios) - there is very little small group work (e.g. quartets and similar) and to be best of my knowledge there has only been one solo recital (Evgeny Kissin - I had a ticket to that but through illness couldn't go ).

Most of The Proms season is as 'serious' as any other classical concert. However, the final concert - The Last Night of the Proms - has traditionally been a time to let the hair down. The first half of the concert is generally a normal sort of concert. The second half includes several staple favourites, including 'Rule Britannia' with the audience invited to sing along. There is also a placing of a wreath on the bust of Sir Henry Wood.

The majority of The Proms is uncontentious (though there are occasional mutterings about too much modern stuff - concerto for lawnmower and orchestra, that sort of thing). However, what non-Brits may not be aware of is that the Last Night is not universally liked. There is a tendency amongst my fellow Brits to be at times what we would call rather too 'precious' - the sort of fey whimsy that Americans think we engage in far more than we do. Putting a wreath on an old statue and singing along to outdated pieces of jingoism ain't everyone's idea of fun. A lot of Brits are also put off by the 'hooray for us' patriotism of singing Rule Britannia [Americans may find that point hard to comprehend - Brits are patriotic, but we have a deep suspicion of showing off about it - e.g. the idea of schools or indeed most government buildings flying the Union Jack would be considered bizarre and rather 'bad form']. Indeed, during the Gulf War, one conductor due to conduct the Last Night withdrew as he felt that it was inappropriately jingoistic.

Sorry, Dennis, not trying to thread crap or anything like that, just giving a bit of the cultural background for Mike. The recording you've selected should be a decent rendition.

For the contents, sounds like a nice disk.

Of course Clockwork Orange has a bit of Pomp & Circumstance thrown in

BTW, I am trying to learn how to find classical music. The "scrambled eggs" that the crude search terms I use on Amazon come up with are not very enticing.

Thanks Dennis, is that the Classical Power Search? (When I click on your link I get a message about a browser bug.)

If it is the search I'm thinking off, what it doesn't do, which I would like, is to enter Chorale Music, or String Quartets, and get inventory to appear in slices like that.

My problem is I don't know disk name, number, piece, performer, label, etc., just have an inclination for a style or period.

And as you say, there often is not much info about a disk anyway.

Please note that what follows is a cultural comment, not a political one.




It's a fair summation.

The Conservative Party (the 'Tories') is our right-wing party (oddly enough, represented by Blue, the reverse of American coloring), and traditionally it has gained its support from the more affluent parts of the country. This basically means south eastern England and the more affluent areas of the midlands of England plus other relatively rich areas such as Cheshire. On the whole, it's the affluent rural areas (and affluent towns and city districts) that vote Tory.

The Labour Party (more left wing, but to be honest in recent years indistinguishable from the Tories and represented by the Red colour) has dominated the rest. So on the whole, the poorer areas of the country vote Labour.

There are other political parties - the Liberal Democrats (at one time somewhere between the Tories and Labour party but now looking rather left-wing following Labour's lurch to the right) have a reasonable block of seats but aren't dominant in any particular region. There are also nationalist parties in Wales, Ireland and Scotland (who basically want independence from the rest of the UK) who have a few seats each and (obviously) are restricted to their own repective parts of the country.

Generally the Tories are seen as being more in favour of traditional values, etc. However, when it comes to issues like foreign wars, etc, the parties are often remarkably similar in outlook and stated aims (at least in public). E.g. at the time of the Falklands conflict, the most rousing patriotic speech was arguably that by the Labour leader.




Small world - my dad designed bits of the submarine that can launch a version of one of those things.



It's only in recent years that this has been widely acknowledged in popular histories. I was brought up in the 1960s with the belief that he was a crook, but that was okay because he did a lot of damage to the Spanish. [Sincere apologies to any Spanish people reading this! I hugely enjoy visiting the country and since Spanish doctors saved my dad's life after a severe heart attack I've an especial love of the country and its people]

"Sincere apologies to any Spanish people reading this! I hugely enjoy visiting the country and since Spanish doctors saved my dad's life after a severe heart attack I've an especial love of the country and its people."

Unlike Basil Fawlty?

Ah, dear Basil - so typical of Brits.

When Fawlty Towers was dubbed into Spanish for Spanish TV, there was an interesting problem with what to do with Manuel. In the end it was decided to make the character come from a rural district of Spain with a very distinct dialect.