27 August 2011
I had my early morning session with Ruben and after an hour and a half’s tweaking he seemed convinced he might have solved the problem. He will be in contact early next week to see if that is so.
A busy day of people coming and going. Mid-morning the Muskers dropped in for coffee. They are very old friends, in fact, Alison was at school with Alice Alison is now quite a celebrated artist and member of the Royal Academy. I suppose she really took off when she joined Julius Norwich’s campaign to Save Venice. She did some fine paintings, all, or part of, the proceeds of which went to swell the fund. For many years now Alison has taken small groups of enthusiastic amateur artists to different parts of the world for a painting holiday. There next trip hopefully will be Morocco which is a place beloved by her husband, Roger whose passion is music.
Roger came into prominence when he compiled a list of Mozart’s works-, no mean feat as there were over 600 of them written in his short life – each of them given a Kochel (catalogue) ‘ or identifying number . He is now carrying out a similar exercise on Haydn, The Father of the Symphony’ – who was a friend of Mozart’s and probably the most prolific composer of all times. I say probably because apparently there are over 400 works which might or might not have been compressed by Haydn. With Haydn the equivalent of the Kochel number is called a. Hoboken – like something out of
Tolkien. Hoboken,- according to Wikipedia, was named after Anthony Hoboken who was the first person to attempt this exercise. From Roger’s point of view, although a great loss to the world, he was fortunate that Mozart died at 35 compared with the 77-year-old Haydn, otherwise he might still be working on Mozart.
As I said the Muskers have been friends for many years and often used to come up to Wales during the summer holidays and camp in the orchard of Alice’s home. They are both immensely enthusiastic and sometimes exhaustingly energetic and even now, in their 70s, show no signs of lack of energy or enthusiasm I know as a young man Roger disapproved of me as they were always out and about and ready to go off for a long hike over the Welsh hills. They were always polite enough to ask me to join them and would usually find me stretched out on a sunbed somewhere with my earphones on listening to music and I always gratefully declined their kind invitation I was a bit like my flatmate in London. I was studying for my Finals, and some of my readers might remember him writing for the Evening Standard under his own name Plantagenet Somerset Fry. Being much younger than myself I was frequently embarking on some form of energetic exercise to which I would invite Plantagenet to join me
“Dear boy” he said “if ever I get the urge to exercise I just lie down until it passes over” (it sounds more like Noel Coward then PSF but as his byline in the newspaper was PSC history (failed!) He wouldn’t have little thing like plagiarising worry him I think Roger had the impression that I subscribed to the same philosophy/towards exercise.
In the afternoon we had two of our newer friends s Kit and Jane Orde-Powlette who we met as members of Royal Worlington and Newmarket Golf Club. They are glowing vicariously from the fairy story of their daughter Rosamund’s literary success. Readers may recall that I mentioned Rosamond’s first book Sister, published last September, which was a sensation from the day it was published and broke many records. It is still selling something like 3000 copies a week in the UK and has been translated into 31 languages. Her second book ‘Afterwards’‘looks like being an even greater success than the first. Proud parents indeed and it could not happen to a nicer couple..