I’ve been reading an interesting book by Andrew Calcutt called Arrested Development: Pop Culture and the Erosion of Adulthood which has crystallised a number of thoughts I’ve had recently. It throws light in particular on certain problems I have with Transgenderland, several of which have come to the fore with recent events. While Calcutt (writing in the mid 1990’s) refers to Queer Theory only in passing and not at all to transgender they are quite clearly manifestations of pop culture/counter-culture and subject to the very same criticisms. So, I’d like to present a paraphrase of the argument of this book. Calcutt’s thesis is that counter-culture, in all its forms, represents not so much a force of rebellion as a kind of self-limitation and reduction of human possibility and, as a result, both “pop and politics now share the same language of diminished humanity.” Also, that what was once only a youth culture is now culture itself. Counter-culture is thus not really a challenge to society but merely a “preview of where it was already going“.

At root counter-culture arose as a response to the crises of the twentieth century – world wars and civil insurrections, gulags and concentration camps, the threat of nuclear annihilation and so on. It is not surprising that individuals reacted to such events with a sense of impasse and impotence or that they felt bewildered and insecure in the face of a world almost literally unbearable. Who can claim even to fully grasp the enormity of the problems of contemporary humanity? They appear overwhelming. What else can one do but retreat into the self and find satisfaction and meaning there and in the alternative lifestyles based on such estrangement from “the perceived risks of public life and ideological contestation“?

Some kind of bargain has been struck with power – you can have space on the margins of society to deal with matters of personal experience just so long as you confine your radicalism to those matters of personal experience. We have become content with being rather than doing. It is now more important to demand recognition for who or what one is than to engage with society and act within it, to cultivate one’s personality rather than change the world. As a consequence there is a widespread preoccupation with sexuality and matters of personal identity. Yet counter-culture demands an autonomy of the self which actually undermines all that which grants autonomy. Furthermore, Calcutt argues that counter cultural rebellion refuses mainstream society while at the same time renouncing the possibility of truly transcending it.

While one can trace the countercultural attitude back as far as the Romantics, at least, that attitude did not become dominant until the 1960s. Calcutt refers to Ian MacDonald’s description of that period’s “revolution in the head“: a view of reality as a “chaos of dancing energies without meaning or purpose“; a consequent privileging of ’simultaneity’ and ‘instantaneity’; a narrowing of experience into immediate sense impressions and thus a repudiation of history and a denial of the future; a concentration of the self into the moment with spontaneity as a guarantee of authenticity: all summed up “in the message that everyone must be everything NOW“. Thus, in Frank Mort’s words we live today in an era of “extravagant and aggressive pluralism.” This celebration of endless change and diversity is perhaps not as free and progressive as it sounds. For if you can be anything you usually end up being nothing – for what can justify any settled position?

What has occurred is that vast numbers of people now live in a state of permanent adolescence. According to Calcuttm the adolescent has to learn how to cope with a classic dilemma: whether to join society or transcend it. “Pop culture describes this moment of indecision, cultivates it as a way of life, and invests the resultant juvenilia with a significance which is hard to justify.” Counter-culture beckons us towards maintaining a state of childhood whereas in the past childhood was to be outgrown as quickly as possible. We now value a condition of endless youth in which we forever evade adult responsibility and refuse to grow up. The adult world is viewed as mundane, false, limited, repressed, over-structured, authoritarian, full of obligations whereas the realm of the adolescent is exciting, endlessly new, authentic, unstructured, free and unlimited. It is difficult not to be tempted. I, too, sadly, have been a permanent adolescent. Indeed, for a time, it is an attitude which can produce an exhilarating sense of liberation. But there are diminishing returns the longer you remain in that state.

Trangenderism and Queer Theory are quite typical manifestations of this counter-cultural permanent adolescence and playful evasion of adult life. And both display that pervasive irony to which every experience is nowadays reduced. Change a few words and how well this statement applies to transgendered cross-dressing: “The cult of ‘easy listening’ involves dressing up as an adult and simultaneously looking at oneself in that costume and enjoying the incongruity of it. What’s being expressed is at once the desirability and undesirability of adulthood, and the impossibility of realising it in the first place.” Both the transgender and the queer embrace their alienation from the world and celebrate their disengagement from the mainstream. Both resist integration into what appears to them conformist and conventional. Both express their contempt for all that seems staid, boring, stifling, unsatisfying.

However, as Calcutt puts it: “In locking themselves out of mainstream society and its expectations, they were also locking themselves into the confined space of the alienated sensibility.” This withdrawal and avoidance inevitably creates a climate of anxiety in which people define themselves as potential victims and seek escape into a safe refuge. Thus the formation of a community that has arisen as a fantasy engendered by a shared sense of feeling vulnerable. The attempt to build solidarity around a joint awareness of weakness, however, only highlights our helplessness in face of an uncaring world. The danger of this distancing of oneself from other people is that it tends to exaggerate the threat they pose. The world is seen as a scary and hostile place, a nightmarish realm of strangers about whom we must maintain an ever-vigilant suspicion and fear. This, of course, encourages us to view ourselves as always vulnerable and threatened. One is reminded of Ann Charters’ description of Jack Kerouac as “a child cut adrift in a darkening universe“. Vulnerability is conceived as a sign of integrity and worth, of authenticity and depth. To the point where being a genuine self implies suffering from that self and a claim to victim status becomes equivalent to a claim to truth.

This is what Robert Hughes once termed as ‘Heroic Victimology’. Calcutt defines it as a form of subjectivism: “where the feelings and aspirations of the individual are not grounded in the experience of trying to alter the course of events in the outside world, but rather are allowed to continue untested in the internal world of our private thoughts.” So a transgender person can justifiably say “I am a woman” because, as Calcutt puts it, in the counter-culture: “I perceive it to be, therefore it is.” Furthermore, as a potential victim one wields an unassailable moral authority and becomes immune to criticism or challenge. So many transgender blogs could be considered, in Ruth Picardie’s words, examples of ‘autopathography’. A parade of wounds where vulnerability is not to be overcome but cultivated as a shield. There is far too much inward-looking over-examination of oneself and one’s past. There is an obsession with self-definition. Bloggers seem to revel in their fragility, confusion, hurt, passivity and defencelessness. Their posts recall Simon Reynolds comment on Kristin Hersh: “the inconsolable wrestling with the insoluble“.

It is not surprising then that so many of the transgendered seem addicted to therapy. Therapy undermines the self confirming its helplessness. How can it do otherwise when – for all the dogma about change and empowerment – it promotes a view of people as basically immature, hopelessly unstable, morally inadequate, incapable of rational thought, and unable either to control their impulses or deal with the consequences of their actions? Every one of us, it seems, is a “trauma waiting to happen“. Is this not a unbelievably negative image of humanity?

Reading Arrested Development brought to mind another book, True Selves by Mildred L. Brown & Chloe Ann Rounsley. The description of growing up transsexual that the author presents, with many moving personal testaments, does resonate with me. Feeling alienated from one’s body, being afraid that one is some kind of freak, the incongruity between what one feels and what one is told, the misery of pretence and being forced to act a part, the constant loneliness and fear of rejection, the desperate acts of denial and the internalisation of conflict, the escape into books and other imaginary worlds, the endless search for solutions and coping mechanisms – I was familiar with all this from an early age until I was past 40.

Yet I am uncomfortable with the view of transsexuals as victims. As a therapist Mildred L. Brown does seem to have a rather excessive regard for therapy itself. She is scathing about what she calls “knowing patients” who treat therapy purely as a means to an end. She seems to view all transsexuals as in urgent and essential need of therapy and indeed sees transition itself as more or less a long therapeutic process. I’m sure I’m not the only one to be surprised by all the talk in True Selves of group sessions and role-play and who knows what. Well, I have had no therapy whatsoever and I don’t expect to have any. It is true that circumstances have forced many of us to live lives of pain and confusion which take great effort to overcome. Being transsexual, though, doesn’t demand therapy. What I object to is the notion True Selves promulgates that this suffering is an inevitable part of being transsexual and therefore requires a virtually life-long process of therapy to counter-act it. The therapeutic model that the author adheres to is not universally appropriate. No, it is transitioning alone which solves our “problem”. I refuse to be a victim of my condition. I have become a grown-up woman.

I am not a great fan of Reality TV or talent shows. Indeed, programmes like Big Brother and I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out Of Here are more likely to get me declaiming about the end of civilisation! Still, I have watched Strictly Come Dancing with pleasure…. well, how I’d love to do ballroom dancing myself. Anyway, this year I have become very keen on X-Factor. I became hooked after sitting down bored one afternoon, watching the highlights of last year’s competition, and being bowled over by the progress of Alexandra Burke (I love her new single, by the way). I know it’s contrived but it is entertaining. And I’ve no time for those who criticise it in the name of “real music” (what, like Sting!!) The auditions, of course, are a kind of ridiculously fascinating freakshow. Oh, to think that there are so many fantastically deluded people in this land! My favourite was the old woman with her dog (Simon Cowell: It’s not a duet, it’s just you, isn’t it? The dog doesn’t really sing. Woman: He was singing! I heard him!) But I also had a soft spot for the man with a mournful face who sang in the most peculiarly expressive but incomprehensible voice, somehow strangled. Now we are down to the last six. I was sad to see Rachel go – unlike everybody else I liked her. I thought Miss Frank would last longer – but perhaps that was a blessing in disguise because I preferred them when they were still a bit rough round the edges and they were becoming too smooth. I can’t stand John & Edward. Who is voting for them? Has everyone forgotten their behaviour earlier on (when they sang over another contestant ruining her chances)? Their incompetent dancing, their embarrassing rapping, their camp costumes, their idiotic permanent grins, their infernally creepy perkiness – I hate it all. They are like a cross between the Midwich Cuckoos and the Hitler Youth. The weedy-voiced Lloyd should have been voted off weeks ago. Olly is very attractive – but too bland for my taste. Joe is terribly sweet – I so much want to mother him – and I like his voice. I agree, though, with the judge who said he would be more suited to musical theatre than pop. I think it is between Danyl and Stacey as to who is the best singer. I don’t know what people have against Danyl – I have voted for him most rounds. He has a good, expressive voice – his big notes make me gooey inside. And I love Stacey – such a genuine character and so gauche in manner. Yet when she sings – and with such a lovely voice – she is transformed. She would be a worthy winner of this unreal fairy-tale competition. But I suspect Olly is going to get it.

EDIT: So Joe won it. Well, he deserved it in the end. There was too much front and not enough substance with Olly, I thought. Stacey had some great moments but was hampered by somebody’s vain desire to make her into a sophisticate. As for the utterly charming Joe, his singing just got better and better: last night’s Sorry Seems To Be The Hardest Word had me in tears.

I know, I know – this is the typical lazy bloggers’ fall-back. I will write some new posts soon. Promise.

In the meantime: ridiculous searches which have brought people to this site. I’m always astonished at how bizarre so many of them are. But I have to confess they do rather irritate me – because it makes me feel like the majority of visitors alight here by chance and then click away within seconds as there is nothing to satisfy their ill-conceived search enquiries.

• there are the rushing waves mountains of molecules
• munch on satin panty box
• desmond morris roadmap to sex
• beautiful hungarian man
• what does the phrase “full on” mean
• stephanie hates circular logic
• latex hobble skirts
• portraits of dying women dada
• lauren bacall engagement ring
• book mutant traitress
• stefanie reptile transgender
• wordpress hedonism thigh
• ludicrous t-girl youtube
• sophisticated elegant naked ladies silk
• fotos childer ianomami
• advertiser newspapers talk about panda’s face in food by aaron macdonald
• as the barriers in the head get broken down, the noise buff becomes a kind of hip vegetable.
• crossdresser sitting and tapping heels
• kate fox irony loft conversions
• how many myths are their about the alphabet
• sequinned nipples
• dying from affixation definition
• you like the phrase. “i respect that”

I love disco.

1) Risco Connection – Ain’t No Stopping Us Now. A Jamaican extended remix of the McFadden & Whitehead classic. The song itself is dispatched pretty quickly and we are left with a loping bass-line, a chugging reggae rhythm on the guitar, latin-y drums and pans, and soaring over it all the most fabulous strings. This is the sexiest track ever!

2) Sparkle – Handsome Man. Mixed by Larry Levan and about scoping a… handsome man, this also has a slight Caribbean feel.

3) Air Power – Welcome to the Disco. Ten minutes more of gloriously swooping strings.

4) Aquarian Dream – Fantasy. Produced by Norman Connors, a short, sharp, punchy track.

5) Loleatta Holloway – Love Sensation. One of the great divas of the disco era. This song has been sampled on a hundred house tracks (most notoriously, perhaps by Black Box on Ride on Time). This is the Tom Moulton mix. Sheer ecstasy.

6) Inner Life – Moment of my Life. Another track on Salsoul and featuring another great diva, Jocelyn Brown.

7) Musique – Glide. A Patrick Adams production – sort of deliriously drag-queeny in style!

8) Metropole – Miss Manhattan. A wonderful piece of Italo-Disco from 1981. I immediately fell in love with it a couple of years ago when I first heard it and it has probably been my most played track ever since. A gorgeous song, excellently orchestrated – and like all good disco its sound and atmosphere strikes a perfect balance between hedonism and melancholy.

9) The Fantastic Aleems – Hooked On Your Love. The deepest bass line, chunky guitars, soaring strings, Leroy Burgess’s sexy voice, feverish girl backing singers, and congas playing like butterfly kisses down your spine. Is there any better dance music?

10) Silver, Platinum and Gold – I Got a Thing. An incredibly powerful track sung by three very feisty women. Get ready to be blown away!

Now tell me disco was all a load of kitsch!!

So, another year of Promming is over. I only made it to 7 or 8 concerts this year – circumstances forced me to miss Argerich playing Prokofiev and Ravel for instance. But the ones I did make it to were all wonderfully enjoyable.

It is curious, then, to be reminded that the Culture Secretary last year dismissed the Proms as elitist and irrelevant and alienating to people of “different backgrounds”. What nonsense! The audience at a typical Prom concert is far more heterogeneous than most – there are many more young people for a start: I have often found myself queuing between what were clearly music students and those who have never been to a classical concert before in their lives. There are tourists and people who have come straight from work. Most dress casually, though some dress up. A few appear outlandish – there was one character who stood beside me at one concert in a huge black Victorian dress. When there was no music playing he wore what looked like an executioner’s hood over his head! I confess I found him rather creepy and I wish he had chosen somewhere else to stand… But generally, the informality of the Proms is one of its great attractions.

Anyway, the first concert I went to was Prom 2 on July 18th given by the Gabrieli Consort & Players conducted by Paul McCreesh with a large choir and soloists and a performance of Haydn’s oratorio The Creation. For a piece based on Genesis and Paradise Lost it is a very jolly work – a product of the Rationalist 18th century with its depiction of an innocent world before Original Sin. It was disappointing that they used an English translation – it’s not like anyone is unfamiliar with the story! The performance, though, was glorious, the choruses fleet and golden, the massed period instruments sounding sumptuous. I left the Albert Hall glowing.

Next was Prom 9, a concert of 20th century British music given by the BBC Philharmonic under Vassily Sinaisky. I confess I have been one of those who’ve readily dismissed this kind of thing as “cowpat music” – but I have been giving it a chance lately. This concert definitely made a good case. It began with E. J. Moeran’s Symphony in g minor, an atmospheric if rather bleak work inspired, apparently, by the landscape of County Kerry and Norfolk. Redolent of Sibelius it is nonetheless an original work – one wonders, though, whether it will always be described, and damned with faint praise, as “interesting.” After that we had Gerald Finzi’s Grand Fantasia and Toccata for piano and orchestra played by Leon McCawley. I’d never heard this before and it was great fun. A very energetic work reminiscent perhaps of Busoni with its faux-Bachian counterpoint, Lisztian pyrotechnics and hints of Bartokian modernism. Finally, Elgar’s Symphony No.2, full of restrained passion, barely-concealed nostalgia and melancholy, the whole coming to a climax of calm resignation.

I was back the following night for Prom 10 and a fascinating concert of French and Japanese music from the Orchestre National de Lyon conducted by Jun Märkl. It began with a performance of Takemitsu’s Ceremonial: An Autumn Ode. The lights were dimmed around the lonely figure of Mayumi Miyata playing the sho, a kind of ancient Japanese mouth-organ, the long, slow notes eerie and ethereal as they insinuated themselves around the great expanse of the Royal Albert Hall. In the middle section of the work focus switches to the orchestra with dreamy strings and evocative woodwinds before returning to the solo sho and its meditations. Wonderfully strange! This was followed by Caplet’s gorgeously orchestrated version of Pagodes from Debussy’s piano suite Estampes and a vigorous performance of Ravel’s colourfully beguiling Rapsodie Espagnole. There was more Takemitsu after an interval, the densely impressionistic Green. Then Akiko Suwanai came on stage as the soloist in Sarasate’s brilliant Concert Fantasy on Themes from Carmen and Ravel’s demoniacally virtuosic Tzigane. Suwanai has a clean, flawless technique – too perfect, perhaps, for these two works? I would have preferred playing that was, well, dirtier, sleazier, more improvisatory and dangerous. Following a second interval there was a new work by Toshio Hosokawa entitled Cloud and Light and the return of Mayumi Miyata and her sho. An atmospheric piece of pulsating harmonies. The concert concluded with Debussy’s La mer.

A week later I was at Prom 20 for the Scottish Chamber Orchestra conducted by Yannick Nézet-Séguin. The concert began with the music for Stravinsky’s Pulcinella, the ballet created by Diaghilev for Massine, in the complete version for orchestra and three vocalists. The score was based on 18th century manuscripts attributed to Pergolesi – but the final outcome, with its piquant orchestration and spiky rhythms, is pure Stravinsky. Darkly humorous, it is very entertaining. It was followed by Schumann’s Piano Concerto, one of my favourite pieces, played by Nicholas Angelich. The performance was perfectly acceptable – the first movement could have been more firmly characterised, though, and should have been more Romantic, and the slow movement was a little too understated, but the finale had great dash and liveliness. Then we heard Mendelssohn’s 5th Symphony, the Reformation. A more serious-sounding work than the Scottish or Italian Symphonies this was a powerful and convincing interpretation with the great chorale Ein Feste Burg ringing out magnificently at the end.

Next was the event I was looking forward to most this season – Multiple Pianos Day! First was Prom 32 given by the Britten Sinfonia under Ludovic Morlot. They began with a languorous orchestration, strangely enough, of Fauré’s Dolly suite for piano duet. Then Katia and Marielle Labeque came on stage for a lazy Sunday afternoon performance of Mozart’s Concerto for Two Pianos K365 – a bit too relaxed, perhaps? After the interval there was a première – of Left Light by Anna Meredith. Single isolated sounds build up to an enormous climax. I found it an immediately attractive piece but I wonder whether it would bear much repeated listening? The Labeque sisters reappeared for an electrifying dispatch of Lutoslawski’s Variations on a Theme of Paganini. Breathtaking. And, as always, I am so envious of the stylish jackets the Labeques wear in concert. Finally, there was Saint-Saens’ ever-popular Carnival of the Animals played in sparkling fashion by Lidija and Sanja Bizjak. I don’t think I’ve listened to Carnival of the Animals for years – it’s one of those pieces so hackneyed one avoids them on purpose. Unheard for so long it now appears fresh once more. The concert over I crossed the road into Hyde Park and sat under a tree to eat my packed lunch or rather tea before returning to the Albert Hall to queue up for the evening’s Prom 33. This was given by the London Sinfonietta conducted by Edward Gardner. They began with Antheil’s Ballet Mécanique in the version for four pianos, a battery of percussion and laptop. As so often the noise was toned down and restrained but the work still retains its modernist charm. That was followed by the tedious Grand Pianola Music by John Adams. The long first section is pure kitsch, sweet and syrupy, the second bombastic, presumably some kind of ironic joke. At the end I applauded with gratitude that it was finally over. After the interval a work with real, meaningful content, one of the masterpieces of 20th century music I believe, Bartok’s Sonata for two pianos and percussion. The complex interplay between the four instrumentalists is at times demonic and exciting, at times mesmerising and magical. And then the climax of the day, the folky primitivism of Stravinsky’s Les Noces given a very spirited performance.

I turned up for Prom 40 – which included Beethoven’s 9th Symphony – but the queue for the Gallery was so terribly long even an hour before the doors opened that I suspected I would not get in so I went home. The queue was even longer the following Friday for Prom 48 – but at least I was at the front of it this time! The first Prom I went to – about five years ago? – was given by the West–Eastern Divan Orchestra, the group of young Arab and Israeli musicians formed by the conductor Daniel Barenboim. And now I was to hear them again in a very assured and beautiful concert – if rather short and marred by a lot of noise in the audience. It began with Liszt’s symphonic poem Les Préludes – as gorgeous and convincing a performance as I’ve heard, I think. Wagner’s Prelude and Liebestod from Tristan und Isolde was just as impressive. And after the interval a vivid rendition of Berlioz’s Symphonie fantastique with quite incredible bell sounds before the Dies irae.

Life and lack of cash got in the way of my attending any more concerts until Prom 69. This was given by the venerable Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra under Riccardo Chailly. In the first half they performed Mendelssohn’s Piano Concerto No.1 with Saleem Abboud Ashkar at the piano. A lively, classical performance with some lovely moments in the slow movement. Of course this orchestra will forever be linked to the memory of Mendelssohn. In the second half, Deryck Cooke’s completion of Mahler’s Symphony No.10. I’ve never actually heard the whole thing before and it was a revelation. What can I say? Moving and profound music yet sketchy and tentative, too. Nostalgic and forward-looking at the same time. Applause was prolonged – and rightly so.

I’ve been listening to a lot of passionate, melancholy and melodic chamber music by Russian composers these past few months.

1) All of I knew of Alexander Alyabiev until recently was that he composed a famous song called The Nightingale. Well, it appears he led an eventful life in the first half of the nineteenth century – a soldier, who distinguished himself in the Napoleonic Campaign, and inveterate gambler he was sent to Siberia for many years after being wrongfully accused of murder. Anyway, not long ago I discovered a recording of chamber music made by Emil Gilels and members of the Beethoven Quartet. From it here is the Adagio of Alyabiev’s Piano Trio in a minor.

2) Mikhail Glinka, more or less a contemporary of Alyabiev, is, of course, far better known. I particularly enjoy his delightfully tuneful Grand Piano Sextet in E flat. This is the Allegro as played by Mikhail Pletnev and Ensemble.

3) Alexander Borodin was by profession a chemist who made several important discoveries. His musical output is therefore small – but of high quality. Here is the playful Scherzo with a beautifully lyrical middle-section from his Piano Quintet in c minor.

4) Anton Rubinstein was undoubtedly the giant of Russian music – perhaps the finest pianist of the nineteenth century after Liszt, he was said to physically resemble Beethoven and certainly possessed something of the same titanic power in his personality and playing, and his influence on other pianists and composers was enormous. Even though I have heard much of Rubinstein’s piano music I don’t think I would ever have guessed he was the composer of this Quintet for Piano and Wind Instruments in F Op.55. From it here is the lovely slow movement, Andante.

5) I have a great fondness for some of the works of Sergei Lyapunov, especially his very passionate Sextet for Piano and Strings in b flat minor Op.63. This is the Scherzo.

6) The chamber music of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov are not nearly as familiar as his orchestral music or opera. Well, the Quintet for Piano and Wind Instruments in B flat is just as colourful and as originally scored. This is the utterly charming finale, Allegretto.

7) Alexander Glazunov’s seven String Quartets are still new works for me. This is the tunefully contrapuntal first movement, Andante – Allegro, of the Fifth Quartet in d minor Op.70 played by the Shostakovich Quartet.

8) Alexander Grechaninov’s Piano Trio in c minor Op.38 is a gorgeously romantic piece which should be better-known. Here is the first movement, Allegro passionato.

9) It appears that Sergei Taneyev is often dismissed as an uninspired academic composer. How anyone can think that after hearing some of the chamber music is quite beyond me. What could be more impassioned yet tightly argued and intricate? Take this Allegro brillante from the Piano Quartet in E Op.20…

10) Rachmaninov’s first Trio Elegiaque in g minor, imbued with a deep melancholy, is one of my favourite works of that composer.

There’s a meme going round called Fifteen Books in Fifteen Minutes – I encountered it yesterday at Bird of Paradox. You are supposed to list fifteen books that will always stay in your mind – and not take more than fifteen minutes to recall them. Well, I started but then I decided I don’t want to do that exactly so I revised it slightly to something more interesting (to my mind, anyway). I wondered, what if you, dear reader, were here with me in my little room? What fifteen books, from my depleted library, would I be pressing you to read?

So, here are my Fifteen Books I Would Be Keen to Lend:

1) Well, one would be a book that appears on the list at Bird of Paradox: Whipping Girl by Julia Serano. While there are many books on trans subjects Whipping Girl stands head and shoulders above them all. This provoking, critically acute collection of essays possesses the estimable virtue of being both engagingly personal and intellectually stimulating.

2) There are many books, too, about the development of the PC and the birth of the internet. My favourite is The Dream Machine by M. Mitchell Waldrop. At the heart of the book is an affectionate biography of the genius J.C.R. Licklider whose vision of the extending and enabling possibilities of computing seemed to have propelled so many innovations and whose managerial abilities were central to making those visions come true. Better than any other book on the subject it comprehensively portrays the central personalities, conveys the most important ideas, and captures the excitement of technological advance without neglecting the part played by contingency, fallibility and inertia.

3) There are more concise summations of the various fallacies of reasoning than Historians’ Fallacies by David Hackett Fischer – but none more complete or illustrated so devastatingly. Fischer exhaustively surveys the faults of argumentation in a wide range of academic history – his examples, though, can be applied to any of the humanities and to discussion and argument in general. A wise and witty work.

4) Nietzsche and Hegel have one thing in common, at least. They have both suffered from curious reception histories which have resulted in their philosophies being saddled with the most preposterous misinterpretations. To some extent a certain blame for misunderstanding might be attached to the literary hyperbole of the one and the dense jargon of the other. Still, one might expect scholars to be, well, scholarly. With these two philosophers, however, they rarely are. That’s why I recommend the selection of essays edited by John Stewart entitled The Hegel Myths and Legends. That Hegel believed that the Rational is Actual and the Actual is Rational; that Hegel denied the Law of Contradiction; that Hegel promulgated the dialectic of thesis-antithesis-synthesis; that Hegel proved a priori that there could only be seven planets (without realising that an eighth, Uranus, had just been discovered!): all these commonplace claims, and more, are effectively skewered and demonstrated to be false. I particularly enjoy Walter Kaufmann’s splendid and complete destruction of Karl Popper’s miserably inadequate critique of Hegel in The Open Society - the only thing to rival it is Medawar on Chardin!

5) The Good European by David Farrell Krell and Donald L. Bates might be superficially dismissed as a coffee-table book about Nietzsche. It is a biography of the philosopher concentrating on his travels through Germany, Switzerland, Italy and the French Riviera and illustrating his work-sites, the places where he thought and wrote, with archive pictures and wonderful photographs taken by the authors and accompanied by quotations from letters and other writings. I love this book! How I should like one day to follow its path…

6) A couple of years ago I was given The Art of Looking Sideways by designer Alan Fletcher for Christmas. It is described by its author as a cabinet of curiosities. Is there a richer, more inspirational book? It is packed full of pictures, illustrations, photographs, quotations, information, and ideas, all superbly presented. Fabulous is the only word that will do.

7) My favourite cookbooks are those by Nigel Slater – I like that fairly simple but sensuous, rather masculine, robustly-flavoured kind of cooking. Appetite is the one I would recommend. Yummy.

8) I recently read Patrick Hamilton’s splendid novel Twenty Thousand Streets Under The Sky. Set in the West End of London between the wars it is in three parts telling the stories of each of the main characters: the waiter Bob, who is madly in love with Jenny, a prostitute who doesn’t love him back but takes his money anyway, and Ella, a barmaid who unrequitedly loves Bob but is pursued by the loathsome Mr Eccles. The story comes to a devastating but very understated conclusion. It is an ominous tale of very ordinary, lonely people trying to survive in a harsh, uncaring, hopeless world. Hamilton spares no-one – he is merciless on their vanities, delusions, flaws, absurdities – yet you end up feeling nothing but pity and understanding for the central characters. He is sharp and funny, too, on the language, the clichés, the manners and the class system of the world he describes.

9) The stories of Jorge Luis Borges are, no doubt, well-known. Less familiar, but equally delectable, is The Book of Imaginary Beings, a compilation of tiny essays made with Margarita Guerrero. Here we are told of The Catoblepas, The Peryton, and the Lunar Hare among many others. Fascinating.

10) I think the funniest novel I ever read was The Serial by Cyra McFadden, a satire of post-hippy 1970s types and mores. Is the satire blunted or sharpened by the fact that what was once confined to a comfortable elite in Marin County – New Age religion, psychobabble, fad diets, alternative health and so on and on – is now commonplace? Well, I see where it’s coming from, I just don’t know where it’s at. But, like, I can get behind that, you know? It’s a process and you just have to flow with it.

11) A very different kind of satire is Extinction by Thomas Bernhard. The narrator receives a telegram informing him that his parents and brother have been killed – he then rants for over three hundred pages about his family, his home town and his country (Austria). His hatred and scorn know no bounds. It is righteously and darkly funny. And it’s a lot better than I’m making it sound.

12) I’ve just borrowed George Perec’s A Void (that’s the one written without using the letter e) from the local library. From my library I would lend his W or The Memory of Childhood. Autobiographical fragments about growing up during the Second World War are interspersed with a story concerning a strange island apparently dedicated to sport and the Olympian ideal. What really happens on the island is slowly revealed and movingly linked to the horrors of that war.

13) If I lent out Ocean of Sound by David Toop I’d have to include the gorgeous double-CD that accompanied it. The book opens with Debussy’s discovery of Javanese music at the Paris Exposition in 1889 and travels from AMM and the Aphex Twin through Stockhausen and Sun Ra to Lee Perry and Brian Eno and the Yanomami Indians and the humpback whale and the sound sculptures of Max Eastley and… well, you get the picture. It is a survey of ambient sound in the twentieth century and its association with altered states, landscapes, and atmospheres. Always stimulating.

14) As should be obvious to anyone who reads this pillowbook I adore the piano. Pianoforte by Dieter Hildebrandt is the perfect introduction to the instrument (in the classical world). The English translation is rather portentously subtitled A Social History of the Piano – it is no such thing; the German is Der Roman des Klaviers. The book, as Anthony Burgess points out, is a novel and one whose hero is Franz Liszt. It is full of the most delightful and interesting details, anecdotes and stories about pianists, pianos and piano music in the nineteenth century.

15) Perhaps I should end with a book from my shelves which is currently on loan – Luis has my copy of Opium and the Romantic Imagination by Alethea Hayter. It is a book both gothic and scholarly describing the effects of opium and profound influence of the drug over so many of the writers of the Romantic era.

Well, my last compilation had Baroque keyboard music played “straight”, more or less, on the piano. Now I want to survey some transcriptions – same era, same instrument, but rather more elaborated.

1) Ottorino Respighi “freely” transcribed a number of lute pieces from the 16th and 17th centuries as a set of suites for orchestra and then arranged them for piano in his collection Antiche Danza ed Arie. This is the very attractive, jaunty and modern-sounding Bergamasca by Bernardo Gianoncelli.

2) Leopold Godowsky made a number of transcriptions of Baroque music for his collection entitled Renaissance. As usual with Godowsky inner voices and piquant harmonies have been added. Here is his version of a Courante by Jean-Baptiste Lully.

3) Sergei Prokofiev was more likely to transcribe his own music than those of other composers. He did make this rather serene but austere (and only partial) transcription of Dietrich Buxtehude’s organ Prelude and Fugue in D.

4) Bela Bartok made a number of transcriptions of Italian Baroque keyboard music to play at his own piano recitals. He is sparer with virtuosic flourishes and additions than some of his contemporaries but still converts the music into a modern pianistic style. This is his transcription of Michelangelo Rossi’s Toccata No.2 in a minor.

5) Here is Percy Grainger’s brilliant and lyrical ramble through John Dowland’s song Now, O Now, I Needs Must Part. Utterly anachronistic – but surely marvellous and enchanting?

6) Moritz Moszkowski was another virtuoso pianist of the late nineteenth/early twentieth century who, like so many at the time, enjoyed making transcriptions to play at concerts. Handel’s aria Lascia ch’io pianga from Rinaldo, music of a simple but sublime unadorned beauty, might have seemed an unlikely candidate for such a transcription. It’s lovely, though…

7) Rachmaninov transcribed three movements from Bach’s Violin Partita No.3 in E BWV 1006. They are cheeky little arrangements almost expressly designed to irritate the purist. The alterations are delightful, though, even if the final result is as much Rachmaninov as it is Bach. This is the Prelude.

8) In my Baroque Piano compilation I included a harpsichord piece of Jean-Philippe Rameau played fairly straight by Robert Casadesus although in a pianistic style with many a Romantic nuance. Here is a much more extravagant and impressionistic transcription of Le rappel des oiseaux made by Ignaz Freidman with double notes galore.

9) Enrique Granados transcribed twenty-odd of the Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti making them more pianistic (according to the taste of the early twentieth century) – doubling notes, adapting harmonies, adding phrasing and dynamics. This is his version of the Sonata K102 – slower but more decorative than the original.

10) Well, we can’t have Baroque transcriptions for the piano without something by Ferruccio Busoni. Here is one of my favourites: the magnificent and resounding organ Prelude and Fugue in D BWV532 played here by Emil Gilels. I remember very clearly the first time I heard this piece. It was sometime in the latter half of the 1990s. It was early autumn and my parents were on holiday and I was using their house to study because it was so peaceful. I had spent the day making notes for my thesis. As the afternoon wore on I put on a new CD that had arrived that morning from Amazon – a Busoni recital by Geoffrey Tozer. The final work was this Prelude and Fugue transcription. I got up from the table and stood in the kitchen in the twilight and stared out into the garden. There’s something so ecstatic and profoundly right about the fugue that tears rolled down my cheeks. They were tears of joy at being alive.

It has become something of an article of faith that classical music should be performed on the instruments for which they were intended – for only then, it is argued, can the music be played in the correct manner and style and only then will it sound right. Pianists in particular, however, have long been interested in appropriating music written for the harpsichord or clavichord. It cannot be denied that the effect is very different. One might even talk, in some cases, of re-creation. Yet when the results are beautiful does it matter? I appreciate authenticity – but authenticity does not trump art. Anyway, I find it difficult to believe that any Baroque composer would be opposed to such transcriptions in principle considering how central the practice was to many at that time.

1) So, first, here is Girolamo Frescobaldi’s Toccata No.1 played by Francesco Tristano Schlimé.

2) Next a subtle and profound Pavan (MB15) by Orlando Gibbons played on the piano by Daniel Ben-Pienaar.

3) Glenn Gould made a famous recording of early keyboard music which in the very anachronistic manner of its performance somehow brings the music to life. From that record this is William Byrd’s First Pavan and Gailliard.

4) The Sonatas of Domenico Scarlatti have long attracted pianists – they are irresistibly charming, varied, and beautiful. There are innumerable recordings – from them I have chosen the Sonata in b minor K87 in a very late recording made by Vladimir Horowitz. It is a performance which demonstrates perfectly how the piano brings out the melodic line and with it the almost vocal expressivity of this music.

5) Jean-Philippe Rameau’s piece for harpsichord, Le rappel des oiseaux used to be a great favourite with concert pianists. Here it is played with great delicacy by Robert Casadesus.

6) It is often thought that the keyboard music of French composers like Rameau and the Couperins was particularly resistant to being played on the piano. It is true that the music makes great use of the peculiarities of the harpsichord and that it is very difficult to transfer the ornamentation, for instance, to the piano in an effective way. But listen to Angela Hewitt playing Les Ombres Errantes by Francois Couperin. Is it not lovely?

7) Raymond Lewenthal made a fascinating LP once of Toccatas by various composers up to the present (including one by the pianist himself). The first on his programme was this brilliant little Toccata in g minor by Azzolino Bernardino della Ciaja.

8) Antonio Soler may well have been taught by Scarlatti – his many sonatas are as touching and playful as the older composer’s. Here is one in c sharp minor played by Alicia De Larrocha.

9) The Portuguese Carlos Seixas was similarly influenced by Scarlatti in his hundred or so sonatas. This, though, is a short and emotional Menuet in f minor played most movingly by Maria Grinberg.

10) Giovanni Battista Pescetti’s Sonata in c minor in an early recording by Clara Haskil.

11) Does it matter on which keyboard instrument you play Handel’s fabulous Chaconne in G (HWV435)? The harpsichord might be first choice but a version for piano only adds to and illuminates such music – don’t you think? Here it is played by Murray Perahia.

12) Of course it is not surprising that it is the music of Johann Sebastian Bach which pianists have plundered most. However necessary and important it is that we seek out aesthetically-correct and historically-informed performances, however fascinating and beautiful those performances might be, how could we live without Bach on the piano? To my mind it would be a needless form of asceticism to deny oneself such riches. I have been listening to a lot of the wonderful French pianist Marcelle Meyer lately – she recorded a great deal of Rameau, Couperin, Scarlatti and Bach. Here to end with is her heavenly playing of Bach’s Caprice from the Partita No.2.

So, with those scraps from the old pillowbook I have re-posted everything I wanted to preserve. From now on all will be shiny and new :)