I believe in letting an invader in and then setting a good example. That is the reply Benjamin Britten gave to a tribunal for the registration of conscientious objectors in 1942 when asked "What would you do if Britain was invaded?" I was reminded of it when researching my recent article on Marco Pallis , who was an authority on both Tibetan Buddhism and early music, and, together with Britten, a champion of Purcell . In his best-selling book Peaks and Lamas , which was written in 1939, Pallis tells this story about the Sakyas , the ethnic group of which Gautama Buddha was a member which inhabited the foothills of the Himalayas. News was brought to them of an impending attack by a hostile tribe and it was debated anxiously whether resistance should be offered or not. Eventually they decided that, as followers of [Buddhist] Doctrine, they were debarred from offering armed resistance, but must welcome the invaders as friends, so they threw down their arms... The Tibetans, how...
Comments
(sorry if this is a repeat - not sure the first attempt made it, I run my default browser with extremely restricted settings and occasionally get bitten :-) )
(bobregular)
Hi Bob:
More like “Guessing the Score” but would it be Elgar’s “The Apostles”?
Carol
… Elgar’s Apostles which includes a Shofar …
Antoine
Interesting trivia ... of the first five readers who correctly identified Elgar's The Apostles one lives in England, one in Estonia, one in France (just) and two in the States. Which gives the lie to Elgar only appealing to the English.
More trivia, the first two correct answers came from current or former librarians on both sides of the Atlantic and two of the first three came from ladies, the eternal feminine clearly know their Elgar.
I was going to head the post Shofar so good but thought that would give the game away.
What a wonderful work The Apostles is. It is so different to the 'smells and bells' of Gerontius and is almost contemporary in its ecumenical message.
If you don't know the work Boult's classic recording from EMI is currently available for the price of two Starbuck lattes - no contest.
Many thanks to everyone who joined in the fun.
Actually, the question is as much whether Elgar finds appeal beyond the UK (I love Falstaff and the end of the Dream is worthy of Brahms’s German Requiem) as much as how many who responded correctly are Jewish (disclosure: I am).
AL
Actually, I live in Lithuania, not Estonia.
One of my friends, Anatolijus Senderovas, had composed a piece involving the shofar, Shmaa Israel
http://www.mic.lt/en/classical/persons/works/senderovas/36?ref=%2Fen%2Fclassical%2Fpersons%2F41
It involves a shofar...you can listen to bits of it. After that it was easy to find it....
Doesn't mean I appreciate Elgar, though ;-)
-- Beate
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