click opera - Taking sides: Sitwells versus Cowards

December 2009


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	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 11:11 am

Taking sides: Sitwells versus Cowards

Because we share the same initials -- and possibly because of some perceived campy hauteur -- some reviewers have thrown Noel Coward comparisons into my record reviews. In fact I'm a lot more Sitwellian than Cowardly.

The reason you have to choose between the two camps is that, for about five years in the 1920s, they were at war. In 1922, hidden behind a curtain, the shy, skeletal Sitwell read her poems through a megaphone while a chamber group played music William Walton had written to accompany it. "Facade" is an English anticipation of Brecht and Weill's takes on jazz and ragtime, a completely artificial fusion of the European salon tradition and negroid pop music which, like "Threepenny Opera" or the "Mahagonny Songspiel", takes both genres into realms of rich strangeness. I've loved it from the moment I heard it, aged 12, and to my mind it's much better than anything Noel Coward ever did. Sitwell was joined by her aristocratic brothers, Osbert and Sacheverell (the quiet one). Osbert's Who's Who entry listed his hobbies as "regretting the Bourbons, Repartee, and Tu Quoque" and his favourite sports as "pelota, kif-kif and the pengo". It was this kind of thing which later led F.R. Leavis to remark, unkindly, that the Sitwells would go down in the history of publicity, not of art.

In 1923 Coward had his first stage musical success with "London Calling", and his first hit record in the form of the excruciatingly hackneyed Parisian Pierrot, the sung equivalent of a sad clown painting:

Mournfulness has always been
The keynote of the Pierrot scene,
When passion plays a part,
Pierrot in a tragic pose
Will kiss a faded silver rose
With sadness in his heart...

But Coward couldn't resist adding to "London Calling" a little skit on the Sitwells' Facade, still fresh in everyone's memories from the previous season. "Swiss Family Whittlebot" presents a poetess called Hernia Whittlebot. Played by Maisie Gay with lesbian overtones, Hernia "breakfasts on onions and Vichy water" while preparing the publication of her new books "Gilded Sluts" and "Garbage". Life, she says, is a curve, art an oblong. "Contours" is a poem Whittlebot reads out to her two brothers:

Round - oblong - like jam -
Terse as virulent hermaphrodites;
Calling across the sodden twisted ends of Time.
Edifices of importunity
Sway like Parmesan before the half-tones
Of Episcopalian Michaelmas;
Bodies are so impossible to see in retrospect -
And yet I know the well of truth
Is gutted like a pratchful Unicorn.
Sog, sog, sog - why is my mind ambitious?
That's what it is.

The first thing to notice is that chanelling Sitwell has made Coward a much less hackneyed writer -- someone almost promising. The spoof still falls far short of Sitwell's
own poems, though. Here's "By The Lake" from Facade:

Across the flat and the pastel snow
Two people go... "And do you remember
When last we wandered this shore?"... "Ah no!
For it is cold-hearted December."
"Dead, the leaves that like asses' ears hung on the trees
When last we wandered and squandered joy here.
Now Midas your husband will listen for these
Whispers -- these tears for joy's bier."
And as they walk, they seem tall pagodas;
And all the ropes let down from the cloud
Ring the hard cold bell-buds upon the trees -- coda
Of overtones, ecstasies, grown for love's shroud.

Or read the excellent Four in the Morning, also from Facade, the story of Mr Belakor, "the allego negro cocktail-shaker". This stuff captured my young imagination in a way Coward's slick, commercial fare never could. Some say it's the missing link between T.S. Eliot and Dylan Thomas.

There were four Whittlebot poems in "London Calling". Coward wrote sixteen more and had them privately printed in a volume called "Poems by Hernia Whittlbot" (1923). They later appeared in his 1925 poetry collection "Chelsea Buns". The Sitwells were furious. When Coward wrote to Edith to say sorry, she replied "I accept your apology" -- and didn't speak to him again until the eve of her 70th birthday, in 1957. Coward had written congratulating her on her book "The Queen and the Hive". At last Sitwell was willing to forgive. She sent him a telegram: DELIGHTED STOP FRIENDSHIP NEVER TOO LATE INVITE YOU BIRTHDAY CONCERT AND SUPPER FESTIVAL HALL OCTOBER 9TH 8PM EDITH SITWELL

(Anonymous)

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 12:41 pm (UTC)

"It was this kind of thing which later led F.R. Leavis to remark, unkindly, that the Sitwells would go down in the history of publicity, not of art."

I am currently reading John Carey - "What good are the arts?" He talks a great deal about Kant. He would certainly have shared Leavis's view. He even believed music was not art, since it was incapable of communicating ideas and depended on mere sensations without concepts, he felt it was at best an enjoyment, rather then an art.

According to Kant you're not an artist, just a mere provider of enjoyment. Thoughts?

wwb

imomus

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 01:43 pm (UTC)

I know very little about Kant, but I know that John Carey is "on the other side" from me in terms of attitudes, politics, ways of thinking. I find his perspective on Modernism and particularly Brecht infuriating. He claims (in books like "The Intellectuals and the Masses") to be slaying the dragon of elitism, but in fact he's simply pimping populist anti-intellectualism. He's quite high on my Creep List.

(I was about to add "in fact, given his right wing populism I'm surprised he's not working for Rupert Murdoch", but I checked his Wikipedia page and he reviews for the Sunday Times, so he is.)

Edited at 2008-03-16 01:46 pm (UTC)

(Anonymous)

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 04:01 pm (UTC)

Yes, the more and more i read the higher he ranks on my list of "people I know i wouldn't have at a dinner party" - incidentally a few weeks back you mentioned another list, one about your favorite things, blogs / websites / brands / etc - i was going to request a post talking about that, but the revelation of the existence of a creep list leads me to request a post on it instead.

wewillbecome.com

pay_option07

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 04:42 pm (UTC)

pimping populist

Nic are there any good reads on the road from Sitwell to Patty Smith covering your above response?

(Anonymous)

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 02:48 pm (UTC)

Pretty much everyone considers music an art. Who else shares the notion that art must communicate concrete ideas? This is taking the typical utilitarian view that was starting to be popular at that time. It's still alive today. Art has to be saying something--preferably something political.

(Anonymous)

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 03:45 pm (UTC)

... not Kant but won't!

kumakouji

クMAコUジ

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 05:11 pm (UTC)

" He even believed music was not art, since it was incapable of communicating ideas and depended on mere sensations without concepts, he felt it was at best an enjoyment, rather then an art."

Hes basically saying that unless art is literally obvious in concept it's not art, which is complete nonsense since as soon as you even try to define what counts as a "universally literal concept" you're met with a million philosophical brick walls. Moreover, He's completely missing the point -- the breadth of human conscious experience is wider and more complex than the literalness of words or archetypal symbolism can express, and the literalness you see in something might not be the literalness someone else sees in it. Art tries to tap into this conscious experience with abstract symbolism which, through its vagueness, has larger scope.

Not to mention music is actually capable of literalness -- song lyrics, "sad" sounds, "scary" sounds, "angry" sounds. So he's wrong on both levels.

(Anonymous)

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 12:50 pm (UTC)

der

electricwitch

La poupee qui fait non

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 12:52 pm (UTC)

lolol oh bb, "campy hauteur"???

georgesdelatour
georgesdelatour

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 02:32 pm (UTC)

Wow. I hadn't listened to Facade since I was little. So I just gave it a listen now and -

Omigod. Edith Sitwell invented rap!!!

(Anonymous)

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 03:47 pm (UTC)

Edith in profile reminds me a little of Claudia Brücken.

count_vronsky

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 03:52 pm (UTC)

anaphora

The Sitwell stuff really sings and shines compared to Coward's doggerel. I can hear "When Cold December" as a momus song in my mind as I read it. Lovely.

The Armadillo

count_vronsky

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 06:38 pm (UTC)

"Has it ever happened to you," Leon went on, "to come across some vague idea of one's own in a book, some dim image that comes back to you from afar, and as the completest expression of your own slightest sentiment?"
"I have experienced it often, especially when reading Click Opera," she replied.
"That is why," he said, "I especially love the poets. I think verse more tender than prose, and that it moves far more easily to tears." (from Madame Bovary)

imomus

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 08:57 pm (UTC)

Who knew that Flaubert lurked?

(Anonymous)

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 05:31 pm (UTC)

Poetry is the new crack

The Ginger Light/ Jeremy Reed (http://www.myspace.com/thegingerlight/)

thomascott

Thomas Scott

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 09:37 pm (UTC)

Tall as a stork

Great little post, thought Facade would be your cuppa chai.
I don't really like this performance that much - I would prefer the poem spoken - but the ensemble give the piece some brio.

imomus

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 09:46 pm (UTC)

Re: Tall as a stork

Yes, I hoped there'd be something on YouTube I could illustrate this post with, but there were just opera singers ruining it with their "professionalism".

thomascott

Thomas Scott

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 11:02 pm (UTC)

Re: Tall as a stork

Indeed, it does denote the flavour of Walton's accompaniment but the peri-Brechtian whole of the original becomes lost in those gesticulating histrionics.
Walton subsequently orchestrated Facade so unfortunately most available recordings of the piece are performed in this way..

obliterati

Night of the Living Dave

	Sun, Mar. 16th, 2008 10:02 pm (UTC)

"Sway like Parmesan before the half-tones"?

Just awful!

fishwithissues

jordan fish

	Mon, Mar. 17th, 2008 01:26 am (UTC)

The first thing to notice is that chanelling Sitwell has made Coward a much less hackneyed writer -- someone almost promising.

^really fascinating.

sonjaaa
sonjaaa

	Mon, Mar. 17th, 2008 03:59 am (UTC)

I love her nose!!

xoskeleton

	Tue, Mar. 18th, 2008 05:40 pm (UTC)

whats up with her little beady eyes? she looks like a witch woodcut.

la-terrasse.blogspot.com
la-terrasse.blogspot.com

	Fri, Jan. 23rd, 2009 10:50 pm (UTC)

Discovering the Sitwells

Radio 4 just did a programme about 'Facade':

http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b00grftg