Tag: Basil Bezuidenhout

Gresham Society Visit To The Royal Tennis Court, Hampton Court, 14 September 2023

The building “set back” with a turret in the above picture is the original Tudor-period covered tennis court at Hampton Court Palace, with several walls remaining, one of which is part of the current, Stuart-period covered court, which is on the site of the original uncovered court.

Thanks to Janie for most of the pictures and all the videos (apart from the professional highlights vid).

Whose idea was it to have a real tennis-themed event at Hampton Court? As the event proved to be a great success, Tim Connell is claiming full responsibility for the idea. Meanwhile, I am claiming at least to have inspired the idea with my lockdown webinar, Tennis Around The Time Of Thomas Gresham, in 2020.

Tennis Around The Time Of Thomas Gresham, Gresham Society Webinar Presentation, 7 October 2020

Full credit to Tim for the timing of the event – he insisted that we try to find a sweet spot between the summer holidays and the weather turning autumnal. A hostage to fortune, perhaps, but the timing worked brilliantly, as we were blessed with a sunny but not too hot afternoon for the event.

The good people at the Royal Tennis Court, Hampton Court (RTCHC) were incredibly helpful in allowing us to hold the event and facilitating same, from the initial conversation I had about it with Lesley Ronaldson the previous autumn right through to the day itself. Thanks to all named below plus Nick Wood, the RTCHC Head Professional, without whose blessing none of this would have been possible.

The History Of The Court & Explaining The Game, David Best, Lesley Ronaldson & Jack Josephs

Yours truly introducing David Best

Lesley very kindly suggested that David Best, who wrote THE book on the history of the Royal Tennis Court, speak to our group on that topic. David even more kindly agreed to speak and also to join in our brief “exhibition” to demonstrate the game.

Lesley Ronaldson, a Real Tennis Hall of Famer in her own right, assisted David’s history talk…

…while Lesley also assisted Jack Joseph’s explanation of the game in all its facets

RTCHC’s junior professional, Jack Josephs, did most of the game explaining. Two years ago, when I first met Jack at Middlesex University’s court, he was a complete newbie!

Both Lesley and Jack talked a lot of balls…I mean, talked a lot ABOUT balls

After hearing about it, Gresham Society members and guests were invited to have a go. Surprisingly, many tried…

Unsurprisingly, few succeeded. It is a fiendishly difficult game, even for moderately talented regular enthusiasts. For neophytes it is even harder than that.

Basil’s first ever hit of a Real Tennis ball skimmed beautifully over the net. The second did not – Basil claims that it was poorly delivered.

Tim & Bobbie; “close but no cigar” in the matter of hitting the ball over the net

Janie’s technique looks wanting, but she landed chases with each of her goes

Then a short exhibition, during which David Best and I, ably assisted by a professional on each side – thank you Jack & thank you Scott Blaber – demonstrated through a short match how it should and shouldn’t be done. Lesley supplied the commentary, as did the players when at the service end.

Janie shot very little video of the exhibition match…”thank goodness” I hear many readers cry…but here is a short snippet to give you an idea:

If you want to see what the game looks like at the highest level, the following six minute reel of highlights shows the very top professionals at play:

Tea & Cake

Then, for the Gresham Society visitors and their guests it was time for tea and cake. In truth I hadn’t realised, when the RTCHC people said that they would lay on tea and cake, that “Lesley Ronaldson’s home made cake” is what they meant.

Had I known that, I wouldn’t have teased Lesley by e-mail a couple of days before with the words:

No pressure, but my wife, Janie, will be judging the whole event on her piece of cake. 

Former US Open Champions / World Championship Finalists are not deterred such entreaties. As we know, champions adjust and pressure is a privilege.

Lesley “pulled off a blinder” in the matter of the home made cakes, to such an extent that Janie was too busy enjoying the tea break to photograph same until most of the sweet delicacies had been well and truly devoured.

The weather was simply glorious at that stage of the afternoon, allowing the visitors to enjoy the wonderful tea and cakes in the garden – hence the barren look of the dining room in the above photo.

The visitors took some marshalling back into the dedans gallery for the final part of the visit, a performance symposium, led by yours truly, on the topic of “Hampton Court, Tennis, Gresham, Music & Drama”.

Click here or below for a link to the full transcript, which actually extends to something like 90-100 minutes if it was all used at the same event – we used about 60 minutes of the material.

Hampton Court, Tennis, Gresham, Music & Drama

The performance was ably supported by Jack Carter and Reuben Ard, tennis-playing music graduate / research students from Middlesex University Real Tennis Club and a couple of guest appearances from Tim and Pilar Connell. Also providing praiseworthy support were the visitors, most of whom sang along with the help of their scripts/song sheets. Click here for a pdf of those extracts.

I was particularly impressed that people sang along so well to “In Darkness Let Me Paint It Black” – see final embed below.

Janie got busy with the video app on her phone during the performances, so several highlights and lowlights were recorded. Below only the highlights as YouTube embeds.

I would recommend, if you were to choose only one highlight, Reuben Ard’s performance of William Byrd’s Earl of Salisbury Pavan, which was really quite magical performed in that wonderful setting on “electric virginals”:

Word is, most if not all of the visitors thoroughly enjoyed their afternoon at Royal Tennis Court, Hampton Court. Thanks again to our hosts, who made us feel so welcome and steered the event to sweet success.

Gresham Society Soirée, Including Þe Fair Weather Canticle, 12 December 2022

Gresham Professors Singing The Gresham Professors’ Song, With Thanks To Basil Bezuidenhout for the pictures and the “live music” video

Was it really three years ago that we last enjoyed one of these soirées? Yup. Last year’s event had to be postponed at the last minute.

The only good news about that delay was that the Gresham music professor, Jeremy Summerly, who was unavailable to attend in person last year, was available this year. Splendid news in particular because his deep knowledge about and insights into early music were especially welcome in the matter of the piece that I had “uncovered in autograph manuscript form”, just before the pandemic.

Long lost medieval canticle? We’ll return to this later

Fortunately for all concerned, we had professional musicians to entertain us for the first half of the show, before we Greshamistas got the opportunity to ruin everything.

Actually, before the professionals got the chance to entertain us, the noisiest amateur of us all, Michael Mainelli, piped us in to Barnard’s Inn Hall in the now traditional style.

Michael at full blast. Thoir an aire yer cluasan, folks

Someone once asked me if I ever duet with Michael. My reply:

What would be the point? You’d only hear Michael.

Mercifully for all our ears, the professional team of David Jones and Sofia Kirwan-Baez soon established a pleasant tone to proceedings, both treating us to their fine keyboard skills as well as their excellent voices, with Part 1 of the show.

Sofia has a fine operatic voice, which really came to the fore when she sang the Massenet and the Puccini. David always entertains, not least with his “party piece”, Lehrer’s Elements Song, in which he subtly switches from “Harvard” to “Barnard’s” for the punchline. Also a lovely rendition of Misty, although I can never hear that song any more without thinking of the Gresham Society visit to the London Mithraeum and my resulting Mithras version of that song:

The London Mithraeum With The Gresham Society, 15 March 2018

Part 2 of the programme was a different affair, of course, with some regular and irregular antics.

Tim Connell updated a couple of literary standards, deliberately lowering our intellectual and linguistic standards in so doing, aided and abetted by Frank Cox & Mike Dudgeon

Maths Professors Wilson & Hart taught us how to sing numerical carols. Turns out, it’s as easy as 1-2-3…as long as 4-5-6-7 and 8 are also in your repertoire, naturally.

Tristis opus non est beatus, as PC Wilson might put it.

As for my little offering, Þe Fair Weather Canticle, it had been long in the process between “rediscovering” and performing.

I supplied Professor Jeremy Summerly with a copy of the “autograph” and a demo recording, the latter you can see below:

Professor Summerly very kindly gave this opus more than its fair share of scholarly attention, helping the audience to understand the historical significance of my “discovery” with a professorial dissertation on the piece. Unfortunately, that mini-lecture, a masterpiece in its own right, was not recorded for posterity on the night, but I do have some of Jeremy’s notes, which I can share with readers:

Of necessity, discoveries of new sources in the field of early music are less and less frequent as time goes on. All musicologists dream of finding a source of forgotten music, even more so a fragment that might fill in significant holes in our understanding of music history.

Yet such a discovery has been made recently. It is hardly surprising that such a fragment might turn up on the site of a medieval coaching inn, and even less surprising that this inn should be located in Middle England.

The musico-poetic gem þe Fair Weather Canticle, like much early music, surprises us through its apparent modernity. Like the brightly-coloured decoration of a medieval ceiling, or the dissonant harmonies and boldly-contrasting texts of a medieval motet, there is something shockingly modern about this ancient canticle.

Scholars will need time to consider the implications of this newly-found piece within the pre-Baroque jigsaw.

Meanwhile, the words and music should be enjoyed for what they represent: a perplexingly polystylistic mesh of jumbled ideologies and opaque thinking.

Professor Summerly then went on to examine the words of the canticle, noticing some astounding…in some cases shocking…similarities between those words and the words of subsequently well-known songs from periods ranging from the 12th to 17th centuries. In one case, even the 20th.

Finally, Professor Summerly, being an expert on early music, provided some historical context to my performance on an original instrument, which he kindly described as:

a rare and fascinating example of a gittern-ulele, an instrument probably of similar vintage to the canticle.

The instrument has an exceptionally sweet sound in the hands of an appropriate musician…or so we are led to believe, if only such a virtuoso performer could be found.

In the right hands, this gittern-ulele would quite possibly be, to the guitar-family, what Paganini’s Il Cannone Guarnerius is to the violin.

As for the gittern-ulele performance you are about to hear, many of you will surely be moved to tears when listening to the sound of this extraordinary old git?”

It was hard for me to follow that introduction, but I tried, after a subdued start. Basil recorded the moment for posterity – for which I am grateful. It is not every day that my work is professorially conducted, but the triumphant chorus at the end benefitted greatly from Professor Summerly’s expertise, as I had my hands full at the time:

For those who would like to study the words or are crazy enough to try singing along with the vids, here are the words:

Sumer is icumen in, þe nymphs and shepherds dance
Bryd one brere, groweth sed and bloweth med
And don’t you know, amarylis dance in green–ee-ee-een.

Lightly whipping o’er þe dales, with wreaths of rose and laurel,
Fair nymphs tipping, with fauns and satyrs tripping
Mister Blue Sky is living here today hey, hey hey.

Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.

Hey you with þe angels face, bright, arise, awake, awake!
About her charret, with all admiring strains as today, all creatures now are merry…
(…merry merry merry, merry merry merry merry, merry merry, merry, merry merry merry merry merry merry minded.)

Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.

Hey there mister blue, who likes to love, lhude sing cuccu,
Nauer nu, ne swik thu, sing hey nonny nonny nu.

Mirie it is while sumer ilast, in darkness let me fast,
Flow my tears, fairwell all joys for years,
Never mind, I joy not in early, I joy not in early bliss.

Mister Blue Sky please tell us why, you were retired from mortals sight, stars too dim of light.
Ba ba, ba ba ba ba, ba ba, ba ba ba ba, ba ba, ba ba ba ba, ba, ba x2

After the show, there was plenty of time for eating, drinking, chatting and making merry, as is the case at any good soirée. The Gresham Society Soirée is certainly always a good one.

An Exceptionally Long AGM & Dinner, The Gresham Society, National Liberal Club, 17 February 2020

I’m not one to whinge.

So I am not describing this year’s Gresham Society annual bash as “long” because the formalities took longer than promised.

But in truth, deploying the sort of barefaced nerve that might even make our current Prime Minister blush at the missed timescale, Tim Connell’s perennial boast that he would keep the AGM to within five minutes (or die in a ditch attempting it?) was blown once again this year by more-than-doubling the time to 11-and-a-half minutes.

No, the reason this evening should be remembered by all Gresham Society folk as The Long AGM & Dinner is because Ray Long CB was the guest speaker.

I am certainly not suggesting that the formal elements of the dinner were too long. The grace, toasts and Ray Long’s address were all delightfully short and well-directed. Ray, who is currently Master of the Information Technologists’ Company and a Past-President of BCS, spoke in part about artificial intelligence (AI), outlining the potential risks but also the monumental benefits that such technologies might bring.

Did Ray use AI to help compose and edit his charming address? We can only guess. Perhaps Ray himself doesn’t even know for sure; that would be spooky.

Yes, most of the evening was spent eating, drinking and enjoying conviviality, as always.

The Gresham Society crowd and their guests are such a warm and friendly bunch; this event is a great opportunity to catch up with Gresham friends. I always go home from such evenings feeling happy and uplifted.

As last year, Iain Sutherland again brought Bobbie Scully with him, which added some 1980s reminiscing to the 2020 conviviality. Bobbie admitted remembering little about a fight breaking out in the theatre when we were watching Long Day’s Journey Into Night several decades ago, but apparently such minor theatrical spats are small beer these days; the Royal Opera House is a better place to see bare-knuckle fighting.

Meanwhile, Basil was keen to introduce me to visiting music professor, Jeremy Summerly, as he thought that the good professor might appreciate knowing more about my Gresham Society soirée antics, e.g. the bash a couple of months ago:

Gresham Society Soirée, Barnard’s Inn Hall, 16 December 2019

As it turns out, fortunately, Jeremy Summerly is an early music expert with a sense of humour and a sense that there is no such thing as poor performance – in common with my early music teacher, Ian Pittaway:

A Renaissance In Baritone Ukulele Lessons, Stourbridge, 3 July 2017

Anyway, the point is, Jeremy Summerly and I had enough time chatting to realise that there should be some early music fun to be had at the next soirée, not least with a little “piece” I already have up my sleeve in readiness.

Basil also, very kindly, tipped me off to Jeremy Summerly’s superb guest lectures, the first two of which I missed but both of which are now available on YouTube (copyright issues having been overcome, it seems), so I passed a couple of very enjoyable and informative hours the next evening watching those:

I have also made a diary note to attend the next one on 2 April.

Another noteworthy element of the evening was the wine. I tried the white, a Bacchus from New Hall Vineyards in Essex, more in hope than in expectation, but I thought it really very good; as did Bobbie, who spent quite some time trying to persuade Iain to try it. The La Linda Malbec was also excellent – we should consider it for Z/Yen events, especially when our Linda (Cook) is organising them.

I’m rambling – and in danger of making this piece the only exceptionally long aspect of the event.

It was a lovely evening, as always with Gresham Society.

A Gresham Society Visit To Westminster Abbey Library & Muniment Room, Plus The Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries, 12 April 2019

As if I don’t spend enough time hanging around this part of Westminster, I found myself, for the second time in 24 hours, hanging around in Dean’s Yard. But this time I was on a half-holiday, awaiting a tour of the Westminster Abbey Library & Muniment Room, with my friends from The Gresham Society.

The Library Collection is described through this link – click here.

The Muniment Collection is described through this link – click here or the image below, which depicts the Muniment Room and is copied from the linked page for the purposes of linking back to that page.

We were such a large group that we needed to be split in two. I wondered whether to mention Solomon at the point that Tony Trowles, Head of Collections and our principal guide for the afternoon, suggested an even division of the group. But I thought better of that Old Testament reference in the particular setting of the Westminster Abbey Library.

If you want a general background/introduction to Westminster Abbey, btw, you could do a lot worse than the Wikipedia entry – click here.

Anyway, my half of the group went with Matthew Payne to see the Muniment Room first. I think the more conventional way is to see the Library first, perhaps because the Muniment Room is seen to be the highlight.

In reality, I found the whole tour a highlight.

It was fascinating to see the Muniment Room, it’s storage chests some of which are 800 or so years old, it’s extraordinary mural of Richard II’s white hart and it’s stunning views across the Abbey.

But it was also fascinating to have Tony show us the Library and learn all about its transformation from a Benedictine monks’ dormitory into a theological library.

Further, some of the artefacts on show in the library were quite simply breathtaking. An Edward The Confessor writ, for example, which they are almost 100% certain is genuine (there is doubt over some of the oldest relics), made the hairs on the back of my neck stand up.

Public domain image borrowed, as permitted, from Wikipedia, with credit and referencing
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_the_Confessor#/media/File:Edward_the_Confessor_sealed_writ.jpg

After our private tour – even among Gresham friends it seemed extremely cosy in places – the wide-open spaces of the new Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Galleries seemed liberating.

The stroll and climb to the galleries was enjoyable in itself – around Poets’ Corner at ground level and then a charming new staircase with gorgeous views across to the Palace Of Westminster. What a shame to think of the shambles that is the political mayhem going on in that historic place at the moment.

But then the new galleries and the stunning exhibits on show, well set out for ease of navigation and all very well labelled/described.

While Westminster Abbey prohibits photography within its confines unless you buy a licence to do so, it does provide excellent imagery for those beyond its confines, such as these excellent short videos about the new tower and galleries. First up, the climb up the stairs of the tower:

Next up, the galleries themselves, described extremely well by the curator, the Dean and also Tony Trowles, who guided our library tour:

On seeing these wonderful artefacts with my Gresham Society friends, I felt a burst of communal, almost cult-like enthusiasm, that reminded me of our Gresham Society visit to the London Mithraeum last year:

The London Mithraeum With The Gresham Society, 15 March 2018

I wondered, briefly, whether the cult of Mithras (see above) or the Cult of Saint Edward The Confessor (yes, really, Westminster Abbey owes a great deal of its character to Henry III’s attachment to that cult) would be the preferred cult for us Gresham Society types.

I took some soundings…some might call it a mini-referendum…which was a very close run thing; 52%-48% approximately. As a heated, perhaps irreconcilable debate broke out amongst this group of hitherto convivial Gresham Society friends, I thought best to take my leave of the group swiftly.

For all I know, the remnants of the Gresham Society might still be debating the relative merits of their preferred cults in The Westminster Arms; at least, that’s where most of the group (or should I now describe it as a brace of warring factions) was last seen at the time of writing.

In truth, it was a thoroughly interesting and enjoyable afternoon out. Once again, thanks to Tim Connell for leading our field trips…also to Basil Bezuidenhout and others for helping to organise them.