Дополнительный материал для 10 класса по английскому языку «Music and dance in Britain»

MUSIC AND DANCE IN BRITAIN

The opera and ballet (con­tinuation), vocal music, brass bands, main festivals, rock and pop music.

British Opera

Britain is lucky to have five major opera companies, presenting a vast range of works. In London there are the Royal Opera at the Royal Opera House (the building is better known as Covent Garden from its location), and the English National Opera at the Coli­seum Theatre (the company of the English National Opera performs opera in English). The English National Opera also has a nor­thern company whose place of residence is the city of Leeds. In Wales there is the Welsh National Opera, and in Scotland the Scottish National Opera.

The Royal Opera's home, Covent Garden, is a splendid building with a massive Corin­thian portico (in the article "The British Theatre" we explained that the name "Cov­ent Garden" was originally given to London's wholesale fruit, flower and vegetable market, which in 1973 moved to new buildings south of the Thames; the Covent Garden Theatre is near the former site of the Covent Garden market). An evening at Covent Garden is something of an event, and although there is much less formality than there once was, smart evening suits and dresses are still not out of place there. The price of tickets at Covent Garden is very high, reaching 50 pounds.

The situation is somewhat different at the English National Opera, only a few blocks away, at the Coliseum Theatre in St. Martin's Lane. As it was mentioned above, opera is sung here mostly in English; the repertoire is much broader and more experimental than at Covent Garden. The seats are about a third of the cost of those at Covent Garden, and easier to book. The company pursues a valuable middle course between the popular classics and modern works.

A new venture has been the opening of a northern branch of the English National Opera in Leeds. The concept of bringing locally-based opera to the Midlands and the North of England has so far succeeded fairly well. At first productions were imported from London, but the home-grown article has almost completely taken over.

The Welsh National Opera Company is based on a national love for choral singing. Verdi's operas, that lay great stress on the chorus, are especially popular with the Welsh.

The Scottish National Opera, in its com­paratively short history, has already secured a solid international reputation for imagina­tive staging and expert casting of leading singers.

Before leaving the British operatic scene we must mention at least two other regular companies: the company at Glyndebourne ['glaindbD:n] and the Kent Opera.

Glyndebourne (called so after the name of the estate) is the creation of John Christie (the owner of the estate, a great lover of art) and his wife. Tucked in a fold of the Sussex Downs near the city of Lewes, Glyndebourne provides as near perfect a setting as can be imagined. The theatre is small, the time given to rehearsals long, the stage designs are full of interest. Nowadays the leading singers tend to be young, with their careers ahead of them, but they provide an experience just as compelling as their older colleagues. The performances start during the afternoon and have long leisurely intervals.

The Kent Opera is a small company which spends most of its time touring. It has resurrected, in extremely actable modern ver­sions, works by Monteverdi (1567—1643) and other little-known composers.

British Ballet

Ballet in Britain can be dated almost exactly from 1911 when Sergei Diaghilev brought his Russian Ballet to London. Some­how, against all possible expectation, they caught the public imagination. London went ballet mad, as the music of Stravinsky, the genius of Nijinsky and Fokin were paraded before it. There were some English dancers in the company, who stayed on to found British ballet.

Much was to stem from that first visit of the Diaghilev company, and most of it was promoted by two remarkable women, both at one time dancers in the company, Marie Rambert ['ra:mbea] and Ninette de Valois ['vselwa:].

In 1926 Dame Marie Rambert founded her Ballet Club, which in 1930 became the Ballet Rambert, a small but well-known company. Marie Rambert was always ready to experi­ment, and was seeking new choreographers, dancers and musicians. The Ballet Rambert, now well launched on its second half-cen­tury, has always reflected the dedication of its founder, the late Dame Marie Rambert, to experiment; it has also remained youthful and vibrant. Like many of the country's smaller companies, it is always on the move, and visitors to Britain are as likely to catch it performing in a small town as they are to see it in London.

The creative work of Dame Ninette de Valois is connected with the predecessors of the Royal Ballet; it was given this name in 1956 and has become one of the great ballet companies of the world. It now performs regularly at Covent Garden, has prestigious and very popular seasons at New York's Metropolitan Opera, and also tours the rest of Great Britain, as well as the rest of the world. The Royal Ballet is divided into two sections. Both sections do the great classical ballets — "Swan Lake", "Sleeping Beauty", "Giselle", "Coppelia", as well as many mo­dern works. Ninette de Valois also founded the Royal Ballet School. She was perhaps most fortunate in inheriting a Rambert dis­covery, Frederick Ashton, a talented chore­ographer and dancer. He has created some of the loveliest works — "Cinderella", "Sym­phonic Variations", "Monotones", to name just three — and has danced with the very gifted ballerina, Dame Margot Fonteyn.

One more important ballet company is the Royal Festival Ballet, founded in 1950 imme­diately before the Festival of Britain (a spe­cial jubilee exhibition). This company per­forms both classical and modern works (it has revived one or two of Diaghilev's ballets). It has no home theatre and most of its perfor­mances are held either at major London theatres such as the Coliseum, the Royal Festival Hall or Sadler's Wells, or else at theatres round Britain while on tour.

The ballet scene in Britain is not as rich as the theatre in fringe companies, but there are a fair number; the New London Ballet, the London Contemporary Dance Theatre, the Scottish Ballet are just a few of the groups which are now bringing dance in all its forms to the country at large. People interested in the experimental dance scene usually visit "The Place" (this is the name of a theatre club near St. Pancras station, London).

Vocal Music

It is interesting to note that the British have usually preferred to make their music not as individuals, but as members of a choir or a band. The leading choral societies have long been accustomed to meet together at festi­vals, at which choirs and orchestras perform in competition with one another.

Britain has had a strong tradition of vocal music, especially church music, for many centuries, and the fruits of that long tradition are now being harvested. Every week of the year you can attend performances of great choral works in concert halls, listen to recitals in stately homes by candlelight, strange piec­es of music on remote Scottish islands and in Wales Uvely madrigals from boats on a moon­lit river.

You will frequently be amazed at the quality of music which the local choir will be singing. The members of many cathedral choirs are pupils of the choir school, who are chosen for their voices and are trained by expert teachers.

Brass Bands

Another very common form of corporate music-making in Britain is the brass band. This is a band or orchestra of players on brass musical instruments, often together with oth­er wind instruments and almost always with drums. Brass bands are found throughout Britain, but are particularly popular in the Midlands and in the North of England. Their players come from a wide range of commer­cial and voluntary organizations, although some of the best bands are from factories (these are the so-called "works bands"), coal-mines and religious or charitable orga­nizations such as the Salvation Army. There are also good bands with young players, especially in schools.

Main Festivals of Music, Dance and Other Arts

The Aldeburgh ['oddbara] Festival (an an­nual music festival which was. started by the composer Benjamin Britten, who lived in Aldeburgh; see also the previous article);

the Bath Festival (an annual music festival held in the city of Bath and running at the same time as various theatre and ballet performances, exhibitions, etc.);

the Cheltenham Festival (an annual music festival in the city of Cheltenham, where mainly modern British music is performed);

the Edinburgh Festival (an annual festival of music and drama held in August and September at various centres in Edinburgh; the festival, first held in 1947, has gained international status and has won a reputation for its inclusion of experimental or "avant-garde" events, which are called "Edinburgh Fringe"; see also the article "The British Theatre");

Eisteddfod [ais'teovad] (1. an annual Welsh festival of music, literature, especially poetry, and drama, held alternately in North and South Wales during the first week of August; the modern Eisteddfod — the word is Welsh and means "chairing", i. e. the chairing or seating in a ceremonial chair of the winning bard — has developed from the gatherings of bards held in the 12th century; the literature contest is conducted entirely in Welsh; 2. an international festival of folk-dancing and music held annually at Llangollen, North Wales; the festival has no bardic or literary content and is conducted entirely in English; 3. an annual youth festival similar to the Welsh national Eisteddfod; its aim is to encourage the evolution of the Welsh language; 4. a festival of folk-dancing and music held in England resembling the Eisteddfod at Llan­gollen);

Glyndebourne (an annual opera festival held at the estate of John Christie; see above);

the Three Choirs Festival (a music festival, first held in 1724 and now held annually — in turn — in the cathedrals of Gloucester, Hereford and Worcester ['wusta]; the music consists of both choral and orchestral reli­gious works (church music) performed by each cathedral choir, and also by special festival choirs and outside orchestras.

Rock and Pop Music

The most classless music — rock and pop music — is listened to by a large number of people all over the world. It also crosses national barriers as easily as class barriers. Every year about 40 per cent of the best­selling singers in Europe are British and about ten British singles get to number one in the United States.

The people who put Britain at the front of the pop revolution of the 1960s were the Beatles. Before the Beatles, British pop music was based on rock'n'roll exported from the USA by singers like Elvis Presley.

Then, in the early 1960s, the new British sound was heard, very different from anything which had so far come from the American side of the Atlantic. This was the Liverpool, or Merseyside, "beat music" (the expression meant pop music with a strong rhythm). Situated on the River Mersey in the north­western corner of the industrial Black Coun­try, Liverpool was not a place which anyone visited for fun. Until the 1960s it was known only as one of Britain's largest ports. Then, almost overnight, it became world famous as the birthplace of the new pop culture which, in a few years, swept across Britain and America, and across most of the countries of the world. Liverpool finally caught the pub-he's imagination; "Scouse"-type speech (the speech of those who were born in this city) quickly grew to be represented, admired and even partially understood by the non-Liver­pudlian teenage population; the "Cavern" (a club which was one of the Beatles' early venues) came to be regarded as a kind of Mecca, so that now it is quite common to see posters in the United States advertising a holiday in Britain with visits to London, Stratford-on-Avon, Oxford, Cambridge, Edin­burgh — and the "Cavern", Liverpool ("You too can breathe the air the Beatles breathed!").

The Beatles were only one of the many groups playing in Liverpool at the time they began to make their reputation, but soon they became the most popular. The group included Paul McCartney (b. 1942), John Lennon (1940-1980), George Harrison (b. 1943) and Ringo Starr — real name Richard Starkey (b. 1940). At first, they performed music influenced by American rock'n'roll and rhythm-and-blues. Lennon's and McCartney's songs, however, became increasingly sophis­ticated and experimental, and their imagina­tive lyrics and memorable melodies soon contributed to the distinctive "Mersey sound". Among their most popular songs were "I Want to Hold Your Hand", "Hey, Jude", and "Yesterday".

The group was phenomenally popular in the middle and late 1960s. The intense devo­tion of the group's fans, especially the hyste­rical screaming that the Beatles provoked in large crowds of teenagers, was called Beatle-mania.

The Beatles also made several successful films ("A Hard Day's Night", "Help", etc.). In the late 1960s the group studied Indian mysticism and used hallucinatory drugs, and both activities influenced their music. The Beatles broke up in 1971. Paul McCartney then formed the successful group Wings, while John Lennon wrote and recorded music in America with his second wife Yoko Ono. Lennon was murdered in New York in 1980.

With the big British port of Liverpool going through a slump, the city fathers have resur­rected Beatlemania to brighten the situation. Attractive advertisements entice tourists to visit spots associated with John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison and Ringo Starr. Shops and stalls advertise such souvenirs as beer mugs and salt-cellars of the type the quartet supposedly used, as well as John Lennon's spectacles and the Beatles' socks. There are even bricks on sale, which allegedly come from the walls of the tiny restaurant where the famous four first performed in public.

Together with the Beatles, the Rolling Stones were one of the most important British pop groups of the 1960s. The group included Mick Jagger, Keith Richard, Brian Jones, Bill Wyman and Charlie Watts. The Rolling Stones were deliberately brash and provocative. Their public behaviour was se­verely criticized by some sections of the media for their alleged decadence. This "shock effect" was precisely what they wished to achieve, and their powerful and uninhibited music was a major factor in the development of Britain's "alternative society". The group's two most popular hits were "Satisfaction" (which summarized their philosophy of frus­tration and ferocity) and "Jumpin' Jack Flash" (the name was taken from a song by the American black singer Muddy Waters).

British pop music still has a world-wide audience today. Groups from Britain like the Rolling Stones, the Who, the Clash, the Police and ex-Beatle Paul McCartney with his new group Wings, are some of the most popular singers in the English-speaking coun­tries, as well as in many other countries.

Without counting the top stars, the number of the best groups in Britain must run into tens of thousands. Of these, few are full-time professionals with excellent sound equipment who may be well known in their own region and able to make a fairly good living, others are purely amateur; they practise in one of their member's homes, and do not have sophisticated equipment or rehearsal schedu­les. The majority of rock and pop groups, however, are semi-professional; their mem­bers generally have day-time jobs far removed from the music world and they usually lay aside one or two evenings a week for rehears­ing.

There are lots of places in London where you can listen to rock and pop music — in clubs, in concert halls, even in the Tube and in the streets. When you are walking from one platform to another in an Underground station you will suddenly hear the sound of a young man's voice and a guitar. The music is loud and sounds really lively because it echoes in the Underground passages. The young man is playing a song and his friend — his girl-friend perhaps — is carrying a hat or a box; she is going up to the people who are passing and is asking them for a few coins for the musician. This is busking — music in the Tube, on a street corner, in the market or up and down a queue outside a theatre or a cinema. A busker usually has a regular pitch (place) where he stands and plays. He also needs a friend who collects the money. A busker often has trouble with the station staff in the Underground; many Station Masters do not like musicians who play in the Tube and ask passengers for money. The police also sometimes move buskers in the street. But there are always some good pitches where no one bothers the musicians.

In London there are many buskers — men and women, young and old. Some are famous characters that everybody knows. They spend most of their lives as buskers. Others are students who need some money but who normally do other things. Some buskers are lucky and become famous: a record company "discovers" them and their life changes. For example, two London singers who make pop records now — Don Partridge and Leo Sayers — were street buskers before they became professional pop singers.

Many British singers and musicians have been popular not just for the music and the words of their songs but also because of the ideas and attitudes behind them. When John Lennon was murdered in 1980, he was mourned by millions of people all over the world, not only because of his fame as a Beatle, but because he had dedicated this fame to the cause of peace. Here is another example of a singer's active attitude to life.

Bob Geldof first became popularly known as the leading singer of the pop group Boomtown Rats, formed in 1975. In 1984, concerned at the severe famine in North Africa, and in particular in Ethiopia, Geldof decided to take action that would raise money to supply food to the starving there. At Christmas that year, he organized a ga­thering of leading pop stars to make a record on the subject. The record was a bestseller, and the funds raised from its sale were collected by a charity called "Band Aid", set up specially for the purpose, and then sent to Africa. The following year, Geldof organized a grand rock concert, held simultaneously in London and Philadelphia, USA, and televised live. Funds raised by this event were collected by a second charity called "Live Aid". In 1986, more money was collected by sports­men and sportswomen under the name "Sport Aid", and in this same year Geldof was awarded an honorary knighthood for his fund-raising efforts. Geldof himself gained a reputation, admired by some but criticized by others, for his direct, even crude manner of speech and for his "no nonsense" or abrupt approach when dealing with important offi­cials. He has paid more than one visit to Ethiopia in person.