'Emerald City'

Green fingers of land running into sparkling blue water - the image of Sydney I have in my head is confirmed when I cross the Harbour Bridge. But the Edwardians, away from the water, must often have thought of Sydney as honeycomb-coloured.

Central Station, quarried from local sandstone in 1902. Photographed 19 Sep 2013.

Tchaikovsky's "Fatum"

Continuing my series of program notes

Peter Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840-1893)

Fatum (Fate)

A strong argument could be made that Fate was Tchaikovsky’s great theme. For example, he said of the strident fanfare opening of his great Fourth Symphony of 1877 ‘This is fate...which hangs above your head like the sword of Damocles.’ It is not surprising, therefore, to find one of Tchaikovsky’s early works actually given ‘fate’ as a title, even though the work has no known specific program.

In 1868, Tchaikovsky had been nearly three years on the staff of what would become the Moscow Conservatory. He’d been headhunted from St. Petersburg by Nikolai Rubinstein when Rubinstein wanted to institute a Moscow branch of his brother Anton’s St.Petersburg-based Russian Musical Society. Tchaikovsky began Fatum in late September/early October 1868 and finished the scoring in December. Fatum’s first performance took place on 15/27 February 1869 at the eighth concert of the Russian Musical Society in Moscow, conducted by Nikolai Rubinstein. 

Biographers have speculated that the emotional turbulence of this work stems from the ups and downs of Tchaikovsky’s short-lived relationship with Belgian soprano, Désirée Artôt. At the time of the first performance, however, Nikolai Rubinstein suggested giving the work a more obviously explanatory title and some lines by Konstantin Batyushkov were added as a kind of epigraph:

You know what grey-haired Melhisedek

Bidding farewell to life, uttered:

‘A man was born a slave

He will die a slave,

And death will hardly tell him

Why he walked through the poor valley of tears

Suffered, endured, sobbed and perished.’

It’s hard to see how this might have enlightened the first audience. After all, what is the exact correspondence between Tchaikovsky’s often buoyant music and these words?

Tchaikovsky was at first proud of the form he had created for this work. However, still seeking validation as a composer, he sent the score to Mily Balakirev back in St. Petersburg for feedback. The leader of the group of nationalist Russian composers known as the ‘Mighty Five’ wrote back: ‘It is not properly gestated....The seams show, as does all your clumsy stitching...’ Though Balakirev accepted the dedication and conducted the work’s first Saint Petersburg performance, Tchaikovsky was discouraged and destroyed the score. It had to be reconstructed after his death.

Is the work as seriously deficient as Balakirev seems to have believed? What we have in Fatum is an overture-length work in two fairly similar halves. It opens with a stentorian statement of what we might consider the ‘fate’ theme. This is then given canonic treatment beginning in the bassoon before opening out into one of those eloquent melodies that we might describe as panoramic if it were accompanying stage action in a Tchaikovsky ballet. There follows a fast section (Molto allegro), rather like a Russian dance, before a truncated return of the very opening.

After this return, the ‘panoramic’ section follows (melody this time given out by horns), and the Molto allegro section is recalled. There is not much here in the way of detailed ‘symphonic development’, often a point of serious criticism as far as Tchaikovsky is concerned, but the work exhibits the eloquent lyricism that audiences have always loved in Tchaikovsky despite the reservations of critics.

Cesar Cuí, one of Balakirev’s ‘Five’, praised this work’s orchestration (the much-loved Tchaikovsky of the later symphonies and ballets is obviously present in such details as the woodwind and harp gilding of the ‘panoramic’ melody). All was not lost with Balakirev’s trenchant criticism, however. In many respects, Fatum opened the door to his and Tchaikovsky’s fruitful relationship. Though Tchaikovsky was never a member of the Five, Balakirev played something of the role of a mentor. Late in 1869, Balakirev came to Moscow and began a custom of suggesting programmatic topics to Tchaikovsky. On one of their walks together he suggested Romeo and Juliet. It worked. On 7 October 1869, after Balakirev’s hint, Tchaikovsky began what would become his first undoubted orchestral masterpiece, the Romeo and Juliet – Fantasy Overture.

Gordon Kalton Williams, © 2013

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:

Edward Elgar's Froissart, published 2 July 2013
Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, published 3 July 2013
Franz Waxman's Carmen-fantaisie, published 6 July 2013
Jan Sibelius's Oceanides, published 8 July 2013
Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod, published 12 July 2013
Aaron Copland's Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson, published 18 July 2013
John Williams' Escapades, published 22 July 2013
Thomas Adès's Violin Concerto Concentric Paths, published 26 July 2013
J.S. Bach's Cantata: "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott", BWV.80, published 28 July 2013
Beethoven's 5th and 6th Symphonies, published 29 July 2013
Wagner's Götterdämmerung (Immolation Scene), published 31 July 2013
Liszt's Tasso, published 2 August 2013
Stravinsky's Les Noces orchestrated by Steven Stucky, published 8 August 2013
Liszt's Hamlet, published 15 August 2013
Scriabin's Piano Concerto, published 18 August 2013
Christopher Rouse's Der gerettete Alberich, published 27 August 2013
Richard Strauss Der Rosenkavalier selections, published  
Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, published 30 August 2013
'Traditional terms' - an interview with John Adams, published 5 Sep 2013
Berlioz' Waverley Overture, published 9 Sep 2013

Coffee

Australians are very particular about coffee. They'll often come back to Australia saying they couldn't find a good coffee in the US (accompanying the finding with an expression of surprise because, after all, we know that Americans ditched the alternative, tea, in Boston Harbor back in 1773).

Call me obsessive but I've actually made a list of the best coffee I've found so far in the States. It would be odd if this turned out to be my most useful post!

California
The Blue Bottle, 300 Webster St Oakland, CA 94607 (It's in an industrial area, but also supplies various places over in the San Francisco city itself)
Philz Coffee, 3101 24th St (at Folsom St), San Francisco, CA 94110 (Mission District)
Lucky Llama, 5100 Carpinteria Ave., Carpinteria, CA 93013
Primo Passo Coffee, 702 Montana Ave, Santa Monica, CA 90403
Bru-Coffee, Vermont Ave, Los Feliz 90027 

New York              
Indian Road Cafe, 600 @ 218th Street, Manhattan (http://indianroadcafe.com/)
Gregory's Cafe, 327 Park Avenue South, New York, near 24th and 25th Street

North Carolina
Beyu Caffe, 355 West Main Street, Durham NC 27001

Charleston, South Carolina
Hope and Union, 199 St. Philip Street, Charleston, but I think that is closing and there's no word where it's going!
Kudu, 4 Vanderhorst Street, Charleston, SC,

Savannah, Georgia
Gallery Espresso, 234 Bull Street, Savannah, GA
The Sentient Bean, 13 East Park Avenue, Savannah, GA

And of course there are my favourite Starbucks - Reseda (cnr Vanowen & Reseda Blvds), Westwood CA and Bull Street, Savannah.

Some pictures:

Outside Indian Road Cafe, New York

Gallery Espresso, Savannah

The cooler coast

One of the most striking things I've learnt about Los Angeles from living there is that there are broadly four climatic regions in the city over summer. Winter seems to be pervasively comfortable, but in high summer when the Valleys are in the hundreds (40sC) and it's hotter the deeper in you get, Downtown will be in the 90s, Westwood in the 80s and Santa Monica, in the 70s. I wonder where else this happens?

Last week, to escape the heat, we went over to Carpinteria (so-named because the early Spanish explorers were impressed by the Chumash's boat-building techniques and named the area in honour of the 'carpenters'). It's also dubbed California's safest beach. It's another of those delightful beach town you get here on the coast, and hey - no Norfolk Island Pines, an absence of Australian references.

This fudges it a bit; we didn't go by train.

 Although I guess I should admit that for one brief minute, this Chumash design reminded me of Kuring-gai engravings.

  
  

Berlioz' "Waverley Overture"

Continuing my series of program notes:

Hector Berlioz (1803-1869)

Waverley – Overture

Berlioz’s Mémoires and the accounts of him written by other people at the time he wrote this work (most probably early 1827) reveal a young man pursuing his musical vocation with the ardent, even hungry, determination of a lover. 

Having arrived some years previously from La Côte-Saint-André near Grenobles, he was still trying to make his way in the musical world of Paris. His parents had cut his living-away-from-home allowance in the hope of convincing him to follow in his father’s footsteps and become a doctor. He was trying to gain performances of his opera, Les Francs-juges. He had been rejected in the first stage of the coveted Prix de Rome. Still he pressed on, reluctant to tell his parents too much of his difficulties for fear they would say, ‘You see – you’re killing yourself, and all for nothing.’ All this dates from around the time he wrote the Waverley Overture, which in pure musical energy reflects the determination of a budding master determined not to ‘remain at the foot of the mountain’ (as he wrote to his sister).

Waverley was therefore an appropriately dashing topic for a piece of music. The title derives from the first novel in a series by Sir Walter Scott, which concerns Edward Waverley who goes against his father’s sympathies to support Bonnie Prince Charlie in the Jacobite Uprising of 1745. Berlioz wrote a series of quotes from the novel down the title page of his manuscript. These dealt with the hero’s adolescent love of solitude and melancholy reverie, his embrace of soldiering, his dancing with Flora McIvor, and so on. But it would be inadvisable to listen for programmatic exactness in this work, suffice to say that a couplet from Scott, also on the title page of Berlioz’s manuscript, suggests the overture’s Andante-Allegro structure:

Dreams of love and lady’s charms

Give place to honour and to arms.

The work begins simply, with a single oboe note followed by a descending phrase on the strings. A broad cello aria follows, leading into the Allegro. There are three main themes here (a couple of them have been described as Rossinian, but they all have the older Berlioz’s élan), and the form is basically classical sonata form, with a short development and brusque recapitulation. This is to overlook the numerous touches which mark this as a work of burgeoning originality rather than student apprenticeship. The way the timpani quietly underlines the aria theme in the Andante, the way themes seem foreshortened to speed us through sectional divisions, the tumbling via a sudden conversion to triplets into the recapitulation – these suggest a natural ability to manipulate form on Berlioz’s part.

Berlioz eventually got this work performed by putting on a concert of his works, himself, in May 1828. Between then and publication of the work he reduced the instrumentation. He had originally scored the piece for 110 instruments, further proof that this work was among the first expressions of an outsize Romantic imagination.

Gordon Kalton Williams © 2012

This note first appeared in program booklets of orchestras associated with Symphony Services International (http://symphonyinternational.net/). Please contact me if you would like to reprint this note in a program booklet. If you would like to read more of my notes on this blog please see:

Edward Elgar's Froissart, published 2 July 2013
Aaron Copland's A Lincoln Portrait, published 3 July 2013
Franz Waxman's Carmen-fantaisie, published 6 July 2013
Jan Sibelius's Oceanides, published 8 July 2013
Richard Wagner's Tristan and Isolde: Prelude and Liebestod, published 12 July 2013
Aaron Copland's Eight Poems of Emily Dickinson, published 18 July 2013
John Williams' Escapades, published 22 July 2013
Thomas Adès's Violin Concerto Concentric Paths, published 26 July 2013
J.S. Bach's Cantata: "Ein feste Burg ist unser Gott", BWV.80, published 28 July 2013
Beethoven's 5th and 6th Symphonies, published 29 July 2013
Wagner's Götterdämmerung (Immolation Scene), published 31 July 2013
Liszt's Tasso, published 2 August 2013
Stravinsky's Les Noces orchestrated by Steven Stucky, published 8 August 2013
Liszt's Hamlet, published 15 August 2013
Scriabin's Piano Concerto, published 18 August 2013
Christopher Rouse's Der gerettete Alberich, published 27 August 2013
Richard Strauss Der Rosenkavalier selections, published  
Beethoven's Eighth Symphony, published 30 August 2013
'Traditional terms' - an interview with John Adams, published 5 Sep 2013

"Traditional terms?" - interview with John Adams

Composer John Adams recently appeared as conductor with Australian orchestras, the Sydney Symphony Orchestra and Melbourne Symphony Orchestra. I interviewed him for the printed program booklets for both orchestras. A complete version of this interview is reproduced below:

‘Can’t be defined in traditional terms’: Gordon Williams speaks to John Adams

The American composer, John Adams has had a longstanding presence in Australia. Nixon in China was the featured opera at the 1992 Adelaide Festival, and in 2002 the Adelaide Festival saw the Australian premiere of El Niño, in a version directed by Adams’ regular collaborator Peter Sellars, who had resigned as Festival Director some months before. I interviewed Adams in the Northern Foyer of the Sydney Opera House in 2000 at the time of the Australian premiere of Naive and Sentimental Music, one of a couple of Sydney Symphony co-commissions. Adams says he feels badly that he hasn’t been out to Australia since, because he knows what a great musical culture Australia has. He was particularly impressed when the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra’s Huw Humphreys asked for an ‘all-Adams’ concert in Melbourne. But there have been major additions to Adams’ output in the intervening years (City Noir, operas Dr Atomic (2005) and A Flowering Tree (2006), and a second oratorio, The Gospel According to the Other Mary (2011)), so it’s a good opportunity to see how his views might have changed over the years. 

When I interviewed him in 2000 Adams was almost patriotically proud of Minimalism, an ‘-ism’ which had done much to bring audiences back to contemporary classical music in the 1970s and 80s. This time he was almost bemused that I began by asking him about it.

"I think that it was a very important stylistic development or invention, and I think it spawned several masterpieces – certainly [Philip Glass's] Einstein on the Beach and early Steve Reich pieces - but I haven't really thought in terms of Minimalism myself since the early 1980s. I'm surprised when the subject comes up but then, of course, audiences know my early pieces like Shaker Loops, and think about them and listen to them more than I do, so it's understandable. I mean it's a style of composition that is defined by three specific things – it's emphatically tonal and it's got a regular pulse. It uses repetition to create its musical structures. But that said: I sublimated Minimalism. I was very restless within its confines and tried to break out of it early on."

Anyone who has seen the rapturous reaction of an audience to Harmonielehre (such as when Markus Stenz conducted the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra in the work in 2004) will realise that Adams is a living orchestral composer with the magnetic pull of a Beethoven or Mahler; and a great deal of that power can be credited to Adams' ability to re-create tension and climax in the way that has been exciting in western music since at least the classical period. I put it to him that he had come back to traditional cadential motion refreshed by Minimalism.

"My music is definitely harmonic and has a sense of tonality, but it's too elusive and evasive and it moves so quickly that I don't think it can be defined in any particular traditional terms. What's interesting in recent pieces is my use of mode. I'm not unlike a jazz performer in that I create modes using various combinations of whole steps and half steps and they generate both the harmonic and melodic feel of the piece. It's not a new development but I think I've given a new spin to it. I really think that if there's been a success with audiences with, for example, the music of Steve Reich or Philip Glass or myself, it first and foremost relies on the beauty of the harmonic relationships. That rhythmic thing is very important, the sense of atmosphere with all of us, but if you took Steve Reich's music and made it atonal or made it harmonically indifferent nobody would want to listen to it."

I home in on what he says about harmony as that's really the sphere in which audience reaction to contemporary music has been played out in the past 100 years. Adams has used Schoenbergian technique for entertainment value (imagined in a cartoon-like context in his Chamber Symphony), and the title of his 1985 symphony Harmonielehre pays tribute to a 12-tone master "who knew tonal harmony better than almost anyone on the planet."  

"I really don't believe that you can be a good composer unless your music has a very strong, harmonic...let's say 'profile'. The problem is that harmony is not taught seriously anymore. I sound like the sort of old guy I never wanted to be, but I look back on my life and realise I was lucky because my parents found a teacher who could teach harmony. He exposed me to harmonic practice, and then I studied with a student of Nadia Boulanger when I was in college so I've had this developed sense of harmonic awareness all my life."

It might be argued that Adams broke out of Minimalism partly through what has been described as 'hypermelody', a melodic line that, in certain works, began to float over the top over the mosaic of repeated motifs that you otherwise find in Minimalism. Critic, Paul Griffiths has said that, "The first movement of the Violin Concerto is a supreme example of this technique. Entering over rainbow staircases of arpeggios from the orchestra, the soloist begins with just one interval, a falling minor third (from E flat to C), and spins a line that goes on for almost a quarter hour with little interruption." Perhaps Adams' development of a sense of line was inherently American. 1988's The Wound Dresser uses a text by Walt Whitman set with a melodic straightforwardness learnt from songwriters like Gershwin or Richard Rodgers. I asked Adams about the artistic influence of America, a homeland he's paid tribute to in a number of works, such as  2003's My Father Knew Charles Ives (which apostrophises the musical heritage of the Northeast, Adams' boyhood stomping ground) or The Dharma at Big Sur ('a concerto after Jack Kerouac').

Big Sur coastline, California. It's my own simplification perhaps, but I can't help strongly associating Adams with northern Californian landscapes. Released into the public domain by Calilover on Wikipedia

"Well, we're an intensely musical culture and part of the reason for that is the ethnic mix. I can't imagine how pale and uninteresting American music would be if it hadn't been for African-American culture. We've mixed it up in many ways. George Gershwin – a second-generation Russian Jew who absorbed all different kinds of vernacular music and particularly black music and created these masterpieces that we're so grateful for. And I think it's fair to say that I am conscious of what I'm doing when I incorporate elements of the music that's around me. But of course, I'm first and foremost a classical musician. City Noir is a good example of what I do. In a sense it's a symphony but informed with and full of my experiences with jazz and particularly jazz as it appears in the movies, circa 1940 and 50. I'll be doing a version of it in Melbourne which I think is very satisfying now."  

City Noir was partly inspired by Kevin Starr's 'Californian Dream' series of books, which cleverly convey the mood of the 'noir' period in Los Angeles' history when it was "a Front Page kind of city... a demimonde of rackets, screaming headlines, and politicians on the take; a town of gamblers, guys and dolls, booze and sex...Double Indemnity could have been set in Indianapolis, but it could not have had the same sense of evil beneath the sunny surface of palm-lined streets..."

Of course, John Adams is a good, solid New England name, the name of the US's second president in fact. And Adams had what might be considered a typical east coast Democrat's upbringing. Indeed he remembers shaking Candidate Kennedy's hand during the New Hampshire primaries in 1960. But he now lives in San Francisco and has written a piece about California's other city. I wondered to what extent people mightn't realise the enormous contribution that Los Angeles has made to music?

"Well, you know, I think California in general is very culturally rich area and the outside world tends to look at us as in a very hackneyed, prejudiced way. They look at Los Angeles as Walt Disney and Arnold Schwarzenegger and San Francisco as beatniks and the Golden Gate Bridge. It would be as if you thought of Paris only as the Eiffel Tower. Los Angeles is one of the most ethnically-rich urban environments in the world and it has a great history of the arts – wonderful patrons – and a great musical richness. And of course San Francisco has a very interesting history of the 1960s – Jefferson Airplane and The Grateful Dead and then Allen Ginsberg and The Beat poets. So I think I've had a good time – not in every work – but occasionally in my works of placing myself in this culture and trying to make a musical evocation of it.

"You use an obbligato saxophone in City Noir.

"Well, you know, the saxophone doesn't get a lot of respect in the world of classical music and when it's used – which is quite rarely – it's usually for special effect. I've included saxophone in my pieces since Nixon in China in 1987 and I'm very used to the sound because I grew up listening to it. My father occasionally played it [he played in a swing band at the Winnipesaukee Gardens resort during the northeastern summers] and I myself actually played it but not very well. I wrote City Noir because I wanted to evoke that kind of nervous bebop sound that you occasionally heard in the background in film noir and so I wrote a virtuoso solo part in City Noir for alto saxophone and it sounds like it's being improvised but isn't. In fact, Tim McAllister played it so brilliantly [in the premiere performances] that I thought, gee maybe I should write a concerto for this guy because there aren't many good saxophone concertos.

"You’ve already written a violin concerto so you’ve got some experience in concerto form. Did you have to rethink it for saxophone?

"When I enter into a piece I don't have formal plans. Paul Hindemith said you should have everything already planned out before you've written the first note and I just think that's completely counter-intuitive for me. I look at composing as an adventure, like Magellan going out. I think there might be some continents out there but I don't know what they look like and I really launch an expedition, so the form usually ends up being the result of the materials that I’ve chosen."

Talk of the podium prompts me to ask Adams about his work as a conductor. The last time he went to Australia he was actually sitting in the audience listening, as Edo de Waart conducted his work.

"I've actually been conducting all of my professional life and way back in the 90s I had already conducted some of the great orchestras – Cleveland, Chicago, the Amsterdam Concertgebouw. I try to control the amount of it each year because, not only does it take time away from my composing, but it also takes psychological energy. I have to become almost like a Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde. When you're composing you're very inward and introverted and solitary and when you're conducting you have to be a very public person and outward. And that's why, when I read about Mahler I'm amazed that he could do both but I'm also aware of why people thought that he was a very difficult personality because it's a real challenge to move from one activity to the other. On the other hand, it's also tremendously fruitful for me, because not only am I able to polish my own pieces but when I do music that isn't my own I think I can bring a certain, perception to the performance of it."

Adams' music has often been inspired by big themes, orchestral works such as 2010's Absolute Jest may pay respect to masterworks of the European repertoire, the stage works cover the meeting of civilizations (Nixon in China), the creation of the Atomic Bomb (Dr. Atomic), several new takes on Christianity (El Niño, The Gospel According to the Other Mary)... I ask Adams what's next?

"I wish I could tell you. Every book I read, every story I encounter, I'm always kind of prospecting for a story because I think that, if people remember me in a hundred years, it'll be more for my stage works and my operatic works because they do really kind of put their finger on the pulse of our time, whether it's politics or nuclear war or terrorism...It's just very hard to find the right spin. It has to be, on the one hand, universal in its theme and yet at the same time something that can be localized in terms of the story into an extremely compact time and group of characters. I know I’ll find something but it's very frustrating not to have it right in front of me.

"I was very impressed that you'd read all those ‘California Dream’ books.

"Yeah, sometimes I think I read too much. I look around and think there are other things to do in life, but I was at a farmers' market you know, shopping for vegetables, and this guy had a T-shirt that said, 'Eat, Sleep, Read'."  

He laughs. It almost sounds like 'eat, sleep, read' is precisely what Adams wishes he could do now, but I know that pretty soon after I get off the phone he's going to "hunker down" (his agent's words) to write, something he'll be doing between this interview and preparing for a concert tour of Australia. I can kind of understand how he answered my question about Minimalism by saying that his music "moves so quickly that I don’t think it can be defined in any particular traditional terms".

Gordon Kalton Williams, © 2013


The repertoire for John Adams' concerts with the two Australian orchestras was:

Sydney
BEETHOVEN Fidelio Overture
ADAMS Violin Concerto (with Leila Josefowicz)
--
ADAMS Saxophone Concerto (world premiere, with Timothy McAllister)
RESPIGHI The Pines of Rome

Melbourne
ADAMS Short Ride in a Fast Machine
ADAMS Violin Concerto (with Leila Josefowicz)
--
ADAMS City Noir (Australian premiere, with Timothy McAllister)

Edited versions of this interview can be viewed at: sydneysymphony.com/program_library

and, for Melbourne, in "In Concert September" http://www.mso.com.au/your-visit/concert-programs/


If you are interested in other of my articles on composers, please see:

Sousa and the Sioux, 19 August 2011
@ http://gordonkaltonwilliams.blogspot.com/2011/08/sousa-and-sioux-i-am-reminded.html

or,
"...above the canopy of stars..." - Beethoven's Ninth, 28 May 2012
Percy Grainger, the chap who "wanted to find the sagas everywhere", 17 June 2012
A Star and his Stripes - Bernstein, the populist, 29 June 2012
Igor in Oz: Stravinsky Downunder, 17 July 2012
Wagner - is it music, or is it drama? 27 July 2012
"Beautiful...sad": Puccini's La boheme, 29 July 2012
Philippa - an opera [blog 1], ideas for an opera on Philippa Duke Schuyler, 16 Sep 2012

On my website, click on "USA blog" to scroll down the full selection.

Compelled to enjoy freedom

When we went to vote at the Australian consulate in Century City the other day, the concierge downstairs asked what we thought it would be like if Americans were compelled to vote. I just said I thought there were advantages in not being able to opt out; in feeling you aren't leaving all the decisions in the hands of those who already have clout. (I once took the option of numbering all 230-odd boxes on an Upper House ballot paper and feel sure I'm one of those handful of voters who denied Pauline Hanson a seat in the NSW Legislative Council.)

But compulsory voting here would have a disturbing aspect. It's spectacularly easy here to not know what's going on. I get queries from friends back in Australia asking my views on things going on in US politics and I don't know what they're talking about. I haven't heard anything. Australians, I think, are much better informed about world events and that includes what's going on here. This is possibly a symptom of being so far off the main routes; Australians compensate by having a thirst for information. But I also think there's a very small and slight reason you wouldn't expect.

I don't watch much news in Australia. I don't buy a newspaper there either. But there are newsagencies everywhere - every mall, every shopping strip, street corner after street corner. And they have the day's headlines emblazoned on those sheets that the newsagent (yes, it's a job in Oz) places outfront in those wire frame thingys (technical name escapes me). You can't really walk down a street in Oz or stop at a traffic light or go to the fruit shop, butcher's or deli, without knowing the day's biggest news. It's in front of you; you don't have to have your cellphone on. This doesn't guarantee deeper thought or insight I know, it doesn't guard against people who think they have a right to their ignorant opinion, but it's a step toward a better-informed public. And, why would you want that? Hmmm, I don't often quote Thomas Jefferson, but...

"if a nation expects to be ignorant & free, in a state of civilisation, it expects what never was & never will be."