As I say in this video, my latest project – another attempt to spread culture among the masses and save western civilization – has been a real labour of love. As regular viewers of my Youtube channel will know, I regard Mozart as the greatest composer ever. But while I love a lot of his operatic music, I have never been a great fan of his operas in general. In fact I have never been a great fan of opera in general whether by Mozart or not, even though many operatic pieces rank among my top favorites.

Half of the reason is that they are usually based on obscure stories and are sung in languages I don’t understand. For example, take Mozart’s most popular opera, the Magic Flute. It’s based on an obscure story rooted in 18th Century German Masonic mythology. I don’t know about you, but I find it difficult to relate to 18th Century German Masonic mythology. Particularly if I don’t understand the language.

The other half of the reason is that they tend to have one or two good numbers while the rest of the music is not all that inspiring. Particularly recitative. I have always hated recitative – where they sing dialogue in a very mannered and, to me, rather tedious way.

So I have long thought how wonderful it would be to have an opera packed with some of Mozart’s most beautiful and memorable pieces. I was just waiting for the right story to put his music to. I wanted it to be based on a fairy tale, though not one of the more overdone ones like Cinderella or snow White. I wanted it to reach as wide an audience as possible, and hopefully introduce more people to the wonderful music of Mozart.

On first reading, Hans Christian Andersen’s story about the Marsh King’s daughter did not inspire me. The story didn’t hang together very well and there were great gaps in the narrative which left a lot of things unexplained. But I found that my imagination began to fill in the gaps and expand on the story in a way that really excited me, and I became consumed by a fever of creativity as I found myself totally absorbed by the project. I almost didn’t have to think about it. Everything just seem to come together almost effortlessly, as if I had Mozart and Hans Christian Andersen looking over my shoulder and dictating the whole thing.

Some might mutter aloofly about my audacity in daring to tamper with Mozart’s music. But somehow I am convinced that Mozart himself would not feel that way. I am sure he would welcome any efforts to broaden the appeal of his music.

And I have to confess that I have taken some liberties with his music. For example, there is of course a wedding scene. I could have chosen Mozart’s well known bridesmaid’s chorus for this, but it did not really sit comfortably within the story. So I considered a number of pieces before choosing part of the mid section of his concerto for flute and harp and reshaping it until I was satisfied.

But overall I know I have stayed true to the spirit of his music and to the great composer himself. In the process I have made the music more accessible to singers who have not been operatically trained and who are more used to singing in modern musicals.

This time there is no video involved, however. This is a special preview for NQ readers only. It is a scene from “Pirates in Pinafores: A Gilbert and Sullivan Pastiche”, which features the most popular G&S music (mainly with new lyrics from me) from seven of their shows, all wrapped up in a semi-modern story about love, duty and corporate intrigue. It was partly the reception I got here on NQ and on Youtube to “Modern Intellectual” that inspired me to do a whole show. The final show has 25 songs and two reprises that most people will recognize.

(One of the reasons I haven’t been doing much on NQ or Youtube lately is because I have been too busy with this project and dealing with new interest in my other stage musicals.)

The song in the scene I am printing below is sung by three accountants who work for the Pieman of Penzance (also known as the Franchise King), who has built up a huge fortune with his pie franchise.

SONG 4: AN ACCOUNTANT’S LIFE IS NOT A LOT OF FUN
to the tune of “A Policeman’s Lot Is Not a Happy One” from “Pirates of Penzance”)

ACCOUNTANT 1:
I am Alistair McDuff the chief accountant

CHORUS
Number cruncher

ACCOUNTANTS 2 and 3
And we are his assistants, Keith and Ron

CHORUS
Keith and Ron

ACCOUNTANTS
It’s our job to take good care of all finances

CHORUS
All finances

ACCOUNTANTS
And make sure our number crunching’s never wrong

CHORUS
God forbid

ACCOUNTANTS
But there’s no joy in being an accountant

CHORUS
No excitement

ACCOUNTANTS
For nobody ever thinks of us as fun

CHORUS
Dull as dirt
(ALL YAWN)

ACCOUNTANTS
No-one ever thinks of us as hot and sexy

CHORUS
Never sexy!

ACCOUNTANTS
We always seem so dull to ev’ryone

ALL
It’s not nice when ev’rybody thinks you’re dull
and no fun
An accountant’s lot is not a jolly one
Not a jot

ACCOUNTANTS
But you’ll find in private life we’re quite eccentric

CHORUS:
You? Eccentric?

ACCOUNTANTS
If you knew what we got up to you would say
That you never would have thought that an accountant
Could behave in such a nonconformist way

CHORUS
There’s no way

ACCOUNTANT 1:
In my private life I am an outlaw biker

CHORUS
Who’d have thought it?

ACCOUNTANT 1
At weekends I wear leather ev’ry day

CHORUS
Ev’ry day?

ACCOUNTANT
I ride my Harley with such wild abandon
I scare the pants off all who come my way

ACCOUNTANT 2
At weekends I become a secret nudist

CHORUS
The mind boggles

ACCOUNTANT 2
I strut around as naked as can be

CHORUS
T.M.I.

ACCOUNTANT 2
So never knock upon my door at weekends

CHORUS
We’ll avoid it

ACCOUNTANT 2
Unless you want to see the naked me

CHORUS
No, not me

ACCOUNTANT 3
At weekends I dress up in women’s clothing

CHORUS
No surprise there

ACCOUNTANT 3
I have a diff’rent dress to wear each day

CHORUS
Come what may

ACCOUNTANT 3
I’ve lots and lots and lots of pretty outfits

CHORUS
Bet that cost you!

ACCOUNTANT 3
But though I’m a crossdresser I’m not gay

CHORUS
Gay? No way!

ALL
Oh, when there is number crunching to be done,
to be done
An accountant’s job is not a lot of fun
Not much fun

PS I am now putting Mozart’s music to a Hans Christian Andersen tale. See what you started?

This video explains why I haven’t uploaded many videos lately. It is the first in a three-part series that tells of a musical I have been working on, which I hope will at least provide some entertainment for my friends on No Quater and on my Youtube channel.

If you enjoy musicals, you might enjoy this affectionate parody of musicals in general and some of the great classic musicals like West Side Story, My Fair Lady, Damn Yankees, Singing In The Rain, a Chorus Line, Hello Dolly, How to Succeed in Business (Without Really Trying), and a number of others.

Two more videos are to follow (unless everyone hates the first one!)`

Naturally, my prejudices are evident in the video, even if it is about something as seemingly innocuous as musicals. Political correctness is one of them.

Here’s one for the feminists. It’s another tongue-in-cheek song from my musical $ucce$$! (now seeking a Broadway home). The song is sung by an Irish-Latino character named Juanita Fitzgerald. The lyrics are as follows:

JUANITA:
Don’t trust a man or you’ll be sorry
Men just cause worry

CHORUS:
They’ll make a fool of you

JUANITA:
They only bring anxiety
Just take it from me!

CHORUS:
Men will just leave you blue

JUANITA:
Don’t trust a man
He’ll only hurt you
He’ll only make a fool of you
He’ll take what he can
And then desert you
That’s men for you
They’ll leave you blue
There’s nothing much a girl can do

CHORUS:
He will hurt you
Then desert you

JUANITA:
All men are swine as you’ll discover
You won’t recover

CHORUS:
They’re evil through and through

JUANITA:
They’ll promise you the earth and sky
Then leave you to cry

CHORUS:
That’s what a man will do

JUANITA:
You always hope there’s one exception
One who will make your dreams come true
But all you get is lies, deception
That’s men for you; I know it’s true
All men are rotten through and through

CHORUS:
Love is just a misconception

JUANITA:
Men have a single function, namely
They just exist to plug the gap
Most of them do it rather lamely

CHORUS:
Let’s wipe ‘em off the map!

JUANITA:
I think it’s clear that we don’t need ‘em
So we won’t breed ‘em

CHORUS:
Then there’ll be none at large

JUANITA:
We just won’t bear their progeny
That’s how it will be

CHORUS:
Then women can take charge

JUANITA:
We don’t need them as pollinators
Test tubes will do their work instead
Then they’ll have no chance to frustrate us
They’ve had their day; that’s what I say
I can’t see any other way

CHORUS:
We don’t need ‘em
We won’t breed ‘em

JUANITA:
A man was born to cause us sorrow
Sure as tomorrow

CHORUS:
That’s all a man is for

JUANITA:
All those I’ve known turned out to be
A burden to me

CHORUS:
Let’s show ‘em all the door

JUANITA:
A man will always try to use you
Then he’ll abuse you

CHORUS:
We just can’t take no more

JUANITA:
I think that we can do without it
No doubt about it
We’ll have no more

CHORUS:
Give ‘em what for
We’ll show ‘em all the door
Clear the floor
Clear them out
Till there’s no more

JUANITA:
We’ll have no more

CHORUS:
When there are none at large
We’ll take charge
When they’re gone
We’ll carry on

JUANITA:
We’ll soldier on

ALL:
And then we’ll all be free
Free to be anything we want to be

I wrote the song in this video for a musical called “SUCCESS!” (which I recently revised and which is currently looking for a Broadway home). It occurred to me that the observations in this song could be applied to a lot of the people and situations discussed here since the start of the elections.

Part of the lyrics are as follows:

Take an ordinary guy with a couple of dimples
You slap on some make-up to cover the pimples
A little bit of gloss and the kid could go far
And before you know it you’ve created a star
Cause it’s not what you sell
It’s the way that you sell it
It’s not the story
It’s the way that you tell it
If you’ve got no talent
That’s no cause for shame
‘Cause we can fix it all
In the marketing game….

With my marketing skills there is no chance of failure
Your name will be known from Maine to Australia
With my expertise you just simply can’t lose
I can help you be anything that you choose…

Now who does that remind you of? (Actually a number of people spring to mind).

The show is basically a pastiche/parody of classic movie musicals, including West Side Story, My Fair Lady, A Chrorus Line, The Producers, Singing In The Rain, Damn Yankee, Hello Dolly and others. If you want to hear some of the other songs and see them in the context of some of the movies they affectionately parody, you can find them on this Youtube playlist.

As I say in the video, it seems to me that many, if not most people tend to live their lives on the surface, hiding their true natures from the world so as to present a facade of normality, whatever the concept of normality happens to be at the time and in the circumstances of their lives.

The characters in Iris Murdoch’s novels, however, are different. The people in her books, drawn mainly from the British upper classes and aristocracy, tend to live their inner lives on the outside, revealing all kinds of behavior and inclinations that most people try to hide from the world.

Murdoch is considered by many to be one of the most intelligent as well as one of the most compelling novelists of the 20th Century. As a professor of philosophy at Oxford University, she was certainly one of the most educated writers. But there is no academic stuffiness in her novels.

I look on her and her novels as forces for the best kind of liberalism – representing a freedom of the spirit and a wide ranging and intelligent mind that is not afraid to confront a host of issues that most people might prefer to sweep under the carpet.

It is interesting to note that her final novel, which was written in the advancing stages of Alzheimers, and was very disjointed and confused, was praised by academics and literary critics as one of her best.

This recording was apparently unearthed in Australia. Written in 1915, with words by Thomas Hoier and music by Jimmie Morgan, it was recorded in 1929, the year that saw the start of the Great Depression.

It raises some interesting questions, particularly for someone like me who arrived on these shores rather late in life. One of the questions is: Just when is it okay for an immigrant to point out some of the things he or she might not like about this country – the great melting pot of immigrants who arrived here from all over the world?

And what is the difference between constructive criticism and destructive criticism?

I admire America more than any other country for its hard working citizens, its open-heartedness and the core values enshrined in the Constitution (something that Britain still does not have). I believe it remains the freest and most democratic country in the world.

But, as in any society, there are inevitably aspects that can be improved. And as someone who perhaps takes a slightly more objective view of the situation than someone who was born and raised in America, should I be pointing out the faults I see?

Am I biting the hand that feeds me if I say, for example, that in my view Congress is a very sick entity, led by inept people like Nancy Pelosi and corrupt people like Barney Frank?

It would be interesting to get some perspectives from NQ readers and writers on the whole subject of criticizing America, along with the views of different individuals about what’s right and what’s wrong in America right now (apart from the new government).

Just as the world can be divided into those who prefer Mozart to Bach and those who don’t, so the world can be divided into those who prefer F. Scott Fitzgerald over Ernest Hemingway and those who don’t.

In my series on the great composers, I found that some of those who preferred Bach over Mozart tended to be very rude and hostile in their dismissal of Mozart (and of my series). These people screamed that after all Bach had done for counterpoint and in his development of the fugue, anyone who thought Mozart was the greater composer was an imbecile. It reminded me of the abuse I attracted for daring to question Obama’s credentials for being President.

I love many pieces by Bach, and ranked him third in the list, but I always felt he lacked the originality, the poetic soul and the expressive range of Mozart, Haydn and Beethoven (or even Brahms, Prokofiev and many others). It’s the same thing I feel in comparing Hemingway with F. Scott Fitzgerald. Hemingway, in my opinion, lacked the poetic soul and the expressive range of a great writer like Fitzgerald.

I remember a literary critic I once worked with on a newspaper praising the “lean, sparse prose” of Hemingway. I asked him to give me an example, and he read me the following passage:

“He had a beer. It was good. He had another.”

I was totally unimpressed, but with Hemingway so highly recommended by this literary critic (who had a degree in English literature, which I didn’t), I felt I should give him a chance and tried to familiarize myself with his work. I read some of his most well known novels, but never experienced the same feeling of involvement, of going on a journey of discovery, that I did with Fitzgerald and other writers I came to love and admire.

I also found that those who preferred Hemingway tended to be hostile and insultingly dismissive of me for regarding Fitzgerald as more deserving of the title of “Great American Writer” than Hemingway, who in my opinion was nowhere near as brave or as eloquent as Fitzgerald in baring his soul and capturing both the darkness and the humor of life.

I see the same kind of attitudes behind this, and behind the reactions to my composer series, playing out in many areas of political and social life.

Naked hostility and insults are always a sign of people who are on flimsy ground and therefore feel the need to defend their elitist positions with sneering dismissal of those who don’t agree with them.

Now who does that remind you of?

In my new video I look at the way the Emperor’s Clothing Syndrome has dominated the arts and humanities over the past half century, with the help of academic practitioners looking for theories to build on, trying to carve out some academic territory for themselves and becoming the high priests or priestesses of their chosen domains. In music, it ended with meaningless and very irritating noise.

Now I make some sweeping generalizations in this video, and may be overstating my case for effect, but that does not necessarily dilute the reality of what I am saying.

As I said at the beginning of the top ten composer series, we saw the Emperor’s Clothing Syndrome ( a tendency to pretend to see or believe something out of fear of being thought of out of step with others, or out of fear that you might be attacked or ridiculed if you show your true feelings) running rampant during the elections.

“It’s the kind of pseudo-liberal academic milieu that produces people like the Beast with No Name, who is a Rhodes scholar and yet one of the most narrow-minded and bigoted people you can find. One of the problems is that lot of people who excel academically are people who are able to absorb and reflect back what their tutors want them to,” I wrote then.

“They are the kind of people who try to impose their narrow and very theoretical world view on others and become blinkered in their focus, doing their best to beat down anyone who doesn’t agree with them. (Now what does that remind you of?).”

Academia can provide you with the tools and techniques of art, but the academic process cannot make you an artist, or even an art critic.

From a broader perspective, Academia can provide you with a framework for examining things, but to get close to the true nature of anything you have to examine it through a number of different frameworks from a number of different angles. If you keep using the same theoretical frameworks, they become blinkers.

Many branches of academia, particularly in the field of arts and humanities, strive to create a single framework or model of things and academics fight to have their models adopted as the only ones that are valid. That is what gives them power.

Art and life in general cannot be confined by academic theories or opinion. The essence of art is that it must be transcendant, and to be transcendant it has to be organic. It has to be able to grow beyond prescribed boundaries to achieve new perspectives.

As in art, so in life.

That was in 1798 (more than two centuries ago), when he published the first edition of his economic treatise – An Essay on the Principle of Population – pointing out that population growth generally preceded expansion of the population’s resources, in particular the primary resource of food.

In all societies,” he wrote, “even those that are most vicious, the tendency to a virtuous attachment is so strong that there is a constant effort towards an increase of population. This constant effort as constantly tends to subject the lower classes of the society to distress and to prevent any great permanent amelioration of their condition.”

What Malthus didn’t take into account was the fact that his prophecies were self-defeating, because increasing awareness of the problem led to greater efforts to make sure his prophecies were not realized. This was accompanied by great technological progress, which increased exponentially after the industrial revolution in Britain.

Since Malthus there have been many subsequent cries of alarm from others about the earth’s resources being unable to support the population growth, but every time these cries of alarm turned out to be self-defeating prophecies.

We have now entered a period where the Malthus mindset has once again taken root about resources and the prospects for economic growth. While it will almost certainly prove yet again to be a self-defeating prophesy, this phenomenon is unfortunately often accompanied (at least in the short term) by self-fulfilling prophesies of economic doom and gloom.

If enough people think that the economy is going to get worse, it makes it certain that the economy WILL get worse, because the belief itself fans the flames of economic disintegration. People stop spending, so the economy slows down. Because the economy slows down, productivity drops. Thus pessimism becomes a self-fulfilling outlook.

The fact, however, is that technological progress continues to accelerate in leaps and bounds, and many of the problems in terms of availability of resources can be overcome through the application of new technology and new ideas to energy, food, infrastructure and economic activity itself.

There is every reason to be optimistic about the longer term future, provided people are able to see the possibilities ahead of them and not get stuck in the Malthusian mindset that now prevails.

(The accompanying video, below, has nothing to do with Malthus, but is a kind of tribute to industry.)

In my last video – the penultimate in the composer series – I look at some of the other composers who were considered for the list of the top ten composers who ever lived, but who didn’t make it – and why.

Among those featured are Mendelsohnn, Brahms, Aaron Copland, Sergei Prokofiev, Carl Orff and Stravinsky, with mentons of Tchaikovsky, Ravel, Puccini, Liszt and Chopin. Can you handle the truth?

There are excerpts from Copland’s Appalachian Spring, Brahms’ 3rd Symphony, Carmina Burana, Mendelsohnn’s Hebrides suite and Prokofiev’s Romeo and Juliet.

Next week I will be looking at the “Emperor’s Clothing Syndrome” in music, arts and society in general and hopefully puncturing some pretentious balloons.

Finally we come to the number one spot in the series on the greatest composers of all time. There will be seven additional videos on this composer presented on my Youtube channel over the next two weeks – six devoted to his “Greatest Hits” and one to his Requiem.

Next week I will be looking at some other composers who were considered for the top ten, but didn’t quite make it. Finally, there will be a video that looks at the Emperor’s Clothing Syndrome in music, the arts and society in general.

As many people guessed, the composer at number 2 in the list of the greatest composers of all time is Ludwig von Beethoven.

The composer at number one will be revealed next Friday, but I am sure that many will already have guessed who that is.

A two-DVD set of the complete series, in wide screen high definition and with additional material, is now available from my website.

After that there will be a video on some of the composers who were considered for the Top Ten but didn’t quite make it.

Yes, it’s the news about who is at number three in the list of the Top Ten Composers of All Time.

I have had to ward off threats to my personal health to bring you this dispatch from the cultural front.

After this, there is only one more composer to go before we get to number one. Can you cope with the suspense?