With the shite weather I was having a wee look at what’s on at the flicks and saw some screenings of operas etc alongside the movies. Which got me to thinking - should I try summat like that? To which the answer was no, I shouldn’t, I’d be bored out of my noggin.
That further caused me to conclude that I am completely not into so called high culture.
Nae Opera (Nessun dorma is barry obvs)
Nae theatre
Nae classical concerts (though I like classical as background music)
Nae galleries
Museums only for practical stuff like engineering, and dinosaurs
Nae poetry
Some classic literature but I find most of it boring pish, even the stuff I think is valuable for what it has to say
Nae ballet - the single worst thing I’ve ever been to was when a gf dragged me to it as a lad. After failing in my argument to watch it on screens in the bar, I remember being crushed when I realised ‘the end’ was in fact an intermission. Excruciating.
I’m not sure what else falls into the bracket but I expect I’m not an aficionado.
Am I a philistine or a typical c21 Scottish bloke? Or c) all of the above.
And do any of you put me to shame?
Think you are being a bit self-deprecating with the philistine thing. I don't really go for the High Culture/Low Culture distinction but for what it's worth I'll give my two bob's worth.
I like some Opera and have several recordings but have never been to one. I prefer compilations of operatic arias rather than the whole thing; skip the boring recitativo bits in between. I like Mozart operas for the great tunes as well as Verdi and Puccini. I got into a lot of these through their use in films and TV. A few years ago I got into Schubert Lieder; songs with only piano accompaniment after seeing In Bruge with Der Leiermann from the Winterreise song cycle:
Likewise 18th century Italian songs after seeing an episode of the Sopranos where Tony's wife, Carmela, is looking at a painting in an art gallery accompanied by Vivaldi's Sposa son disprezzata sung by Cecilia Bartoli.
Cecilia Bartoli, Sposa son disprezzata
The human voice is really amazing.
Theatre can be great. I like the fact that the actors are live with no safety net. Saw a great version of Glengarry Glenross several years ago at the Lyceum. Really visceral.
Galleries can be great too. I remember visiting the Prado in Madrid in 2002 on a stag do, hungover to fuck. The Goya stuff was amazing. There is a room with Hieronymous Bosch's Garden of Earthly Delights at one end and Breughel's The Triumph of Death at the other. My Weedgie pal squints at the latter and says "do you think this cvnt ate some mouldy breid?"
Poetry I like. You just need to get used to its conventions. T.S. Eliot, Philip Larkin, Dylan Thomas and William Blake are among my favourites. Just bought a copy of A Shropshire Lad by A.E. Housman specifically for this:
"Into my heart an air that kills From yon far country blows: What are those blue remembered hills, What spires, what farms are those? That is the land of lost content, I see it shining plain, The happy highways where I went And cannot come again."
Classical literature I love. Dickens is great. Particularly Great Expectations and Bleak House. Given your interest in the French Revolution you should try A Tale of Two Cities; one of the few books where you probably already know both the opening and closing lines.
Russian literature I think you know. War and Peace is massively overrated. Anna Karenina is far better. His shorter works like The Cossacks and The Death of Ivan Illyich are a good introduction. Try also Dostoyevsky's Notes from Underground or The Gambler.
Orlando Figes' Natasha's Dance is a great overview of Russian literature and culture.
Some of the peaks of European literature I read because they were there and I wanted to see if I could. Things like Thomas Mann's The Magic Mountain was a real effort but it was worth it. A lot of great works of fiction require you to put a bit of work in but ultimately repay the effort. Having said that, I've never got beyond the first volume of Proust or attempted Ulysses.
Totally agree with Aggie about Conrad.
Classical music is awesome and there is so much of it you're bound to find something for you. One of my big favourites is Bach. I was always shite at maths but his music is an application of mathematics that I can understand. Try his keyboard works played by Glenn Gould, especially The Goldberg Variations and The Well-Tempered Clavier.
I also love choral music, so his St Matthew Passion and B Minor Mass are right up my street.
See also Mozart's Requiem. In fact, fuck it, pretty much anything by Mozart. Someone once said that the difference between Beethoven and Mozart is that Beethoven's music is Beethoven talking to God, while Mozart's music is God talking to Mozart. Listen to his piano concerto no.21 to see how true that is.
Sorry for the long post but an EGB query deserves an EGB reply.
I also enjoy classical and folk music.