‘They are bluffing, and you must learn to bluff too’

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

In the documentary, Tell Me the Truth About Love, W.H. Auden’s friend Thekla Clark recounts the story of one of Auden’s lovers complaining to him that he thought Auden would be more “romantic,” being a poet, after all. “But you aren’t romantic,” Clark quotes the lover telling the Auden. “You aren’t romantic at all.”

“If you want romance,” Clark quotes Auden replying, “screw a journalist.” (Except the word he used was not “screw.”)

Auden was not one to ruin a good line—or a good night—by spending it an explanation of the difference between the romantic and the sentimental.
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Today in History: September 14

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Charles Jennens delivered the script for a new work to his friend, George Frideric Handel, in July 1741. Handel started composing music for it on August 22 that year, which is known because Handel kept thorough records. Handel always worked quickly, and his composition of the music for the oratorio, which he titled Messiah, only took him a total of 24 days. He finished composing on September 12 and then, he noted, he cleaned it up and finished it 275 years ago today, September 14, 1741.

The original manuscript, with Handel’s scratch-outs and corrections and with empty bars that offer no musical notes at all, as if Handel had briefly entertained thoughts of adding music if he could, sits in the British Library. That great institution has made the manuscript available for virtual perusal, which I recommend visiting. One can see a page on which Handel must have tipped over his ink bottle and other pages in which he draws the staves to the end of the page so he can complete his musical thought on the same page.

The “Hallelujah Chorus” sung by the Royal Choral Society (after the jump):
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A Mulligan in Time: A Radical Leap

Posted on by Mark Aldrich

Nothing is perfect, except for the perfect things. It does not take a precise 24 hours and zero minutes and zero seconds for the earth to complete one spin on its axis; it takes slightly longer, but not so much longer that you could even call it a “tick.”

The earth’s rotation each day is only a tiny fraction of a millisecond slower than what we otherwise call a day, but these partial seconds can eventually add up. Twenty-six times since 1972, the international bureau of standards that handles time issues has added a “leap second” to all of our lives. The last year with a leap second was 2015, so if that year felt longer for you, there is a reason: It was. By one second. Clocks everywhere could have read “11:59:60” at midnight the night of the leap second, but they did not because no one makes clocks that do that.

The next leap second will delay the arrival of 2017 immediately before midnight on December 31.
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