portmuthian rhapsody

 

Writing about music is as futile as dancing about architecture, according to Frank Zappa and many others. Yet I often try, looking for quasi-synaesthetic meaning. After all, using music to portray something other than itself has long been a feature of “programme music” from Vivaldi's "seasons", through Beethoven's "pastoral" and of course Mendelssohn. A few years ago, a visit to Fingal’s Cave was accompanied by the Hebrides Overture played repeatedly on the tannoys of trip boats queuing and bobbing on the swell, cacophonously out of sync with each other. The basalt columns, like giant organ pipes, hoved into view simultaneously with the music. 

Four hundred miles from Hebridean Staffa to the South of Hampshire, a much younger music, but as old as I can remember, accompanied a sequence of moving monochrome images. Only snippets are available, but I still remember the order of appearance. Bournemouth Pier is followed by Corfe Castle; a 1950s Ford Anglia or similar passing by. Incongruous to today’s sensibilities, Fawley Oil Refinery (!) cedes to the waving tails of New Forest ponies. A liner moored at Southampton Docks. A flock of gulls, their wings flapping quickly, as if anxiously fleeing we know not what.  Moving eastwards, the film shows the White Cliffs of Dover, Brighton Dome, Kentish oasthouses, a rustic gate overlooking a Wealden fieldscape and Canterbury Cathedral. The view changes quickly, almost anticipating today’s music videos. The viewer’s short attention span struggles unless the vista changes every few seconds. 

The scenes are well represented in the music itself. A brass fanfare in a stately 12/8 march is accompanied by trilling woodwinds evoking seabirds; a cymbal the crashing of waves. A second “romantic” theme on violins, then piano, suggests a Rachmaninoff rhapsody.  This tails off wistfully before plaintive horns announce a repeat. An interlude on strings, harp and horn changes key. An achingly beautiful cor anglais solo suggests the rustic idyll of inland farmland. A single triangle chime signals a complete change. Clarinet and snare drum introduce a sailors’ hornpipe which increases in jazziness as various sections of the orchestra join in turn with increasing chromatic agitation. It reminds me of those so-called “light music classics” common in newsreels and “Ealing Comedies”. Before being overcome with frenzy, we suddenly return to a reprise of the initial fanfare in the finale. But what was it?

Southern Rhapsody was composed by Richard Addinsell for the daily “start-up sequence” of Southern Television. Between 1958 and 1981, the station served audiences in Dorset, Hampshire, Wiltshire, Sussex and Kent. The above ocean liner seems to have been RMS Caronia, used as an ad-hoc studio by the company. Before the era of continuous multi-channel programmes, the only other station was the BBC. In contrast to today, the epitome of “less is more”. It was the music that accompanied much of my life in Portsmouth and the Isle of Wight, until I moved away four years after the TV franchise changed. 

Sadly this post may be misnamed. Portsmouth, despite being central to the area, does not feature anywhere in the film. Maybe it's due in part to its long rivalry with Southampton, which was where the studios were. “The station that serves the South” was the on-screen slogan. It served me well, and does so today as I actively listen to the rhapsody again. And again, to write this. 

LINKS

Dancing About Architecture scenes fro - Royal Literary

FundSouthern Rhapsody with Southern Television's openingm 1958Southern Independent Television - The Caretakers' Forum

Richard Addinsell - Wikipedia

RMS Caronia (1947) - Wikipedia

Southern Television - Wikipedia