I’m currently researching the history of the trombone for an article I’m writing for a client. Whilst working through the famous composers who incorporated the instrument into their operas and symphonies, I came across Giacomo Puccini’s page on wikipedia. Puccini happens to be my favourite composer - La Boehme and Madame Butterfly are brilliant - and ‘Nessun Dorma’ is one of my favourite pieces of music. I also love that Mandy Moore’s character in ‘Chasing Liberty’ refers to herself as a “Puccini groupie”, but that’s beside the point. What I found absolutely fantastic was the date of Puccini’s birth - the 22nd of December (1858). I was born 126 years later, on the 22nd of December, on what was a hot summer’s day in South Australia, the proverbial world away from Puccini’s winter birth in Italy. There’s some weird sort of symmetry in the fact that I enjoy the music of someone who shares my birthday, though our dates of birth are separated by more than a century and several continents.

Goldfrapp - ‘Seventh Tree‘

Release date: 25/02/2008

I am so excited for this release, you have no idea.  If the album is anything like the first single ‘A&E’, it sounds as if Goldfrapp have returned to their more downbeat routes which can never be a bad thing.  Mind you, nothing Goldfrapp does is ever a bad thing, so who knows.

In somewhat related news, Roisin Murphy has been confirmed in the second line-up announcement for V-Festival Australia, which I haven’t got tickets for but my sister does.  This may be a good time to agree to let her wear the new dress I bought last week…

Every now and then something (a scent, a sound, a phrase in a book) will remind me of a line or phrase from a nursery rhyme.  Considering we spend the first few years of our lives having nursery rhymes recited to us on a daily basis it shouldn’t be a surprise that every now and then we regress as adults into humming ‘Sing a Song of Sixpence’ or ‘Humpty Dumpty’.  What we cannot appreciate when we are children but should find interesting as adults is that many of the nursery rhymes and songs we sing as youngsters are actually cultural remnants from times past - not meaningless little ditties but political and historical statements of life and death.

Take our good friend the Grand Old Duke of York (who had ten thousand men).  This rhyme is said to be about the invasion of Flanders by the second son of King George III: Prince Frederick, Duke of York and Albany.  Others believe that the song has been used on several occasions throughout the centuries when a Duke of York (or other related aristocrat) has ordered or led a nonsensical move in battle - Richard, Duke of York’s death during the Battle of Wakefield in 1460 is such an example.  Another English nursery rhyme, ‘Mary, Mary, Quite Contrary’, has had similar uses in British history, being used to refer to both Mary, Queen of Scots’ reign and Mary I of England’s reign.

‘Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush’ is another fine example of an innocent children’s rhyme having more sinister beginnings.  It is said that the song originated at H.M.P. Wakefield, where female prisoners danced around a mulberry bush singing songs to entertain their children.  ‘London Bridge is Falling Down’ has similarly dark origins - some scholars believe the phrase: ‘London Bridge is falling down my fair lady’ refers to the practice of burying live virgins in the foundations of bridges as a means of imbuing magic into the structure to prevent collapse.  ‘Rain, Rain, Go Away, Come Again Another Day’, is said to relate to the failure of the Spanish Armada to defeat English fleets due to bad weather, just as ‘Ring a Ring of Rosies’ is said to be a reference to the catastrophic death toll of the Bubonic Plague.  ‘Rock-a-bye Baby’, one of my favourites as a child, is actually a song that originated in North America during the region’s colonial period and is said to be a reference to the practice of Native-American women tying their babies up in tree branches to keep them safe whilst working, hunting and gathering.  ‘Three Blind Mice’ is said to be a record of Mary I of England’s ordered execution of three Protestant bishops during her attempt to reverse the Reformation in England.

Most interesting - and probably the most likely to be correct in my opinion - is the origins of the rhyme ‘Jack and Jill’.  It is said that the song was composed about King Charles I’s attempt to change the taxes on liquid measures.  ‘Jack’ was slang for a half-pint measure, whilst Jill (or ‘gill’) was a quarter-pint.  You’ll remember that the rhyme goes: ‘Jack and Jill went up the hill to fetch a pail of water, Jack fell down and broke his crown and Jill came tumbling after’.  Some historians believe that the phrase ‘Jack fell down and broke his crown’ refers to the changes in taxation and pricing to the half-pint (the half-pint was measured on glasses with a printed crown, hence the reference to a broken crown).  The phrase ‘Jill came tumbling after’ refers to the subsequent change in price and taxation of the quarter-pint.

You have to wonder, with such famous precedents, what songs of today will become nursery rhymes in the centuries to come?  John Lennon’s ‘Imagine’?  The Beatles’ ‘Hey Jude’?  Wham!’s ‘Wake Me Up Before You Go-Go’?