Forty

No, my heading doesn't come because I'm celebrating reaching two score years, sadly. Read my profile and you'll soon be disavailed of that notion. Nor is it the number of this post- apparently, I've now committed 132 collections of my verbal meanderings to cyberspace. Quite prolific I suppose, but nothing like the output of some of the world's most famous musicians and writers. It's over two centuries since his death, but there can scarcely be a country where this musical superman's works are not being played somewhere right now. If my words could stand the test of time the way his symphonies, operas and sacred musical compositions have,I'd be a happy bunny indeed.
Friday was Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart's 250th birthday, but in Salzburg the party's only just begun. Were he not buried in a pauper's grave, he'd be remarkably well preserved for his age. But his music, if not his body, certainly is. The attention and the adulation that will be showered on Austria's most famous musical son this next year are more than justified by the quite extra-ordinary range of his music, made even the more magnificent by the prodigious age at which he started composing and playing it.

There was, of course, much media coverage of the anniversary yesterday, and BBC Four TV whiled away the night hours with a five hour concert hosted by the EBU (European Broadcasting Union) featuring a wide selection of the great man's output. Among the more interesting Mozart matters though was the little known connection between WAM and my late musical mother's birthplace of Kent. Mozart passed through here in his young life and played concerts in the Garden of England in between his appearances before royalty and an adoring public in London. Meanwhile, yesterday in a Canterbury primary school, children as young as six were being introduced to the finer nuances of Mozart's symphonies, much to their enjoyment.

For many of these children, the head said, it was their first experience of live classical music. But I bet it wasn't their introduction to Mozart; how many of them, for instance, had been singing "Twinkle, twinkle, little star" since they were tots, unaware it was composed by the Austrian wunderkind? I was a little bit older than them, however, when I first started to enjoy the music of Mozart, thanks to a one-hit wonder called Waldo De Los Rios. His interpretation of "Mozart Forty" had the rare distinction for a classical composition of reaching the top ten, sometime in the seventies I think.

Unless you're a (Nigel) Kennedy or a Mylene Klass- just awarded the prestigious Sunday morning slot on Classic FM recently vacated by one-time boy treble Aled Jones who's defected to Radio Two- it's likely that the musical preferences of most kids soon turn to boy bands or girl groups, rebellious rock and loud lyrics. I then must have seemed something of a weird kid when the kind of music that soothed this Savage breast through my teen years was generally the light music that was filling most of the airtime on BBC Radio 2 , and still does if only on a Sunday evening when the grey zone takes over with music to soothe the more mature audience over their cocoa and biscuits. Melodies for You, Your Hundred Best Tunes and the seemingly ageless David Jacobs are the kind of programmes I mean. As long as they continue to be there, like a warm bath on the sabbath evening before school the next day, there's hope for civilized life.

Music unites like few other emotionally-led factors can, which is why two centuries after Mozart's birth, his life and his story is still Salzburg's biggest, albeit most expensive, tourist asset. I've never visited Austria, but maybe this might be the year to do it. From Mozart to Von Trapp, the Eastern Kingdom has a musical legacy which will last forever and to share in it is a pleasure open to all through the simple joys of making music together.

But music can also be divisive of course, at least of the generations. Was it fear that my parents might not approve which meant I was 25 before I really got into listening to rock music seriously? Living at home til I was 28 certainly made me more wary of discovering and enjoying my own tastes than I can now, but yesterday I made a point of having a bit of a music fest with my trusty turntable while I was at my flat in Sussex. Of course I'd had plenty of exposure to the more populist stuff through my radio listening hobby, and the assistance of the likes of Mike Read and Steve Wright on the kitchen radio, making my pot-washing labours a little more endurable while I worked in catering for seven years. Boy George I guess is the sound I most remember from that era, and a beautiful but rather dippy girl colleague who was forever singing Karma Chamelon. Now whatever happened to Gary Davies, another star DJ of that era,I wonder?

Interestingly, it was at the same time that I became a Christian I first got into some of the names my contemporaries had been enjoying among their chums for nearly a decade. Slightly ironic, that, but that period of my life, like now, seemed to release in me an ability to be myself and enjoy life to the full too - in music and in companionship. Had I been a more sociable schoolboy, I expect I would have done so much earlier while at school too, though I remember well the oft-repeated sound of Peter Frampton and Genesis on the sixth form record player.

Then, circa 1985, my mate Andrew introduced me to a certain Irish group called U2 and said one reason he liked them were that they were Christians. As he was working in the radio industry at the time, Andrew had a unique opportunity to listen to all the best sounds, as well as some of the worst- the chuck outs from some of that period still populate my record and CD library! But it's funny how these musical memories can stick so much and you get a sudden urge to listen to or sing them again; on Thursday morning, in the shower, another "Forty" came to mind, and I desperately wanted to sing and hear it again! U2's unique treatment of one of the Psalms is brilliant. It kind of sums up in minim, quaver and semi-breve what I was doing while I was only semi-breathing spiritually until a few weeks ago, how I quavered or maybe quivered at who I thought I was and being too minimalist in my understanding of the riches of God's love for me, and for you, too.

I couldn't get my fix of U2 in Middlesex, as most of my record collection is still in my other place, so I was glad yesterday to make a point of listening to it when I was in Sussex. But still no Forty. Where is it- I want it! Never mind, the day was full of musical surprises and delights, as I listened again to the first LP I was ever given, on my sixteenth birthday- more of that light music stuff but especially the original piece with its funky phasing used at closedown and start-up by Radio One- called, you've guessed it, Theme One. Of course, there had to be some Mozart yeterday too, and when I put on a U2 EP of The Unforgettable Fire- betraying its age by the pre-barcode Boots price sticker - I got my first hearing for a while of Bass Trap, a wonderful instrumental by Bono and Co. When it comes to U2 favourites though, can I name one? Difficult. Close contest between New Year's Day, Forty and the one which I think best describes my own experience: I Still Haven't Found What I'm Looking For.
Some now question the present Christian credentials of U2, especially since Bono became world superstar and joint expressor supreme with Sir Bob Geldof of the plight of the poor of the world. He's been on the campaigning trail again this week, in pursuit of the great and the good at Davos, Switzerland at the World Economic Forum- not so very far from Salzburg, Austria where some rich folk will let go of their Euros for the rest of the year, unheeding of the irony that it takes music to fight poverty, yet this greatest of classical geniuses himself died penniless. Maybe his own requiems can serve as his eulogy,but as long as poverty and human depravity remain, as remembered on Holocaust Memorial Day which also fell on Mozart's birthday, the world will need the solemn sounds of the Hebrew prayer for the
dead too in its songs to counteract the joyful exclamations of Mozart at his most lyrical and his operas at their most comically absurd, like life itself. Until the Lord comes again, we will need to wait patiently for him, when we can sing a new song. He inclines to us, and hears our cries, in music whether of exaltation or mourning. And he sets our feet on a rock every bit as permanent as a Salzburg, a mountain of salt.

.This posting's dedication is for my mate Brian Draper, U2 fan par excellence and regular contributor to their official sites. He's currently doing the Saturday Thought for the Day on Radio 4 -one more to go in the current series- and is imminently approaching his 37th birthday. Ah, I remember that- alright for some for whom forty has yet to come! Brian's new book Searching 4 Faith is a recommended read if you're asking questions about Christianity- but meanwhile, if you want to share any thoughts or indeed have a burning question you want to express, hit that comments button right now!