Classical music: Force for good or indication of evil?
My first, brief, post in this blog will serve primarily to link to two splendid articles that deserve a wider audience. In the first, Theodore Gioia discusses the association between classical music and villainy in film and television:
The second article, part of the 'Classical Musings' blog, offers a happy counterpoint; revolving around the famous fictional detective Inspector Morse:
The cultured police detective is of course a trope (both in literature and TV) in and of itself. My favourite is the least plausible of them all, P.D. James' heroic Commander Adam Dalgleish of the Metropolitan Police Force, who publishes widely-admired poetry in between solving subtly difficult murders. More a Platonic ideal of an intellectual investigating officer than a believable human being, James' hero is saved from risibility by her immaculate prose and forensic dissection of the psyches of his investigative subjects. It is notable that, despite good actors playing the role, Dalgleish never translated well to television, in stark contrast to Colin Dexter's less well-written but infinitely more human Morse. That grumpy, stingy, borderline alcoholic was full of human frailty but had not lost his ability to appreciate (and elucidate upon) beauty.
Classical music lovers have cause to be grateful to Dexter and his TV colleagues.
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