{"id":1463,"date":"2007-01-18T08:38:35","date_gmt":"2007-01-18T08:38:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/18\/if-youre-in-london-tonight-and-at-a-loose-end\/"},"modified":"2008-02-12T15:28:39","modified_gmt":"2008-02-12T15:28:39","slug":"if-youre-in-london-tonight-and-at-a-loose-end","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/if-youre-in-london-tonight-and-at-a-loose-end\/","title":{"rendered":"If you&#8217;re in London tonight and at a loose end"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Then hie thee to the Plantaganet gothic splendour of <a href=\"http:\/\/www.southwark.anglican.org\/cathedral\/\">Southwark Cathedral<\/a> (<a href=\"http:\/\/maps.google.co.uk\/maps?f=q&#038;hl=en&#038;q=southwark+cathedral&#038;sll=53.098145,-2.443696&#038;sspn=8.318227,20.566406&#038;ie=UTF8&#038;z=19&#038;ll=51.50627,-0.089462&#038;spn=0.001052,0.002511&#038;t=h&#038;om=1&#038;iwloc=A\">by London Bridge<\/a>), for 8pm.<\/p>\n<p>Last night I caught a really rather excellent performance of the <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ahorie.net\/on_Daniel.htm\">Ludus Danielis<\/a>, a sung play (being pitched as a sort of proto-opera) dating from around 1230 with some of the finest early music you&#8217;re likely to find. I know this runs the risk of sounding insanely pretentious, but there&#8217;s something about the play of choral latin off gothic stone pillars, and the mingling of simple melodies from instruments so old you won&#8217;t even know their names (precursors to the violin, lute and bagpipe among them) that makes for one of those rare experiences where you come out of a performance and simply can&#8217;t stop smiling.<\/p>\n<p>Nonetheless, yesterday and today are the only two performances at Southwark (although I believe they may be taking it to Kings, Cambridge later in the month), and last night there was a depressing number of empty seats. Tickets range from \u00c2\u00a310 to \u00c2\u00a330, can be bought <a href=\"http:\/\/www.barbican.org.uk\/eticketing\/event-detail.asp?ID=5251\">via the Barbican<\/a> or on the door. I&#8217;m no music critic, so won&#8217;t even attempt to give the thing a full review, but it really was <a href=\"http:\/\/www.ahorie.net\/on_Daniel.htm\">superb<\/a>.<\/p>\n<p>(Back to politics in a bit, no doubt&#8230;)<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Then hie thee to the Plantaganet gothic splendour of Southwark Cathedral (by London Bridge), for 8pm. Last night I caught a really rather excellent performance of the Ludus Danielis, a sung play (being pitched as a sort of proto-opera) dating &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/2007\/01\/if-youre-in-london-tonight-and-at-a-loose-end\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[29],"tags":[191],"class_list":["post-1463","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-nosemonkey-news","tag-culture"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1463"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1463\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1463"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1463"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jcm.org.uk\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1463"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}