{"id":11183,"date":"2011-09-16T11:10:42","date_gmt":"2011-09-16T15:10:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/?p=11183"},"modified":"2011-09-16T11:10:42","modified_gmt":"2011-09-16T15:10:42","slug":"last-night-of-the-proms","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/2011\/09\/16\/last-night-of-the-proms\/","title":{"rendered":"Last Night of the Proms"},"content":{"rendered":"

Patrick West<\/a> talks about the pro- and anti-Prom factions in British life:<\/p>\n

\n

When it comes to international politics, it is subconsciously understood that music can be used as a means of celebrating nationalist sentiment, or for trying to overcome it. While national anthems and folk music are employed to foment patriotism, songs such as the \u2018Internationale\u2019 and \u2018The Red Flag\u2019 represent an effort to transcend it. It\u2019s a neat dichotomy — and it is also wrong, as last Saturday\u2019s Last Night at the Proms demonstrated.<\/p>\n

For those not in the know, the concert, held at London\u2019s Royal Albert Hall, is the culmination of an annual eight-week festival of orchestral classical music, and the Last Night is its rapturous crescendo, traditionally featuring tunes that celebrate Britain\/England — Edward Elgar\u2019s \u2018Pomp and Circumstance March No.1\u2019 (which includes \u2018Land of Hope and Glory\u2019), Thomas Arne\u2019s \u2018Rule, Britannia!\u2019, Hubert Parry\u2019s \u2018Jerusalem\u2019 and the national anthem itself, \u2018God Save The Queen\u2019. The only place you will see Union flags on show in such vast numbers, and with such unashamed vainglory, will be on Belfast\u2019s Shankhill Road or at a British National Party rally.<\/p>\n

And there lies the problem for some on the liberal-left, who have traditionally sneered at this event. Many feel uneasy seeing the Union flag displayed so copiously in this musical, ersatz political rally, the ostensible message of which is that Britain is the best country in the world and all other countries are rubbish. Writing in the Guardian<\/em> this week, Guy Dammann noted that the Last Night of the Proms provided \u2018the opportunity to celebrate great little Britishness with no apparent irony\u2019, as if to celebrate it with sincerity was a baffling and risible idea. The fact that the audience seems composed mostly of inebriated toffs compounds a sense of odium among the liberal-left.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Patrick West talks about the pro- and anti-Prom factions in British life: When it comes to international politics, it is subconsciously understood that music can be used as a means of celebrating nationalist sentiment, or for trying to overcome it. While national anthems and folk music are employed to foment patriotism, songs such as the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,7,28],"tags":[200],"class_list":["post-11183","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-britain","category-history","category-media","tag-music"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2hpV6-2Un","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11183","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=11183"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11183\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":11184,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/11183\/revisions\/11184"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=11183"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=11183"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quotulatiousness.ca\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=11183"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}