No medical emergency fortunately. Paul and I made supper for the two oboists who were very easy to talk to. One has a bf who is a jazz drummer.

We sat at the back of the church for the concert but at least the sound balance was OK. The first half was Mozart's Coronation Mass with a couple of extra Moz interjections. It sounded fine to me.

Purcell's King Arthur (extracts) was the main feature and what I had come to hear. It has one greatest hit - Fairest Isle - plus another section which sounds as if it was plundered by M Nyman for the music to the Draughtsman's Contract. It is not King Arthur as we generally know him. There are Arthur and Merlin fighting the invading pagan Saxons and Arthur's queen Emmeline is captured by them. There are various nymphs and shepherds plus some jolly yokels - also a Jack Frost character. I most liked the soprano of the 4 soloists.

Today we played with the new Kindle Touch which rather impressed me. Amazon seem to have developed a format for the books which is highly compressed. All those free and cheap books are very appealing. Eating up the remains of yesterday's meal which is still tastey. Paul has arrived on the banks of the Seine.

Yesterday I finished Wagner and the Erotic which suddenly placed all its points into a coherent argument at the end. Wagner attempts to portray the less agreeable features of the erotic but his goal as displayed in Parsifal is to show that there is an emotional life beyond sensuality. This is not at all like Debussy as far as my recent investigations have shown. Debussy certainly borrows musical devices from Parsifal but his goal in Jeux - perhaps the most 'advanced' piece that he composed - is to reduce the erotic to the momentary and transitory sensation. This is the reall message that Mallarme put into the faun poem.