Centenaries are sizeable business in 2012. It just so happens that the Olympics are coming to the United Kingdom for the third time in a year which finds us thinking very hard if being British still means what it did 100 years. Then, two momentous calamities singed themselves into the national psyche: the Titanic sank, and Captain Scott and his four companions failed to return from the South Pole.
Adam Sweeting has already reported on the deluge of Titanica [3] fanning across the television schedules from National Geographic docs to Drownton [4]. The Scott industry is spreading itself more widely across the year. As well as three exhibitions – at the Natural History Museum [5], the Queen’s Gallery [6] and the National Museum of Wales [7] – you can also enjoy a musical flavour of what it was like to be at the bottom of the world with the Terra Nova expedition by investing in a new double-disc CD. On it is a selection of scratchy recordings Scott and co took south with them to remind them of home in the long polar night. In fact they had a library of hundreds of tunes to turn to, so the choice can do no more than suggest the range of musical tastes catered for, from Enrico Caruso to Nellie Melba, from Harry Lauder to Weber’s Concertino for clarinet. Wagner's "Ride of the Valkyries" was on hand to gird the loins as the men prepared to strap themselves into man-hauling harnesses. For many of the jauntier tunes some of the chaps will have dressed up in drag and danced along.
The records were donated to the expedition by The Gramophone Company (nowadays known as EMI), along with two splendid old gramophones, one of which is on display at the Natural History Museum’s current exhibition. The main track listing concludes with “God Save the King”. An additional track features Ernest Shackleton talking about his own unsuccessful attempt on the Pole three years earlier. There is a piquant irony to its inclusion. Scott and Shackleton had history, and were not friends, although that did not stop Scott using Shackleton’s expedition journal as a useful pathfinder. But that's another story. The full track listing of Scott’s Music Box is as follows.
CD 1:
CD 2
BONUS TRACKS
Links
[1] https://theartsdesk.com/users/jasper-rees
[2] https://www.addtoany.com/share_save
[3] http://www.theartsdesk.com/tv/titanic-round
[4] http://www.theartsdesk.com/tv/titanic-itv1
[5] http://www.theartsdesk.com/visual-arts/scott%E2%80%99s-last-expedition-natural-history-museum
[6] http://www.theartsdesk.com/visual-arts/heart-great-alone-scott-shackleton-and-antarctic-photography-queens-gallery
[7] http://www.theartsdesk.com/visual-arts/captain-scott-south-science-national-museum-wales
[8] http://www.amazon.co.uk/Scotts-Music-Box-Various-Artists/dp/B007J7PKOS
[9] https://theartsdesk.com/node/23970/view
[10] https://theartsdesk.com/node/17222/view
[11] https://theartsdesk.com/node/28949/view
[12] https://theartsdesk.com/node/3528/view
[13] https://theartsdesk.com/node/2989/view
[14] https://theartsdesk.com/classical-music
[15] https://theartsdesk.com/topics/featured-buzz
[16] https://theartsdesk.com/topics/buzz