Om Sommeren

Between the release of 'Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince', the Vancouver Folk Festival and the belated (albeit just in time for folkfest) arrival of summer here in Vancouver, there hasn't been much time for blogging the last few days.

As for folk fest, it was as good as always; my favourite act was the Danish duo of Haugaard & Høirup, whose album 'Om Sommeren' (In Summer) gives this post its title. Haugaard plays violin and Høirup plays guitar and they take their instruments pretty seriously. According to the liner notes, Haugaard's violin was made in Mittenwald in (roughly) 1760 while Høirup 'plays two Canadian guitars made by Jean Lariveé, Victoria B.C. and William (Grith) Laskin in Toronto'.

Something in my memory tugged at me with this last line and, sure enough, both Lariveé and Laskin were mentioned in a recent Globe article, 'Crafting Sound', the third in a series of ten articles celebrating Canada's most distinctive achievements. Says the Globe,

"Mr. Laskin is a Toronto luthier known internationally for his fine instruments and unique pictorial inlays. ... "Mr. Laskin's inlay art, which a California publisher celebrated in the lavish book A Guitarmaker's Canvas: the Inlay Art of William Laskin, is a visible symbol of Canada's distinctive place in the world of acoustic guitar-making. Several makers of Mr. Laskin's generation -- he's now 51 -- are creating instruments known around the world for their warm, balanced sound and impeccable craftsmanship.

"All patriotism aside, Canadian guitar builders are comparable to any I've ever seen," said David Wren, co-owner of The Twelfth Fret, a Toronto guitar boutique. "There's no doubt they're up there with the best."

Before devoting his energies full-time to his shop, Mr. Wren built guitars for the likes of Joan Baez, Jackson Browne and Roger Whittaker.

Mr. Laskin's clients have included Stan Rogers, Ottmar Liebert, Jesse Cook and kd lang."

and further down after mentioning a couple of other 'luthiers' (guitar-makers),

"All three luthiers studied with Jean-Claude Larriveé, a former Montreal auto mechanic who helped launch a distinctly Canadian approach to the craft in the late sixties.

At a time when most American makers felt obliged to follow the lead of C. F. Martin & Company, the dominant manufacturer of flat-top steel-string instruments, Mr. Larriveé decided to go his own way, and to share ideas with anyone who felt similarly inclined.

Mr. Larriveé was mainly interested in classical guitar, but could see that the market was headed in a different direction.

So, he adapted a classical model of construction to the needs of folk and pop guitarists, hoping to achieve a more integrated sound than was typical of the square-shouldered "dreadnought" guitars many players were using."

When I first read the column, I kind of skimmed it, said 'huh' and moved on, but obviously it stuck with me, and it seems like maybe the Globe had a point. Anyway, if you like Danish folk music, or really if you just like the combination of violin and guitar, I recommend Haugaard & Høirup.

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It may not be fashionable to admit it, what with the series having become incomparably popular (as books go), but I've been a pretty big Harry Potter fan for many years now. I just finished reading the recently released (in case you hadn't heard) 'Half-Blood Prince'. Haven't had much time to digest it yet, but while I'd say it's unlikely to knock off 'Chamber of Secrets' or 'Prisoner of Azkaban' as my favourites in the series, it's still a very engrossing read.

One of the things I've always liked about the Harry Potter series is that it combines two of my favourite childhood genres, the fantasy series and the boarding school series. It's an interesting combination since fantasy series typically tend to have an almost travelogue-esque component, with a map inside the front cover and battles replacing museum tours as the hero(es) proceed to visit pretty much every place marked on that map. Whether it be Prydain, Middle Earth, Narnia, Fionavar, the worlds of the Belgariad or the Wheel of Time, or what have you, the basic pattern remains the same.

Meanwhile, the boarding school novel relies on the establishment of a single beloved place such as say Mallory Towers or MacDonald Hall. The first book introduces the main elements and rituals of the place and subsequent books in the series are like subsequent verses in a song, different words set to the same music and meter.

So bringing the two genres together must have posed a bit of a challenge for J.K. Rowling - getting a little tougher with each book, when each of the rituals of the school become a little more familiar and the need to graft the adventure of fantasy onto the static setting gets a little more urgent.

Warning: vague spoilers for various Harry Potter books ahead...






Rowling has dealt with this dilemma pretty well so far. The primary thing she did was to change the mechanism for driving the plot from moving from place to place (as in classical fantasy) to moving from clue to clue in the solving of a mystery. Of all the books, book two (The Chamber of Secrets) is probably the purest mystery, with hardly a single word spared for anything which doesn't drive the mystery plot forward. Book three, 'The Prisoner of Azkaban' is another mystery but also combines elements of a coming of age story with Harry learning more about his history and also being forced to deal much more with his emotions than in previous books.

After book three, the mysteries remain, but they are relegated to playing more of a secondary role in moving the plot forward, with Rowling moving to more traditional boarding school novel techniques. In book 4, 'The Goblet of Fire', a new event, the Triwizard Tournament, is introduced which basically defines all the major plot points for the entire book. This reminded me somewhat of Korman's 'Go Jump in the Pool' or 'Beware the Fish' - books where a new concept is introduced (raising money for a pool, and raising the profile of the school in these cases) and then the rest of the plot centres around a series of isolated incidents which are connected to that new concept / plot device.

Book 5, 'The Order of the Phoenix' is a real classic boarding school novel story. The beloved institution is threatened by some new person / change in management and gradually all the things which we love about the institution get taken away before our eyes. Demerit point systems get abused, classes get improperly taught, traditional sports are cancelled, favourite people get expelled/fired, and so on. While the background subject matter couldn't be more different, the structural parallels with, say, 'The War with Mr. Wizzle' are striking, right down to the band of loyal students who get pushed too far and rise up to defend the institution.

It hasn't really been long enough since I finished reading 'The Half Blood Prince for me to try and categorize the plot. In fact, on first reflection it's hard to even say what the main plotline of the book was. Perhaps this is in part because the Half-Blood Prince was in some ways only half a book, with a number of elements seemingly serving to set up the seventh book, rather than being resolved by the end of book 6.

So what's my point? Nothing really, I just felt like rambling on a bit about Harry Potter and how I've been spending some of my time, in summer.