Making Your Mark

 There has been a plethora of “cultural summer happenings” in Brugge this yeat. There is so much

 Feest in 't Park 2019

going on with a stream of free outdoor concerts like those during Moods; the trippeldagen of concerts to mark National Day on July 21 in the Burg; Feest in ‘t Park in Minnewater; Klinkende in different pubs; Cactusfestival again in Minnewater. And now the MA Festival [Musica Antiqua] is drawing to a close after many [not free] concerts in the Concertgebouw and churches, plus a Fringe to give

 Benenwerk 2019

opportunities to young musicians, and an International Competition featuring a three year cycle of organ; vocal and baroque ensembles; and harpsichord and other historical keyboard instruments. Did I remember to mention Dancing in the Vismarkt on Saturdays and Sundays? And the series of Carillon concerts throughout the summer months on Monday and Wednesday evenings. And of course, tomorrow, August 10th, there is Benenwerk, with different styles of dancing available at no cost, at different locations in the Egg, all free I believe
when Brugge will be even more full of visitors than usual!. These musical events, catering to a range of tastes, add a carapace of light-hearted spontaneity to the atmosphere here, mingling, as they do, in harmony with the church and convent bells and the usual carillon overtures, alongside the wonderful punctuation of horses’ hooves on cobbles. All while I try to ignore the  ten year low for sterling in exchange with the euro!

 Africa/Asia Reading Room, British Library

I recently received a welcome email from an American friend briefly describing a marvellous exhibition at the British Library entitled Writing: Making Your Mark. So enthused was I that I have delved into the British Library website to discover more and found what sounds to be treasure.

Babylonian stela from Mesopotamia, Iraq
Marduk Temple, 900-800 BCE.

Michael Erdman, one of the show’s curators, explains that the Library, in the age of the Internet when people might think that writing is becoming unnecessary, wanted to introduce to people what writing can be, can involve. He defines writing as any graphical representation of speech and the exhibition begins with the origins of writing [one of mankind’s greatest achievements] in Mesopotamia, Egypt, China, and the Americas and then traces the evolution of writing through technology and innovation with examples from over 30 different writing systems including Greek, Chinese and Arabic. Earliest items include a Mayan limestone stela from 647 A.D. Mayan writing
consisted of logograms [signs representing whole words; for example, a jaguar’s head signifying a jaguar] and syllabograms, [signs representing syllables; ka +ka +u =cacao] A later example is intriguing; from a wealthy but illiterate landowner from Ravenna, who used a symbol similar to a star inside a large wheel to sign a nine foot long papyrus deed for property/land sale and purchase.

 Caxton and his first book printed in England,
The Canterbury Tales.
Caxton lived for many years in the Woensdagmarkt/
Spiegelrei area here in Brugge.

Highlights of the exhibition include Scott of the Antarctic’s final diary entry; an 1800 year old wax tablet containing a schoolchild’s homework as he struggles to learn his Greek letters; Caxton’s first book printed in England, The Canterbury Tales; and a 60,000 strong petition from 1905 protesting against the first partition of Bengal and signed in both Bengali and English. And there is more! Mozart’s hand-written catalogue of his complete musical works from 1784-1791 featuring musical notation also. Plus Alexander Fleming’s notebook recording his discovery of penicillin from 1928.

Last entry, Scott's diary found after his
death, 1912.

For anyone reading this and living within reach of the British Library, the advice is to seek out this exhibition before August 26th!

Meanwhile, I love the words of Adrian Edwards, lead curator of the exhibition:

From hieroglyph to emoji and clay tablet to digital, Writing: Making Your Mark will demonstrate how writing is so much more than words on the page – it is how we communicate across time and space, how we express ourselves, and how we lay down our collective memory. We hope that visitors will consider their own relationship with writing in the digital age and reflect on whether we will abandon pens and keyboards in favour of voice-activated machine writing and video messaging, or continue to carry the legacy of ancient times with us.

 Last entries in Mozart's hand-written catalogue of his complete works
showing The Magic Flute and La Clemenza di Tito.
Begun Feb 9, 1784; completed at Mozart's death in 1791.

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