Swansong

Swansong (pronounced swon-sawng)

(1) The last act or manifestation of someone or something; farewell appearance.

(2) According to legend, the first and last song a dying swan was said to sing.

1831: A compound word, the construct being swan + song and a calque from the original German Schwanenlied (that construct being Schwan + Lied).  Swan dated from before 900 and was from the Middle English & Old English swan, from the Proto-Germanic swanaz (swan, literally “the singing bird”), from the primitive Indo-European swonhz- & swenhz- (to sing, make sound”).  It was cognate with the West Frisian swan, the Low German Swaan, the Dutch zwaan, the German Schwan, the Norwegian svane and the Swedish svan.  It was related also to the Old English ġeswin (melody, song) & swinsian (to make melody), the Latin sonus (sound), the Old Norse svanr, the Middle Low German swōn and the Russian звон (zvon) (ringing) & звук (zvuk) (sound).  Song was from the Middle English & Old English song & sang (noise, song, singing, chanting; poetry; a poem to be sung or recited, psalm, lay), from the Proto-Germanic sangwaz (singing, song), from the primitive Indo-European songwh-o- (singing, song) from sengwh- (to sing). It was cognate with the Scots sang & song (singing, song), the Saterland Frisian Song, the West Frisian sang, the Dutch zang, the Low German sang, the German Sang (singing, song), the Swedish sång (song), the Norwegian Bokmål sang, the Norwegian Nynorsk (song), the Icelandic söngur and the Ancient Greek ὀμφή (omphḗ) (voice, oracle).  It was related to the Gothic saggws and the Old High German sang.  Swansong is a noun; the noun plural is swansongs.  Constructions like "swan-singing" are structurally correct but not used. 

The English swansong (which has always existed also as swan song and swan-song) was a calque of the German Schwanenlied (Schwan (swan) + Lied (song)) (also as Schwanengesang), the term alluding to the old belief that swans normally are mute but burst into beautiful song moments before they die.  Although the idea is much older, swansong appeared first in English translation in 1831 but did not pass into common use until after 1890 which is perhaps surprising given Chaucer mentions the singing of swans as early as the late fourteenth century.  To date, Lindsay Lohan's last single release was Back to Me (2020), released on the Casablanca label.  She has hinted it may be included on a yet to be released third album but thus far, musically, it's her swansong.

The romantic roadster's swansong

Ferrari's Dino 246 F1 on Monza's famous banking, Italian Grand Prix, September 1960.

The swansong for the front-engined open wheel racing cars which had since the early twentieth century dominated top-flight motorsport came in the 1960s.  In 1959, both the driver’s and constructor’s championships were claimed using rear-mid engined machines and as the new decade began, it was obvious to all in the once unpredictable behaviour of the layout had been mastered (at least on race tracks when in the hands of expert drivers) and the opening eight rounds of the season did nothing to change that view, mid-engined cars winning the lot.  Ferrari, still running the front-engined Dino 246 F1, were not happy and that meant most of Italy was similarly grumpy, something which induced the organizers of the Italian Grand Prix to stage their event under conditions designed to suit the Scuderia’s last remaining advantage: straight-line speed.  Accordingly, it was announced the event would be held using the combined road and oval course at the Monza Autodrome, making what was already the championship’s highest speed circuit faster still.  With both the driver's & constructor's titles already decided, other leading teams opted to boycott the event, attracted by neither the prospect of their delicate machines being subjected to the notorious roughness of the concrete banking nor the prospect of a high-speed accident following mechanical damage.  As planned, Scuderia Ferrari enjoyed a 1-2-3 result, delighting the Italian crowd.  It was the last World Championship grand prix won by a front-engined car.

The rebodied 246 F1, Lady Wigram Trophy weekend, RNZAF (Royal New Zealand Air Force) Wigram Air Base, Christchurch, New Zealand, 1964.

The winning Dino 246 F1 therefore became a machine of some historical significance but even though Enzo Ferrari (1898-1988) may have suspected the success would not again be repeated, he was not sentimental about yesterday’s car, happy usually to sell anything obsolete to gain funds so he might build something with which to win tomorrow.  The 246 F1 victorious at Monza winner was thus sold to a private racer in New Zealand who, with a similar pragmatism, removed the 2.5 litre V6 in favour of the greater power and torque offered by a 3.0 litre V12 Testa Rossa engine in sports car trim.  In that form, he campaigned the hybrid Ferrari for two quite successful years but found no buyers when he tried to sell it, most agreeing with Il Commendatore that, big engine and all, it was just another, uncompetitive relic with the engine in the wrong place.  Thinking laterally, the owner took a very modern approach, having a coachbuilder fabricate in sixteen gauge aluminium a body strikingly similar to the factory’s own 250 GTOs, creating a very fast road car and one of the few on the road with the underpinnings of the machine which won an Italian Grand Prix.  The rules were rather more relaxed in those days.  In that form it was run until 1967 when it was sold, along with its original body, to an English collector who restored it to it with its V6 engine to the configuration in which it ran at Monza in 1960.  It’s still seen as an entry in historic events on the European calendar.

Ran just before crashed, nicely patinaed, one headlamp believed matching numbers and many parts still original: 1954 Ferrari 500 Mondial, as sold (left & centre) and in period (right).

To Enzo Ferrari for whom old race cars were usually just assets to be sold, it would in 1960 have amused him had anyone suggested decades later, people would pay millions of dollars for old, battered Ferraris, some of which never came close to winning anything.  Improbable as it would have sounded, he might have conceded such things could one day happen if the vehicles had four wheels and were drivable but for that to be achieved by wrecked 1954 Ferrari 500 Mondial which in August 2023 sold at auction for US$1.875 million would have been beyond comprehension.  The second Mondial built and one of 13 examples with Pininfarina spider coachwork, it was one of the rare “customer” race cars which used 2.0 litre , four cylinder engines and was campaigned extensively in Italy and the US where, sometime between 1963-1965 (the stories vary) it crashed and was incinerated, apparently while fitted with a Chevrolet V8, the swap at the time a common path to cheap, reliable power.

Some assembly required.

The provenance was solid if not illustrious.  It was raced by a one-time Scuderia Ferrari team driver and its many appearances included starts in the Mille Miglia, Targa Florio, and Imola Grand Prix.  Although the original engine was long gone, the sale included a comparable 3.0 liter Tipo 119 Lampredi four while the transmission was original and thus the prized “matching numbers”.  Belying the (usually undeserved reputation) Italian corporations have for chaotic record keeping, the supplied documentation was an impressive wad, including the precious factory build sheets and homologation papers.  In the hands of experts, such a thing can be restored although without the original engine, it hard to predict if it will realise the same value as the US$4.15 million a fully-restored Mondial (chassis# 0448 MD and all “matching numbers”) achieved in 2019.

The Offenhauser-powered Watson Special, winner of the 1964 Indianapolis 500.

In the US, the swansong of the front-engined roadsters at the Indianapolis 500 came a little later, the last victory coming in 1964.  As in so many things however, the end came quickly and the next year a solitary roadster completed the full race distance, finishing a creditable fifth.  The last roadster to appear in the event in 1968 qualified on the second to last row of the grid and completed only nine laps of the 200, retiring with a collapsed piston.  That run was at the time little noted but it’s now remembered as the swansong of the front-engined roadsters in top flight racing.

LP (long playing) album label for Led Zeppelin’s Presence (1976), issued by Atlantic Recording Corporation on the Swan Song label.

The English graphic art production house Hipgnosis (best known for album covers which were (in the pre-CD (compact disc) era) for a quarter century-odd a vibrant part of the pop-art world) used William Rimmer’s Evening as a model for the logo of Swan Song Records, set up in 1974 by the English band Led Zeppelin (1968-1974) after the expiration of their distribution contract with Atlantic Records (which anyway handled the distribution of Swan Song’s release).  The idea was to combine the imagery of Rimmer with the wings of a white swan and the notion of “songs”.  At the time, the popular music business substantially was controlled by the major labels and Swan Song was one of a number of (usually short-lived) labels created in an attempt to give musicians who could not secure a recording contract a way of having their output reach audiences.  Although the label remains active for the purposes of re-issuing older material, after the surviving members of Led Zeppelin disbanded in 1980, there were only spasmodic releases until in 1983 it was announced active operations would cease and no new contracts would be executed.

Evening (The Fall of Day) (1869–1870), charcoal, crayon), oil & graphite on canvas by English-born US artist William Rimmer (1816–1879), Museum of Fine Arts Boston, Massachusetts.

Winged humans have been in imagination at least since the tale of Ικαρος (Icarus) was told in the mythology of Antiquity.  In the best-known version, Icarus was the son of Daedalus and one of Minos' slaves called Naucrate and it was when Daedalus explained to Ariadne how Theseus could find a way to escape the Labyrinth, so enraged was Minos he imprisoned Daedalus and his son in the structure.  Undeterred, Daedalus took fallen feathers and fashioned wings for them both, applying wax to fix them to their shoulders; a cautious parent, Daedalus warned Icarus to fly neither too close to the ground nor too near the sun.  Icarus however was headstrong and, finding the power of flight intoxicating, soared higher and higher until he was so close to the sun the heat melted the wax, disintegrating his wings; denied flight by hubris, he fell into the sea around the island of Samos and drowned.  As a tribute, the sun god Helios called the body of water the Ικάριο Πέλαγος (Ikario Pelagos) (Icarian Sea), the name still used of the stretches of the Aegean between the Cyclades and Asia Minor (the modern-day Türkiye Cumhuriyeti (Republic of Türkiye, still often referred to as Turkey)).  Other versions from Antiquity have him drowning in nautical accidents but generally his name is used as a cautionary tale about the consequences of not heeding the advice of those who know better although, curiously, there’s also the odd reference to him having invented woodwork and carpentry.  In Rimmer’s evocative drawing, the model has always been presumed to be the doomed Icarus but the artist may also have had in mind the fallen angel Lucifer, the imagery of a prideful descent perhaps influenced by John Milton’s (1608–1674) Paradise Lost (1667) or Dante Alighieri’s (circa 1265–1321) Divina Commedia (Divine Comedy (circa 1310-1321)). 

Richard Strauss, Vier Letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs)

Richard Strauss (1864-1949), was the last great German composer in the Romantic tradition and Vier Letzte Lieder (Four Last Songs) was his swansong, his final work.  Inspired by the poetry of Nobel Laureate Hermann Hesse (1877-1962) and Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff (1788-1857), all four are pieces of exquisite beauty but Strauss didn’t live to hear them performed, the premiere delivered posthumously in London in 1950, sung by Kirsten Flagstad (1895–1962), accompanied by the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra under Wilhelm Furtwängler (1886–1954).

Many notable sopranos have sung the songs but the definitive performance remains the 1965 recording by Elisabeth Schwarzkopf (1915-2006) with the Radio-Symphonieorchester Berlin under György Széll (1897–1970).  (CD: EMI Classics Cat: 0724356696020[9]).

Four Last Songs Since their collaboration, the need again to record the songs vanished; it's simply not possible to improve on  Schwarzkoph's achievement in 1965.  Re-mastered versions from the original tapes have been released and they're of interest to audiophiles but add nothing to the atmospherics so well captured in the Berlin sessions. 

Spring (Hermann Hesse)

Wandering in darkness under your high
vaulting branches, I have dreamed so long
of your green leaves and breezy blue sky,
the vibrant fragrances–and the bird song!
 
Now, as you open your robe of winter night,
your brilliance staggers every sense.
The world sparkles in the light
of a Miracle, your recurring presence.
 
I feel the healing touch
of softer days, warm and tender.
My limbs tremble–happily, too much–
as I stand inside your splendor.

September (Hermann Hesse)

The garden mourns.
The flowers fill with cold rain.
Summer shivers
in the chill of its dying domain.
 
Yet summer smiles, enraptured
by the garden’s dreamy aphasia
as gold, drop by drop, falls
from the tall acacia.
 
With a final glance at the roses–
too weak to care, it longs for peace–
then, with darkness wherever it gazes,
summer slips into sleep.

When I Go to Sleep (Hermann Hesse)

Now that day has exhausted me
I give myself over, a tired child,
to the night and to my old friends, the stars–
my watchful guardians, quiet and mild.
 
Hands–let everything go.
Head–stop thinking.
I am content to follow
where my senses are sinking.
 
Into the darkness, I swim out free:
Soul, released from all your defenses,
enter the magic, sidereal circle
where the gathering of souls commences.

 At Sunset (Joseph Freiherr von Eichendorff)

We have passed through sorrow and joy,
walking hand in hand.
Now we need not seek the way:
we have settled in a peaceful land.
 
The dark comes early to our valley,
and the night mist rises.
Two dreamy larks sally
forth–our souls’ disguises.
 
We let their soaring flight delight
us, then, overcome by sleep
at close of day, we must alight
before we fly too far, or dive too deep.
 
The great peace here is wide and still
and rich with glowing sunsets:
If this is death, having had our fill
of getting lost, we find beauty, –No regrets.

Variation

Variation (pronounced vair-ee-ey-shuhn)

(1) The act, process, or accident of varying in condition, character, or degree.

(2) Amount, rate, extent, or degree of change.

(3) A different form of something; variant.

(4) In music, the transformation of a melody or theme with changes or elaborations in harmony, rhythm, and melody.

(5) In ballet, a solo dance, especially one a section of a pas de deux.

(6) In astronomy, any deviation from the mean orbit of a heavenly body, especially of a planetary or satellite orbit.

(7) In admiralty use as applied to nautical navigation, the angular difference at the vessel between the direction of true north and magnetic north; also called magnetic declination.

(8) In biology, a difference or deviation in structure or character from others of the same species or group.

(9) In linguistics, any form of morphophonemic change, such as one involved in inflection, conjugation, or vowel mutation.

1350-1400: From the Middle English variation (difference, divergence), from the Middle French variation, from the Old French variacion (variety, diversity) and directly from the Latin variationem & variātiōn (stem of variātiō) (a difference, variation, change), from the past participle stem of variare (to change) (the source of the modern English vary).  The use in the context of musical composition wasn't common until the early nineteenth century.  Variation is a noun and the (rare) adjective is variational; the noun plural is variations.

The available synonyms themselves show an impressive variation: deviation, abnormality, diversity, variety, fluctuation, innovation, divergence, alteration, discrepancy, disparity, mutation, shift, modification, change, swerve, digression, contradistinction, aberration, novelty, diversification, mutation, alteration, difference.  Apart from the English variation, European descendants include the French variation, the Italian variazione, the Portuguese variação, the Russian вариация (variacija), the Spanish variación and Swedish variation.

Ginger, copper, auburn & chestnut are variations on the theme of red-headedness: Lindsay Lohan demonstrates the possibilities.  

Glenn Gould and the Goldberg Variations: 1955 & 1981

Published in 1741, JS Bach’s (1685-1750) Goldberg Variations consists of an aria and thirty variations.  Written for the harpsichord, it’s named after German harpsichordist & organist Johann Gottlieb Goldberg (1727-1756), thought to have undertaken the first performance.  The work is now thought part of the canon of Baroque music but before 1955, was an obscure piece of the Bach repertoire, a technically difficult composition for the hardly fashionable harpsichord and known mostly as a device for teachers to develop students’ keyboard skills.  Even for aficionados of the Baroque, it was rarely performed.

Glenn Gould (1932—1982) was a Canadian classical pianist, his debut album on the then novel twelve-inch vinyl LP an interpretation of the Goldberg Variations, played on the piano.  A quite extraordinary performance and a radical approach, played at a tempo Bach surely never intended and with an electrifying intensity, it was beyond mere interpretation.  The work was also his swansong, uniquely for him, re-recorded in 1981 and issued days before his death.  Eschewing the stunningly fast pace which made its predecessor famous and clearly the work of a mellower, more reflective artist, for those familiar with the original, it’s a masterpiece of controlled tension.

In 2002, Sony re-released both, the earlier essentially untouched, the later benefiting from a re-mastering which corrected some of the technical deficiencies found in many early digital releases.  Although critics could understand Gould thinking there were aspects of the 1955 performance which detracted from the whole and why he felt the second version a better piece of art, it’s still the original which thrills.

Mad

Mad (pronounced mad)

(1) Mentally disturbed; deranged; insane; demented.

(2) Enraged; greatly provoked or irritated; angry.

(3) As madman or (metaphorically) mad dog, a person abnormally furious; ferocious (and can be applied literally to animals (mad bull etc), especially dogs afflicted with rabies (a rabid dog).

(4) Extremely foolish or unwise; imprudent; irrational.

(5) Wildly excited or confused; frantic (often as “in mad haste”).

(6) Overcome by desire, eagerness, enthusiasm etc; excessively or uncontrollably fond of (usually) someone; infatuated; (often as “madly in love”).

(7) Wildly lively and merry; enjoyably hilarious.

(8) Of extremes in climatic conditions (of wind, storms, etc), furious in violence.

(9) An angry or ill-tempered period, mood, or spell.

(10) As MAD, the acronym for mutually assured destruction: a theory of nuclear warfare deterrence whereby each side in a conflict has the capacity to destroy the other in retaliation for a nuclear attack.

(11) The acronym for the Militärischer Abschirmdienst, a counterintelligence agency of the German military (essentially the successor to the old Abwehr (1920-1944)).

(12) The acronym, in admiralty administration, for the Maritime anomaly detection in Global Maritime Situational Awareness, for avoiding maritime collisions

(13) The acronym, in astronomy, for the Magnetic anomaly detector which detects variations in Earth's magnetic field.

(14) The acronym, in high-energy physics, for the Methodical Accelerator Design, a CERN scripting language used in particle acceleration.

Pre 900: From the Middle English mad (adjective) & madden (an intransitive verb, derived from the adjective), from the Old English gemǣd, past participle of gemǣdan (to make mad), akin to gemād (troubled in mind; demented, insane, foolish).  It was cognate with the Old Saxon gemēd, the Old Norse meitha (to hurt, damage) and the Old High German gimeit (foolish, silly, crazy).  In the Old English, gemǣded was the past participle of gemǣdan (to render insane).  As an adjective, the comparative is madder and the superlative maddest but the strangest adjectival form is probably the very English maddish, suggesting some state between displeased and actually mad.  The ultimate root of the Old English forms was the Germanic adjective gamaidaz (changed for the worse, abnormal), the element “maid” from the primitive Indo-European moi-, a variant of the root mei- & moi- (to change, exchange, go, move), extended with a dental suffix (-d in Germanic; -t elsewhere).  The same suffixed variant moit- appears in the Latin mūtāre (to change, exchange, give and receive in exchange), familiar in COVID-19-era English as mutate.  The Sicilian Greek (a fork by virtue of geography always most likely to be influenced by Latin) has the noun moîtos (thanks, favor, reward), presumably a borrowing from the Old Latin moitus.  Mad is an adjective, verb & adverb; madder & maddeningness are nouns, adjectives & verbs, maddest, maddish & maddening are adjectives, madly & maddeningly are adverbs and madden & maddens are verbs; the noun use of mad is non-standard.

The synonyms for mad exist in its four senses (1) lunatic, maniacal, psychotic, crazed, crazy, nuts, kooky, nutty, insane, (2) furious, exasperated, livid, raging, wrathful, irate, (3) ill-advised; unsafe, dangerous, perilous & (4) absurd, fantastic, delirious, wondrous.  There is much overlap in the synonyms, insane historically meant “not sane, mentally unstable” but is now popular with the Instagram generation as a general expression of approval and "bonkers", while still meaning “not sane, mentally unstable” also (except in the US) has come to be used in an entirely non-pejorative way to suggest something astonishing in the sense of something or someone verging on the irrational but in some way inspiring; absurd works in a similar way.

Bonkers: 2023 Dodge Challenger SRT Demon 170.

Because it makes Greta Thunberg (b 2003) mad, the likes of the SRT Demon 170 won’t be seen again but an off-the-shelf machine which can generate 1,025 horsepower makes a fine swansong.  To make Ms Thunberg madder still, it’s noted the induction system is capable of providing more fuel flow per minute than the average US showerhead and in a nice touch the purchaser will receive a commemorative Demon 170 decanter set.  Thousand horsepower cars for the street have traditionally been the preserve of madmen but mad women should be encouraged to give one a try.   

The word appears often in idiomatic use including “mad as a March hare” which alluded to hares becoming especially active in spring their mating season; “mad as a meat axe”, an especially evocative piece of Australian slang which is self-explanatory to anyone who has seen an un-skilled operator use a meataxe on a carcass and “barking mad”, the origin of which is mysterious.  The best story links it with the existence of a medieval lunatic asylum in the grounds of the royal monastery Barking Abbey (located in what is now the London borough of Barking and Dagenham) but there’s no evidence of use before the early twentieth century and most etymologists have concluded there’s a link with the idea “mad dogs” incessantly bark.  The London slang use suggesting someone is “three stops past Barking” is thought to have be an opportunistic adoption referencing the “barking” and in the vein of something like “a picnic short of a sandwich” which suggests some degree of mental incapacity.  There was even “shorthand slang” based on this idea: were one to be called “daggers”, it meant one was “three stops past Barking”, Dagenham being three stations beyond Barking on the London Underground.

The original meaning of mad was “insane, demented, disturbed of mind”, a sense inherited with the word from the Germanic forms.  The progression in meaning seems to have begun circa 1300 when the senses (1) “mad dog” (dog afflicted with rabies (rabid)), (2) “foolish or unwise” and (3), “overcome by desire or eagerness” emerged; the meaning “enraged, angry” not recorded until circa 1400.  This sense of mad quickly became the usual colloquial term in the United States whereas “angry” long persisted as the popular form elsewhere in the English-speaking world although the increasing US cultural influence noted since the mid-twentieth century makes these distinctions probably less noticeable.  The sense “wildly lively, merry” is said to be an innovation of African-American English associated with jazz and dating from the 1940s.  For those learning English, “mad” must seem a strange word given the social difficulties engendered if one accidently mixes up being “mad about you” with “mad at you”.  So students should be given practical examples such as: "I am mad about him" (I would like to enjoy intimacy with him); "I am mad at him" (I am angry with him or I would like to kill him); "He is mad" (he appears mentally unstable).

Lindsay Lohan and her lawyer in court, Los Angeles, December 2011.

Another thing for them to learn was that wad was one of those words listed as a class-identifier by Professor Alan Ross (1907-1980), Professor of Linguistics at the University of Birmingham who in 1954 coined "U" (upper-class) and "non-U" (non-Upper-Class) to describe the differences social class makes in their use of English.  While his article included differences in pronunciation and writing styles, it was his list of variations in vocabulary which attracted most interest.  One difference he noted was the upper-class call the obviously unstable “mad” whereas the lower classes tend to label them “mental”.  Professor Ross published his illustrative glossary "U" and "non-U", differentiating the speech patterns in English social classes, in a Finnish academic journal and used extracts from Nancy Mitford’s (1904–1973 and the oldest of the Mitford sisters, all but one of whom society's more conventional types were apt to label "mad") 1945 novel The Pursuit of Love to provide examples of the patterns of speech of the upper class.  This pleased Nancy Mitford who interpolated the professor’s work into an article about the English gentry she was writing for Stephen Spender's (1909-1995) literary magazine Encounter (1953-1990).  Although not best-pleased that her discussion of the Ross thesis was the only part of her piece to attract attention, more amusing was the subsequent re-publication in 1956 in her Noblesse Oblige: an Enquiry into the Identifiable Characteristics of the English Aristocracy which, augmented with contributions from John Betjeman (1906–1984) and Evelyn Waugh (1903–1966), meant that for decades she was the acknowledged authority on upper-class speech, manners and ways.  Her class-conscious readers had taken it all more seriously than she had intended.

Low’s take on the official German line explaining Hess deserting the German government as “madness”.  This cartoon does represent what was then the prevailing public perception of the typical behaviour expected of those in “lunatic asylums”.  Depicted (left to right) are:

Hermann Göring (1893–1946; leading Nazi 1922-1945, Hitler's designated successor & Reichsmarschall 1940-1945): Committed suicide by by crushing between his teeth an ampule of a potassium cyanide (KCN), smuggled into his cell in circumstances never confirmed, shortly before he was to be hanged after being convicted on all four counts ((1) Conspiracy to wage aggressive war; (2) Waging aggressive war; (3) War crimes and (4) crimes against humanity.

Adolf Hitler (1889-1945; Führer (leader) and German head of government 1933-1945 & head of state 1934-1945): With his wife Eva Hitler (née Braun; 1912–1945) of a few hours, committed suicide (he by gunshot and KCN, she by KCN alone) with the tanks of the Red Army only a couple of blocks from the Berlin Führerbunker.

Dr Robert Ley (1890–1945; head of the Deutsche Arbeitsfront (German Labour Front) 1933-1945): Committed suicide by hanging (by means of suffocation) himself in his cell in Nuremberg prior to the trial after for some years have made a reasonable attempt to drink himself to death.  He died with his underpants stuffed in his mouth.

Joachim von Ribbentrop (1893–1946; Nazi foreign minister 1938-1945): Hanged at Nuremberg after being convicted on all four counts.

Dr Joseph Goebbels (1897-1945; Nazi propaganda minister 1933-1945): With his wife (Magda Goebbels (née Ritschel; 1901-1945), committed suicide (by gunshot) in the courtyard above the Führerbunker, shortly after they’d murdered their six children.

Heinrich Himmler (1900–1945; Reichsführer SS 1929-1945): Captured by the British while attempting to escape disguised as a soldier, he committed suicide using an ampule of (KCN) he’d concealed in his mouth.

On 10 May 1941, Hess, a skilled pilot, wholly on his own initiative, undertook a secret flight to Scotland where his plan was to negotiate an end to the hostilities between the UK and Germany.  This was only days before the German invasion of the Soviet Union (something of which Hess made no mention while being interrogated) and his motivation was to avoid what he (correctly) regarded as the major strategic mistake of confronting a two-front war.  The British government, interested only in the eradication of Nazism declined to negotiate and Hess was locked up, including for some two weeks enjoying the rare honor of being held in the tower of London.  News of Hess’s flight had sent shockwaves through the Nazi high command, then about to embark on the greatest invasion in history.

Rudolf Hess (left) and Adolf Hitler (right), Sturmabteilung (the SA (Storm Troopers, the Nazi Party's original paramilitary formation) parade, Nuremberg 11 September 1938; the car is a Mercedes-Benz 770K (W07, 1930–1938).

After for a while clinging to the hope his erstwhile deputy might have crashed into the ocean, Hitler, upon hearing the BBC (British Broadcasting Corporation) confirm the curious arrival on Scottish soil, made the sudden decision to issue a statement claiming Hess had gone mad, the consequence of injuries suffered during World War I (1914-1918) and falling under the influence of fortune tellers.  This was done without consulting the propaganda minister and Goebbels was aghast the regime had just admitted its deputy leader was a madman; he feared how the British would exploit the revelation, knowing what he’d do in their place.  However, aware through intelligence sources the invasion of Russia was nigh, the British had no wish to convey to Moscow the impression they were seeking to make peace with the Nazis and the bizarre business soon vanished from the news, coming to be known as a “nine day wonder”; the only one upon whom it appeared to leave a lasting impression was comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) who to his dying day remained suspicious elements in the UK were associated with the flight of the “motorized Parsifal”.

Hitler on a walk with Helga Goebbels (1932-1945), 1936.  She was Joseph Goebbels' oldest child.

The other immediate effect was the Nazis, in a typical reaction, organized a crackdown on the fortune tellers but in Berlin, the sardonic humor soon surfaced and a joke circulated in which Hess was taken to meet Winston Churchill (1875-1965; UK prime-minister 1940-1945 & 1951-1955) who asked: “So you’re the madman?” to which he received the reply: “No, I’m only his deputy.”  Hess died by suicide in Spandau prison in 1987 after 46 years in captivity, outliving Göring (committed suicide in 1946 just before he was to be hanged for war crimes), Hitler (committed suicide in 1945 in the Berlin Führerbunker with the Red Army’s tanks only streets away), Ley (committed suicide in 1945 while under indictment as a war criminal), Himmler (committed suicide in 1945 after being arrested by the British), Goebbels (committed suicide in 1945 (with his wife) after they’d murdered their six children (aged between 4-12)) and von Ribbentrop (hanged in 1946 as a war criminal.

Until probably sometime in the nineteenth century, for all but a few specialists, the condition of madness was relatively simple: people were mad or sane and while it was noted one could become the other, once labeled as mad one was by most, probably always thought mad and the punchy succinctness of the word could produce a memorable phrase such as the one used by Lady Caroline Lamb (1785–1828) to describe her lover, Lord Byron (George Gordon Byron 1788–1824): "Mad, bad, and dangerous to know".  The only widely observed nuances were behavioral and that was because madness was an observational diagnosis; there were those who were mad, slightly mad, quite mad and barking mad, hardly clinically exact descriptors but it’s doubtful many misunderstood what was being conveyed.  Modernity’s advances in neurology and pharmacology allowed the creation of psychiatry which began to gain a grudging acknowledged respectability in the medical profession around the turn of the century and it been a growth industry since.  The American Psychiatric Association’s (APA) Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM), when first published (DSM-I, 1952) was a slim volume of 130 pages which listed 106 mental disorders but by the time the fifth edition (DSM-5, 2013) was released it had grown to 947 pages although interestingly, the number of specific diagnoses was reduced from 172 in DSM-IV (1987) to 157, something of an achievement given 15 new mental illnesses were added.  It is though bit of a definitional minefield and there are those who suggest that once deconstructed, there are really over 300 identifiable conditions, some of the official 157 categories better thought of as groups or clusters.  However the count is done, nobody is expecting DSM-6 to contain fewer pages, whatever method is used to define the conditions so it seems there must been more to madness than once convenient mad-sane binary.

How much the proliferation of diagnosed madness is mission-creep and how much better understanding is a debate, mostly outside the profession.  Some of it is certainly an attempt to secure market-share for the psychiatrists, some “conditions” once thought normal as part of the spectrum of the human condition now listed as a disorder to be referred for treatment and in some cases this is doubtlessly a good thing although quite how reassuring a diagnosis of “generalized anxiety disorder” (GAD) is for a patient may be questionable.  GAD may also be overkill, the psychoanalyst having long supplanted the priest for those who can afford the hourly-rate, market share seems well secured.

Some of Louis Wain's drawings of cats, all reputed to date from his time of incarceration in a mental hospital during the 1930s.

The English artist Louis Wain (1860–1939) was a noted painter of cats, sometimes naturalistic, sometimes stylized and often anthropomorphic.  In his sixties he was diagnosed with schizophrenia and confined to a series of mental institutions, settling eventually in Napsbury Hospital, north of London.  By the standards of the time it was a convivial place with a park and a colony of cats and while his condition worsened, the frequency of his psychotic episodes decreased but drawings of cats he continued to produce became increasingly abstract, intricate and bizarre.  After 1930, he would never again leave Napsbury and there, in 1939, he died aged 78.  For a long time his paintings of cats have been used to illustrate an artist's descent into madness, a theme popular in those circles in which the notion of the "disturbed genius" is a cult.  However, the thesis has been questioned, notably on the technical ground of chronology; being undated, it can't be guaranteed the sequence of drawings as they're usually assembled are an accurate lineal progression of his work and doubt has been case even on the diagnosis of schizophrenia, some speculating the then not well understood medication used in the era to treat the condition may have contributed to his symptoms.

Drone

Drone (pronounced drohn)

(1) A male bee in a colony of social bees, stingless and making no honey whose sole function is to mate with the queen

(2) An unmanned aircraft or ship that can navigate autonomously, without manned control or beyond line of sight.

(3) In casual use, any unmanned aircraft or ship that is guided remotely.

(4) A person who lives on the labor of others; a parasitic loafer.

(5) A drudge.

(6) To make a dull, continued, low, monotonous sound; a hum or buzz.

(7) To speak in a monotonous tone.

(8) To proceed in a dull, monotonous manner.

(9) In music, originally, a continuous low tone produced by the bass pipes or bass strings of musical instruments (later extended to the notion of "drone music", a "clearing house" term for a range of sub-genres and elements).

(10) The pipes (especially of the bagpipe) or strings producing this tone or the bagpipe equipped with such pipes.

Pre 1000: From the Middle English drane & drone (male honeybee), from the Old English drān & drǣn (male bee, drone), from the Proto-Germanic drēniz, drēnuz & drenô (an insect, drone), from the primitive Indo-European dhrēn- (bee, drone, hornet); the Proto-Germanic was the source also of Middle Dutch drane, the Old High German treno (the German Drohne, is from Middle Low German drone), the origin of which may have been imitative (there was the Lithuanian tranni and the Greek thronax (a drone)).  It was cognate with the Dutch drone & Middle Dutch drōnen (male bee or wasp), the Low German drone & German drohne (drone), the dialectal German dräne, trehne & trene (drone), the Danish drone (drone) and the Swedish drönje & drönare (drone).  An earlier variation was the Old English drān, related to the Old High German treno (drone), the Gothic drunjus (noise) and the Greek tenthrēnē (asp) which was the source of the sense of a sound, the meaning emerging 1490–1500, related also to the Middle English droun (to roar), the Icelandic drynja (to bellow) and the Gothic drunjus (noise).

The meaning referring to pilotless airframes appears first to have been used by the military in 1945-1946, initially in the sense of towed target drones, the "pilotless aircraft directed by remote control".  Even in 1946, military theorists were speculating about the potential use of "drones" although much of what was then described was closer to the modern smart bombs or guided missiles.  The meaning "a deep, continuous humming sound" emerged circa 1500, apparently an independent imitative formation in the sense of the 1630s noun threnody (song of lament), from the Greek thrēnōdia (lamentation), the construct being thrēnos (dirge, lament) + ōidē (ode).  The Ancient Greek thrēnos was probably from the primitive Indo-European imitative root dher- (to drone, murmur, hum), source also of the Old English dran (drone), the Gothic drunjus (sound) and the Greek tenthrene (a species of wasp).  The specific technical use "bass pipe of a bagpipe" was first adopted in the  1590s.   The figurative sense of "an idler, a shiftless, lazy worker" (based on the idea of the male bees which make no honey), dates from the 1520s.  Drone quickly became a popular way to describe a mono-tonal, boring speech delivery.

Drones and UAVs

The modern military term for what most people casually call a drone is unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) a more accurate descriptor given the original target drones were either objects towed by “target tugs” or radio controlled aircraft dumbly flying on pre-set paths.  Research on the concept of unmanned flying devices for reconnaissance target practice or even ordnance delivery had begun even before the military had adopted combat aircraft and by the mid-1930s, the Royal Air Force (RAF) in the UK had hundreds of radio controlled biplanes but the word drone appears to have been adopted only in 1945-1946 to describe the objects towed behind piloted aircraft.  Used to provide a moving target for either air-to-air or surface-to-air target practice, the target tugs towing the drone tended to be painted in lurid color schemes to differentiate tug from target although tugs still suffered hits from "friendly fire".  Over time, slang developing as it does, the terms “target drone” and “drone” came often to refer not just to the towed target-object but also the “target tug”, the aircraft towing the target, less a leakage from military use than just a misunderstanding that caught on.  Now, most UAVs sold to hobbyists or for commercial use are marketed as drones.

Paint scheme for target tug towing drone used for surface-to-air target practice on de Havilland Mosquito TT (target tug) Mark 35, No 3 CAACU (Civilian Anti-Aircraft Co-operation Unit), Exeter, UK, 1963.

The use as a target tug (TT) was the last operational role for the Mosquito, one of the more remarkable aircraft of World War Two.  Developed as a private venture by de Havilland, it was greeted by the by the Air Ministry with not their usual mere indifference but outright hostility to the very concept of a light, unarmed bomber made from plywood which relied for protection on speed rather than firepower.  The company however persisted and the Mosquito, which first flew in 1940, became one of the outstanding and most versatile combat aircraft of the war deployed as a fighter, fighter-bomber, night-fighter and bomber in roles as diverse as photo-reconnaissance, maritime strike, long-range surveillance, ground-attack and pathfinder missions guiding heavy bombers.  There was even a naval version for carrier operations, operated by the Fleet Air Arm.

The post-war career too was notable.  Equipped with the latest radar, the Mosquito was retained as a front-line, all-weather fighter until 1951-1952 when night-fighter versions of the Gloster Meteor and de Havilland Vampire entered service.  The last of the 7771 Mosquitos produced did not leave the production line until 1950, the long Indian summer necessitated by the UK’s technology deficit and although few probably thing of the Mosquito as a Cold War fighter but that was its unexpected penultimatum.  The less celebrated but valuable swansong came as a target tug, painted in vivid colors to decrease the danger from “friendly fire” and these platforms remained in operational service until finally retired in 1963, some of the decommissioned aircraft subsequently used by film studios for wartime features.  In addition to the RAF’s Mark 35s, a number of Mark 16 bombers were converted to TT Mark 39s, operated also by the Royal Navy and two ex-RAF Mark 6 (fighter-bombers) were in 1953-1954 converted to the TT Mark 6 standard for the Belgian Air Force which used them as target tugs at the Sylt firing ranges.  For an airframe which the authorities were at the time inclined to reject, the Mosquito enjoyed a remarkable operational life of over two decades; the Treasury got their money's worth.

Lindsay Lohan in Netflix's Irish Wish (2024) being filmed by drone (the car is a 1965 Triumph TR4A).  Camera-equipped drones have reduced the cost of filming such scenes.

It's no exaggeration to suggest drones (even the military now often use the term instead of UAV) have been a revolutionary weapon in armed conflict.  Able to function as long duration reconnaissance or weapons platforms, depending on the device, they can in real-time be controlled by soldiers in the field or from command centres thousands of miles away.  Cheap and mass-produced, they have emerged also as a "Kamikaze" weapon and, because off-the-shelf commercial drones can easily be adapted for offensive purposes, they present a challenge to established militaries when used by irregular combatant forces (including terrorist groups) which have not previously had access to weapons which can be deployed in mass at long range.    

The Germans, the Russians and Drone Music

Although musicologists categorize “drone music” as a sub-genre in the minimalist tradition, when produced thus it’s really an application of a element of sound which has been a component of many pieces nobody would describe as even vague drone-like.  Ethno-musicologists also object to the usually Eurocentric treatment of the topic, pointing out that musical traditions from Morocco to Mongolia contain much that can only be called a drone and along with a rhythmic beat, the two are probably the basis of most of the early music created by humans.  As a modern form however, to be thought of as “drone music”, compositions tend to be long and characterized by slight or sudden, jarring harmonic shifts.  The form obviously pre-dates means of electronics production but the availability in the twentieth century essentially allowed the genre to be created and it was figures such as Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007) and Pierre Schaeffer (1910–1995) who created the works which first came to public attention.  The critical response varied, those attracted to the avant-garde anxious not to seem reactionary while others would probably have agreed with comrade Stalin (1878-1953; Soviet leader 1924-1953) who condemned as “formalists” those artists who pursued novelties and technical challenges just to impress their peers and a small elite cohort.  The public reaction to the form in its early years seems mostly to have varied between scepticism and the dismissal of the very idea such sounds could be called “music”.  Still, it endured and although never more than a niche as a stand-alone product, continues to underpin many popular forms, notably those listened to in clubs or at festivals by those under the influence of some substance and as the artists well know, there is a relationship between the drone and the chemicals.

By the time the German experimentalists Tangerine Dream released Zeit (Largo in four movements, 1972), it’s possible all that could be done in droning had been done and it can be argued everything since has been a variation but that hasn’t stopped the explorations, the Europeans especially entranced although it was the film-makers who found snatches of drone so useful in creating dramatic effects.  Curiously, there are those who have argued the credit (or the blame, depending on one’s view) for the emergence of drone music belongs to Richard Wagner (1813–1883), on the basis that by the end of his career, tonality had constantly shifting key centres, modulated so often there was little but ambiguity about what the final notes should be.

That’s fine but, so the argument goes, if there are more and more shifting key centres, there comes a point at which there’s no longer a centre of pitch, thus Arnold Schoenberg (1874–1951) twelve-tone system in which instead of a composition being based on major or minor scales and chords, a tone row was created, the twelve appearing in a specific order (thus the nickname “tone row”).  Musically (and politically, according to some), the idea of a tone row is methodically to avoid a preference for one note over another; all are equal.  Unlike tonal music in which pull active tones “pull” to resolve to resting tones, what came to be called “atonal music” came about because so far had Wagner pushed the boundaries that tonality could do nothing but disintegrate.  For the avant-garde, this created a gap in the market for “critic-ready compositions” because just as a visual form like cubism deconstructed the “bits” of the image and let them be seem in isolation as part of a whole, music could be rediced to a collection of drones and these could be performed singularly, in parallel or as a lineal set.  “By Schoenberg, out of Wagner” is an intriguing explanation for the origin of drone music and not all will agree.