Philip Glass - World Music Is The New Classical

‘By the early 1960’s,’ Philip Glass said, ‘the world of new concert music had reached a virtual dead end. By that I mean there were more and more composers writing for fewer and fewer people.’ Glass (left) had worked with Ravi Shankar on film sound tracks in the early sixties and, like the sitar master, was looking to open a door that would bring different sensibilities to Western music. ‘That door turned out to be much bigger that I thought,’ Glass said. ‘I thought it would lead to Indian music. Actually, it led to World Music – and that continues to this day.'

Glass had travelled to India in 1967 and discovered through his mentor Ravi Shankar that George Harrison was already immersed in India’s wisdom traditions, and had understood the impact Eastern music could have on the West. Glass met Harrison shortly after his return, and they agreed that the Indian sound was a much-needed breath of fresh air. ‘We were entering the same door but from different sides,’ Glass said. ‘From my side, it was the world of experimental concert music, and from George’s side it was the world of popular music. It was clear to us that this had historic significance, and that the foundations of contemporary music were going to shift. But I was wrong about one thing. I thought it was going to take much longer, the change happened much more quickly than I expected’ - Philip Glass being interviewed by Joshua Greene in the recently published ‘Here Comes the Sun, the Spiritual and Musical Journey of George Harrison,’ (Bantam Books ISBN 0553817965).

Now playing - Orient–Occident with a stellar cast of World musicians - Jordi Savall, Khaled Arman, Osman Arman, Driss El Maloumi, Pedro Estevan, Siar Hashimi and Dimitris Psonis. For me, Alia Vox is becoming a second ECM with their innovative exploration of unusual repertoire that defies conventional categorisation. The instruments on this superb new release say it all – rubab, tulak, oud (below left), darbouka (below right), def, tambor, pandereta, riq-gunga, tablas, zir baghali, santur, saz, viol, lire d’archet, and rebab. In the sleeve note the great musician, scholar and humanitarian Jordi Savall passionately advocates World Music with these words.

Orient–Occident was born out of solidarity and the wish to share musical experiences with musicians from other cultures and religions, as well as to reflect on those times in the past when we in the West have also been responsible for breeding intolerance and cruelty. Four years on, the Orient – Occident project has finally taken the form of a stimulating dialogue between musicians from East and West, articulated through the instruments and music of Christian, Jewish and Muslim Hesperia, the stampitte of medieval Italy and the improvisations and dances of Morocco, Israel, Persia, Afghanistan and the old Ottoman empire. Forms of music apparently far removed from one another in time and space, music that has often been consigned to oblivion beneath successive layers of modernism, or undervalued because of its uncertain origins. Dances, prayer, songs and laments of rare beauty and intense emotion, whose delicacy of expression frees us from the stranglehold of our deeply embedded roots and avoidable isolation.

And here to remind us what a rich heritage World Music has to draw on is a listing of just some of the festivals from many different cultures that are being celebrated around the world in the coming month of November 2006:

Wed 1 Algerian Revolution Day
1 Antiguan & Barbudan Independence Day
1 Christian All Saints Day
Thu 2 Christian All Souls Day
2 Rastafarian Haile Selassie 1: Coronation
Fri 3 Dominican Independence Day
3 Japanese Bunka no Hi
Sun 5 Sikh Guru Nanak Dev ji Birthday
5 Thai Loy Krathong
5 UK Guy Fawkes Night
Mon 6 Moroccan Green March Anniversary
Thu 9 Pakistan Allama Muhammad Iqbal Birthday
Fri 10 Turkish Ataturk: Death
Sat 11 Angolan Independence Day
11 Polish Independence Day
11 UK Armistice Day
Sun 12 Bahai Baha'u'llah: Birthday
12 UK Remembrance Sunday
Tue 14 Indian Children’s Day
Wed 15 Japanese Shichi Go San
Sat 18 Latvian National Day
18 Moroccan Independence Day
Wed 22 Lebanese Independence Day
Thu 23 Japanese Kinro Kansha no Hi
US Thanksgiving Day
Fri 24 Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji: Martyrdom
Sun 26 Bahai Day of the Covenant
Tue 28 Albanian Independence Day
28 Baha'i Abdu'l-Baha: Passing
28 Zoroastrian: Shenshai Second Gahambar: First day
Wed 29 Albanian Liberation Day
Thu 30 Barbadian Independence Day
30 Filipino National Heroes Day
30 Scottish St Andrew's Day
30 Yemeni Independence Day

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Music as a healing force in Palestine

Today’s Independent makes the vital connection between music and current affairs in both a double page feature and a thoughtful leader praising the work of contemporary composer and human rights activist Nigel Osborne (left). Here is an extract from the inspirational story of how music is helping traumatised Palestinian children: - The Reid Professor of Music at Edinburgh University, and one of Britain's foremost contemporary composers, is somehow managing simultaneously to play the guitar, dance, and conduct a class of 30 children in their lusty performance - in Mandinga - of a West African folk song. This is Balata, a stronghold of armed militancy and the target of at times almost daily Israeli incursions, where 150 Palestinians have been killed since the intifada began six years ago. It is also one of the most densely populated places on earth, home to 30,000 civilians who live in less than two square kilometres of cement-block housing packed so closely together that fat people cannot squeeze into some of the alleys between them.

Professor Osborne, whose works have been performed by orchestras across the world from the Berlin Symphony to the Los Angeles Philharmonic, who has seen his operas play at Glyndebourne and the English National Opera, has come to Nablus to practise what he has preached for more than a decade: the huge potential of music to rehabilitate war-traumatised children. Professor Osborne's belief in the therapeutic and transformational power of music in the most unpromising circumstances is no passing fad. He graduated in music from Oxford in the late 1960s (where as the composer of a Cinderella produced by Gyles Brandreth, he coached Eliza Manningham-Buller, future head of the British Security Service, to sing for her part as the fairy godmother).

He was a music therapist for a spell as a young man but it was as a human rights activist, enraged by the failure of the international community to protect Bosnia from Serb aggression, that he went to Sarajevo in 1993. Horrified by the impact of the siege on children, he devised, with two Bosnian artists, the idea of running creative workshops for children caught up in the conflict. "The idea was just so the children could have a bit of fun," he recalls. "I was surprised how the therapeutic idea emerged out of it." For a visionary who has worked in several conflict zones, including Chechnya and Georgia, Professor Osborne has an unexpected streak of humility. He is careful to distinguish between clinical music therapy and the kind of session he is doing in Nablus, or those he ran in Sarajevo, and west Bosnia, where he was inevitably called - at least by journalists - "the Pied Piper of Mostar". But ever since noticing what he has described as the "palpable wave of energy" emanating from the Sarajevo children, he has believed passionately that "music assists these [traumatised] children, helping communication between individuals and within groups, creating trust joy, safety, cognitive repair and the incomparable self-esteem brought by creativity." Professor Osborne has no illusions that music will somehow stop all young people picking up real guns in the future. But he says: "I hope we can offer an alternative path, a path where human energy can be put to creative, not destructive purposes."

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Mahler beats Britten with finale knockout

In the first half we had Benjamin Britten's Violin Concerto, premiered in 1940 by Antonio Brosa and the New York Philharmonic conducted by John Barbirolli. The structure of the concerto is three movements with the final Passacaglia marked Andante Lento (un poco meno mosso). Its opponent in the second half was another 20th century masterpiece dating from 37 years earlier, Gustav Mahler's Symphony No 5 in C sharp minor, with its Rondo Finale marked Allegro - Allegro giocoso.

The venue for last night's contest was Britten's own magical Snape Maltings, and the orchestra was the BPO. Everywhere else in the world BPO stands for Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra, but Aldeburgh is a parallel musical universe where the BPO is the Britten Pears Orchestra, a crack orchestra of young professionals whose spontaneous music-making puts to shame the autopilot efforts of the big name bands. Yes, they do take risks, as the early horn entry in the attaca between the last two movements of the Mahler showed, but give me ten of those for one of the current autopilot performances by the BBC Symphony. Conductor was man to watch Paul Daniel who conjured up memories of Sir Adrian Boult with a crystal clear stick technique, feet kept firmly on the podium, and violins divided across the stage. The outstanding violin soloist in the fiendishly difficult, and exposed, Britten Concerto was Thomas Bowes whose task was made even more difficult as he took over the part as a last minute substitute for the indisposed Janine Jansen.

Britten was, of course, a great admirer of Mahler. He had received the score of the Ninth Symphony as a present from Peter Pears in 1938, and the Violin Concerto is clearly influenced by that great work, ending in a beautiful coda that struggles ambiguously between the desolation of D minor and the possibility of D major. An outstanding performance faded away last night, and the capacity Snape audience hesitated - had the work really finished, or was there another movement to follow to resolve the ambiguity? There were no such questions in the second half, the barnstorming Rondo Finale of the Mahler accelerated to the final bars leaving the audience in no doubt that this was the triumphant conclusion. The audiences responded with an ovation, and it was clear that Mahler had won with a knockout in the finale.

The status of these contrasting masterpieces from two of the 20th century's greatest composers mirrors the reaction of last night's audience. There are few recordings of the Britten in the catalogue (the finest of which remains the composer's own), and it is rarely heard in the concert hall. Searching Mahler 5 on Amazon returns 320 hits, and the work is a warhorse of the auto-pilot orchestras with the peripatetic Minnesota Orchestra riding it into town this summer for a BBC Prom. Why the difference in popularity?

Visconti's 1971 film Death in Venice was the PR dream come true for the Mahler. I still cannot hear the Adagietto without seeing a heavily made-up Dirk Bogarde, and to understand the film's inspiration just compare the photo here of Bogarde as Gustav von Ascenbach with the header image of Mahler. And talking of von Aschenbach the opening work of the 2007 Aldeburgh Festival is a new production of Britten's opera Death in Venice directed by Yoshi Oida with the Britten Pears Orchestra conducted by last night's conductor Paul Daniel. While the Mahler symphony was undoubtedly boosted by Visconti's dramatisation of Thomas Mann's novella, the Britten Violin Concerto is unpopular with today's autopilot soloists who find it difficult to learn and in little demand from the equally as autopilot concert planners.

But is there an additional explanation for the differing popularity of the two works in the form of their finales? Granted there are many examples of frequently played works with equivocal endings ranging from Maher's Ninth Symphony to the Rite of Spring and Gottedamerung. But these are outnumbered many times over by the popular works with rousing and uplifting conclusions, including Mahler's own First Symphony (have you ever heard a performance that didn't get a standing ovation?), Beethoven's Ninth and numerous other examples. So is there a lesson here for contemporary composers? - please your publisher and get more performances by writing a rousing finale.

* A timely reminder that December 4th 2006 is the thirtieth anniversary of the death of Benjamin Britten. The composer was a friend of admirer of Shostakovich, and it is an irony that this important musical anniversary looks likely to be overshadowed on the BBC and elsewhere by the current Shostakovich saturation. Britten was a great composer, conductor and pianist, a musical visionary, pacifist and humanitarian whose legacy not only survives, but grows with the work of the Britten Pears Foundation which embraces young performers and composers. Many of Britten's admirers, including me, will be attending a concert at Snape on December 2nd by the Britten Sinfonia and Britten Pears Chamber Choir. This will include Britten's 1948 cantata St Nicholas and Arvo Pärt's Cantus In Memoriam Benjamin Britten. We are also fortunate to be seeing the acclaimed new Glyndebourne Touring production of the Turn of the Screw here in East Anglia in November.

* I mentioned the impact of the film Death in Venice on the popularity of Mahler's Fifth Symphony. We should also not forget that films were important in popularising Britten's music. He composed scores for GPO Film Unit productions including Night Mail and Coal Face in conjunction with WH Auden (pictured together left). And of course Britten's best known work, The Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (1946), was composed to accompany Instruments of the Orchestra, an educational film produced by the British government, which was narrated and conducted by Malcolm Sargent.

Britten's Violin Concerto was first performed in 1940 with John Barbirolli conducting the New York Philharmonic, now follow this link for more on new music in New York at that time.
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Paul Simon brushes over troubled waters

From yesterday's Independent profile of Paul Simon (left) - He clearly harbours political anger against the Bush White House - especially over the Iraq war - and sounded faintly embarrassed when I asked him about the time he was invited there in late 2002, a few months before the Iraq invasion. He was one of a small number of prominent artists to be honoured that year by the Kennedy Center in Washington - a ceremony that by tradition entails a trip to the White House. At first Simon said, with considerable vehemence, that he would not have set foot in the place for any other reason. But then he changed his mind and acknowledged that an invitation from a sitting president is just one of those things you don't turn down. The White House, he says, was "bigger than the occupant, no matter who that is".

Pliable adds - It is good to see Washington DC and its John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts remaining an irony free zone. Here is the announcement of the winners of the Kennedy Center Honours for 2006 by their Chairman Stephen A. Schwarzman: “Andrew Lloyd Webber has led a seismic change in our musical theater becoming the most popular theater composer in the world; conductor Zubin Mehta’s profound artistry and devotion to music make him a world treasure; Dolly Parton’s (right) creativity and spirit make her country music’s best international ambassador; Smokey Robinson’s song and voice have created the soundtrack for the lives of a generation of Americans; and Steven Spielberg’s films make him one of the most successful and accomplished directors of all time.”

Now read how another musician expressed his political anger in Lebanon - a war of out time
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Just a small experimental nuclear device

There was very little interest in my recent article on the use by NATO of Depleted Uranium ammunition in the Kosovo conflict in 1999. Now read today's front page Independent article by award-winning journalist Robert Fisk, from which the extract below is taken, and see if you find my article any more relevant today:

Did Israel use a secret new uranium-based weapon in southern Lebanon this summer in the 34-day assault that cost more than 1,300 Lebanese lives, most of them civilians? Scientific evidence gathered from at two bomb craters in Khiam and At-Tiri, the scene of fierce fighting between Hizbollah guerrillas and Israeli troops last July and August, suggests that uranium-based munitions may now also be included in Israel's weapons inventory - and were used against targets in Lebanon. According to Dr Chris Busby, the British Scientific Secretary of the European Committee on Radiation Risk, two soil samples thrown up by Israeli heavy or guided bombs showed "elevated radiation signatures". Both have been forwarded for further examination to the Harwell laboratory in Oxfordshire for mass spectrometry - used by the Ministry of Defence - which has confirmed the concentration of uranium isotopes in the samples.

Dr Busby's initial report states that there are two possible reasons for the contamination. "The first is that the weapon was some novel small experimental nuclear fission device or other experimental weapon (eg, a thermobaric weapon) based on the high temperature of a uranium oxidation flash ... The second is that the weapon was a bunker-busting conventional uranium penetrator weapon employing enriched uranium rather than depleted uranium." A photograph of the explosion of the first bomb shows large clouds of black smoke that might result from burning uranium.

Asked by The Independent if the Israeli army had been using uranium-based munitions in Lebanon this summer, Mark Regev, the Israeli Foreign Ministry spokesman, said: "Israel does not use any weaponry which is not authorised by international law or international conventions." This, however, begs more questions than it answers. Much international law does not cover modern uranium weapons because they were not invented when humanitarian rules such as the Geneva Conventions were drawn up and because Western governments still refuse to believe that their use can cause long-term damage to the health of thousands of civilians living in the area of the explosions.

Which is where I came in ...

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Eric Whitacre download bonanza

My recent article on Eric Whitacre generated a huge amount of interest. Now comes the opportunity to hear an interview with Whitacre (left) telling how he started in choral composing, plus performances of three of his works. (The title of the feature does seem a touch ambiguous though - Stumbling into Choral Music). The generous 16 minute programme comes from NPR and includes complete performances of “This Marriage” and “Go Lovely Rose” sung by Polyphony, under the direction of Stephen Layton, and “A Boy and a Girl” from a concert performance by the Santa Fe Desert Chorale, directed by Linda Mack. Follow this link for the download. Also worth a visit for Eric Whitacre fans is his MySpace site where you can hear more of the Hyperion Cloudburst CD featured in my original article.

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The continuing cathedral choir tradition

The greatest and perhaps most precious anachronism is the continuing tradition of the cathedral choirs ... it tells of a civilation utterly different from the one we seem to be preparing for the 21st century. Such a record as this brings it home. The mastery of our Tudor composers in their choral writing tells of a rich culture, in which the cathedrals were very near the centre; and this mastery is splendidly preserved by choirs like Worcester Cathedral ... it is amazing and marvellous to find them flourishing as vigorously as this one clearly is - John Stean's Gramophone review of Great Tudor Anthems sung by Worcester Cathedral Choir directed by Donald Hunt

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Independent record labels never failed me yet

In a neat piece of wordplay today's Independent newspaper has a supplement in praise of Independent Music. Here are some of the highlights from Michael Church's article:

Gavin Bryars, whose Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet, in which a tramp's accidentally-recorded song was put through a labyrinthine series of transmutations, is one of our best-selling contemporary composers. Yet since he began putting out his works on small labels "who were ready to take works from experimentalists like me, who the majors saw as beyond the pale", he has regarded those majors as a more of a curse than a blessing. Jesus' Blood, put out on a branch of Philips in the Nineties, has sold half a million copies, but since the costs of jetting an orchestra round the world were so huge, he hasn't seen a penny in profits. "And if I was recording now with a major label, I'd be lucky to do an album every two or three years. Moreover, the executives of that company would choose the repertoire. I prefer to control my own destiny," he says.

And he now does. Using his own label, GB Records, for which his wife does the design and a friendly American production company helps out, he is now re-releasing existing recordings to which he owns the masters, and making new ones with the aid of licensing deals with Latvian Radio musicians. "I do these records partly to keep things in print, partly to control the output, and partly to invest in subsequent recordings. It's not so much about making money, as ensuring the music is heard."

Simon Perry, who has succeeded his father as boss of Hyperion, sees a different threat from the download phenomenon. "Retail record shops, on whom the classical labels depend, survive by selling pop CDs, but as downloads eat into that market, they may close. We will have to find other forms of distribution, and downloads - which can't carry the liner notes which are what our clientele require - are not sufficient." That is the challenge.

* I'm glad to say that I bought my copy of Gavin Bryar's Jesus' Blood Never Failed Me Yet from the wonderfully independent, and still thriving, Prelude Records in August 1998, and not via the Amazon link on Gavin Bryar's website. Incidentally, Jesus' Blood was originally released on Virgin EG, not Philips as stated in the Independent article. You can check out Prelude's top ten sellers via this link, as I write Sting and Dowland are at number one. Please add your own recommendations of independent record stores around the world using the Comments facility below.

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A treasure trove of Stokowski downloads

A Japanese site has a treasure trove of recordings by the legendary conductor Leopold Stokowski ranging from 1917 acoustic recordings to 1953 electric recordings. All were 78rpm shellac releases, and the site claims they are copyright free. There are a lot of very fine things to listen to including two complete Tchaikovsky symphonies, a complete 1941 No 4 recorded with the NBC Symphony in 1941, and a 1940 Symphony No.6 'Pathetique' with the All American Youth Orchestra. Thanks go to US reader and internet sleuth Walt Santner whose research uncovered these, and the Norwegian historic MP3s, for us, and to the unknown Japanese webmaster for making them available.

Stokowski was the role model for today's jet set maestros. Born in North London in 1882, a short distance from what was to become EMI's famous Abbey Road Studios, he started his musical career as organist in St James' Church, Piccadily. He moved to the US in 1905, and ten years later became a naturalized American. He took over the Philadelphia Orchestra (see my article Reflections on the Philadelphia Orchestra), and it was here that he built his reputation as orchestral trainer, contemporary music champion (including the first performance and recording of Charles Ives' Symphony No. 4) , pioneer of new technology, and womaniser. He is remembered for many things, most notably his wonderful recorded legacy, his Bach orchestrations, and his work with Walt Disney on the film Fantasia. Do listen to the audio files that Walt Santner has done us all a great favour by uncovering.

* The biography Leopold Stokowski by Preben Opperby was published by Hippocrene Books in the US and Midas Books in the UK (ISBN 0882546589 & 0859362531) but is now out of print.

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John Peel's Private Passions

DJ and broadcaster John Peel (right) was the champion of independent British rock music for nearly 40 years on his late-night BBC Radio 1 show. He led the way in promoting new acts, from David Bowie, through Joy Division to the White Stripes. During his schooldays one of his teachers wrote “It's possible that John can form some kind of nightmarish career out of his enthusiasm for unlistenable records and his delight in writing long and facetious essays..." which kind of sounds familiar, doesn't it?

As well as his music programmes John Peel was an award winning current affairs presenter on BBC Radio 4 and World Service. His love of classical music was not widely known, but he chose it for the majority of his selections when he appeared on BBC Radio 3's Private Passions programme. Peel asked presenter Michael Berkeley to include something that would surprise him. Berkeley programmed the Conlon Nancarrow's Study for Player-Piano No. 21, and Peel subsequently played it on his rock music programme on Radio 1.

If like John Peel you haven't taken the overgrown path to the riches of Nancarrow's Studies for Player-Piano, here to delight you are two complete studies comprising more than than eight minutes of music courtesy of those wonderful people at Minnesota Public Radio. These two studies are taken from the commercially available Wergo set made in 1988 at Conlon Nancarrow's Mexico City studio, using the composer's own custom-altered Ampico reproducing piano

Study for Player-Piano 3b -

Study for Player-Piano 49c -

John Peel lived here in East Anglia. He died suddenly two years ago today while on holiday in Peru, aged 65. Here are his Private Passions....

* Saint-Saëns, Piano Concerto No. 2 in G minor, Op. 22 (third movement, Presto), Cécile Licard (piano) / London Philharmonic Orchestra / André Previn CBS MK 39153
* Allegri, Misere, Choir of King's College, Cambridge / Roy Goodman (treble) / David Willcocks Decca 421147-2
*Gottschalk, Ojos Criollos, Danse cubaine, Vienna State Opera orchestra, Berlin Symphony Orchestra / Cary Lewis, Eugene List (pianos) / Igor Buketoff and Samuel Adler (conds) Vox Box 1154842
*Neil Young,'Rockin' in the Free World', Neil Young Reprise 9352-41406-2
*Conlon Nancarrow, Study for Player-Piano No. 21, Conlon Nanacarrow 1750 Arch Records S1786B
*Bruch, Violin Concerto Op. 26 (second movement), Kyung-Wha Chung (violin) / Royal Philharmonic Orchestra / Rudolph Kempe Decca 417 707-2
*Gershwin, Rhapsody in Blue, Michael Tilson Thomas (piano and conductor) / Los Angeles Philharmonic Orchestra CBS MK 39699

* Programme broadcast on 16th March 1996. Listen to the latest BBC Radio 3 Private Passions programme with this link. Information reproduced from Private Passions by Michael Berkeley, published by Faber ISBN 0-571-22884- 4 Image credit - Roger Waters Online . Nancarrow examples - Minnesota public radio
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The eternal feminine follows the musical path

In my wanderings through song and poetry over the last ten years, I have come across stony paths, paths strewn with flowers, pathways across land and sea, and almost invisible trails, where it was very easy to lose my way ... Arianna Savall (daughter of Jordi) describes her own Overgrown Path in the liner notes for her first solo CD, Bella Terra. Now follow this link for an MP3 sample of some of really ravishing music, and if you think Arianna (above) has a beautiful voice remember that not only is she also playing the harp, but all the settings of the poems are composed by her as well.

Meanwhile another eternal femine follows an invisible trail at Covent Garden's Linbury Studio Theatre as the Independent describes: - Dominique Le Gendre grew up around music. "Our next-door neighbour and landlady was a woman called Olive Walke, who was the leader of a choir called La Petite Musicale in Trinidad. My sister and I used to go and sit under her piano at the rehearsals," she says. "There was always a sound of choirs singing Caribbean folk songs." The early exposure to music has served her well. Now 46, Le Gendre (right) is the first female composer to be commissioned by the Royal Opera. The work, Bird of Night, is a fantastical rite-of-passage tale set in 1950s Trinidad and based on the traditions and folklore of the island.

Bird of Night has opened to mixed reviews, but who hasn't? As Arianna Savall tells us it is the journey that is important, and it is great to see Dominique Le Gendre opening up a new Path at Covent Garden.

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BBC Electric Proms premieres new rock opera

Today’s Independent reports: - Two years ago, the BBC's director general Mark Thompson began his transformation of the corporation, cutting 4,000 jobs and promising in return a lean machine fit for the 21st century. The idea was that, with the savings made from the cutbacks, £350m would be ploughed back into programming. While many are still grappling with the realities of the seismic overhaul that has seen the corporation shrink by close to a quarter, the money is now trickling through. With it comes a wave of commissions. Notable among these is this week's Electric Proms, a five-day festival boasting more than 50 artists - among them Damon Albarn, James Brown and The Who - at venues in and around Camden Town in north London. Performances will be broadcast across BBC TV, radio, online and interactive, making the Electric Proms arguably the first tangible realisation of the all the management-speak; an example of Thompson's "360-degree commissioning", where content is just the starting point.

"Radio 1 and Radio 2 play to more than 20 million listeners each week. That's a lot of people who like music," Lorna Clarke of the BBC says. "The idea is that we could raise that to the status of the kind of work that happens in the classical music world. If you are serious about classical music, you absolutely know what the BBC does in terms of that genre. We want a companion to that." This electronic counterpart to the classical Proms that take over the Royal Albert Hall every summer is aimed at a younger audience that consumes media in a different way. "They are starting to watch television online; they are starting to receive content on their mobiles; they don't always compartmentalise everything the way they used to," Clarke says. "People are listening to 1Xtra or the Asian Network via their televisions. The Electric Proms is an event that spans the whole of the organisation, and this is how things are going to be done now." Clarke's aim is to create "new musical moments", allowing artists to do things they haven't done before. "We're trying not to beige out rock and pop."

So The Who are premiering their new rock opera Wire & Glass, James Brown gets a full choir, and Damon Albarn (photo above) and Paul Simonon showcase work from their new project The Good, The Bad and The Queen. Fatboy Slim plays in what is essentially a pub, and Kasabian and the Guillemots will perform with the BBC Concert Orchestra. "It is ambitious, but you have to recognise that young people need a deeper experience and access to live performances," Clarke says.

For full details of the BBC Electric Proms follow this link. Great to see the BBC actively encouraging access to live music, and equally as great to see the legendary Roundhouse in London, venue of so many ground-breaking Boulez concerts in the 1970s, lovingly restored and once again hosting cutting-edge concerts, all of which gives me a back-link to The Year is '72.

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Bill Gates compares Paul McCartney to Bach

I'm sorry, I did say that the I had posted my last words about Paul McCartney, but I just have to share with you these words from today's Observer: - Paul McCartney's entourage is the first to come out fighting, releasing this weekend quotes from a laudatory DVD of McCartney's 2005 world tour. Following reports about his alleged physical abuse of his wife, the former model Heather Mills, his camp hopes that the counter-offensive will help the former Beatle. The new DVD will feature the warmest of praise for McCartney from no less than former US president Bill Clinton, Microsoft founder Bill Gates and various luminaries from the worlds of music and film. In the DVD, called The Space Within Us, Clinton labels McCartney 'an American icon'. He describes his music as a 'unifying force'. Gates goes further, comparing McCartney's work to that of Bach.

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New music comes in out of the cold in Iceland

A thought-provoking article on Iceland by John Carlin in yesterday's Independent. Here is an extract supplemented by my own brief survey of the flourishing contemporary music scene in that remarkable country.

The miracle of Iceland is that so much has been achieved in so little time in a country of only 300,000 people. Whether the miracle can be replicated in a bigger, more historically complex country is another story. Iceland has managed to arrange its society extraordinarily sanely. It has contrived to create an innovative entrepreneurial climate in which the price of failure is not destitution, as it might be in the US, but the guarantee of a social safety net that will feed and house you till the day you die, and take care of your children's health and education to the highest modern standards. A lot of people I spoke to in Iceland agreed that a large reason for the country's success was the absence of the cultural, religious, political and tribal baggage that other nations accumulate over time. Baggage that, as the minister of education observed to me, weighs other countries down, and gets in the way of intelligent, practical, natural solutions to the elementary problems of life.

* Iceland is the only member nation of Nato that has no armed forces, these having been abolished in the 14th century.
* Only a tiny fraction of the country's 679 police officers - an elite crisis unit called the Vikings - carry guns.
* With an annual murder rate below five, the sum total of the country's prison population is 118.
* Iceland legalised gay marriages in 1996.
* Private education and private health care do not exist - the state facilities are so good that there is no demand.
* Icelanders buy more books per capita than any other nation on earth

There is certainly no accumulated baggage getting in the way of an intelligent and practical approach to new music, and the Iceland Symphony Orchestra, under its Principal Conductor and Musical Director Rumon Gamba (right) is a model of progressive programming. As well as the completion of a Shostakovich symphony cycle and a mandatory Mozart opera their 2005/6 season includes the premiere of a new orchestral work by Mark-Anthony Turnage which is a joint comission by the orchestra. The season also includes Finn Kalevi Aho´s Flute Concerto, Christian Lindberg’s new Trumpet Concerto from Sweden, and Stefán Ragnar Höskuldsson, an Icelandic flautist at the Metropolitan Opera in New York is performing American Lowell Liebermann’s Concerto for Flute and Orchestra.

There is also a strong commitment to performing contemporary Icelandic music. Among the works performed in the Iceland Symphony Orchestra's 2005-2006 are concertos by Jón Nordal in celebration of the composer´s 80th birthday, the recent Symphony no. 2 by Atli Heimir Sveinsson (the composer is on the right of the group photo), a new violin concerto by Áskell Másson, and new works by Þorsteinn Hauksson, Haraldur Sveinbjörnsson, Eiríkur Árni Sigtryggsson and Þorkell Sigurbjörnsson. Iceland is also, of course, fertile ground ground for rock acts, most famously Björk and the disbanded Sugarcubes (but note the Sugarcubes including Björk are performing one reunion concert in November to raise funds for the future betterment of Icelandic music and artists - nice one). Among the other rockers there are Quarashi, Sigur Rós (who show classical and minimalist influences), Minus and many more. Additions, corrections, and links to composers I couldn't trace for this Icelandic saga, are, as ever, very welcome.

For more facts on Iceland visit the CIA over in Virginia, and by one of those wondrous coincidences that abound here CIA also stands for Centre for Icelandic Art, which is well worth a visit. And all that talk of the CIA also gives me a neat back-link to The Winter's Tale

Image credit: Header Hornafjordur, Hofn via Arctic-experience.co.uk (c) RTH Sigurdsson. Atli Heimir Sveinsson from Notendur.centrum. With thanks to Vanessa Lann whose mention of Bjork (and Pink Floyd!) sent me down this Overgrown Path. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk .

Paul McCartney - the last word

Magdalen College, Oxford presumably in the hope of notoriety, commissioned the former Beatle to turn his attention to "the classical end of things" for the inaugaration of a new concert hall. It took him eight years, but it sounds like the work of eight minutes. Melodically the cantata is banal to the point of embarrassment, while the macaronic text, which McCartney assures us tells us what really is in his heart is depressingly feeble. How the time drags. I could have washed up or emptied the bin - next!

Rick Jones tells it like it is in his Times review of Paul McCartney's Ecce Cor Meum.

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Malcolm Arnold and the rock idols

The year is 1969, the group is Deep Purple, and the odd-man out in the suit and tie is Malcolm Arnold. Here is the extraordinary story behind this photo as told by Paul Jackson in his biography of Sir Malcolm.

A few months after the Prom success of his Concerto for Two Pianos (Three Hands), Malcolm Arnold returned to the Royal Albert Hall to conduct a concert that would for many critics show that Arnold as a serious musician was now beyond the pale and without hope. The concert in question took place on 24 September 1969 and saw Arnold conducting the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra alongside the rock group Deep Purple. The concert itself consisted of a performance of Arnold's 6th Symphony, a solo set by the band and finally the premiere of the Concerto for Group and Orchestra by Jon Lord, the keyboard player with the band.

In the 1980s, orchestras willingly collabarated with pop musicians and recorded works by Queen or the Beatles, or David Bedford's symphonic treatment of Tubular Bells, but in 1969 - with the exception of the Beatles - pop musicians and classical musicians simply did not meet. There was trouble at the first run-through when the (mainly) long-haired group arrived on stage to a chorus of wolf-whistles from the orchestra. Soon into the rehearsal it looked as though the project would be a disaster, the major problem being the balance (or lack of it) between orchestra and heavily amplified band. The first run-through ended badly, mainly due to the performance - or lack of it - of the orchestra, many of whom were not taking the project seriously (though they were happy to take the band's money).

Arnold stepped in at this point, rapped his baton on the music stand and spoke to the orchestra as only one of their own could, saying 'I don't know what you think you are doing! You're supposed to be the finest orchestra in Britain, and you're playing like a bunch of c***s. Quite frankly, with the way it's going, you're not fit to be on the stage with these guys, so pick yourself up and let's hear some b******s ... We're going to make history tonight, so we might as well make music while we're doing it!' This shock tactic worked, the rehearsal went more smoothly and the Gala Charity Concert went ahead.

The performance was filmed and shown in an edition of BBC2's arts programme Omnibus under the title 'Best of Both Worlds.' This showed Arnold and Lord in conversation, together with rehearsal footage and the final performance of the concerto, though in a slightly edited version. Arnold in full evening dress is in complete command of the forces and galvanises the orchestra and band into some thrilling playing. The beat with the right hand may seem a little wayward but it is quite clear, with the left hand clearly indicating entries. It is striking how Arnold's face (right) is never buried in the score but maintains constant and immediate eye-contact with his performers. His energy and commitment are apparent, as is his humility in sinking into the shadows to allow band and orchestra to bask in the applause.

Sir Malcolm Arnold would have been 85 this Saturday, October 21 2006. Happy birthday Sir Malcolm, I'm sure you are hard at work proving that the devil doesn't have the best tunes. Read On An Overgrown Path's tribute here.

* The Life and Music of Sir Malcolm Arnold, the Brilliant and the Dark by Paul R.W. Jackson, from which the extract above is taken, is published by Ashgate (ISBN 1859283810)
* The Concerto for Group and Orchestra composed by Jon Lord and performed by Deep Purple and The Royal Philharmonic Orchestra conducted by Malcolm Arnold was recorded live at the concert. It was originally released as a Harvest LP, and a video recording of the complete concert was released on DVD in 2003 including the performance of Arnold's 6th Symphony.

Image credit - thehighwaystar.com Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk. If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Chanticleer rocks with Sound in Spirit

Contemporary composers must never be bored

Hi,I really enjoyed discovering your blog through your mention of our CD "Touch - don't touch", to which I (Moritz Eggert) also contributed a piece. Just now I sit in one of the most boring surroundings imagineable, a panel meeting of the Deutsche Komponistenverband, and reading your wonderfully educated and extremely enlightening blog was a wonderful reprieve of this boredom. Many thanks, and a good day, Moritz Eggert (photo above, and follow that link to a website well worth visiting).

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If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to A contemporary composer is very lucky ....

Early music speaks of the human heart

I hope that Mr Sting's record does make people go out and discover early music like John Dowland because it's something I find calms my soul in times of trouble. Unlike later grand musical movements, the romantics and so on, which speak of grand themes of nature and politics and religion, early music speaks of the human heart, and that is the same now as it was half a millenium ago - Words of real wisdom over on Arthur Clewley's Diary, and Saturday took us to a harpsichord recital by Richard Egarr that really spoke to the human heart. The whole programme was exquisite, but the real delight was to hear several works by Antonio de Cabézon live.

The music of Cabézon is rarely heard either in concert or on recordings, although he made a fleeting appearance here a while back. Cabézon was a blind composer and organist at the Royal Court of Spain, and was responsible for the education of Prince Philip and his sisters. He travelled widely in Europe with the prince, and visited London to attend Philip's wedding to Mary Tudor. He is thought to have met Thomas Tallis and William Byrd on this visit. On ascending to the throne King Philip II became his patron, and the King held him in higher esteem that any of his other artists except Titian.

Cabézon made a major contribution to the development of the Iberian keyboard style, and his use of dissonance and chromaticism is well ahead of its time. His style has links with the Tudor composers of Gibbons and Byrd, and his writing is influenced by the sacred music of the time as well as the more common dance forms, and is a splendid antidote to Scarlatti sonata fatigue. He is an important composer who should be much better known, but recordings are rarer than the proverbial hens teeth. My recommendation for starters is an excellent recital of Spanish and Portugese Harpsichord music (that link has some brief audio samples) on Chandos by Sophie Yates which combines seven of Antonio de Cabézon's works with one by his son (Hernando) and others from José Ximénez, Manuel Rodrigues Coelho, António Carriera, and Joan Cabanilles - rare riches indeed and highly recommended.

Image credit - Titian Tiziano Vecellio from Malaspina.org Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
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The Pentagon’s manna from heaven

On 7 February 2000, Nato’s then Secretary General, Lord Robertson, wrote to the UN Secretary General, Kofi Annan: I can confirm that DU (Depleted Uranium) was used during the Kosovo conflict … during approximately 100 missions. The GAU-8/A API round (left) is designated PGU-13/6 and uses a streamlined projectile housing a sub-calibre kinetic energy perpetrator machined from DU, a non-critical by-product of the uranium refining process … A total of approximately 31,000 rounds of DU ammunition was used in Operation Allied Force. The major focus of these operations was in an area west of the Péc-Djakovica-Pritzen highway … However, many missions using DU also took place outside of these areas. At this moment it is impossible to state accurately every location where DU was used.

Before that admission, Finland’s Minister of the Environment, Satu Hassi, issued a statement: I think the EU should make an initiative: military use of DU should be forbidden. Depleted Uranium is a waste from the nuclear industry. In the industry itself, the handling of DU is strictly regulated and controlled, and waste is kept in guarded areas. But in military use, in combat situations and test shooting, the very same waste is dispersed into the environment, where the spread follows a haphazard pattern. Munitions containing DU are now part of the armament of many countries. I am of the opinion that the use of DU should be banned … It will permanently contaminate the areas where it is used with toxic heavy metal.

DU is seen by the Pentagon as manna from heaven. Nuclear waste costs next to nothing, the supply is unlimited and uranium-tipped ‘tank-busters’ have extra ‘penetrative power’. Therefore when the DU controversy arose after the Gulf war, and refused to go away, the Pentagon became even more secretive than normal. Like all debates which leave the public dependent on the competence and integrity of scientists, this one often generated more heat than light. The topic’s vulnerability to journalistic oversimplification assisted the Pentagon and arms industry, which share a determination to obstruct or subvert DU research. When the US government commissioned a Rand report, in response to growing public disquiet, its authors omitted to mention DU’s most dangerous feature, its transmutations into ceramic aerosols. (Pliable - the senior staff at Rand have included James Schlesinger, former CIA director and pro-nuclear Secretary of Defense, and Henry Rowen, former head of the CIA's National Intelligence Command).

In August 1999 the ceramic aerosol phenomenon was explained by Dr Rosalie Bertell, an epidemiologist with thirty years’ experience of studying the health effect of exposure to ionizing radiation: DU is radioactive waste, and it attains special deadly properties when it is fired in battle. Because of its density and the speed of the missile or bullet containing it, DU bursts into flame on impact. It reaches very high temperatures, and becomes a ceramic aerosol which can be dispersed 100km from the point of impact. Because the radiation dose to te person depends on the strength of the source of the radiation, and the time duration of the exposure, this ceramic aerosol formation is important. Ceramic (glass) is highly insoluble in the normal lung fluid, and when inhaled, this ceramic particulate will remain in the lungs and body tissue before being excreted in urine … Much of the ceramic DU aerosol is in respirable size particles and it stays in the lungs for upwards of two years … Ingested uranium is excreted in faeces, basically never entering into the human blood and lymph system. In contrast, the DU ceramic aerosol released in war enters directly into lymph and blood through the lung-blood barrier and circulates throughout the whole body …Women (because of their radiation sensitive breast and uterine tissue) and children (because their bones are growing, thus able to pick up more DU than adults) wil be more at risk from delayed DU weapon action … DU is also a heavy metal and is chemically toxic to humans … The aerosol can be resuspended in wind or when disturbed by traffic and this inhaled DU represents a seriously enhanced risk of damage immune systems and fatal cancers.

The chilling account above is from Dervla Murphy's 2002 book Through the Embers of Chaos, Balkan Journeys (John Murray ISBN 0719565103). Not happy reading, but essential reading nevertheless.

The 26 member countries of Nato are – Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, and United States – but not Finland, home of Satu Hassi, or Ireland, home of author Dervla Murphy.

Now playing - Peter Maxwell Davies' (below) exquisite five minute solo for piano Farewell to Stromness. Both this piece and Yesnaby Ground are piano interludes from The Yellow Cake Revue, a sequence of cabaret-style numbers first performed at the St. Magnus Festival, Orkney in Scotland, by Eleanor Bron, with the composer at the piano, in June 1980. The Yellow Cake Revue took its name from the popular term for refined uranium ore, and the revue was written to highlight the threat of a proposed uranium mine to the economy and ecology of the Orkney Islands. Stromness, the second largest town in Orkney (pop. 1500), would have been two miles from the uranium mine's core, and the centre most threatened by pollution. Yesnaby is the nearby clifftop beauty spot under whose soil the uranium is known to lie. Farewell to Stromness also exists as a guitar arrangement.

If you do not know Farewell to Stromness or Yesnaby Ground you are missing something seriously beautiful. Here linked from the excellent MaxOpus web site are audio files:

Farewell to Stromness -

Yesnaby Ground -

* Dr Rosalie Bertell is is an internationally recognized expert in the field of radiation and has been a Grey Nun of the Sacred Heart for more than fifty years. After the Bhopal disaster in 1984, she directed the International Medical Commission investigating the effects of the Union Carbide chemical spill that contributed to some 15,000 deaths, and after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster of 1986 resulted in 31 dead and forced the evacuation of 135,000, she helped convene a tribunal to fight for the rights of those victims.
* For more on Depleted Uranium follow this link.

Image credit - Depleted Uranium ammunition round from Wikipedia. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
For more on the terrible aftermath of Operation Allied Force take An Overgrown Path to The Beautiful Blue Danube - Pancevo, and take this Path to find out about Musicians against nuclear weapons

Rock idols and the Harry Potter fallacy

Independent feature writer and fellow blogger Jessica Duchen gets a double-pages spread in today's Indie on the Sting Dowland and Paul McCartney Ecce Cor Meum discs, and writes - 'I'm willing to stick out my neck and say that whether or not you like the results, and whether or not it's fair, both Sting and McCartney have done something worthwhile. They've broken the mould; they've kept pushing the boundaries; and though the results may be patchy, in the main these albums work because they're fuelled by genuine creative drive. If Sting and McCartney can bring creativity, conviction and communication centre stage then, like it or loathe it, let them try. '

I have no problem at all with the classical ventures of these two rock idols, if you can get your record company to record your Dowland or new choral work good luck, whoever you are. But let's not kid ourselves that these two efforts reflect anything other than 100% commercial agendas. If Paul McCartney really wanted to put communication centre stage he could have underwritten a performance of a little known and deserving contemporary choral work (let's take Rudolf Mauersberger's sublime Dresden Requiem as an example) in London, he could have made sure the hall was full by promoting it in the media, and he could have persuaded his record company, EMI, to record and really market the results. That way new audiences would have experienced real creativity, conviction and communication. Meanwhile Sting could have put his efforts behind persuading (and funding) an online archive of the BBC's contemporary music riches similar to that hosted in Finland by YLE, and he could have persuaded some of his super-rich rock buddies to fund the first year's composer royalties to allow free downloading - now that would be breaking the mould.

Jessica also trots out the old canard that the McCartney piece "could prove to a large number of otherwise hesitant listeners that new works in a classical idiom can engage with them". I'm afraid it just doesn't work like that as the book industry found out with the Harry Potter fallacy. J.K. Rowling's books have sold millions, but if you analyse the sales for the industry over an extended period no more books are sold across the total market. It is a fallacy both that Harry Potter readers go on to Jane Austen, and that more books are sold because of the Harry Potter titles. McCartney and Sting fans will buy these two discs; good luck to them, and I am sure they will enjoy them. But let's not pretend this is breaking any moulds or pushing any boundaries.

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A Who's Who of contemporary composers

My March 2006 article about the fascinating history of the theremin consistently attracts large numbers of readers via Google and the other search engines. So I was delighted to see a new release from Wergo titled Touch! Don't Touch! This features Lydia Kavina and Barbara Buchholz and the Kammerensemble Neue Musik Berlin playing new compositions from eight German and Russian composers written for two theremins and instrumental ensemble. Touch! Don't Touch! really explores the extraordinary sonic possibilities of the theremin, and the track list reads like a Who's Who of contemporary European composers. Here it is:

Olga Bochihina: Canto Ostinato for two theremins, piano, and percussion
Caspar Johannes Walter: Vakuum-Halluzinationen for two theremins, violin, and violoncello
Nicolaus Richter de Vroe: Thereminskie ostrova (Theremin-Inseln) for two theremins, piano, and percussion
Michael Hirsch: Rezitativ und Arie for two theremins, violin, violoncello, piano, and percussion
Juliane Klein (photo above): se vuoi for theremin, violin, violoncello, piano, and percussion
Vladimir Nikolaev: Cherno-belaja muzyka (Schwarz-weiße Musik) for two theremins, violin, violoncello, piano, and percussion
Moritz Eggert: The Son of the Daughter of Dracula versus the Incredible Frankenstein Monster (from Outer Space) for two theremins, violin, violoncello, piano, and percussion
Iraida Yusupova: Kitezh–19 for theremin and tape

* Download the inlay for Touch! Don't touch! as a pdf file via this link
* This CD is available from Prelude Records and other good stores
* Photo credit - Edition Juliane Klein Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
And the serendipitous Overgrown Path takes us from Moritz Eggert's The Son of the Daughter of Dracula versus the Incredible Frankenstein Monster (from Outer Space) to Neil Armstrong finally reveals his moon music

A massive hope for the future ...

Difficult to find the superlatives to describe last night's concert at Snape Maltings with Sir Colin Davis conducting The Combined Orchestra of The Guildhall School of Music and the Royal Academy of Music. This brought together the top players from two of London's (and the world's) leading music conservatoires in a vast orchestra (14 cellos and 12 basses!) that filled the Maltings capacious stage and scarcely left Sir Colin room to make his way to the rostrum. Sir Colin revels in working with young players (his 2005 Prom with an orchestra drawn from the Royal Academy and Juilliard schools was a highlight of the season) and he has worked regularly at both the Royal Academy and Guildhall.

The programme was Berloz's Overture Béatrice et Bénédict (a Davis speciality), Tchaikovsky's Fantasy Overture Romeo and Juliet, and in the second half Elgar's magnificent Symphony No 1 in A flat major. The 79 year old Sir Colin's Elgar is passionate and red-blooded, in fact close your eyes and you would have thought the conductor was the same age as the players. The intonation and attack of the orchestra belied the large number of players. And the sound, oh the sound ... We are so privileged to have Snape as our 'village hall'; it is brick, the auditorium only holds 700, there are no balconies, and even the seating eschews upholstery to preserve the warmth of the sound. The bottom registers in the packed hall last night were extraordinary, full bodied with real slam, but warm and glowing and never dry.

But above all it was the playing. It would be foolish to say that the quality matched that of the many big-name orchestras I heard at the Proms this year. This student orchestra knocked everyone, including the Berlin Philharmonic, into a cocked-hat. It really rammed home the folly of the 'London today, Edinburgh tomorrow' lifestyle of our professional orchestras. In Snape Maltings we heard spontaneity, commitment, enthusiasm and above all risk taking.

Last night rammed home that there is only one form of music, and that is live music. MP3s, CDs, iPods, YouTube and our other technology baubles are just pale shadows of the real thing. And the concert also rammed home that the future of live music making is safe in the hands of the young players of the Guildhall School, Royal Academy and all the other music colleges around the world. As we made our way out of the Maltings car park after the concert the young players passed us laughing, joking and buzzing with adrenalin as they boarded the fleet of buses to take them on the foggy late night 100 mile drive back from Suffolk to London. Elgar denied that there was any programme to his A flat major symphony, but told friends it expressed "a wide experience of human life with great love and massive hope for the future". Amen to that.

* Notable students of the Royal Academy of Music: Sir Harrison Birtwistle, John Dankworth, Lesley Garrett, Evelyn Glennie, Sir Elton John, Dame Felicity Lott, Joanna MacGregor, Michael Nyman and Sir Simon Rattle.

* Notable students of the Guildhall School of Music and Drama - Susan Chilcott, Dido, Sir James Galway, Dave Holland, Paul Lewis, Tasmin Little, Sir George Martin, Anne Sophie von Otter, Jacqueline du Pré, Bryn Terfel and Janice Watson.

* Sir Colin's live (Barbican) recording of Elgar 1 with a professional orchestra on LSO Live is highly recommended, available from Prelude Records and other good record stores

Image credit: Lower photo is of Royal Academy players, but Royal Academy Aarhus, Denmark which by sheer coincidence takes us down another Overgrown Path. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to Britten – music does not exist in a vacuum

There is a green hill far away called Taize

This Overgrown Path takes us from England through Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg and France, to the vineyards of Burgundy and on past Cluny where a spiritual revolution started a thousand years ago. Our destination is a modest village on a hilltop eight miles beyond Cluny where another spiritual revolution is happening, and where the photographs in this article were taken a few weeks ago.


Brother Roger arrived alone in the Taizé in August 1940, at the age of 25. His mission was to create a community where reconciliation would become a living reality every day. He set out to do this during one of the most troubled times in modern history. As World War II raged Brother Roger started to give shelter to refugees, notably Jews, and finally had to return to Switzerland to escape the attention of the Nazi sympathising authorities.


At the end of the war Brother Roger returned to Taizé, and in the intervening sixty years the ecumenical Community has grown in size and influence during a time when other religious groups have seen their memberships decline significantly. In the early years the Taizé brothers came from different Protestant backgrounds, but Catholic brothers soon joined the Community, and today more than 100 brothers come from over twenty-five different countries.


The distinguishing feature of Taizé, in a world where religion continues to lose influence, is the appeal of Taizé to young people. Hundreds of thousands of youngsters have made the pilgrimage to the remote hilltop in France, and as many as six thousand can be in the tiny village at any one time.


Music and song are at the heart of Taizé, and the Community's songbook says: “Song is one of the most essential elements of worship. Short chants, repeated again and again, give it a meditative character. Using just a few words . . . they express a basic reality of faith, quickly grasped by the mind.” The music, with its echoes of Gregorian Chant and Lutheran Chorales, has already featured here, and is constantly being expanded by new compositions which reflect the international appeal of the Community through the use of languages such as Portuguese, Lithuanian, Swedish and Russian.


For a moment park your preconceptions about established religion. A revolution started by young people on the university campuses in the 1960s was the catalyst for removing the inequalities of gender, sexual preference and race. A revolution started by young people in Leipzig in 1989 precipitated the demolition of the Berlin Wall and ended three decades of ruthless political oppression and denial of human rights. All the signs in September 2006 were that another revolution is gathering momentum on a hilltop in Burgundy.


The ninety year old Brother Roger died in August 2005 after being attacked during evening prayer in the Church of Reconciliation in Taizé. His successor had been chosen before this tragic event, and under the leadership of Brother Alois, a Catholic born in Germany, the Community continues to flourish. Two years before his death Brother Roger was asked what was the mystery of Taizé, could he explain it? He replied: 'It's a question I never ask myself. What we are living, especially with the young people, continues to astonish us. Why do they come in such numbers to Taizé or to the meetings we prepare elsewhere? We will understand fully when we are in the life of eternity. With my brothers, we ask God above all that we may understand what simplicity means, simplicity of heart, and simplicity of life.'


'There is discrimination in this world, and slavery, and slaughter and starvation. The answer is to rely upon youth - not a time of life but a state of mind, a temple of will, a quality of imagination, a predominance of courage over timidity' - Robert Kennedy


'What overwhems me when I come to Taizé is to enter the enormous Church of Reconciliation and to see those thousands of faces, those thousands of different expressions. Why is it that every year thousands upon thousands of young people from all the five continents keep arriving in Taizé in an uninterrupted pilgrimage, week after week?

Young people have an extraordinary thirst for the absolute. And it is sure that nowadays many of them make visits to monasteries. Why is this? Is it because they are looking for God? What they find in monasteries is above all a sense of mystery, of peace and of depth, in fact of everything that is lacking in the societies where we live. I remember once meeting the great film director Andrei Tarkovski, who said: "The challenge for our age is to let humanity remain a question; to avoid thinking that everything is explainable." It is very important that there should be people and places and actions which ask the question of the mystery of life, the mystery of God' - Olivier Clément, French writer, theologian and member of the Russian Orthodox Church writing in Taizé, A Meaning To Life.

Music at the heart of Taizé - Adoramus te Domine (7.59) by Jacques Berthier (1923-1994) -

*Adoramus te Domine audio file linked from Carmelite of the Immaculate Heart of Mary, Montreal, with many thanks.
* MP3 audio files of Taizé music can be downloaded from Taizé.fr
* There are many commercial recordings of Taizé music available. The Songs of Taizé (image above) on Naive is recommended for its 60 page illustrated booklet with meditations by Brother Roger.
* Adoramus te Domine is on the Auvidis CD Cantate (T 505) which contains fifteen Taizé works by Jacques Berthier. Also recommended is the 2006 release Christe Lux Mundi which features recent Taizé compositions
* All photographs taken on the green hill of Taizé in September 2006 by Pliable and copyright On An Overgrown Path. With thanks to the young pilgrims who gave their permission to be photographed for this article. Working from the top down photo 2 shows the pilgrims tents and the view across the valley, photo 3 is the twelth century village church, photo 4 is the Church of Reconciliation, photo 6 is the entrance to the Community, and photo 8 is Father Roger's modest grave outside the village church; for more moving photos follow this link.
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All content must ultimately be paid for

Yet there is also a more sinister reason why Google is buying YouTube. It is to do with the fact that the two have a common set of business values in the sense that neither seems to care a fig about the law of copyright. Both rely on the use of free content to drive their business. They therefore have next to no cost, or at least one so marginal that it wouldn't be recognised by any traditional media company.

Google is the most talked-about business phenomenon of recent times. Its founders, Sergey Brin and Larry Page, are feted wherever they go like demi-gods for the wealth they have created and the revolution in business and lifestyles they have helped bring about. No doubt a great deal of this is justified, but I'm still not wholly convinced Google is a proper business. As a sustainable business model, it may even in time prove to be as transitory as the online gaming sites, many of which have been trounced by confirmation of what investors and users chose to ignore - that online gaming is illegal in the US.

Google and YouTube are based on a not dissimilar misapprehension. OK, so both are only too happy to remove content where breach of copyright can be demonstrated, but they are extraordinarily aggressive in the manner in which they attack the soft underbelly of intellectual property rights, and their basic philosophy is that all content should be free.

Insulated from the real world by their newly found billions, it must be nice for Messrs Brin and Page to think this is true. In fact, all content, like any other form of produce, must ultimately be paid for, and if all Google is doing is acting as a supermarket for, or an aggregator of, other people's stolen goods, then in the long run it might have something of a problem.

Google and YouTube are routinely in massive breach of copyright. The fact that this seems to be tolerated is almost as odd as the phenomenon itself of one of the world's most admired companies being based on such a legally dubious business model. Yet the legal challenge to Google has so far been half-hearted.

At YouTube, some of the music majors have adopted the view that if you cannot beat them you must join them, and signed up to revenue-sharing deals on anything that might be generated by their material. Even so, breach of copyright remains the core issue for any business that relies on file sharing. Google and YouTube do just that. Napster and some of the other file-sharing sites that devastated the music industry have been defeated. Google and YouTube have yet to be similarly challenged.

It makes perfect sense for Google to buy YouTube. Based on similar philosophies, the two fit together like hand in glove. But the valuations are powerfully reminiscent of the mistakes that were made in the original dot.com boom seven or eight years back. The thinking relies on the idea that the wheel has in some way been reinvented - and that the traditional laws of business have been suspended. You'll forgive my scepticism.

Jeremy Warner talks a lot of sense in today's Independent.

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Shostakovich - this is myself

We went to see Shostakovich the next day, without having eaten or slept. He was expecting us and opened the door himself. 'Hello, how are you? Thank you for coming,' he said rapidly, convulsively shaking all our hands. Four music stands were waiting in the room. Shostakovich sat down in an armchair and waited impatiently. We quickly opened our cases, took our places, and immediately began playing.

The five-movement Quartet No. 8 in C-minor, Opus 110 is played without interruption. The slow fugato, with its theme, 'D-S-C-H'; the furious scherzo, with the Jewish melody from his own second trio, Opus 67; the agitated waltz; the requiem for those who perished; and once again the original bitter fugato con sordino, with his initials.

As he listened, Shostakovich picked up the score and a pencil, and put both aside, his head bent. What he must have felt at this moment, we could only guess. Having openly said at the beginning of the quartet, 'This is myself,' he sat before us, tormented, listening to his story about himself, his musical confession, the sorrowful cry of a soul, where each note weeps with pain.

We tried not to look at him. We began the fourth movement, which imitated either bombs falling from above and exploding on the earth or just hearts breaking. Then came the old Russian song 'Tormented by Heavy Bondage,' and finally the culmination of the quartet, which comes from his opera Katerina Izmailova. In the last scene, when the prisoners are being moved across a Siberian river, Sergei, for whose sake Katerina has sacrificed everything on earth, betrays her with Sonetka. The impact of the scene is that the entire audience, the orchestra, and all the characters see this; even the gendarme spits at Sergei and Sonetka; only Katerina alone knows nothing and is happy to meet Sergei. The insolent Sonetka appears, and slowly the irremediable catastrophe reaches Katerina's consciousness. She throws herself into the icy water, pulling Sonetka with her. Thus is happens in the opera. The same melody sounds different in the quartet: here, it is the loneliness of the composer himself and his premonition of his inevitable end.

We finished the quartet and looked at Shostakovich. His head was hanging low, his face hidden in his hands. We waited. He didn't stir. We got up, quietly put our instruments away, and stole out of the room - Rostislav Dubinsky, founder of the Borodin Quartet writing in Stormy Applause , Making Music In A Workers State.

In memory of Anna Politkovskaya, crusading Russian journalist famed for her exposés of corruption and the Chechen war. Born 1958, murdered October 7 2006.

Image credit - Patricia Zipprodt, costume designs for Katerina Ismailova, New York City Opera via Ohio Arts Council. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
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Tower Records - the lessons that must be learnt

“A whole bunch of smaller labels are going to disappear completely,” said René Goiffon, president of the classical label Harmonia Mundi. “The smaller labels are probably going to lose 80% of their sales.” With Tower gone from Los Angeles, he said, there would only be two serious music shops to cater for a city of more than 4 million. “It’s the end of an era for me and many others,” said Mr Goiffon. “It was the biggest name, the last name that was synonymous with music, commitment, catalogue and knowledgeable buyers. We are left with Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart and K-Mart, which are all stores where companies like Harmonia Mundi have no presence whatsoever.”

Today’s Guardian joins the lament for the passing of Tower Records. On An Overgrown Path is a vigorous champion of both independent record stores and independent record labels. But actions, as well as words, are needed from labels such as Harmonia Mundi to stop the doomsday scenario predicted by René Goiffon.

The first action the independent labels need to take is to change their suicidal pricing policies. Let’s take an example close to home - Harmonia Mundi’s release of Olivier Grief’s moving Sonata da Requiem which I praised here recently. If I buy this CD from my local serious record store it will cost me £14.99, if I buy it online from Caiman in Florida it will cost me £9.75 delivered. How long will serious record stores survive in the UK with that price difference? And it is not just pricing differentials between the UK and US that account for this crazy situation. Take another example of a recent release from independent label Signum Classics of music by Francis Pott, who has also featured in these pages. If I buy his excellent ‘Meditations and Remembrances ’ from my local serious record store it will cost me £14.99. Buy it online via Amazon Marketplace from a UK vendor and the lowest price is £9.00. I asked industry sources, including a serious record store, how this situation could come about. Their explanations were, the CD wouldn’t be in stock, or it would be second-hand, or it would be a review copy. Sorry folks, wrong, wrong and wrong. I bought my copy online, it arrived in days, and it was a mint, shrink-wrapped copy.

Secondly, the independent labels must concentrate on adding value instead of slipping down the slippery slope of price cutting and surrendering to the distribution route of paid-for file downloads. On an Overgrown Path has repeatedly said that recorded classical music is already too cheap, and we are not the only ones saying it. Jordi Savaal’s brilliantly successful Alia Vox label has shown that value can be added to the CD format. In France recently I happily paid 23€ for Montserrat Figueras’ superb new release Lux Feminae because of the beautifully produced 172 full colour booklet that is bound into the packaging. The complete single CD package weighs in at 220gm, more than four times the weight of a normal CD, a classic example of 'more bang for your bucks.' This style of superb presentation simply cannot be made available to purchasers of file downloads, and it is a compelling reason to continue to buy the CD format. The success of the Alia Vox label shows that adding value works. While contracted to EMI in 1983 Savaal recorded a superb disc of music from the Sephardic Jews of Spain. That recording was being knocked out by FNAC in an EMI/Virgin 8CD box for 17€ with minimal documentation and dreary packaging, while elsewhere in the shop Savall’s 2CD re-recording of the same repertoire (albeit in more relaxed interpretations) was happily selling in superb Alia Vox packaging (above) for twice as much as the 8 disc EMI/Virgin box.

René Goiffon is correct, the demise of Tower Records is the end of an era. But it need not be the end of independent record labels and record stores. Harmonia Mundi, and the other labels, must implement pricing policies that reward retailers who provide a genuine service and commitment, and they must add value to lock loyal customers in to the CD format instead of surrendering to file downloads. The alternative is Best Buy, Target, Wal-Mart and K-Mart.

Now playing - Montserrat Figueras' Lux Feminae spanning the Middle Ages to the Renaissance. My enthusiam for the output of Alia Vox grows and grows; this is music of commitment and passion. Here is Figueras' note from the recording - Lux Femina is a homage to the light of Woman. Having sung of that light for so long through music and poetry, I naturally became aware that it has not always been free to shine. Lux Feminae is a celebratory disc because the best approach to life is to celebrate everything and take time to celebrate. It is a hymn to the place of woman through history, focusing on her aspects of light, mysticism, sensuality, motherhood, love, lament, rejoicing and wisdom. Women sing the story of humanity, celebrating the beauty and possibility of being sweet as honeycomb on the tongue; celebrating mystical love, the fruitful womb and the tender breast that nurtures God; celebrating the experience of giving birth, of motherhood and nursing a child; the gift and duty of transmitting life, teaching and being teachers of life; celebrating the experience of joy, even in the midst of grief and loss. All the protagonists of the poems and songs in Lux Feminae embody and bear witness to that light.

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The Pope has another Regensburg moment

The chanting of the Regensburger Domspatzen has accompanied me since my early youth. It was in the Mozart year of 1941 that I was allowed to hear this great choir in Salzburg for the first time. The splendidly sung soprano solo of the Laudate Dominum as well as the joyful soprano duet between allegro and adagio from Der Schauspieldirektor remains unforgettably engraved in my memory - the Holy Father Pope Benedict writes of wartime Salzburg in a personal message in the liner notes of Universal Music's recently released Concert for Pope Benedict XVI sung by the Regensburger choir.

Meanwhile in his 1951 book, Toscanini, Howard Taubman explains that others were less enamoured of Salzburg - In 1936 the Austrian Government, which was still trying to live with the Nazi Government in Germany, had cooked up a plan for an exchange of broadcasts. The Salzburg operas were to be sent to Germany by air, and the Bayreuth operas were to be broadcast to Austria. The performances led by Bruno Walter were not to be transmitted from Salzburg, since the Nazis did not wish to have music conducted by a man of Jewish antecedents. When Toscanini heard of this plan he sat on it hard. Broadcast any Salzburg performances to Germany, he told Austrian officials, and he would leave the festival for good. The scheme was dead. Naturally, the Nazis retaliated. They declined to let certain German singers appear in Salzburg, and there were last-minute problems.

In his orchestral performances Toscanini had taken pains to include music by Mendelssohn, which was under Nazi ban in Germany. This, too, had been no accident. It followed then as the day followed night that Toscanini would turn his back on Salzburg the moment the Nazis moved on Austria. On the day Hitler's troops and armour rolled into Vienna - Toscanini was then in New York at the head of the NBC Symphony - he was scheduled to conduct a rehearsal. He took his place on the podium in Studio 8H in Radio City wearing an agonized look. He conducted for a few moments and then ostensibly took offence at something that happened in the orchestra. He turned and fled into his dressing-room. There he barred the door to family and friends. He threw score on the floor, turned over chairs, kicked the table, tore at his clothes and wept. For hours he went through this solitary lamentation. It was not the rehearsal that had upset him, but the blow to free men in the loss of Austria to Hitler.

As well as a greeting and signature from the Pope the beautifully sung Concert for Pope Benedict XVI also contains the Sanctus from the Mass L'Anno Santo composed by Georg Ratzinger, a former director of the Regensburger Domspatzen, and brother of the Pope. This CD is not going to make it onto Sequenza21, but other 20th century composers whose compositions are featured include Carl Thiel (who in a fascinating bit of contemporary music trivia was actually a student of Schoenberg in Berlin, but is remembered today for his setting of the 18th century carol Adeste fidelis - O Come, All Ye Faithful which is included in the concert), and the Italian priest Lorenzo Perosi.

Despite (or perhaps because of?) the terrible events taking place, the year of the 14 year old future Pope's visit to Salzburg was an extraordinarily creative time for new music. The compositions from 1941 include Honegger's Second Symphony, Shostakovich's Seventh Symphony 'Leningrad', Howard Hanson's Third Symphony, Britten's 'Paul Bunyan', Poulenc's Exultate Deo & Salve Regina, Martinu's Concerto da Camera for Violin and String Orchestra with Piano and Percussion, Eisler's Variations for Piano, Hindemith's Sonata for Trombone, and Copland's Piano Sonata. But in addition to this list two of the 20th century's musical masterpieces were created in 1941. Olivier Messiaen's 'Quartet for the End of Time' for piano, clarinet, cello, and violin was written, and premiered, while the composer (left) was a prisoner in the Stalag VIIIA concentration camp, in Görlitz, Germany. In 1938, the shooting of a German diplomat in Paris by a 17 year old Polish Jew, made desperate by the Nazi persecution of his race in general and his family in particular, led to one of the most terrible pogroms of Jews - the infamous Kristallnacht. These events inspired Michael Tippett to write his oratorio 'A Child of Our Time' which was completed in 1941. Two years later Tippett was sentenced to three months' imprisonment for refusing, as a pacifist, to comply with conditions of exemption from active war service.

1941 was also the year Joseph Ratzinger, later to become Pope Benedict XVl, joined the Hitler Youth, shortly after membership was made compulsory. He quickly won a dispensation on account of his training at a seminary. “Ratzinger was only briefly a member of the Hitler Youth and not an enthusiastic one,” concluded John Allen, his biographer. Two years later Ratzinger was enrolled in an anti-aircraft unit that protected a BMW factory making aircraft engines. The workforce included slaves from Dachau concentration camp. And before the emails start - there is no suggestion that he was involved in any atrocities. Ratzinger has insisted he never took part in combat or fired a shot — adding that his gun was not even loaded — because of a badly infected finger. He was sent to Hungary, where he set up tank traps and saw Jews being herded to death camps. He deserted in April 1944 and spent a few weeks in a prisoner of war camp. He has said that although he was opposed to the Nazi regime, any open resistance would have been futile. The photo above shows Joseph Ratzinger circa 1940.

1941 was the 150th anniversary of the death of Mozart. Other notable events included:

* January 23 - Charles Lindbergh testifies before the U.S. Congress and recommends that the United States negotiate a neutrality pact with Adolf Hitler.
* February 19 - the start of the "three nights' Blitz" over Swansea, South Wales. Over three nights of intensive bombing Swansea town centre was almost completely obliterated by the 896 high explosive bombs dropped by the Luftwaffe causing 397 casualties and 230 deaths.
* April 6 - Germany invades Yugoslavia and Greece
* April 12 - German troops enter Belgrade
* May 20 - Battle of Crete - Germany launches airborne invasion of Crete
* May 27 - German battleship Bismarck is sunk in North Atlantic killing 2,300
* June 22 - Germany attacks the Soviet Union in Operation Barbarossa
* July 4 - Mass murder of Polish scientists and writers, committed by German troops in captured Polish city of Lwów
* July 31 - Holocaust: Under instructions from Adolf Hitler, Nazi official Hermann Göring, orders SS general Reinhard Heydrich to "submit to me as soon as possible a general plan of the administrative material and financial measures necessary for carrying out the desired final solution of the Jewish question."
* August 22 - German Occupation Authority announces that anyone found either working for or aiding the Free French will be sentenced to death.
* September 6 - Holocaust: The requirement to wear the Star of David with the word "Jew" inscribed (above), is extended to all Jews over the age of 6 in German-occupied areas.
* September 8 - Siege of Leningrad begins - German forces begin a siege against the Soviet Union's second-largest city, Leningrad. Stalin orders the Volga Deutsche deported to Siberia.
* December 7 (December 8 in Japan standard time) - Japanese Navy launches a surprise attack consisting of two full regiments on the United States fleet at Pearl Harbor, thus drawing the United States into World War II.
* December 8 - The United States officially declares war on Japan.

1941 timeline from Wikipedia. Joseph Ratzinger biographical material from Sunday Times. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
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Music, acid, and the collapse of communism

Eastern European communism did collapse and acid did have quite a bit to do with it. Charter 77, the Czech human rights organization was founded by Václav Havel (left) in defense of the Plastic People of the Universe, a psychedelic band inspired by the Velvet Underground. Havel himself was in New York in 1968, listening to the Velvets and dreaming, no doubt, of a way out of Cold War ideology - From Andrei Codrescu's introduction to Acid Dreams - the Complete Social History of LSD: the CIA, the Sixties, and Beyond by Marin A. Lee and Bruce Shlain. (Grove Weidenfeld 0802130623).

Music is the most powerful of all the idealist drugs except religion - Stephen Spender

Truth and love will prevail over lies and hatred - Vaclav Havel

For the extraordinary history of the Plastic People of the Universe follow this link.

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Every young musician must buck the odds

Keith Jarrett's mother, Irma, sent him some old press clippings from his childhood performances recently, sharp reminders of just how long he has been honing his unique craft. But though his parents encouraged his talents as much as they could in the "vacuum-town" (Jarrett's words) that was postwar Allentown, Pennsylvania, they were Christian Scientists who believed that spiritual values came first. In his own way, Jarrett (above) still lives by a similar principle. Understanding music deepens consciousness, and deeper consciousness might lead to a more open world; so might his logic go.

"We accept so many things that come through the media; we get used to them, however vigilant we are," Jarrett says, warming to a favourite theme. "But for any creative art, you have to remain 110% conscious, and in a world that's losing consciousness, that's getting harder. It's a hard job, and a lifetime job, but it's still up to every young musician to buck the odds."

John Fordham interviews Keith Jarrett in today's Guardian

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Rock Me Amadeus

Hello! I just wanted to swing by to tell you how great I think your OAOP blog is. I am a regular, avid reader; albeit a relatively new one; indeed after reading your recent piece on the Vigneron Art of Fugue I rushed out to purchase it, and have been suitably blown away. As a recent convert to the world of classical music, your informed and passionate writing genuinely helps me along, and opens my philistine's brain out into previously unknown, uncharted realms. So thanks.

I'm a writer myself; indeed the consequences of my own, Laboured yet Honest travails along the path of Classical Music Enlightenment are documented within my most recent effort. Here's a link if you're interested:
It's basically High Art through a Low Cultural prism, and is meant to be taken with a couple of dozen pinches of salt. Starched purists (and Classic FM) despise me, but most people have given me a fair crack of the whip. Despite all my bullshit, music is THE love of my life, and most people tend to at least appreciate that.

Anyway, I merely wanted to drop by and say thanks. I probably listen to more classical music now than I did before my "quest" began. And one of the reasons for this is your writing. It's appreciated.
Best regards, Seb - http://www.sebhunter.com/

This email arrived a few days ago from Seb Hunter (picture above) who is the author of several books including Hell Bent for Leather - Confessions of a Heavy Metal Addict, and a contributor to the Guardian and Observer. The new book he refers to is Rock Me Amadeus, Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Handel … and I read it with considerable interest when it was published by Penguin back in May completely unaware that Seb travels On An Overgrown Path.

Quite rightly a lot of time is spent debating how classical music can reach new and younger audiences. The promotional blurb for Rock Me Amadeus says ‘Once he’d reached his early thirties Seb Hunter knew it was time to grow up – but that, of course, meant attempting to enjoy classical music. Pretending just wouldn’t do.’ Regular readers will know that although free MP3 downloads feature here frequently, I do not share the view that they are some kind of ‘musical magical mushroom’ that will turn on a new generation of listeners and concert goers. File downloads, high profile books like Rock Me Amadeus, and music blogs such as On An Overgrown Path and many others all have an important role to play in spreading the gospel. To hear that somebody is a fan of OAOP is just a bonus, to hear that somebody has been blown away by a recording or composer discovered here is what really matters.

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Incest, folk dancing and Abba

Deutsche Grammophon’s current artistic policy seems to be driven by Arnold Bax’s famous advice that one should try everything once except incest and folk dancing. This innovative strategy now brings us Anne Sofie von Otter (left) singing Benny Andersson, who is best known for penning Abba’s pop hits. The new album is titled ‘I Let the Music Speak’ and features six of Abba’s finest including ‘The Winner Takes All.’

In the PR material the versatile mezzo gushes ‘Some of the tunes are extremely gripping, they go straight to your heart, and it’s completely incredible. Very few composers that I know touch me in the way that Benny Andersson’s music touches me’, while Andersson confesses ‘These days I listen almost exclusively to classical music’. The record label that brought you Furtwängler, Karajan, Abbado, Barenboim and Pollini concludes by saying ‘It’s no wonder, then, that Benny and Anne Sofie have finally found each other.’

Anyone for folk dancing?

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The Beautiful Blue Danube at Pancevo

Should justice ever prevail, and Nato's 1999 leaders find themselves lodging in The Hague Tribunal's guest-wing, Pančevo will head the list of Serbian cities whose bombing constituted indirect chemical warfare and was therefore criminal, according to the Geneva Conventions. Other severely poisoned towns were Kragujevac, Bor and Novi Sad. A report submitted to Kofi Annan by the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) and the United Nations Centre for Human Settlements (UNCHS) emphasized how urgently clean-ups were needed because of the long-term environmental consequences. But Serbia, its state coffers grievously depleted by Milošević & Co., could not possibly afford thorough clean-ups.

Early morning clouds hung low and grey as I walked to meet Bogdan at the 108 bus terminal near Omladinski Stadium. He was there before me, a slim young man with jet black hair and large brown eyes in a long, thin, sallow face. As No.108 bus rattled slowly across dull flat land, he criticized Belgrade's Public Institute of Health, a Department of the Serbian Health Ministry, for making light of Natos's pollution legacy - though local doctors had warned all women who were in Pančevo 0n 18-19 April to avoid pregnancy for at least two years. And all who at that date had been in the first two months of pregnancy were advised to abort their babies. Vehemently Bogdan declared, 'The goverment won't admit Nato did so much damage. And it doesn't want to put off foreigners who might invest here when things get normal.'

Pančevo can never have been beautiful and post-bombing it looked like the Tenth Circle of Hell. First we walked by a reeking, litter-clogged canal linking the South Industrial Zone Industrial Complex to the Danube. Into it were released, on that April night, 300 tons of sodium hydroxide and 100 tons of carcinogenic vinyl chloride monomer from the Petrohemija factory. It had been estimated that to decontaminate the canal and its banks would cost at least DM43 million.

'Nato wasn't punishing only us,' said Bogdan. 'More than ten millions in different countries depend on the Danube for drinking water. Fish died all the way down to the Black Sea. On 19 April the sun never got through the the thick fog all over Pančevo - not a natural coloured fog (see header photo). Our ecotoxicologists tested it. They found concentrates of vinyl chloride, naptha, dioxins, ammonia - 10,600 times above human safety limits. That day thousands of people were falling around dizzy and vomitting. We were told to soak our scarves in sodium bicarbonate and use them for face masks. The vinyl chloride plant was bombed twice. Clouds of gas and smoke were sent up hundreds of meters and also held phosgene, hydrochloric acid and ethylene dichloride. And 250 tons of liquid ammonia were thrown into the air.'

By then we had left the canal and were passing the grotesquely twisted remains of one of Europe's biggest fertilizer factories. By chance Nato's bombers missed some of its gigantic warehouses. We paused and Bogdan pointed out the colossal storage tanks, holding 20,000 tons of ammonia. Had those been hit the scale of the disaster would have decisevely exposed Operation Allied Force's (Nato's bombing campaign against Serbia) 'humanitarian' label as counterfeit and abruptly ended the airwar. As we lunched in Bogdan's parent's flat his chemical engineer father mentioned an even narrower escape. Thirteen massive oil and petrol slicks on the Danube - one fifteen miles long and 400 yards wide - had threatened Europe's least reliable nuclear power plant at Kozloduy in Bulgaria. The workers had only thirty minutes to avert a meltdown caused by oily sludge thickening the cooling water.

Father's main personal concern was the eight tons of mercury saturating the soli around the petrochemical plant. Its employees were frantiacally attempting a clean-up with pumps, to prevent the mercury sinking deeper, into the underground water system. But in four months they had recovered little more than a ton.

Bogdan's mother, also a chemical engineer, described the widespread sense of shocked disbelief when Nato began to bomb indiscriminately - oil refineries, power plants, civilian factories, road and railway bridges. Then, all over Serbia, damage limitation became the priority; plants were closed, chemicals neutralized if possible. However in Pančevo and elsewhere more desperate remedies were sometimes needed - such as releasing 1,400 tons of carcinogenic ethylene dichloride into the Danube lest a bomb might cause it to explode. Apartment blocks stood less than 150 yards from its storage site. From the same petrochemical plant, 800 tons of hydrochloric acid, 3,000 tons of lye and large deposits of mercury also entered the river. Could there be any connection betwen those catastrophes and the case of the Lechevo babies? Between October 1999 and July 2000 ten babies were born in the Bulgarian village of Lechevo, near the Serbian border. Eight were 'imperfect' - very imperfect. Two died, mercifully, during their first month.

I well remember Nato's excuse for attacking Pančevo so relentlessly. Such 'strikes' were necessary to 'degrade' Milošević's 'war machine'. (Pliable - Echoes of Dresden). By then Nato's commanders were no longer 'protecting' Kosovars but tearing Serbia apart. And their degraded form of militarism, using cluster bombs, depleted uranium and indirect chemical warfare, means that for decades to come the Serbs, and their neighbours will continue to be punished for the crimes of the Milošević régime.

On our return journey I told Bogdan about a BBC World Service broadcast heard at 1 a.m. on 18 June, eight days after the end of the airwar. Three political commentators were considering how 'the Balkan war' had affected various alliance leaders' reputations. For President Clinton, after that initial trying controversy about ground troops, it had been 'a good war', casualty free and 'impressively projecting US power'. For Prime Minister Tony Blair it had been 'a very good war', he had stood out as the most resolute and inspiring Alliance leader. For Herr Schröder it had been 'a good and timely war', enabling him to prove himself 'master of the German Greens'.

'Where are we at,' I demanded despairingly of my companion, 'when "success" in international affairs is measured by the image-enhancement of natioan leaders, regardless of human suffering?'

'We're at somewhere very frightening,' Bogdan sombrely replied. Then he added,'Now only nuclear weapons can protect countries from the US. I thought before the bombing India and Pakistan were wrong to make those - after '89 I wanted nuclear disarmament. Now I know they were right. If we'd had even one small Hiroshima-sized bomb - the sort we could get to Rome or Munich - Nato would never have attacked us. '

The chilling account above is from Dervla Murphy's 2002 book Through the Embers of Chaos, Balkan Journeys (John Murray ISBN 0719565103). Not happy reading, but essential reading nevertheless. The 26 member countries of Nato are – Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Czech Republic, Denmark, Estonia, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Iceland, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Norway, Poland, Portugal, Romania, Slovakia, Slovenia, Spain, Turkey, United Kingdom, and United States.

Now playing - Olivier Greif, Sonate de Requiem for cello and piano composed between 1979-1993. Grief was born into a Jewish family of Polish stock, and settled in Paris. He was truly cosmopolitan and his cultural influences ranged from the US to India. In 1976, Olivier Greif (below) embarked on a spiritual quest which was to last more than twenty years. He attached himself to an Indian guru living in New York, making frequent trips to the United States and other parts of the world as a consequence. In 1978 he was given the name 'Haridas' ('servant of God' in Sanskrit). This withdrawal into an inner life, in response to a profound spiritual aspiration, resulted in the suspension of his personal musical creativity for some 10 years, following the Sonate de Requiem, Le Livre du Pèlerin and the opera Nô. During these years he made numerous polyphonic arrangements of Indian devotional songs. The Sonate de Requiem is a deeply moving work which speaks eloquently of the humanitarian disasters of the late 20th century such as the Serbian conflict without resorting to serialism or electronic sounds to try and resolve them. Olivier Grief died in Paris in 2000 aged just 50.

Image credit - Pančevo skyline from Zoran Jovanovic Maccak. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
For more on the dreadful consequences of modern warfare take An Overgrown Path to The Winter's Tale

These Simpsons are a cult classic

Autumn 2006 looks like being the season of the boxed set, and an absolute ‘must-buy’ is the newly released seven disc retrospective of Robert Simpson’s eleven magnificent symphonies from Hyperion. Simpson, born in 1921, was a notable champion of Nielsen and Bruckner while working as a music producer for the BBC, but resigned over what he considered to be the Corporation’s positive discrimination in favour of serial and atonal music. The Guardian obituary paints an excellent word picture of Robert Simpson (photo below) -

'His views were indeed held firmly. He was a lifelong pacifist, and his move to south-west Ireland in the early days of the Thatcher era was encouraged by the fact that Ireland did not have a nuclear arsenal. Having joined the BBC at the heyday of the Third Programme, he was appalled at the degeneration of its standards; like his friend Hans Keller, he saw the corporation as the ideal means of communicating the values he held to be important - not because of any cultural snobbery but because they both believed deeply in the civilising force of great art. The breaking-point came in 1980, when the BBC attempted to make swingeing cuts in its orchestral resources, occasioning the musicians union boycott of BBC work that summer. Simpson resigned, writing in a letter to the Times that he could no longer work for an institution whose views he no longer respected.'

But don’t be misled into thinking that Simpson’s music is conservative or unadventurous. Starting from the legacy of Carl Nielsen (who remains one of the most underrated symphonists himself) he exploited the symphony orchestra to full advantage and developed a musical voice that offers a viable alternative to the late 20th century avant-garde. As well as the wonderful symphonies he wrote fifteen string quartets, and died in 1997 aged 76. Hyperion’s invaluable boxed set offers the eleven symphonies and the Variations on a Theme of Nielsen, with the symphonies conducted by another grossly neglected contemporary musician, Vernon Handley. Nobody should resist these classic Simpsons at budget price (around £40 - $76US for seven CDs), and kudos to Hyperion for yet once again showcasing yet another top-flight, but sorely neglected, 20th century composer. The Hyperion website has samples from Robert Simpson's Ninth Symphony.

For more boxed sets of music by another scandalously neglected composer take An Overgrown Path to Recommended cure for Shostakovich fatigue, and for another contemporary composer who fell out with the BBC take An Overgrown Path to Jerry Springer rebel grabs Gramophone accolade

Image credit - Simpsontrivia. The Robert Simpson symphonies, and all CDs featured On An Overgrown Path are available from the leading independent CD store, Prelude Records. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Iannis Xenakis composes in glass

La Tourette monastery, near Lyons in France, was designed by Le Corbusier, and is the Swiss architect's last major European work. During the period of its design and construction between 1957 and 1960 the legendary architect was so busy with other projects around the world that he delegated the detailing of La Tourette to his project director, Iannis Xenakis.

Architecture is a form of composition. As Geraldine Bedell describes in her excellent new book The Handmade House, (Penguin ISBN 9780670914258) the word 'architect' derives from the Greek architekton, or head carpenter, while the Sanskrit and Chinese words for an architect - sthapti and chientsu-shu - both translate literally as 'master builder'. Frank Gehry, architect of the Bilbao Guggenheim and the Los Angeles Disney Concert Hall, has said that his vocation was sparked by playing with construction toys as a child, and Le Corbusier's abstractly-sculptured chapel at Notre Dame du Haut was an early influence on Gehry's own style.

Xenakis had studied engineeering in Athens before joining Le Corbusier's office in Paris. Music and architecture were inextricably linked for Xenakis; his music used Le Corbusier's Modulor system of proportions, and his design work used rhythmic priciples. These links are found in the structure of his first mature work, Metastasis, which is based on the design for the surfaces of the Philips pavilion built for the Expo 1958 in Brussels. Xenakis's obsession with mathematics reflected a credo expressed by Le Corbusier: Mathematics is the majestic structure conceived by man to grant him comprehension of the universe.

La Tourette (above) was commissioned by the visionary Dominican Father Marie-Alain Corturier who also collabarated with Marc Chagall, Fernand Léger and Amédée Ozenfant. The design remains pure Le Corbusier while acknowledging the influence of the Cistercian monastery at Le Thoronet in Provence. Xenakis' most visible contribution is the spectacular pans de verre ondulatoires, the vertical windows of the main façade and the cloister. The uneven horizontal divisions between them were determined using Le Corbusier's Modulor system, and apply musical principles of harmony and rhythm. (See photos at head of article and below). It is delicously ironic that Le Corbusier's once said that the history of architecture was 'the struggle for the window'. At La Tourette he clearly gave up the struggle and delegated the windows to his second-in-command.


In his highly influential book Le Modulor and Le Modulor 2 Le Corbusier recognised the value of Xenakis' synthesis of architecture and music with these words: This tangency of music and architecture, evoked on countless occasions in relation to the Modulor, is now consciously expressed in a musical score by Xenakis: Mestasis, composed with the modulor, which lent its resources to musical composition.

Now playing - Erato's 2 CD set of Xenakis. This super-budget release (£10, $18US or less) is a superb introduction if you don't know his extraordinary music. All the right names are there - Pierre Boulez, Michel Tabachnik and the Ensemble InterContemporain. But it is the second CD that contains the real gems - four works composed for harpsichordist Elisabeth Chojnacka (left) where the sounds are as crystalline as the Xenakis' pans de verre ondulatoires at La Tourette. There are some seriously beautiful things here, in particular Komboi in which the amplified harpsichord plays a duet with a huge array of percussion. This music is a million miles from Le Corbusier's 'White World' of architecture, which he explained as pure, streamlined, and calming. Komboi means 'knots', and Xenakis' compositions can sometimes be as frustrating as unpicking a knot, but the ends results are very well worth the effort. The radical architect Robert Eisenman once said his buildings were 'designed to shake people out of their needs.' That is also a pretty good summary of Xenakis' music.

* All the photos above are of La Tourette, and are copyright Galinsky.com. For more excellent photos and information of the monastery do visit their web site.
* Visit Iannis Xenakis' website via this link, Foundation Le Corbusier via this link, and for an explanation of Le Corbusier's Modulor system of proportions follow this link. The beautifully illustrated Walking Through Le Corbusier, A Tour of His Masterworks by José Baltanás (Thames & Hudson ISBN 0500512337) is an excellent resource on the architect's work, including La Tourette.
* I mentioned the influence of Le Thoronet on the design of La Tourette. The Stones of the Abbey is a remarkable work of the imagination that recreates the building of the twelfth-century abbey at Le Thoronet through the eyes of the monastic master builder who created it in the days before the architectural profession was conceived. The author of this scrupulously researched work of fiction, Fernand Pouillon, is himself a notable architect who studied the building of the original monastery. My copy is the now out of print US Harvest Books edition (ISBN 0156851008), but there are also English editions with the title The Stones of Le Thoronet. The book was originally published in French as Les Pierres Sauvage.
* Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid is essential reading for anyone interested in the relationship between music and mathematics. (Penguin 0140289208)The book is full of delightful Esheresque sleights of the intellect. One quite unnerving puzzle in the book (in the dialogue Aria with Diverse Variations) is the speculative scenario of an author who writes a book and chooses to end it without actually stopping the text, as is the usual procedure. An author cannot make a sudden ending (sudden from considerations of plot, that is) come as a surprise, because the physical fact that there are only a few pages left in the book is obvious to the reader. So the author might conclude the main theme, and then continue writing, but drop clues to the reader that the end has already passed. These clues may take the form of wandering and unfocused prose, mis-statements, or contradictions (does that sound familiar?). The speculative book has become an experiment in the interplay of form and function, just like the music of Xenakis, the text of Gödel, Escher, Bach, the score of the Art of Fugue, the buildings of Le Corbusier, and, on a much more modest scale, this blog.
* Another outstanding contemporary monastery is Novy Dur in the Czech Republic designed by John Pawson, who in a convergence of threads has also published a remarkable photo essay on Le Thoronet titled Leçons du Thoronet.

Any copyrighted material on these pages is used in "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
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Notable students of Darius Milhaud

Burt Bacharach
William Bolcom
Dave Brubeck
Charles Dodge
Philip Glass
Stanley Hollingsworth
Steve Reich
Karlheinz Stockhausen (he left his studies early)
Morton Subotnick
Iannis Xenakis

Darius Milhaud (above) was born in in Aix-en-Provence in 1892. From 1947 to 1971 he taught alternate years at Mills College in Oakland, California and the Paris Conservatoire.
Image credit - Darius Milhaud from Danielthompson.com. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included in "fair use", for the purpose of study, review or critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
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