On An Overgrown Path

Theatre Street, Norwich today. Now see romanticism's poster boy . Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2009. Report errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Re: BBC Radio 3 - Exclusive Content‏ From: Nadia Ruggiero Sent: 29 April 2009 13:28:23 To: Bob Shingleton Dear Bob, BBC Radio 3 would like to invite you to become an exclusive partner of their Mendelssohn season. We would like to offer you access to a range of events and content in return for support on On An Over Grown Path . For example, the opportunity to attend the rehearsal for A Midsummer Night's Dream complete with Mendelssohn's incidental music at Middle Temple Hall this Saturday 2 May (timings tbc today). Or a live broadcast of the drive-time show "In Tune" presented by Sean Rafferty, taking place at the Birmingham Town Hall on Friday 8th May (travel & accommodation provided). We are happy to approach artists and contributors for interview if you'd be interested in talking to any of them. I would be grateful if you could indicate asap whether you would like to attend either of the above events at your earliest opportunity. I'm also happy to discus...

Over time classical music has shifted from being a lean forward activity, where the emphasis is on participation, to a lean back activity, where the audience are passive observers. Music originated as a lean forward activity in churches. The chorales in the Bach Passions are a brilliant use of lean forward music, and Britten followed Bach's example with the congregational singing in Noye's Fludde and Saint Nicholas . The flourishing community choir movement in France is a testament to the power of lean forward music . Music lessons in schools, now fast disappearing , are lean forward music pure and simple. John Cage wrote his A House Full of Music (described by him as 'A Musicircus of non-professional music' ) for 800 music-school pupils in Bremen, Germany, and his 4' 33", where ambient sound becomes the performance, is the ultimate lean forward music. But lean back music, where the focus is on celebrity performers, is the darling of the media driven 21st c...

From Brain music to more Brain music to Acid Dreams - which tells the story of the links between the CIA and LSD. A lot of names from the music industry appear in the book, and they are not all the usual suspects. It includes the story of how André Previn took part in a study of the effect of LSD in the late 1950s carried out by Dr Oscar Janiger , a Los Angeles psychiatrist. Acid Dreams was a chance find a few years back in the gem of a bookstore in Avignon, France, run by Wolfgang Zuckermann , who was, also by chance , supplier of harpsichords to John Cage in an earlier life. I last met Wolfgang Zuckermann when I was in Avignon in December 2008 in search of Olivier Messiaen . And, also by chance, Messiaen died on 27th April, 1992, which is seventeen years ago today. You can relax, Messiaen is not in Acid Dreams . But that didn't stop him thinking outside the box . Brain music thread via Alex Ross and Sounds & Fury . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as ...

The photo above shows music history being made. It was taken yesterday at the acoustic test for the new Britten Studio at Snape, and shows the new hall filled with the invited audience who were about to hear the first ever live music in the new auditorium. Leading young musicians performed a range of chamber and vocal works, including pieces by Haydn, Debussy, Vaughan Williams and Rebecca Clarke . The music was specially selected to allow acoustic experts to assess the sound of the hall with an audience in situ. The Britten Studio is at the centre of the Snape creative campus development that I previewed here in 2006 . It is a stone's throw from the legendary Snape Maltings Concert Hall , which for four decades has been the gold-standard for concert hall acoustics. When Snape Maltings was created from disused industrial buildings in 1967 the new concert hall was acclaimed for its 'radical traditionalism' as well as its superlative sound. Over the years the surface textures ...

A then unknown Andy Warhol drew this Blue Note album cover in the late 1950s. More on Warhol's cover art in Friday's New York Times . See the music here . With thanks to Vanessa Lann for the link. Image credit rhapsody.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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

A couple of weeks ago I ran a piece on Archive Classics , a new website specialising in making out-of-copyright recordings available as podcasts. When I queried Archive Classics' on their position regarding proposed changes in EU copyright law I received this ambiguous response: With regard to existing copyright laws, naturally we hope that common sense prevails when the EU vote on the proposed extension later this year. On Thursday the European Parliament voted in favour of extending copyright protection on music recordings from 50 to 70 years, which is still considerably more lenient than US copyright law . This EU ruling will affect labels such as Naxos Historical as well as Archive Classics. But the fat lady in Brussels hasn't sung yet. Once the law is agreed by member states, they will have two years to put it into place. Which should put the European copyright watershed at around 1942. There was a great resurgence of recording activity after World War Two, so that twent...

Scott has left a new comment on your post " Schoenberg and stomach cramps ": On a mildly related topic which would have fit better a few topics back, I've never really come to grips with what "world music" is. Specifically, why are Ravi Shankar and Ali Akbar Khan (to mention a personal favourite) often mentioned as world music? Surely they are classical music (or art music) as much as is Schoenberg. Sometimes I think that world music is anything that the writer thinks is more lasting than "popular music" but which doesn't fit within the boundaries of western art music or jazz. Thanks Scott, as ever a perceptive comment. As it's Friday and the sun is shining I am going to freewheel down the path you sent us on with those important words 'more lasting'. Back in 2006, when I was writing on Arvo Pärt's Passio , I quoted Mark Van Doren (from the introduction to Thomas Merton's The Seven Storey Mountain incidentally) as saying: ...

In the centre of this 1978 magazine cover is the unmistakable figure of John Tavener . But who is the lady towering above him? And there is another mystery lady here . 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Within the classical framework, I find it difficult to appreciate fully more recent music, beginning from Schoenberg and atonal music, through avant-garde, musique concrète and electronic music. Strange enough I have great trouble with anything discordant. In Darmstadt , Germany, there is a regular festival of modern music featuring pieces by all the famous modern composers, and I have twice been invited to give sitar recitals there. If I arrive at such a venue one day before my performance, I always make a point of listening to what is going on. On those two occasions in Darmstadt, and at least two other times since, I have noticed that I develop a peculiar problem. It is mystifying how it happens, but I find that when I start hearing those strange sounds or discordant combinations, within a few minutes I feel a stomach cramp, and from stomach cramp I develop a terrible headache and nausea. At first I thought these physical effects were coincidental, and that my suffering was due to ...

This postcard arrived from Hedgehog in Berlin, where he has been attending Barenboim's Festtage 2009 . Hedgehog's message says: Centuries of Bach research have revealed the minutiae of his domestic life. That he was a prolific father of numerous children is a well-known fact. This intimate portrait reveals his lesser-known penchant for 'Das washing-up' . Remarkable! Read about Bach and modern technology here. The Bach Privat poster was for actually for a chamber music series by members of the Berlin Philharmonic. See other posters in the series here. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

When will opera directors learn that less is invariably more? In the 1950s the actor-manager Brian Rix developed a genre of comedy known as Whitehall farce. The main characteristic of this peculiarly English art form was frantic stage business involving a lot of doors. And judging by the six doors and endless comings and goings in English Touring Opera's new production of Mozart's The Magic Flute , which played at Snape yesterday, we may be about to experience a revival of the Whitehall farce. This new Magic Flute is directed by, and I quote English Touring Opera's website , "phyical theatre specialist Liam Steel". So it was hardly surprising that the production was more theatre music than music theatre. But this meant that fleeting moments of magic battled against a noisy set that was part lighting showroom (see header photo) and part TV game show. Musically, things under conductor Paul McGrath were equally patchy, despite an outstanding Queen of the Night fro...

Let's hear it for independent record stores . Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2009. Report errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

In 1972 I was in the south of France. I had eaten some bad fish and was in consequence rather ill. As I lay in bed I had a strange recurring vision, there, before me, was a concrete building like a hotel or council block. I could see into the rooms, each of which was continually scanned by an electronic eye. In the rooms were people, everyone of them preoccupied. In one room a person was looking into a mirror and in another a couple were making love but lovelessly, in a third a composer was listening to music through earphones. Around him there were banks of electronic equipment. But all was silence. Like everyone in his place he had been neutralized, made grey and anonymous. The scene was for me one of ordered desolation. It was as if I were looking into a place which had no heart. Next day when I felt better, I was on the beach sunbathing and suddenly a poem popped into my head. It started out 'I am the proprietor of the Penguin Cafe, I will tell you things at random' and it...

Dear Bob, I hope you are really well! I work for Valerie Barber PR and we are responsible for the PR of Archive Classics , which launched on 3rd April (www.archiveclassics.com). This site was launched by Classics Arts with the aim of making great recordings from the past more accessible to both collectors and to a new generation audience. Broadcaster Stephen Johnson presents a weekly podcast centred around an archive recording, and takes the listener on a journey through this recording in an enjoyable and informative style. The podcast is available for download from the website and the recording itself is available for download by subscribers. Please find attached the press release and if you would like any further information please do not hesitate to get in touch. Many thanks and best wishes Iain Handyside Account Executive >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> Iain, thanks for that. I'm interested in running a piece about Archive Classics. To h...

Hodja wanted to learn how to play the lute. So he approached a music teacher and asked him, "How much do you charge for private lute lessons?" "Three silver pieces for the first month; then after that, one silver piece a month." "Oh, that's very fair," exclaimed Hodja . "I'll start with the second month." From Essential Sufism . Header image is peerless Moroccan oud player Said Chraibi's CD for an Arab record label with a secret life. Read more here . 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

A close encounter of the discount kind in HMV's Oxford Street store leads the path back to Convivencia, the CD of music from Moorish Spain seen above. (That artwork incidentally is on my shortlist of best cover art of all time ). In November 2006 I wrote an article contrasting Convivencia , which features soprano Catherine Bott accompanied by various permutations of lute, vihuela, guitar, oud, tar, tablah, tbilat and douf, with a new CD of Dowland lute songs performed by rock star Sting. Recently I noticed the Deutsche Grammophon Sting CD in a deletions bin in HMV Oxford Street. So I checked with Chris Marr at leading independent retailer Prelude Records (how many online retailers have an up-and-coming composer on their staff?) for an update. He told me the original CD of Sting's Songs from the Labyrinth was deleted last autumn. There is now a 'Special Edition' CD released in November 2008 which has a three extra tracks. And there is a 2 CD edition consisting of th...

At no time in his life after the age of about fifteen did Grainger abandon his sadistic and masochistic pleasure-seeking. Blood-letting was often part of his activities and he nearly always laundered his own shirts because of the telltale bloodstains. With the possible exception of Mimi Kwast, all his girlfriends were to be drawn into his particular form of lovemaking and there is ample photographic evidence of this. Several photographs exist which he took himself after one of his bouts of auto-flagellation. An indication of his extraordinary mentality can be detected from the fact that as he stood before the camera lens with bleeding wounds he also held up a notice which gave details not only of the exact time of day, location of session and number of lashes with what kind of whip, but also the type of film used in the camera and the exposure and aperture. Whenever he went on tour he took a selection of several dozen whips with him. From Percy Grainger by John Bird (ISBN 0571117171 ...

A wonderful email story from a reader in Spain to end the Handel anniversary day . When the city of Madrid organised the first Marathon race back in 1978, an anoymous neighbour who lived near the 41th kilometre milestone placed the loudspeakers of his sound system in his balcony facing the street and playing Handel's Hallelujah chorus at full volume in an endless loop while runners passed by. This became a custom that was even announced by the organisation in later editions. In 1999 the race had to change its course in the last kilometres in order to accomodate the growing number of participants. This would have deprived them from their Handel when they approached the last kilometre. But the association of Handel to the race was so entrenched that the organisation set up a booth at the 41th kilometre milestone with a powerful sound system playing Handel's Hallelujah chorus "as usual". I can confess that its effect on the runners is really uplifting. More on the Hallel...

It can hardly have escaped readers in the UK that George Frederic Handel died on 14th April, 1759. There is no doubt Handel is a composer of true genius . But, unfortunately, BBC Radio 3 has turned a notable music anniversary into a media event as tasteless, in its own way, as the coverage of the death of Jade Goody . If you have listened to BBC Radio 3 in the last few days I quite understand why you may never want to hear a note of Handel's music again. But here, in the hope of reviving jaded palates, are four suitably overgrown Handel paths. The perfect antidote to Handel overload is The Cleveland Symphonic Winds recording of The Music for the Royal Fireworks under Frederick Fennell . This was originally issued as an audiophile LP in 1978, and the header photo shows my copy of the original Telarc vinyl release. Handel's Royal Fireworks Music (in an edition prepared by Charles Mackerras and Anthony Baines ) is coupled with Holst's Suites for Military Band , and a '...

Risk-taking is in very short supply in classical music today. Except at Snape. There, the latest avant-garde tricks , writing for machines , and, yes, the occasional grandiose clap-trap are embraced by Aldeburgh Music as they continue to dare to be different . In his 1964 Aspen Award acceptance speech Britten warned of the dangers facing contemporary music - There are many dangers which hedge around the unfortunate composer: pressure groups which demand true proletarian music, snobs who demand the latest avant-garde tricks ... He may find himself writing more and more for machines, in conditions dictated by machines, and not for humanity: or of course he may end by creating grandiose clap-trap when his real talent is for dance tunes or children's piano pieces. But Britten would never have wanted Aldeburgh to become a stuffy museum for his art, and, thankfully, today the Snape creative campus is much more about the future than the past. On Easter Saturday daring to be different ...

The best possible response, however, to the question 'What are your songs about? ' was vintage 60s Bob Dylan: 'Oh, some are about four minutes, some are about five, and some, believe it or not, are about eleven or twelve,' he replied. Quote is from Karen O'Brien's biography of Joni Mitchell . Read about the birth of rock here. Dylan photo from Mood Swing . 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

'Our highest business is our daily life' - John Cage He may have been a student of Zen Buddhist and a self-proclaimed anarchist . But the thinking behind John Cage's words applies across all faiths and philosophies. In Christian monastic orders the business of daily life is defined by the Opus Dei . These are the Holy Offices during which all the Psalms are sung in rotation in a never ending affirmation of faith. Music is central to the liturgy. Again John Cage is surprisingly in tune with the contemplative life. He was famously influenced by the Indian musician Gita Sarabhai whose definition of the purpose of music explains why singing is central to monastic worship: 'The purpose of music is to sober and quiet the mind, thus making it susceptible to divine influences.' Probably the most moving of the Divine Offices is Compline. This is the last of the daily cycle and it celebrates the completion of the day. Compline is sung in darkness, and ends joyfully with th...

Whoever travels without a guide needs two hundred years for a two-day journey Rumi Forget about the Rough Guide. Thinking is the best way to travel , and the very affordable (less than £9 in the UK) compendium of Sufi wisdom seen above is the perfect companion. One in a series from HarperOne that also includes Essential Zen and Essential Tibetan Buddhism . Below is Thames & Hudson's lavish visual guide to Islamic mysticism , which is an even bigger bargain at, again, less than £9 . Contemporary music and Sufism here . I have distorted the Essential Sufism cover to fit the blog format. Both books featured in this post were bought at retail price. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Definitely something not to be missed . Although at a UK retail price of around £20 for 2 CDs of an amateur mono recording that is more than half-a-century old, hardly a bargain. Vaughan Williams' 1958 performance of the St. Matthew Passion cuts twelve numbers including four arias, is sung in English with a large chorus, and uses a piano and organ instead of harpsichord for the keyboard continuo. 'It is our privilege and duty to use all the improved mechanism invented by our instrument-makers to do full justice to this immortal work' - Vaughan Williams explained. It would be difficult to find two greater musical opposites than Vaughan Williams and John Cage . But they do have something in common. Cage said 'I hate the harpsichord, it reminds me of a sewing machine'. Despite that Cage went on to compose HPSCHD for up to 7 harpsichords and 51 electronic tapes. Memories from John Cage's HPSCHD supplier here . VW's Matthew Passion was recorded in the Dorkin...

A comment on When styles collide raises the interesting question of when was the Matthew Passion composed? Was it when Bach started writing the work, when he finished it, or when he produced his final performing version? It is much more than a semantic point. Behind it lies the question, what is the Matthew Passion , or any other piece of music? Is the Matthew Passion the notes printed in the score? But there are diffferent performing editions, and Bach himself directed several versions. Is the Matthew Passion the music Bach heard in his head when he was writing it? But his conception of the work continued to evolve and he was still revising it nine years after the first performance. Is the Matthew Passion the music we hear in performance or from a recording? But performing styles, musical competencies, acoustics, recording technology and our own auditory and receptor systems are constantly changing. The answer must be that the Matthew Passion , or any composition, is simply the m...