Classical music must put its house in order - 2


The blind leading the blind.

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Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

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On that sleeve for his 1985 recording of the Goldberg Variations , Scott Ross is seen standing in the grounds of Château d'Assas in Languedoc. It was here that many of the harpsichordist's great recordings were made. Then, as today, the château dwelt in the twilight zone between grandeur and dereliction, and thirty years ago the recording sessions were regularly interrupted by the sound of rats scurrying across the floor. Scott Ross was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and moved to France with his mother following the death of his father in 1964. He studied at the conservatoires in Nice and Paris, and first came to Château d'Assas in 1969 to give music lessons to the grandson of its owner Mme. Simone Demangel . When an early music academy was established at the Château d'Assas, Scott Ross gave masterclasses and became a frequent visitor. At first he stayed in a room in one of the towers, but from 1983 he rented a small house across the road from the château. The photos b...
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Sketches of Joaquin Rodrigo

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Was Joaquín Rodrigo, who died on 6 July, 1999, a composer out of step with his time? His most famous work, the tonal, tuneful and cheerful Concerto de Aranjuez , was completed in the spring of 1939 in Paris. While Rodrigo was composing German troops were approaching the Czech frontier and Moravia and Bohemia became 'protectorates' of the Third Reich. During that spring the Nazis annexed Lithuania, Arnold Schoenberg's Violin Concerto was published and Michael Tippett started work on his protest oratorio A Child Of Our Time . As Rodrigo's evocation of the glories of Spain took shape in March 1939 the Civil War in the composer's native Spain ended when Madrid surrendered after a siege lasting two and a half years and the remaining Republican territories capitulated to Franco's Nationalist forces. The total death toll in Spain was estimated to be around half a million. The rise of fascism and the spread of anti-semitism were hardly events that Rodrigo could ignore...
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All that twitters is not gold

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That tweet saddens me. It was written by Jeremy Pound who identifies himself without disclaimer on his Twitter account - see below - as the deputy editor of BBC Music Magazine . I don't know Jeremy Pound, but presumably he is a very nice guy who holds a senior position in an influential publication which he reached due to his qualifications and experience. Of course all of us have blind spots in our music appreciation. But is it not the role of a writer to report with a reasonable degree of objectivity that a work fails to engage them, fails to move them, or is beyond their comprehension? And is it not also their role to explore why that vital connection has not been made? Karlheinz Stockhausen has been judged by others with far stronger credentials than Jeremy Pound to be an important if controversial figure in late 20th-century music. To publicly dismiss one of his seminal works as "a load of pish" - definition "variation of piss, most usually used in the nort...
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Britten and Stravinsky - after the flood

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Finally the rains have stopped, and summer has arrived in East Anglia . Photographs taken this morning as I cycled out of our village. Benjamin Britten's wrote Noye's Fludde here in East Anglia, and it was first performed at the 1958 Aldeburgh Festival . It is Britten's most substantial work for children, and is based on one of the 16th century Chester Mystery Plays using an edition by Alfred W. Pollard . The main vocal parts are written for children, with the exceptions of the adult parts of Noye himself, Noye’s wife and the Voice of God. Noye's Fludde is scored for strings, recorders, bugles, handbells and a range of percussion, and also calls for home-made instruments including sandpaper blocks and slung mugs. Every CD collection should include the definitive 1961 recording made in Orford Church . Igor Stravinsky wrote the musical play The Flood in California to a commission from CBS television. The libretto is a compilation of texts by Robert Craft from th...
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Shostakovich we'll allow, but take out Stravinsky

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One of the recurring themes On An Overgrown Path has been the control of agents , broadcasters and record companies over the music we hear. The question is a simple one - do we hear the music we want, or do we hear the music chosen for us by others? A very perceptive comment today on my Peteris Vasks article by Daniel Wolf (do visit his blog Renewable Music ) reminded me that hidden agendas among programmers are not new, and raised the interesting point that Shostakovich was actually promoted, rather than suppressed, by the Soviet authorities at certain times. As soon as I read Daniel's comment I located Stormy Applause, Making Music In A Worker's State by Borodin Quartet founder Rostislav Dubinsky in my library. The events in the extract below took place in 1955. Goskoncert was (and still is) the Russian state run concert agency, and the programs under discussion were for the Borodin's first ever overseas tour to the German Democratic Republic . At Goskoncert the pr...
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Are we ready for an Islamic interpretation of Wagner?

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And so, the Grail was nothing other than the Black Stone of the Ka'aba, the central shrine of the world's last religion, purified judaeo-christianity, Islam. Makkah is named in the Qur'an as the Mother of Cities, and thus the 'birthplace of all nations' and the Ka'aba is named the 'primal shrine of all mankind'. Embedded in one corner of the Ka'aba stands the Black Stone which every muslim raises his lips to and kisses when he arrive dusty and exhausted as a pilgrim, kisses as if quenching his thirst. This is the extraordinary tale that Wagner has, partly despite himself, and partly aware, chosen to tell the world in his farewell revolutionary message. Both the Bey of Tunis and Abd al-Hamid II , Caliph of Islam, contributed to the foundation of Bayreuth, they had not yet heard Parsifal , but their hearts drew them to this most spiritual of men among men in an age of darkness. When Parsifal ends in its vast serenity, 'One of the most beautiful ...
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Early musician who could have become a great conductor

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Hopefully at least a little of the content from eleven years of On An Overgrown Path transcends the virtual noise that is the staple fare of online music journalism today . For me the most rewarding projects have been the Philippa Schuyler and Master Musician of Jajouka doubleheaders, the profile of Guyanese conductor Rudolph Dunbar , the exploration of contemporary modal music , and interviews with Jonathan Harvey , Jordi Savall , Ali Keeler , and with David Munrow's recording producer Christopher Bishop. Although the latter interview has been available as a sound file it has not to date been transcribed as text. So while tidying up loose ends I have transcribed the interview below. (The photo at the foot of the article was taken during the radio interview and shows me with Christopher Bishop). Although David Munrow is best known as an early music authority the interview ranges widely. Christopher Bishop mentored both Riccardo Muti and Andre Previn early in their careers...
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May I say a word about André Rieu?

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May I say a word about André Rieu? It is easy to look down at him and his style of presentation, to sneer at it as schlager or easy listening or glorified elevator muzak or whatever. I've done it myself. But, to my own considerable surprise, I find myself less and less sympathetic with such criticisms, and more and more embarrassed to have indulged in it myself. He is providing -- dare I say it? -- innocent, wholesome pleasure to millions of people, many of whom have never been afforded the opportunity to develop sophisticated classical music tastes. My mother-in-law, who grew up in a poor neighborhood near the Chicago stockyards and certainly never had exposure to classical music growing up, enjoys her Rieu CD and video very much. And the more I think about it, the more I can't find anything wrong with that. For it seems to me that to find fault with someone else's musical pleasure is at best presumptuous and at worst just rank snobbism. As much as I admire artists of un...
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Can classical music learn from Rumi?

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Coleman Barks ' books of Rumi's poetry have sold more than half a million copies worldwide, and in 1994 Publishers Weekly announced that Rumi was the bestselling poet in America. Poetry like classical music is a minority artform; yet Rumi has opened up a new market for poetry, the size of which classical music would die for. So can classical music learn from the Rumi success story? What is little-understood is that the bestselling volumes of Rumi's poetry from Coleman Barks are not actually his translations, but are in fact very skilled creative interpretations. Coleman Barks makes it no secret that he does not speak Farsi (Persian), the language of Rumi, or that his versions are populist re-writes of scholarly translations. In Rumi: Soul Fury he explains that: Of course, as I work on these poems, I don’t have the Persian to consult. I literally have nothing to be faithful to, except what the scholars give... What I do is a homemade, amateurish, loose, many-stranded ...
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Music exists within silence

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The five seconds of silence that precede the music on any ECM album may be the most important statement a record company could make. The pause is a recognition that music exists within silence; only by acknowledging it can a listener become wholly involved. Manfred Eicher is the author of that silence, and of the silence that appears to surround all the recordings produced on his remarkable label. The quality of that silence is intended to lead us towards a heightened awareness, a contemplative state where we are encouraged to listen harder and more acutely to the music, and to the spaces between it. When he was asked, almost forty years after founding ECM, if he had any patterns or models in mind when he started the label, Eicher's answer was straightforward: "A very good model, all the time, was for for me the sound of Miles' Kind of Blue and Bill Evans, how he sounded there". Richard Willams writes in The Blue Moment , a new book which seems to have slipped under...
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