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Showing posts from January, 2011

Never underestimate the public's intelligence

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I feel as though phantom coughs, throat-clearings and other bits of audience noise captured in live recordings connect me with fellow music-lovers of the past, making us secret sharers of a kind. In short, I find that the imperfections of live recordings allow for a unique sort of intimacy - not simply with the music itself, but with other listeners who have heard the same music in the past. If I had more time, I would say more about other specific recordings that have done this for me, such as Wolfgang Sawallisch's 1989 reading of Wagner's Ring , which comes complete with stomps, crashes, shrieks, and other noises recorded live on the stage of the Bavarian State Opera during an actual series of public performances of the Ring. That persuasive response by Joe Koczera is just one many to my recent post Do concert recordings make sound sense? Three things surprised me about the reaction to my criticism of the current practice of sonically emasculating concert recordings to m

Milton Babbitt - writing music for our elite

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Babbitt was famous for writing for a certain type of listener. He never claimed to write for everybody and this was his undoing - that everybody expected him to write music for them. But he said "Why should music? ... most of us are in universities in the States who are interested in complex music, but maybe we should just write for our elite, the way mathematicians send incomprehensible equations to each other, you know what's wrong with that?" and he has a point, absolutely. So his reputation has been branded as an elitist. It's totally unfair and in this country [UK] he has been dismissed. In the States as I say, particularly in the university culture, he is held in very high regard in many places. I hope he will have more of a reputation. I am not sure I really enthuse about his music. I find it fascinating but it is very much a music of structure and a structure that is difficult to hear unless you spend a long time getting to grips with it; it's like th

Glenn Gould and social media

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Glenn Gould was ahead of his time in many ways . It is not widely known that he was an early adopter of social networks. The text of the following draft Personal Ad was found among his personal papers after his death in 1982: Wanted. Friendly, companionably reclusive, socally unacceptable, alcoholically abstemious, tirelessly talkative, zealously unzealous, spiritually intense, minimally turquoise, maximally ecstatic loon seeks moth or moths with similar equalities for purposes of telephonc seduction, Tristan-eque trip-taking ... tristan, tristan-eque trip-taking ... and permanent flame-fluttering. No photos required. Financial status immaterial. All ages and non-competitive vocations considered. Applicants should furnish cassettes or sample conversations, notarized certification of marital dis-inclination, references re low-decibel vocal consistency, itinerary and ... itinerary and sample receipts from previous, successfully completed out-of-town moth flights. All submissions treated

Observing all the repeats

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More cut and paste radio ... Dec 3 2010 - BBC Radio 3 Classical Collection with Sarah Walker 11.02 Elgar Violin Concerto, op.61 Nigel Kennedy (violin) London Philharmonic Orchestra Vernon Handley (conductor) Jan 28 2011 - BBC Radio 3 Classical Collection with Sarah Walker 11.00 Elgar Violin Concerto, op.61 Nigel Kennedy (violin) London Philharmonic Orchestra Vernon Handley (conductor) My frustration with the artwork on the LSO Live CD of Nielsen symphonies set me playing with Wordle . This is a toy for generating “word clouds” from text with the size of the word reflecting the number of times it appears, i.e. number of repeats, in the article. The example above is created from my post about the LSO Live disc . More on BBC Radio 3's Classical Collection here and more repeats, but of a very different kind, here . With thanks to Antoine Leboyer for the Wordle heads up. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Faceboo

The art of the march

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Why are marches the poor relation of classical music? Writing my earlier post about the cuts at the BBC World Service reminded me that during my time at Bush House the march Lilliburlero was used as the World Service identity signal . The tune of Lilliburlero (also spelt Lillibullero ) is usually attributed to Henry Purcell but probably orginated as an Irish folk melody. Lilliburlero is one of the marches on the LP seen above which was recorded in 1967 for the World Record Club division of EMI by Sir Adrian Boult and the London Philharmonic Orchestra. Other marches on it include John Philip Sousa's Stars and Stripes and Liberty Bell , the Battle Hymn of the Republic and Eric Coates' Dam Busters . For reasons that totally escape me it appears the only CD transfer was as a Sony release in 1999 . Despite the unlikely repertoire this disc is prized by Boult afficionados for its superb performances and sound and is well overdue for re-release. The unlikely combination of Sir

What price freedom of the airwaves?

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Radios sold in North Korea are pre-tuned and sealed to prevent listeners hearing anything but official radio. Kim Jong-il's totalitarian regime keeps an iron grip on the media, and tries to block news from abroad. Several thousand people have been sent to re-education camps for listening to foreign language radio. That quote from Reporters Without Borders appeared last year in my post Radio and re-education . My header photo shows the BBC coat of arms with the motto Nation shall speak peace unto nation and the BBC World Service is a vital source of foreign language radio broadcasts for those suffering under totalitarian regimes. Yesterday it was announced that budget cuts mean the BBC World Service is to close five foreign language and one English service with the loss of around around 560 jobs. Below is the official BBC photograph taken at the end of the programme operations assistant training course in January 1972 before the participants started their first placement with Wor

Do concert recordings make sound sense?

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Regular readers will know that I revere Sir Colin Davis as a national treasure and that I rate the symphonies of Carl Nielsen among the greatest music of the twentieth century . Which means a post about Sir Colin's new CD of Nielsen's Fourth and Fifth Symphonies is going to be a pretty predictable affair - a triumph, youth is a state of mind, essential for every collection etc etc. So, sorry to disappoint. In the first few minutes of auditioniong the LSO Live disc it became clear that all was not well sonically. My listening notes include "one dimensional sound lacking front to back depth, not enough of air around the instruments, muddy bass line, a vieled quality, lack of focus, no real slam" and so on. All of which started me reflecting on whether the current move away from studio to concert recordings makes sound sense. The London Symphony Orchestra is just one of many leading orchestras which market CDs and downloads of their concert performances. Recording a c

Music as an environment of self-discovery

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mrG has left a new comment on your post " Classical music as synchronicitous soup ": heh ... quantum entanglement isn't really needed, the Hameroff-Penrose Orchestrated Objective Reduction (Orch-OR) theory of consciousness will do, given research that also shows musical ensemble work will synchronize mental states between performers; if, as is seen in the neighbouring instruments (adjascent reeds will sympathetically sync like metronomes on a a skateboard) the cognitive collapse rates phase-lock, the each member in the ensemble would generate a quantum Orch-OR wave that adds by the wave-power equations (exponentially, not additively, hence why Lasers work) to emit a cognitive resonance that will fall off by the distance squared. Thus adding microphones to a performance doesn't really 'reach' any more people than without. So why then do people like recordings and amplified concerts at all? I hear you ask :) Same reason we can watch Humphrey Bogart in black a

Beware of cut and paste culture

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An important wake up call for everyone in the creative industries comes in a policy paper from the BBC's outgoing Director of Future Media & Technology . The paper by Erik Huggers gives the strategic thinking behind the BBC's decision to cut their online budget by 25%, close 170 websites and shed 360 jobs . Every BBC website has been reviewed using the three criteria of meeting public purpose, meeting editorial priorities and distinctiveness. The latter criteria is defined by Erik Huggers as: How does it differ from what else is out there in the market; is it distinctive?, and if not - should we be doing it all? It is this focus on distinctiveness, see diagram above, which should be sending a message far beyond Broadcasting House. Contemporary culture has fallen into the trap identified by Marshal McLuhan back in 1964 of confusing the medium and the message . Binary thinking is part of this confusion as is cut and paste culture which replaces distinctiveness with cloned

One short post about Glenn Gould

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A chance path led to the screenplay of Thirty two short films about Glenn Gould by François Girard and Don McKellar . Reading it caused me to reflect on how towards the end of his career Glenn Gould subscribed to many of the dogmas that are today believed to provide the missing link between classical music and the mass market. He dismissed the concert hall as an outmoded institution, he was one of the first performers to reject the tuxedo, and he was a technology junkie who believed electronic media and not live performance was the future for classical music. Gould certainly achieved mass market success, but this came early in his career with his 1955 recording of the Goldberg Variations and this popularity was unrelated to his later challenges to classical music's many conventions. If he is known at all today by those who constitute the mass market it is as a one man musical freak show. It is only amongst a minority of cognoscenti that he is rightly recognised as a peerless p

Music guaranteed to elevate the spirit

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Move quickly for a remarkable bargain on amazon.co.uk. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan's Devotional Songs album is selling for £3.99 including UK delivery in CD format or £4.14 for MP3 download. This 1988 album captures the great Qawwali singer and his party of backing musicians in a programme of Sufi devotional music. But don't be put off by the word 'devotional'. This is inspirational and mystical music created to elevate the spirit and bring the listener closer to God. The former benefit is available to all even if the latter depends on individual circumstances. Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan worked on projects with a number of Western musicians. These included a collabaration with Peter Gabriel on Martin Scorcese's film adaption of Nikos Kazantzakis' The Last Temptation of Christ and working with Pearl Jam lead singer Eddie Vedder on a film soundtrack. More sounds of Sufism including a podcast here . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Report broken links, missing images

Mozart end to end detrimental to the music

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An interesting twist to BBC Radio 3's recent twelve days of Mozart , during which the composer's complete works were aired, has been provided by Private Eye . The satirical magazine has pointed out the article in the Telegraph in December 2005 which is seen above . In it BBC Radio 3 controller and Proms director Roger Wright says: Our view is that with Mozart end to end, the overall effect would be detrimental to the music ... The music could wrongly be seen as slightly more chocolate-boxy than it really is. Which leaves me wondering what to do with this story. If I say anything else my inbox will be groaning with the usual anonymous accusations of another " predictable diatribe " and pursuing an " anti-BBC agenda ". But there again, do I need to say anything else ? Also on Facebook and Twitter . 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

Can classical music learn from other cultures?

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Classical music is a linear artform. This is expressed in the traditional sonata form of exposition, development and recapitulation. Contemporary Western culture is increasingly dominated by the hypertext based web which has a non-linear structure: this non-linearity is evidenced by Twitter, Facebook, and the iPod shuffle. Which may explain the uncomfortable fit between classical music and contemporary culture . There are thought-provoking parallels between the non-linear nature of web based communications and Islamic culture. Muslim spirituality is a decentred space which has its roots in the Qur'an as the French ethnomusicologist Jean During explains: The "chapters", or sūrahs, are not thematic units, nor do they follow any chronology... Thus, the Qur'an appears as multiplex , yet this very multiplicity leads to unity , the key principle in Muslim philosophy. Islam rejects all mediations between God and man. This manifests itself in many ways including the absence

Music-lovers have decided to take action.

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A growing number of music-lovers unhappy about the way album tracks are enjoyed in a pick-and-mix fashion have decided to take action. The rules are strict. No talking. No texting. You must listen to every song on the album.Classic Album Sundays treat our best-loved records like great symphonies and are being set up in London, Scotland and Wales. Now pop-up concerts and transmission versus hypermediation become a BBC news story . As my photo shows, what goes around comes around . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Header photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2011. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Classical music as synchronicitous soup

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From Bell's theorem , which asserts that one subatomic 'object' can affect another such object without even the slightest interval of time or space separating them, to Zen archery , in which archer, arrow, and target are so tied up together that the shot has really been fired before it leaves the bow, wisdom manuals of all stripes bring us the news that everything in life is connected with everything else. Not just connected in a nuts-and-bolts, superficial kind of way, but more deeply and subtly than we can perceive and even imagine. Subject and object, cause and effect, the events of yesterday and of tomorrow: all of these things float in a vast "synchronicitous" soup that we play a part in whether we know it or not. No apologies for returning to Ptolemy Tompkins' The Beaten Path for that quote. No apologies either for venturing into what some will dismiss as New Age bad science : because, as anyone who has contacted a call centre in India will know, the a

Sex, drugs and classical music

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Sex, drugs and rock and roll is the familiar adage. But this path explores links between sex, drugs and the music of composers including Igor Stravinsky Pierre Boulez and Elliott Carter. Our starting point is the welcome new Beethoven Symphony cycle from the Basel Chamber Orchestra and Giovanni Antonini for the German Oehms Classics label . For those interested in the history of the orchestra their agent Askonas Holt's website explains : Founded in 1984 by graduates of various Swiss conservatories, the Basel Chamber Orchestra now ranks among Europe’s most highly acclaimed chamber orchestras. The BCO is committed to cultivating the chamber orchestra tradition bequeathed on Basel by Paul Sacher, one of the most important music patrons of the twentieth century. Which is all rather confusing because Lesley Stephenson's authorised biography of Paul Sacher tells us: In 1926, [Sacher] achieved his first major ambition: on 4 November his Basler Kammerorchester (Basle Chamber Orchestr

Lisztomania

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Just as the UK decides that a list of the Top 10 classical bestsellers is not a good thing the US decides that a list of the Top 10 classical composers is a good thing . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The astounding politics of Tunisia

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Political unrest in Tunisia following the the removal of President Zine al-Abidine Ben Ali dominates the world news . One of the best know Tunisian musicians is Anouar Brahem . He was born in the medina in Tunis in 1957 but left the country for France in 1981. He returned in July 2010 for the first time in twenty years for a concert to promote his new ECM album The Astounding Eyes of Rita . There are concerns the unrest will spread to other countries in the Maghreb. My 2010 post about another part of the region is topically titled I am in an even larger prison . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

By-passing the reducing valve

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According to Huxley, the mind had what he called a "reducing valve" - the product of its evolution in the harsh realities of day-to-day survival - and that it acted automatically to filter out all the fabulous, super-luminescent suchness of the world as it truly was, leaving instead the bleached, boring, and all-too-ordinary one that I was more used to. That quote is from Ptolemy Tompkins book The Beaten Path . Ptolemy is the son of Peter Tomkins who wrote the New Age bestseller The Secret Life of Plants . Aldous Huxley's book The Doors of Perception , which the quote refers to, was influential in many ways including providing the name of the rock group The Doors . Huxley's advocacy of mescaline to by-pass the mind's reducing valve is today quite rightly considered unwise. Yet the mass media's chemical-free ways of enhancing the action of the valve so it accepts the bleached, boring, and all-too-ordinary are encouraged. Perhaps this blog should be renamed

An unmediated voyage of discovery

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Now that the twelve days promoting the genius of BBC Radio 3 with assistance from Mozart is over the station's homepage has returned to normal. Except there is one difference in today's version . All mention of the classical chart has been dropped . As the station controller and Proms director Roger Wright said just eight months ago : "The Specialist Classical Chart will be a new and significant part of our Radio 3 programming, providing our listeners with more insights into the classical music recording market. My own unmediated voyage of discovery has taken me to the music of Iraq and Munir Bashir, genius of the oud. Munir Bashir was born in northern Iraq in 1930 and spent the early part of his career in Baghdad. He left Iraq for Hungary in the early 1960s where he studied with Zoltán Kodály. In 1971 Bashir made a commercial recording for the French national radio station ORTF which launched his career in the West and was largely responsible for popularising the oud w

An ocean of shameless kitsch

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Mahler wrote his enormous Eighth Symphony in a very short time; its first part is solidly composed, but its second from the first baritone entry, is thrown overboard into an ocean of shameless kitsch from which it is never rescued, least of all in the inflated ending, and it must be regarded as one of his weakest compositions. Such dangers were always liable to trap even the most gifted and intelligent musicians; the higher they aim, the greater the risk of bathos. That contribution to the current Mahler celebrations comes from Robert Simpson who was no mean composer himself . It appears in Simpson's 1981 book The Proms & Natural Justice which is still available and is essential reading. I hesitate to put words into his mouth, but I believe I am right in saying Bernard Haitink shares Simpson's view of the Eighth Symphony and only conducts it when required to do so as part of a Mahler cycle. Header image is my original 1972 LP set of Georg Solti and the Chicago Symphony O

While classical music debates nothing changes

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'This magic comes only with the sounding of the music, with the turning of the written note into sound - and it only comes (or comes most intensely) when the listener is one with the composer, either as a performer himself, or as a listener in active sympathy' - Benjamin Britten Recent articles here about whether classical music responds to mass marketing and social media have generated considerable interest. So I thought it worthwhile to create a straw model which summarises the thrust of the articles and that is the purpose of this post. The straw model is remarkably simple and is built around the following four propositions. 1. Classical music engages new audiences most effectively by direct transmission to what Britten describes as as "a listener in active sympathy". 2. Despite this classical music today is characterised by hypermediation, meaning there are more and more intermediary layers appearing between performer and audience. 3. These intermediary la