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Showing posts from December, 2012

2013 – the year of the repeat...repeat...repeat...repeat...

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In 2012 classical music dutifully celebrated John Cage’s centenary but resolutely ignored his creative credo of ‘I can’t understand why people are frightened of new ideas. I’m frightened of the old ones’. Which means that in 2013 there will be at least twenty-three different Ring cycles around the world and twenty-four productions of Aida , while a search of the Britten anniversary performance database returns no less than one hundred and twenty results for ‘ Peter Grimes ’. Predictably, BBC Radio 3 has been leading the charge by drip-feeding the Ring at the rate of one act a day over Christmas - a piecemeal approach adopted presumably because the station's fickle audience will decamp wholesale back to Classic FM if confronted with a complete Wagner opera – while Munich also jumped the gun with a Verdi gala on December 26th . With social media functioning as a massive echo chamber , mediated repetition has become the new black at the expense of the vitally importan

Whether the speech please or displease...

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But here, as at other times in my life, I dare not purchase peace with a lie. An imperious necessity forces me to speak the truth, as I see it, whether the speech please or displease, whether it brings praise or blame. That one loyalty to Truth I must keep stainless, whatever friendships fail me or human ties be broken. She may lead me into the wilderness, yet I must follow her; she may strip me of all love, yet I must pursue her, though she slay me, yet will I trust in her; and I ask no other epitaph on my tomb but “She tried to follow truth”. Those are the words of social reformer and pioneer Theosophist Annie Besant . As yet another year slips away I dedicate them to the senior arts figure who in 2012 tried unsuccessfully to pressure me into amending one of my articles on sources of classical music funding , and to the well-connected person who made risible noises about litigation in connection with my posts about artists' fees . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Source of quot

There cannot be, and there will not be lost memory

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'Ideology is the key which unlocks all art, so, while Chantal may listen to the horns give voice to a hopeless yearning for the lost citadels of Europe, I hear something different, a lament for the way in which human beings have been sacrificed for gold. Alberic cheats the Rhinemaidens. He is robbed by Wotan who in turn cheats the giants. Fasolt kills Fafner. They all want that ring of power which is profit, this golden ring which turns the wheels of the dynamo and sends the dwarfish proletariat underground to work for their subsistence… There is a price for everything. That is Wagner’s message. And the gods are doomed. The fortifications of Valhalla are no stronger than those of Sidi Bel Abbès. That is why Wagner is great. He has got the enemy’s number.' An eloquent if unremarkable exposition until you reach the penultimate line. Sidi Bel Abbès is an Algerian city famous as the burial place of the eponymous Muslim marabout (holy man), and as the base for the French Foreign Le

On the edge of transcendence

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‘One can’t describe what pure transcendence is; it is beyond knowledge; it is zero ; but the borderlands of transcendence are exactly what art is about and it is quite clear what those borderlands are. Sometimes you are just on the edge of transcendence , other times you are somewhere within the region and that is quite easy to describe because it has a lot of connections with the normal states of consciousness we move in day by day, so it can be mediated in those terms . Once one has a clear idea of what is at the basis of art, although art can never actually say it, I think it can induce such experiences in people by suggestion and encouragement : one can then see more clearly the aim of art and where to go, and life becomes very exciting at that point ’ – Jonathan Harvey in conversation with Arnold Whittall . Christmas greetings to all my readers. * The more browsable 'active view' presentation will prevail over the Christmas break, but, fear not, the 'passive view

Do you know any really normal people?

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But the idea of a normal person is a fantasy of the mind. Do you know any really normal people? I don’t. That quote from Buddhist monk and teacher Ajahn Sumedho is a useful reminder of the dangers of dualist judgements between normal and deviant. In the past I have been critical of the political deviance of the Benedictine community at L’Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine in Le Barroux, France, and the arrival of the new CD seen above gives me a chance to redress the balance a little. Le Barroux is far more than a monastery; it is an eclectic experiment that uses live audio streams and mobile apps to reach a global congregation, while at the same time revitalising the local area with a state-of-the-art olive mill - see my photo above - that services local smallholders, and a bakery that attracts customers from miles around. These monks certainly have the technology habit, and the candid shot below of one of their number administering last rites of the mechanical kind was taken from my b

The answer my friends was blowin' in the wind

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Back in July 2011 – pre Savile, Newsnight , Entwistle et al – On An Overgrown Path asked the question 'BBC Radio 3 - whose hand is on the balance control?' Now both an expert independent inquiry and the Commons Public Accounts Committee have separately reached the fairly obvious conclusion that there is no hand on the balance control at the BBC . 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 the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

When will they ever learn?

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That must be the most delightful picture I've seen in quite a while. It has forced me - no, not really "forced" - inspired me to order two of his books from Amazon. Thanks. That comment was added by Scott to my post The sound of one monk jumping . The photo of the jumping monk Scott is referring to came from a YouTube photo essay about Plum Village Sangha by Paul Davis and that essay also supplies the images accompanying the current post, while the books he bought are by Nobel peace prize nominee and Zen master Thich Nhat Hanh who founded Plum Village. Our political leaders can offer no solutions to the violence and greed that dominate at what should be a time of peace and happiness. Yet, while we admire the engagement of great minds such as Philip Glass , John Cage , Lou Harrison and Jonathan Harvey with Buddhism and other knowledge traditions, we have no expectation of a similar engagement from our political and business supremos. Plum Village and other commun

A cornucopia of composer anniversary tat

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"They are a limited edition, so you will need to be quick…" trumpets an email from Aldeburgh promoting the Britten centenary merchandise created by design consultant Kit Grover ; the goodies are seen above and include an eminently resistible Britten shopping bag . Despite being so close to the North Sea, the keepers of Britten's flame have failed to spot that the tide is finally turning and that even their peers in the pop industry have realised that audiences are “ switching off because they feel their intelligence is being insulted ”. And this thread is about much more than my personal dislike of composer anniversary tat . Neither Aldeburgh Music’s Twitter feed nor that of @BrittenOfficial made any mention of Jonathan Harvey’s untimely death on December 4, despite the personal links between the two composers . But in the same period there were tweets asking “ Who’d like some Britten & Pears cufflinks for Christmas? ” (Dec 7) and “ or…what about an iphone cove

The sound of one monk jumping

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There are enough Zen centers. We need more Zen corners. Those are the words of the Vietnamese Zen master, peace activist and pioneer of ' engaged Buddhism ' Thich Nhat Hanh . He was speaking at the Plum Village Meditation Practice Center founded by him in 1969 in the Dordogne, France, and among his many books is the best selling Being Peace . The photo was taken by photojournalist Paul Davis at Plum Village and accompanies a thought-provoking article by him about Thich Nhat Hanh's work. Soundtrack is Smiles of the Buddha by the the Vietnamese composer Ton-That Tiêt. More on his music in Hints of Penderecki, Ligeti and Stimmung . 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 the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

CD 'I didn’t really want to do' goes prime time

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Classical music industry press releases rarely rise above self-serving banalities , and the few that arrive in my inbox are usually deleted without being opened. But one that arrived recently from Martyn Warren - director of the estimable Voces choral group - caught my attention so effectively that I am reproducing it below. Is this the precursor of a new art form, the anti-press release? I was contacted last week by a BBC researcher from Desert Island Discs . And no, I didn't seriously think that they wanted me to choose my favourite eight records... Apparently Sister Wendy Beckett is on the programme on Sunday 16 December at 11.15am , and has chosen two tracks from the Voces'  Gregorian Chant CD . The CD was recorded with eight men in the Mary Harris Chapel at Exeter University - the washy acoustic is terrible for polyphony but fine for chant - in the summer of 1994. Tony Yates was the cantor. I didn't really want to do a chant recording - I wanted to record

Life can seem very unfair

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That photo first appeared in the 2007 post The Almost Submerged Cathedral and shows me riding my Moulton APB-14 bike round the Lac du Der Chantecoq in the Champagne region of France. I have been a Moulton owner for twenty years and some time ago had the privilege of visiting the bike's designer Alex Moulton at his Jacobean house in Wiltshire, where he had created workshops in the stable block. He read mechanical sciences at Cambridge and went on to pioneer the use of rubber in vehicle suspensions; his designs were used in the original Morris Mini as well as the unique small wheeled Moulton bikes . Now news has come of the death of Alex Moulton at the age of 92. The Telegraph obituary tells us “Toward the end of his life Moulton became increasingly exasperated with the decline of British engineering – something he ascribed variously to television, the financial services industry and the failings of the educational system”. In the last few weeks we have lost so many great minds

This is the dawning of the age of air miles

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Daily news of funding cuts and orchestras under threat is very worrying. But when I read on another blog recently that we had won the fight for a celebrated cellist's instrument to earn air miles I knew that the corner had been turned and classical music is on the mend. Arman’s artwork Thale’s Cello in bronze and wood has been rotated in my header image. The artist’s tomb in Père Lachaise cemetery, Paris also features a deconstructed cello and can be seen in my post In the shadow of Chopin . Arman was married to avant garde composer Eliane Radique and supplied the artwork for the CD set of her masterpiece Trilogie de la Mort . 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 the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Without Ravi I would have ended up a boring old fart

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People ask me always what I want to be remembered by, and I would like it to be not for my mistakes, but for the things that I was able to achieve – those that have touched the hearts of the people in my own country and beyond. God has been kind to me, and I have been very lucky indeed to have gained recognition and appreciation almost all over the world. It has been my good fortune that there have never been any problems with communicating the greatness of our music. In places where the people had never even heard of it, nevertheless it has been an instant success, and still there are warm receptions today everywhere I go. That is Ravi Shankar, who has died aged 92 , writing in his autobiography Raga Mala . EMI’s recently released 10 CD Ravi Shankar Collection is an eloquent celebration of Ravi’s art, as is Rhino’s lavish Collaborations box which showcases his work with George Harrison. The foreword to the 1997 autobiography was provided by George Harrison, and this quote from it

Their intelligence is being insulted

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Pop’s X Factor TV programme has lost six million viewers in two years and advertising revenue is down 40%. The reason, suggests yesterday’s Independent , is because viewers are “switching off because they feel their intelligence is being insulted”. Does that sound familiar ? Also on Facebook and Twitter . Header image from sinfini website . 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

The occult art of fugue

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A Los Angeles Times article about John Cage's formative years in the cultural stew of 1920s and '30s L.A. quotes how the city was described in 1913 as susceptible to "spiritualists, mediums, astrologists, phrenologists, palmists and all other breeds of esoteric wind-jammers," to say nothing of "mazdaznan clubs, yogi sects, homes of truth, cosmic fluidists, astral planers, Emmanuel movers, Rosicrucians and other boozy transcendentalists". The inclusion of the Rosicrucians in that list of West Coast movers and shakers is prescient, as the secretive society of the Rosy Cross re-entered Cage’s life thirty years later via his fascination with the music of Eric Satie - in the 1890s Satie was the official composer and chapel-master of the Rosicrucian Order Ordre de la Rose-Croix Catholique, du Temple et du Graal in Paris and several of his works of the period are linked to Rosicrucianism. There are many other composers with connections to Rosicrucianism includ

Has new technology made it cool to 'photoshop’ reality?

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Increased speed to market and decreased production costs are just some of the benefits of new technology. There is no doubt that the digital manipulation of images, sound and text has revolutionised the creative process, while web-based communication has made push-button publishing a reality in the form of social media. But the technology driven elimination of traditional checks and balances also brings risks, and the power and speed of liberating technology appears to have been a contributory factor in the recent BBC Newsnight fiasco and the subsequent Twitter scandal . Clearly these two high profile examples raise serious concerns about the dangers of the undisciplined use of liberating technologies. But a recent personal experience raises concerns that the transformative power of new technologies may also be creating a ‘fast and loose’ mindset that is encouraging the creative community to 'photoshop’ reality. Let me explain… A few weeks back I came across the newly release

Latest composer anniversary briefing

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Some illustrious names are joining On An Overgrown Path in questioning what do composer anniversaries achieve ? The latest is Nike Wagner who, speaking in Berlin, has criticised “blatant Wagner marketing” . Talking of which, that accompanying visual is not a spoof; you can buy a Wagner thong from cafepress.com . But I searched in vain for a Britten thong, which surely would become a collector's item. Come on Aldeburgh, step up to the plate . Please rest assured that no review samples changed hands during the preparation of this post. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter .

Delius in search of Zarathustra

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In the Delius anniversary year it is pleasing to see the composer's Mass of Life receiving the attention it deserves thanks to an outstanding new Naxos recording by David Hill and the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra with the Bach Choir. But most of the attention so far has been focused on Delius and Nietzsche, so I thought it was time to redress the balance and give Zarathustra a little bit of the limelight. Peter J. Pirie provides one of the most balanced assessments of A Mass of Life in his book The English Musical Renaissance , explaining that “The words are by Nietzsche, from Also Sprach Zarathustra , and they are better poetry than philosophy; Delius loved this sort of intemperate, heady versifying, it confirmed his prejudices and he did not look too deeply into the logic of the text”. Delius may have valued Nietzsche for his poetry more than his philosophy, but, nevertheless, a study of the text is revealing. Far from propagating Zarathustra’s original teachings, Nie

A great mind that found expression in great music

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...but I wanted to solve a problem. To put it very simply, it was the problem of suffering, and it still is. This seems to me the most important problem, in fact the only problem which one should be engaged with: in art as in life, what is suffering and what is the key to alleviating it? It leads back to Buddhism. Buddha is famous of course for proposing just such a solution and it seems his whole life was engaged in the Bodhisattva mission of alleviating suffering, bringing enlightenment and releasing all beings, all living beings from samsara, the world of suffering. Be that as it may, I certainly felt that this more objective music was in the direction of moving away from this fascinating world of samsara, of suffering, in which we are interminably caught and upon which art endlessly meditates. That was Jonathan Harvey speaking to Arnold Whittall in 1999. Jonathan’s path towards the Buddhist pure land , which he expressed so eloquently in his Fourth Quartet , has progressed further

From Britten’s Children to Elgar’s Earnings

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Book publisher’s new title lists are a far more accurate reflection of the classical music zeitgeist than social media chatter. Notable titles in Boydell & Brewer’s 2013 list include Richard Wagner’s Women by Eva Rieger, and Elgar’s Earnings by John Drysdale. The latter title is particularly topical as it “investigates whether Elgar's complaints about a lack of money can be justified by the facts ”. In a truly accurate reflection of the musical zeitgeist the book’s blurb tells us that author John Drysdale is a musicologist and former investement banker, and that its retail price is $90/£50. 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 the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

On the path of history's most notorious child abuser

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“Nothing, nothing is worth the crime of the abuse of a child” was the heartfelt comment added by a reader to a recent post . Child abuse is currently in the public eye , but the despicable crime has a history stretching back centuries. Tasteless coverage of this sensitive topic must be avoided at all costs; but treating child abuse as the crime that dare not speak its name must also be avoided. So, today's post takes us to France on the path of arguably history’s most notorious child abuser. And the reason for writing this post is that the villain is the subject of an undeservedly overlooked oratorio by an acclaimed contemporary composer; a composer who, coincidentally, is a woman. Prior to becoming probably the most notorious child abusers in history, the Breton knight Gilles de Rais fought alongside Joan of Arc against the English. Born in 1404, Gilles de Rais was heir to a family fortune that included several castles in the west of France; he earned early notoriety by first

Is this the solution to classical music's ageing audience?

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A few weeks ago the Independent's Fiona Sturges tweeted that " a large proportion of BBC Radio 3’s audience should hurry up and die ". Will this promotion, which is currently running in a local store, help speed the process? Soundtrack is Joel Frederiksen's Requiem For A Pink Moon , in my book definitely one of the best new releases of 2012. 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 the request of copyright owner(s). Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk