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Showing posts from August, 2013

A hitchhiker’s guide to the musical galaxy

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When I was at university in the late 1960s hitchhiking was my preferred mode of transport. I remember thumbing it out of Reading headed for the Gower Peninsula in South Wales, only to be stranded at a roundabout outside Cardiff as dusk approached. In desperation I tried another exit and scored a lift – complete with ferry crossing – to the Isle of Wight where I spent the weekend on the beach. Another summer was spent thumbing around the Netherlands in a giant circle with the Paradiso in Amsterdam at the centre. In those hitchhiking years serendipity prevailed in the form of chance meetings and destinations, and as a result my life was infinitely enriched. Similarly cultural hitchhiking was my preferred method of musical education in those far-off years. Sticking my thumb out on BBC Radio 3 brought a chance encounter with Boulez while travelling to Beethoven in the concert hall took me via Berg . Thumbing it in record shops opened up the world of Eastern music and a chance encounte

How thoroughly modern maestros fail to wow the public

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Analysis of internet search volumes shows that the new generation of thoroughly modern maestros is failing to wow the public. In the diagram above worldwide Google searches for the terms Gustavo Dudamel, Herbert von Karajan, Valery Gergiev and Georg Solti are plotted over the past eight years - left click to enlarge. This Google Trends analysis shows that current public interest in Dudamel is very similar both in volume and trend to that for Karajan, despite the latter being dead for twenty-four years. Similarly the trends for Gergiev and Solti are remarkably similar, despite sixteen years having passed since Sir Georg's death. If we accept that Google Trends has a degree of authority this data raises yet more questions about the success of classical music's current celebrity based promotional strategies . The PR agency that sold Newsweek the How Maestro Dudamel Is Saving Classical Music story must be rather concerned about Gustavo's bell-shaped curve. While conversely

Strong enthusiasm for Smiles of the Buddha

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In 1967 Nobel Laureate Martin Luther King Jr nominated the Vietnamese Zen Buddhist monk and peace activist Thich Nhat Hanh (b.1926) for the Nobel Peace Prize. The photo above shows laureate and nominee together and the text of Martin Luther King's nomination letter - which should be compulsory reading for those currently contemplating Western military intervention in Syria - is here . In 2001 the Vietnamese composer Ton-That Tiêt (b. 1933) wrote his setting for chamber choir of poems from the Chinese Tang dynasty titled Smiles of the Buddha (Les Sourires de Bouddha) . Jonathan Harvey's belief that strong enthusiasm will change the world prompts me to share this little-known but masterly contemporary choral work with you. Although Ton-That Tiêt's music is influenced by Mahayana Buddhism and Hinduism there are no New Age indulgences, and, as described in an earlier post , the Vietnames composer's music has bracing hints of Penderecki, Ligeti and Stimmung . Unfortun

Why composer anniversaries do not win new audiences

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Data from an authoritative source shows that the strategy of focussing on composer anniversaries to raise classical music's public profile is not working. The graph above uses the Google Trends tool to measure online searches for the four main composers with anniversaries in 2013 - Verdi , Britten , Wagner ;and Lutoslawski *. Google Trends plots global volumes for specific search terms and my composite graph maps and compares the trend over eight years of searches for the four main 2013 anniversary composers with results indexed to 100. (Left click on the graphs to enlarge). Three main trends emerge from this analysis. The first is that, as the graph above shows, Verdi is consistently by far the most popular of the four composers. Hardly a revelation in itself; but the trend shows that despite Britten and Wagner undoubtedly receiving more promotional attention in 2013 - e.g. not one complete Verdi opera in the 2013 BBC Proms season and just three concerts including his music

Will Sinfini Music still be with us in 2022?

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This is the first post in the tenth year of blogging On An Overgrown Path . In my early days as a blogger Jonathan Harvey sent me the following email : I was delighted to find such a passionate advocate of my and other contemporary music forging his own path (not so overgrown!) clearly in opposition to most current trends. I've always felt that it is and will be strong enthusiasm that will change the world! Thank you so much... all best and bon courage . When On An Overgrown Path sounds its last post and is finally killed off by Twitter, I hope that two phrases will be carved on its headstone: 'strong enthusiasm' and 'opposition to most current trends'. But the end is not yet nye and, insha'Allah, I will share my strong musical enthusiasms for a few more years. But others have done it so much better, and a very good example of the power of strong enthusiasm are the Lyrita recordings from the 1980s by the much-missed Edward Downes' of George Lloyd's

Perennial wisdom versus new technology

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That recurring theme On An Overgrown Path of perennial wisdom versus new technology is given a fresh twist in this holiday weekend photo. On the left perennial wisdom is represented by the 20 year old Moulton APB bike with its steel space frame and dual suspension that I am riding. On the right is new technology in the form of the carbon fibre computer enabled Factor Vis Vires being ridden by our son who is part of the team that created the bike at bf1systems . You can see me looking enviously at the £10k bike and perennial wisdom versus new technology is really no contest. As a young St. Thérèse of Lisieux said when she was offered a handful of ribbons to choose from - 'I choose all'. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2013. No freebies involved but I did get to ride the Factor Vis Vires.

Breaking - Norman Lebrecht gets it completely right

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A reader has pointed out that support for my assertion that classical music has been covertly dumbed down comes from none other than Norman Lebrecht. In his review on Sinfini Music - hey guys, when will you link to On An Overgrown Path ? - of percussionist Kuniko Kato's new album Norman concludes by saying "The sound, recorded at 24-bit/192hz... is outstanding... why can’t all records sound this good?" Cantus by Kuniko Kato is released on Linn; the label is a provocative champion of lossless audio files and an interview with their MD Gilad Tiefenbrun was linked from my post. The coincidence of a trail leading from Sinfini Music to Linn Records and back to Universal Music should not detract from the revelation in that interview that "Linn Records, has also teamed up with Universal to create a back catalogue of the music giant’s records in studio master quality". There has been an astonishingly large readership for my posts on potential links between ult

How classical music was covertly dumbed down

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Classical audiences would never accept a star soloist playing a Bach Partita on a poor quality factory-made violin. So why does the same audience accept a similar degradation in sound quality away from the concert hall? Here is a spectogram of bell percussion - concert hall sound quality. Now here is the same bell percussion after standard 44.1 kHz sampling for digital reproduction - poor quality factory-made sound quality. Both spectograms come from published research into the high frequency content of recordings and the second one shows how the savage cut at 22.05 kHz does very nasty things to the music. Below is the spectrum analysis of a trumpet which plots the ultrasound output extending to above 100 kHz, which is five times higher than the generally accepted upper limit of human hearing. But, as was pointed out in the first part of this post , medical research has now identified that the brain is receptive to frequencies considerably above 20 kHz. Ultrasound, which stimul

Where would you file this CD?

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No, not under ‘Stravinsky’ and not even under ‘Classical’. L’Oiseau de Feu (Firebird) is a CD of improvised music and recitations for ney, santour, Eastern percussion, viole de gambe and voice inspired by texts from Sufi poets and Christian mystics. There is not a note of Stravinsky's music on the disc, but there is a connection: his Firebird ballet has its roots in Russian folklore and the legendary bird also appears as the simorgh in Persian mythology , notably in the Farid ud-Din Attar's Sufi masterpiece Conference of the Birds . Hence the title of the CD. This new release from serial innovators Accords Croisés - sample it here - challenges conventions beyond that of the Firebird as an exclusively Stravinsky property. With its juxtaposition of viol and traditional Persian instruments it challenges an even more rigid convention - the definition of classical music. Despite the presence of a Western classical instrument played by early music specialist Jonathan Dunford

To listen to classical music you need a good pair of eyes

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The periodical Nature reports on research by a social psychologist which shows that judgements about the quality of a musical performance are influenced more by what is see than by what is heard. The remit of the somewhat superficial research was the impact of body language, which means it did not consider a little-known but far more important link between the eyes and sound. It has long been a puzzle as to why high-order harmonics extending beyond the upper limit of human hearing produced by fine instruments such as Stradivarius violins make the music sound better. Similarly there has been no explanation as to why extending the frequency response of an audio system beyond the upper limit of human hearing improves the sound quality. But recent medical research has shown that our eyes are sound as well as vision transducers, and that the eyes play an important role in passing ultrasound to the brain. While the upper limit of human hearing ranges from 15 to 18 khz depending on age,

Do we need to broaden our definition of classical music?

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The Oud was introduced into western Europe by the Knights Templar returning from the Holy Land and by the Troubadours (from the Arabic root TRB - meaning lutanist) from Provence. Having reached the Troubadors from Muslim Spain, this instrument was to play a crucial role in the establishment of the Romantic Courts. The poetry, music and ideals that ensued from this great endeavor became the infrastructure upon which the Renaissance was built. Brought into the British Isles, the Oud was transformed in the Elizabethan period into the western European lute. That passsage is from the sleeve notes for Hamza El Din's CD Lily of the Nile . Hamza El Din (1929-2006) was born in the Nubian territory of Upper Egypt and studied Arabic music in Cairo and Western music at the Academy of Santa Celia in Rome. Like Bartók and Vaughan-Williams , he was part of the great folkloric tradition and collected Nubian songs from the villages that were to be submerged by the Aswan Dam. He played at the 19

Lawyer's death revives links to music's murky past

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Controversial lawyer Jacques Verges who has died aged 88 was one of the lawyers who defended the convicted French war criminal Paul Touvier at his trial in 1994. That is Jacques Brel in the photo above, and in an investigative piece in 2010 I uncovered little-known links between Touvier and Brel , while later that year I reflected on a web of linkages that stretched from Paul Touvier, who was found guilty of crimes against humanity , to Decca's contender for a classical Christmas number one . 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).

This Tchaikovsky is the cat's whiskers

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Pierre Boulez once famously declared :"I hate Tchaikovsky and I will not conduct him... but if the audience wants him, it can have him". Much that I admire Boulez I can think of many good reasons not to hate Tchaikovsky, among them his Third Orchestral Suite. Given the enduring popularity of Tchaikovsky's symphonies it is surprising that the four movement Suite is not better known, because it was originally conceived as a symphony and was composed between two of his most popular symphonies, the Fourth and Fifth. The photo above shows the overgrown feline standing guard over my 1975 EMI LP of the Suite No 3. On this disc Sir Adrian Boult conducts the London Philharmonic Orchestra and the violin solo in the final movement is played by Rodney Friend who went on to lead the BBC Symphony Orchestra. If my memory serves me correctly Sir Adrian made the recording at the suggestion of EMI's Douglas Pudney who had an encyclopaedic knowledge of the repertoire and a wonderful n

We need to bear witness to our love of classical music

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In Andrew Harvey's Journey in Ladakh there is a discussion of how the threatened culture of the Ladhaki's can be protected. During the discussion Harvey says "All we can do is bear witness to our love of the country and its people as clearly and intelligently as possible". 'Bear witness' is an old-fashioned and therefore deeply unfashionable concept, but, despite that, there is still much that classical music can learn from it. One of the definitions of 'bear witness' is "public affirm by word or example of usually religious faith or conviction". Much time is spent wondering why the culture of classical music is threatened. Perhaps it is simply because in the mainstream media, in blogs, Facebook and Twitter we are doing everything but bear witness to our love of classical music. A scan across the classical music headlines reveals stories about everything from sexual abuse in musical schools, through the financial woes of orchestras, to th

Life discovered beyond the Planets

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There is a generous link to On An Overgrown Path in Tom Service's Guardian preview of next week's chamber music Prom which features Imogen Holst's Phantasy Quartet. Thanks Tom; it is good to see there is life beyond the Planets for a Holst, and life beyond Sinfini Music, BBC Radio 3 and the Huffington Post for a blogger . 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).

Classical music needs great stories not kick arse tweets

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In a perceptive post marking the tenth anniversary of The Rambler , senior blogger Tim Rutherford-Johnson laments how "Back in 2003 ...there actually was a community (or communities) of bloggers talking to one another... now, all those conversations have migrated to Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter". Elsewhere another senior blogger Elaine Fine muses that "The kinds of musical discussions that used to be on blogs seem to have migrated to Facebook, but they occur in miniature". While a well received Overgrown Path post explains how medical research shows that "Instead of targeting the short-term working memory by eliminating meta content, classical music should be making its content richer, deeper and more attractive to long-term memory." So how long before the classical music establishment realises that Twitter and the other micro-media that have become not only the dominant platform for classical music debate but also the channel of choice for classic

The Buddha of Bayreuth

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Slowly, however, I was drawn into the sacred rhythm of Wagner's music drama, its strange and unfamiliar time. I understood that what was being enacted with such slowness on the stage in front of me was the inner drama of all the spectators; that it was the psyche itself, in its different dignities and powers, whose progress towards transformation was being charted and displayed; that the external forces, the Buddhas and Bodhisattvas the singers were representing, were no differences from the inner forces of the psyche, that psyche in which the music lived and whose life contained all the drama within it. I ceased being the half-bored spectator; I entered the drama; I allowed it to begin to enact itself within me, in its own rhythms. That passage illustrates the importance of meta content in Wagner's Ring while recasting the main protagonists as Buddhist deities. Richard Wagner's interest in Buddhism has been the subject of informed speculation, most notably in Jonathan H

Independent music website enjoys high rent office café

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Stumbled across this great new independent website called Sinfini Music written by a team of music fans . They have a killer video of accordion player Martynas and mandolin virtuoso Avi Avital filmed in their office café. It really is a cool video and a cool office café. So I thought I'd check out where their office is. A bit of drilling down uncovered that Sinfini's address is at 364–366 Kensington High Street , which sure is a high rent area. And more drilling down uncovered that not only does the Sinfini café seem to be in the head office of Universal Music , but Sinfini is also owned by them - they must have forgotten to say that on the first pages I looked at . Presumably Sinfini's policy of editorial independence prevented them sharing this, but yet more drilling - I drill like a dentist - uncovered that Martynas records for Decca and Avi Avital records for Deutsche Grammophon - both Universal Music owned labels. So now I understand why an independent music websi

Medical research explains why dumbing-down sucks

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This Turnabout LP was bought in New York in 1978 . It then travelled - together with a still-treasured 590 page MOMA catalogue! - in my baggage to Los Angeles and on to Mexico, before returning with me to the UK via Houston. As can be seen from my photo the vinyl disc remains in mint condition and Howard Hanson's overlooked Sixth Symphony resounds in all its analogue glory as I write. I treasure this record not just for the music but also for the rich additional content that supplements the abstract music. This meta content extends beyond the stylish artwork and informative sleeve notes, to memories of where and when I bought it and the journey it made with me half-way round the world, and these in turn trigger a complex and infinite network of synaptic linkages . Meta content held in my long-term memory makes this music particularly important to me, and medical research has identified important links between memory and deep cultural experiences. Yet classical music's st

The right kind of political baggage

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Too much time is being spent here on the wrong kind of political baggage . So to make partial amends here is the right kind. John Williams and Maria Farandouri recorded their LP of protest songs by Mikis Theodorakis in 1971 while the Greek military junta was still in power. My graphic shows the original LP artwork, a CD transfer - alas with different artwork - is available from Sony Greece. Buy* and take a step towards enlightenment. * The only option for buying the CD of this classic of the gramophone at a sensible price is to purchase it from Greece. I have found the online shop of Studio 52 in Thessaloniki to be an excellent way of buying Greek CDs. 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).