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Showing posts from August, 2014

Which version of the truth do you want?

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On August 27th 2014 BBC Two TV screened the first of a four part documentary Hotel India billed as "A look behind the scenes of India's oldest and most famous hotel, the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel in Mumbai". On November 26th 2008 the Afghanistan based terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba attacked a five-star hotel in Mumbai in a city wide terror campaign that left at least 167 people dead. Anyone without prior knowledge watching the BBC's Hotel India , which the Guardian reviewer described as "PR puff", would not have connected the terror of 2008 with the hedonistic paradise of 2014 portrayed in the BBC documentary, yet alone realised that the Taj Mahal Palace Hotel was at the centre of the attacks. Thirty-one of the dead were killed in the hotel which is seen under attack in the photo above. It may be that the remaining three episodes will correct the blatant editorial imbalance - described by the Guardian reviewer as "one of the more extreme cases

Social media hysteria will not help new music

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I decided to set some of the Vespers texts that Monteverdi had set, but I did not want to write an orthodox Roman Catholic Vespers. Religious music is difficult to write nowadays because most composers (I think it is fair to speak generally) can no longer feel themselves part of established religions; yet the religious impulse is there in all of us, and religious works of some kind are, I think, still needed. So perhaps the only approach one can adopt is as an individual, stating what one can believe and no longer attempting to uphold doctrines that are no longer tenable. Those refreshingly frank and level-headed thoughts come from David Matthews' note for the new recording of his Vespers and Seventh Symphony . After first immersing himself in the music of Michael Tippett and then spending three years as an assistant to Benjamin Britten, David Matthews (b.1943) emerged as a pioneer of tonal compromise. This important stylistic school avoids academic sterility while also avoiding

When is dumbing down not dumbing down?

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The dumbing down of classical music by the BBC is truly scandalous . However, it it is ironic that Norman Lebrecht and other music journalists are getting so hot under the collar * over the loss of three minutes of Harrison Birtwistle's music from BBC Four TV: because the same journalists have been assiduously ignoring - no, disingenuously denying - that BBC Radio 3 has been dumbed down for years . Is three minutes of missing Birtwistle the straw that has finally broken the camel's back? Or does the fact that BBC Four TV has a far less generous budget than BBC Radio 3 for commissioning music journalists have something to do with it ? * To avoid inflating search engine rankings, links to Slipped Disc are deliberately indirect; the destination of the link should appear at the top of the Google search results. Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use", for the purpose of critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s)

Music to be, or music to do: that is the question

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'If the world stands bewildered and confused in the face of its troubles, it is partly because we Westerners have made a god of activity; we have yet to learn how to be , as we have already learnt how to do ' - Paul Brunton Fashionable dogmas tells us that classical music should do and not be . However, Jonathan Harvey differentiated between linear music that is composed "against what has been established as a pattern" and transcendental global music that sees "everything as a unity". This split between linear and global can be interpreted as corresponding to the music of doing and the music of being. Paul Brunton's non-aligned beliefs were rooted in Vedanta . Bhakti is a Hindu term signifying devotion as a path to salvation and Jonathan Harvey's eponymous work for chamber orchestra and quadraphonic tape has a quotation from the Rig Veda at the start of each of its twelve movements. Bhakti is quintessential music of being which proves fashi

Assuming the audience knows best is always questionable

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The assumption that the audience knows best what it wants is always questionable. The blurring of the distinctions between the giving and receiving of art can be tragic . Everywhere in the West one notices this frightful descent into homogeneity, blurring distinctions obliterating the idiosyncratic, dragging the leaders down and the led up onto some middle ground of fulcrumed banality . Both communism and democracy are systems dedicated to smoothing out differences between men. Of course you can make a congenital dunce into a prime minister but this is no guarantee of improvement in the state. Those who are prepared to pass the responsibilities of the artist to the audience will merely be rewarded in the same way as the liberals who first prepared the revolution of democracy: their heads were the first to fall when mass-man took over. R. Murray Schafer wrote that in 1966, which explains the politically incorrect tone. But, despite being written almost 50 years ago, it delivers an imp

Conservatories have produced a glut of fifth-rate composers

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Dear Bob, I am a freelance pianist-composer from the smallest state in the USA, and I have a personal stake in some themes you have blogged about recently, to wit, the difficulty faced by new composers in getting heard, and the low income of composers at large. Regarding the first of these themes - Liberty resides in the rights of the music you find most odious - naturally I completely agree with John Stuart Mill's dictum, which is identical in substance to Voltaire's much more famous statement on freedom of speech . I also think that in the particular case you spoke of, where the BBC paid for the Proms and agreed to include the new composition in the live performance but left it out of the broadcast, the composer got horribly shafted and deserves a make-up broadcast from the BBC. But after a cursory Internet search I can't find anything that says that the BBC had actually agreed to broadcast the entire concert; correct me if I'm wrong but the BBC seem to be within

The paradox of the Dalai Lama

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The Paradox of Our Age , a short but powerful essay credited to the present Dalai Lama, is widely available in Ladakh in northern India, a region known as 'Little Tibet'. The text ends with the observation that: 'These are times of fast foods but slow digestion/Tall men but short characters/Steep profits but shallow relationships/It’s a time when there is much in the window but nothing in the room'. Tibetan Buddhism is widely viewed as an appealing alternative to materialistic Western society, so, not surprisingly, The Paradox of Our Age is widely circulated on the internet and Twitter - see photo tweet below . I bought The Paradox of Our Age on an exquisitely printed little scroll in the Tibetan refugee market in the regional capital of Leh, where I had travelled overland from Delhi in July to observe the Kalachakra teachings given by the Dalai Lama. My accompanying photos capture that intensely moving spiritual event; but they also capture a great spiritual tra

Why are composers paid so little and other paid so much?

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There is quite rightly much indignation about the findings of a survey of fees paid to composers for new music. This report by Sound and Music , the UK agency for new music, reveals that the average fee per commission in 2013 was £1,392. Many people are asking why are composers paid so little? But very few people are asking why are composers paid so little when others in the classical music supply chain are paid so much? For instance, the fee for a single concert by a celebrity conductor - in all probability conducting a tour programme of a Mahler symphony and other works he/she has conducted dozens of times before - is around £20,000 . If I was a composer, I would be very angry that a top musician such as Lang Lang earns more for one concert than I do in a year, and, in addition, makes his pocket money by lending his name to the special edition £1.757 million Bugatti Veyron that he is seen with above . Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as &qu

How listening hard alters the music

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The guy who writes the music-themed blog On An Overgrown Path is a bit of an obsessive, but I like that. The entry for 14 August happily happens to chime with a number of my own obsessions. Listening to music, and I mean listening hard, alters the music, and preparing to listen makes it twice as strange. And wonderful. That post by Brian Connor on his blog From a far place appealed to me, because not only does it sum up nicely what I have been saying On An Overgrown Path over the last ten years, but it also hints at the huge untapped potential of the lost art of listening . My own recent listening - and I mean listening hard - has included Bridgettine Chant from Vox Silentii . Birgitta Birgersdotter (1303-1373) of Sweden was a visionary and founder of the Bridgettine monastic order of contemplative nuns: she was canonized in 1391 and declared Patron Saint of Europe in 1999. Sung by the by the Finnish all-female medieval music specialists Vox Silentii , these recordings are not ne

Liberty resides in the rights of the music you find most odious

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There has, quite rightly, been considerable criticism of the BBC's policy of exorcising new music from its recorded TV broadcasts of the Proms. Shortly after the Bill of Rights was drafted, English philosopher John Stuart Mill explained that: "Liberty resides in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious." This principle also applies to the arts, and in classical music liberty resides in the rights of the music you find most odious. The problem is that all of us have been party to the development of a culture where metrics - audience size and social media rankings - have become far more important than unfashionable concepts such as principles, rights, liberty, creativity and integrity. Would Le Sacre du Printemps have received a second performance in an age when classical music has become nothing more than a reality TV show where the audience decides which music will survive? Difficult to choose an appropriate graphic while avoiding stigmatising t

Classical music demands some effort from the listener

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My header photo* shows adepts of the Chisti Sufi order celebrating with Qawwali singing at the shrine of Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia in Delhi. I took the photo just before midnight during Ramadan; despite the late hour the temperature was still in the low 30s celsius with the very high humidity that precedes the monsoon, and covered heads and bare feet were  de rigeur . Hazrat Nizamuddin Aulia's shrine is deep in a labyrinth of alleys in the Muslim enclave of Nizamuddin West where few occidentals penetrate; my photo below shows the approach to the shrine, an ambiance which Max Hole would doubtless describe as "unwelcoming" . Yet, despite the fashionable mantra that great music can only be appreciated if it is easily accessible , the Qawwali music at this Sufi shrine delivered one of those rare experiences which transports the listener fleetingly to a higher level of consciousness . Writing in a booklet essay for Ensemble Al-Kindî and Sheikh Hamza Shakkûr recording of a

William Alwyn: the Suffolk composer who wasn't Britten

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William Alwyn's First Symphony is coupled with Ralph Vaughan William's Job: A Masque for Dancing in the BBC Prom being given by Sakari Oramo and the BBC Symphony Orchestra tomorrow (Aug 13). Genuine thanks go to outgoing Prom director Roger Wright for putting together a programme that shows how classical music's big opportunity is neglected music . William Alwyn was the Suffolk composer who wasn't Britten, and suffered as a result . With Roger Wright moving to Snape hopefully this will be redressed, and perhaps we can look forward to a cycle of all five of Alwyn's magnificent symphonies spread across future Aldeburgh Festivals. Additional thanks go to Roger Wright for starting tomorrow's concert an hour early, thereby allowing me to catch the late train back to East Anglia. If any readers are at this Prom do say hello. It will be easy to spot me: I will be one of those in the audience not applauding between movements . My ticket for the Alwyn/RVW Prom w

Walking on water wasn't built in a day

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When Timothy Leary first offered Allen Ginsberg LSD the poet objected, saying "Walking on water wasn't built in a day", and responses to recent posts here underline that the new audience for classical music also will not be built in a day. My appreciation of Arnold Dolmetsch's work with young people prompted Philip Amos to comment: The second paragraph of this fine post serves to bring again to my mind that the potential saviours of classical music are now about five years of age, if not younger... The key is to expose children to classical music at the latest in their first year of school and thereafter. I do not mean teach music. Nor 'music appreciation' classes if that entails another sort of blether. Just expose. I can remember the first classical works I was conscious of hearing -- and listening to: Eine Kleine Nachtmusik , Morning from Peer Gynt, Water Music...I was five and these were the among the works played as we gathered for morning assembly. On