Comments on On An Overgrown Path: East Anglia 1953 - New Orleans 2005

Garth, it is interesting that the score for Curlew...

2005-09-09T11:50:00.000+01:00

Garth, it is interesting that the score for Curlew River was one of the first published by the then recently formed music division of Faber.

The path of scores, and musical instruments, as aesthetically attractive artefacts in their own right is one I plan to explore in a future post.

I am sure you know about the Library of Congress Vatican Exhibit as I think it just up the road from you.

But for those that don't feast your eyes on this score and the others there. But you do need Broadband!

I looked briefly, late last night, at my Faber sco...

2005-09-08T17:59:00.000+01:00

I looked briefly, late last night, at my Faber score to Benjamin Britten and William Plomer's church parable "Curlew River".
The beautifully engraved bilingual score (English-German) includes a preface by Imogen Holst and extensive original production notes by Colin Graham. These production notes include many diagrams and beautiful black and white drawings showing the bodily positions of the figures in the drama -- especially the Madwoman. The work was dedicated to Michael Tippett, "In friendship and admiration." In my opinion, the score is an absolutely outstanding world cultural artifact -- one which was apparently initially inspired by a 1953 English tragedy of nature and hundreds of untimely deaths.

The libretto was based by Britten and Plomer on a renowned 15th century Japanese No play "Sumidagawa" (The Madwoman at Sumida River), by the No dramatist
Motomasa. Motomasa was the great Japanese No dramatist Zeami's eldest son. (Motomasa was not, however, Zeami's heir, having predeceased Zeami -- as did another son.) Zeami (1363-1443) was himself the greatest playwright and theorist of the Japanese No theater. (Zeami was exiled, by the Shogunate, to Sado Island for eight of the last ten years of his life, and Zeami and Motomasa were both banned from the Shogunate's Palace for the last 14 years of Zeami's life.)

Britten and Peter Pears saw the No drama on their 1956 trip to Japan, three years after the tragic flooding in East Anglia and about eight years before the world premiere of the church parable.
I first became aware of the church parable upon reading the last chapter of Donald Mitchell's "The Language of Modern Music", purchased in a Detroit booksore while driving across country in 1970.

J. Thomas Rimer's "On the Art of Nø Drama: The Major Treatises of Zeami" is highly recommended.

A very relevant and enlightening post. The shame ...

2005-09-08T14:30:00.000+01:00

A very relevant and enlightening post.

The shame now is that the city of New Orleans had an evacuation plan that called for use of school buses to get people out of the city before a major hurricane strike. Instead, the buses sat in the yards (saw footage of them, hundreds upon hundreds of buses) and now they are underwater and useless.

Somehow, we just don’t get it that nature can be really nasty even if we’ve never known it to be so before

The power of the infinite force of nature here in ...

2005-09-08T10:47:00.000+01:00

The power of the infinite force of nature here in East Anglia is shown by this news story today

Very interesting post, pliable. Thank you. I had...

2005-09-07T14:01:00.000+01:00

Very interesting post, pliable. Thank you. I had never made a connection between an actual storm surge and Britten's church opera from 1964, even though at one point I had studied the parable fairly well (and I own the score). Your post also occurred at an interesting time, in that just yesterday there was a New York Times story about flood control in Europe that focused on the costs of building the expensive technologically-advanced protective hydraulic infrastructure. While that story opened with a description of Holland's 1953 catastrophe, the picture provided with the article was of the London Thames River protective hydraulic sea wall. Later this morning, I'll recheck the story and see if it mentions the English storm surge of 1953.
And thanks again for the beautiful and poignant libretto extracts from the Britten church parable.