Goodbye Western art music

The storm was so bad even Peter Grimes would have stayed at home and watched BBC TV's repeat of a Steptoe film on its so-called culture channel. But a good-sized audience braved the worst Easter weather for decades to travel to Snape Maltings on Good Friday for a celebration of something more multi-cultural.

The collabaration between between early music group The Dufay Collective and the Spanish-based Al-Quimia was the outcome of one of Aldeburgh Music's pioneering artist residencies. This musical exploration of the multi-cultural society that flourished in Andalucia seven hundred years ago was a high risk project; this isn't exactly mainstream repertoire and hybrid projects such as this are rarely box-office hits. But that's not what Aldeburgh is about. Britten and Pears created Snape to celebrate the holy triangle of composer, performer and listener and on Friday evening, despite the stacked odds, the spirit of place prevailed and the vital electricity sparked from composer through performers to listener.

In fairness it wasn't so much a collabration as a triumph for Al-Quimia. When the two groups played in concert the collabaration really added no more than a strengthened rythym line. But when the players of the Spanish group took centre stage the music soared, and the Dufay musicians were quite content to join the audience in silent admiration. And what a vindication of Britten and Arup Associates' acoustic vision for Snape, even from our seats at the back of the 830 seater hall the nuances of the oud, dumbek, nay flute and kanun were crystal clear.

I have written here before about adventurous programming such as the celebrated concert comprising an Ockeghem Mass and a Mahler symphony in Berlin in 2000, while none other than Philip Glass has said that world music is the new classical. So, now Aldeburgh Music has seen what electifying musicians Al-Quimia are, please can we have a concert with a set by them in the first half and the Britten-Pears Orchestra playing Messiaen's might multi-cultural Turangalila Symphony in the second? Yes, I know there are boring problems like the platform lay-out. But I live close to Aldeburgh and will happily help swap the oud for the ondes Martenot and oboes in the interval.

Now see the art of the mosque.
Header image is Al-Quimia's only CD to date, available from Samsaoui in Spain. 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

What's in a name?

Hip hop, trance, house, dance, techno and electro aren't just categories of rock music. They are fan bases, communities, underground networks, marketing tools and cultural directions. And more importantly they are self-contained markets which combine to form a thriving scene for new rock music.

In classical music we have the tried but dry categories of early, baroque, classical and romantic, but after that things become difficult. Until eight years ago twentieth-century music was a useful fallback, but should Mahler be in the same category as Boulez? Then there is modern music, but that sounds like furniture, and avant-garde which sounds forbidding. How about contemporary and new music? But is John Cage, who died sixteen years ago, contemporary? Is Britten as contemporary as Christina Kubisch? Or is Stimmung, which was composed forty years ago, new music? Then there are experimental, aleatoric, chance, electronic, atonal, serial, minimalist and other technical labels which sound just like what they are, technical labels.

It's not an academic discussion. We want new audiences and knowing what to call something is the first step towards liking it. Which is why BlackBerry, PowerBook and iPod are much more than mere names. Future Radio bills my programme as contemporary classical and on this blog and on air I use the default of contemporary music or new music. But I keep thinking there must be something more compelling and descriptive to stand alongside hip hop trance, house, dance, techno and electro.

Is there? Or doesn't it matter?

Now read about a title given by the gods.
Image credit mesotic.com 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

Live the dream at Snape Maltings

Fancy a duplex in the middle of beautiful countryside, yet across the road from one of the world's finest concert halls? Well fancy no more. You can live the dream at Snape Maltings.

I have already written about the inspirational new creative campus at Snape that builds on the artistic vision of Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears. As part of this redevelopment some of the redundant Maltings buildings are being converted into residential properties. In my header visual the concert hall is on the left, the new creative campus in the center, and the new properties are on the right. Below are two visualisations of the properties.


The first eighteen properties went on sale off plan late last year. As I write just three are still available. They are all two bedroom duplexes. The cheapest is £425,000 (US$875,000), the most expensive is £550,000 (US$1.13million). This is for a property with one parking space and a six mile drive to the nearest shops and railway station. Jet set conductors and other wealthy readers can find more details of the properties here.


Now playing - Benjamin Britten's The Building of the House op. 79 with Simon Rattle conducting the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. The 1967 Aldeburgh Festival opened with a visit from Queen Elizabeth and a concert in the new Snape Maltings Concert Hall which included this overture, composed to celebrate the ‘building of the house’. The music is as lively as the wonderful acoustics in which it was first performed. The version performed in 1967 was for chorus and used an English text of Psalm 127 adapted by Imogen Holst, but there are alternative versions which omit the chorus.

Now read how about the rebuilding of the house.
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

Hallé birthday to you

Youth is certainly a state of mind in Manchester where the Hallé Orchestra is celebrating the 150th anniversary of its founding. Last night there was a celebratory concert presented by Dame Janet Baker (age 75) which included Ralph Vaughan William's Towards the Unknown Region and Edward Elgar's In the South (Alassio) as well as a 1996 Hallé comission, Thomas Adès' These Premises are Alarmed. Well done the Hallé for defying current music fashion and recognising that Elgar and Vaughan Williams did more than linger "lovingly over musical depictions of pastoral hills and fields, implicitly resisting the march of progress."

Hans Richter, Sir John Barbirolli and Mark Elder are the conductors usually associated with the Hallé. But my header photo shows Benjamin Britten rehearsing his Spring Symphony with them in Leeds in 1950. More on the Spring Symphony here.
Image credit Leeds classical music. 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

Stockhausen's Stimmung at summer Snape

A late night performance of Stimmung is one of the highlights of the 2008 Aldeburgh Summer Festival. It will be sung by London Voices as part of the Faster Than Sound experimental music festival within a festival. The evocative photo above was kindly provided by fellow blogger Richard Friedman. He took it at the October 1971 performance of Stimmung in the Théâtre de la Ville, Paris by the group that commissioned it, Collegium Vocale Köln. Richard is also a fellow webcaster, check out his Music From Other Minds on KALW 91.7 FM San Francisco. The footer photo was taken by me at the 2007 Faster Than Sound. Stockhausen's music is just one of many delights at the 2008 Aldeburgh Festival which runs from 13th to 29th June, here are some of the others:

* World premiere of a new opera An Ocean of Rain by Yannis Kyriakides directed by Cathie Boyd.
* Featured composer György Kurtág and his wife Marta in recital.
* Pierre-Laurent Aimard plays The Art of Fugue and conducts the Britten Sinfonia.
* Ensemble Organum sing Machaut.
* Steven Isserlis and Thomas Adès play music by Kurtág, Debussy, Janáček and a new work by Adès.
* I Fagiolini sing Byrd.
* Premiere of John Woolrich's Violin Concerto.

As I've said here before, contemporary music is flourishing in Aldeburgh. This is due to adventurous and challenging programming. And Aldeburgh is not frightened of controversy. They proudly feature the 2007 premiere of their multi-media opera Elephant and Castle on the front of their new brochure, in confident defiance of a one star Guardian review from a grumpy Andrew Clements. Here are the facts that prove music has to be an adventurous experience:

In the past twelve months Aldeburgh Music has:
* Presented more than 150 concerts and events, including music, opera, dance, visual arts, public masterclasses and talks.
* Sold 91,000 concert tickets.
* Involved 8000 people in 250 Aldeburgh Education project days.
* Nurtured musical talent from around the world through the Britten-Pears Young Artists Programme which has more than 300 alumni.
* Started building its visionary new music campus.
* Involved more than 200 established musicians in Aldeburgh Residencies.
* Coached 25 of the region's finest young musicians through the Aldeburgh Young Musicians scheme.

As Benjamin Britten said, music does not exist in a vacuum.


Header photo (c) Richard Friedman 2008, footer (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. 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

Happy Christmas to all my readers

Photo taken at the festival of lessons and carols in Blythburgh Church sung by the Blythburgh Singers on December 22nd, 2007, a church which has many connections with Benjamin Britten. Have a peaceful Christmas everyone, and a musical New Year.
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 Madonna of Stalingrad

"I spent Christmas evening with the other doctors and the sick. The Commanding Officer had presented the letter with his last bottle of champagne. We raised our mugs and drank to those we love, but before we had had a chance to taste the wine we had to throw ourselves flat on the ground as a stick of bombs fell outside. I seized my doctor's bag and ran to the scene of the explosions, where there were dead and wounded. My shelter with its lovely Christmas decorations became a dressing station. One of the dying men had been hit in the head and there was nothing more I could do for him. He had been with us at our celebration, and had only that moment left to go on duty, but before he went he had said: "I'll finish the carol first, O du fröhliche!" A few moments later he was dead. There was plenty of hard and sad work to do in our Christmas shelter. It is late now, but it is Christmas night still. And so much sadness everywhere."

The German army was trapped outside Stalingrad during the bitterly cold Christmas of 1942. Among the German troops was Kurt Reuber, a clergyman and doctor. Drawing on the back of map of Russian (the folds can be seen on the reproduction above) he used a stick of charcoal to portray Mary holding the baby Jesus in her arms, and shielding Him with her arms. The words above are taken from Kurt Reuber's last letter before he was captured by the Russians. He perished in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp.

His family chose the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin to display the Madonna of Stalingrad, and to pass on the message of light, love, and a sense of protection contained in this moving drawing. A message particularly appropriate at this Christmas time.

Two copies of the Madonna have been sent from Berlin as symbols of hope and reconciliation. One is in Coventry Cathedral which was destroyed by German bombs in 1940, and reconsecrated in 1962 with the first performance of Britten's War Requiem. The other is in the Russian Orthodox Church in Volgograd (formerly Stalingrad).

For more on the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church take An Overgrown Path to Music rises from the ruins in Berlin
The full story of Kurt Reuber and the Madonna, from which the quotation above was taken, can be read here. Image credit: Scanned from reproduction purchased in the Kaiser Wilhelm Memorial Church in Berlin. 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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Happy new ears on internet radio

In between programmes of music by Karlheinz Stockhausen, Colin McPhee and Alvin Curran I have been working on three Christmas specials commissioned by Future Radio featuring Tchaikovsky's great ballets. The hour long programmes will be presented by my wife, and musical highlights from each ballet are linked by a summary of the plot. The project has been a delight from start to finish, and not only because my wife is easier on the ear (and eye) than me. What wonderful music Tchaikovsky wrote, and that's a view shared by some pretty influential people.

'The sheer inventiveness of Prince of the Pagodas is extraordinary - so many memorable ideas - as is the sustained brilliance of the orchestral writing. The quality of the music is the equal of the Tchaikovsky ballets, which served as Britten's model for a large part of the score (Ronald Duncan recalls that Britten told him he kept a score of Sleeping Beauty beside his bed while writing the piece)' - from Britten by David Matthews (Haus Publishing ISBN 190434139).

Our programmes use the recordings of the Tchaikovsky ballets made by the Orchestra of the Royal Opera House, Covent Garden conducted by Mark Ermler (sleeve above). These were recorded for the now defunct Conifer label in the late 1980s. They were chosen for their authentically Russian style and excellent sound captured in All Saints' Church, Tooting, with the bonus that the wordless chorus in the Dance of the Snowflakes scene in the Nutcracker is sung by the local Halesworth Middle School Choir.

The conductor Mark Ermler (1932-2002) was born in Leningrad and worked with the Bolshoi Theatre as well as Covent Garden. He had a wide repertoire and conducted the first public performance of Prokofiev's last opera Story of a Real Man in Moscow in 1960. Our Christmas ballet specials are being broadcast by Future Radio on FM locally in Norwich, UK and worldwide on the internet on Christmas Day (Nutcracker 6.00pm), Boxing Day (Swan Lake 3.00pm) and New Year's Day (Sleeping Beauty 4.00pm). The audio stream can be launched from the right side-bar where there is also a time zone converter.

In November 2007 Future Radio commissioned an independent listener survey, and this showed that 5.5% of the station's total audience listened to the Overgrown Path programmes, a figure that is not too far behind some of their specialist rock shows. I am only too aware of the danger of comparisons across different data sets, but to give a perspective RAJAR figures show that 1.2% of the total UK radio audience listens to BBC Radio 3.

The results of the Future Radio survey are very pleasing as the basic rule for my programmes has been 'no compromise'. All the works are broadcast complete, there are no long-winded explanations of the music, no cult of the presenter, and no listener phone-ins. Around 95% of each programme is music, and linking announcements are minimised. This allows the music to speak for itself and the listeners to judge the music for themselves.

The composer listings for the five months that the programme has been on air are also strictly 'no compromise' - Pierre Boulez, Elisabeth Lutyens, Colin McPhee, Elizabeth Maconchy, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Vanessa Lann, Lou Harrison, Beata Moon, William Alwyn, Thea Musgrave, Alvin Curran, Paul Creston, Judith Weir, Terry Riley, Rebecca Saunders and many more.

Overgrown Path radio is an experiment that is just a small part of a long tail. But the results of the listener survey show that when you treat your audience as intelligent equals they respond. That is something much bigger radio stations have forgotten. And they have also forgotten the vital point made by Libby Purves' in her book Radio: A True Love Story. "All that you can do is to make - and publicise - the best and most passionately well-crafted programmes you can think of. Ratings have to be watched, but calmly and with a sense of proportion. You have to believe that if even one person is swayed, or inspired, or changed, or comforted, by a programme, then that programme has been worthwhile".


Now playing - Britten's The Prince of the Pagodas Suite with Leonard Slatkin conducting the BBC Symphony Orchestra. Regular readers will know that Leonard Slatkin's lacklustre tenure with the BBCSO did not make me a big fan of his conducting. This Chandos CD, which couples the Britten ballet suite with Colin McPhee's Tabu-Tabuhan and the 1941 recording of Britten and McPhee playing a Balinese transcription for two pianos, is a good summary of Slatkin's period with the orchestra.

The CD is worth buying for the performance of Tabu-Tabuhan which is persuasive, and this is the recording I used for my recent webcast. The Britten suite is useful for those who don't want to invest in Britten's own recording of the complete work, but there is little else to recommend it. The performance sounds under-rehearsed and routine. Fine for a budget release of a concert performance, but not for a full price CD.

More wonderful Tchaikovsky from Russia here.
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

Darker than a starless night

Clear as a sky without a cloud
may be a mother's mind,
but darker than a starless night
with not one gleam, not one,
no gleam to show the way.

The Madwoman arrives at the ferry in Benjamin Britten's first church parable Curlew River. Photograph taken this afternoon inland from Aldeburgh. More on Curlew River here.
Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

How can you consider that music?

'The importing agent in Den Pasar handled among other things, Oriental records, Chinese, Malayan, and even recordings from the Koran. There were shelves of Balinese recordings - sacred texts, cremation music, theatre, music from the shadow-play. They had been made in Bali in the late 'twenties by two German firms, Odéon and Beka (label below), and were rare, since only a few had been considered successful enough for the European market. You could not get them in Europe, or even Java, but here they had been stored in quantities.

They had been made, of course, to sell on the island - a naïve project, for no Balinese had money or even the desire for a phonograph. Why should they sit and listen to disks when the island rang day and night with music? Thus, one morning, when I bought two sets, the agent remarked bitterly that this was the first sale in a year. I shall throw them all out, he said angrily. They are only taking up room on my shelves.

It was a warm day, and I thought that he was perhaps infuriated by the heat as much as anything else. But, later, when I knew I was leaving, I returned for another set of records, only to find that he had, in one of those quick fits of rage that can seize a Westerner in the tropics, smashed them all the week before. Not one remained.

Good riddance, he exclaimed defiantly. He seemed quite pleased at my dismay. Anyway, he suddenly shouted, how can you consider that music? You, who call yourself a musician? He looked at me through his thick glasses with sudden hatred'.

Colin McPhee writes in A House in Bali of the destruction of the remaining stocks of the historic gamelan records that were to have such an influence on Western composers including Benjamin Britten and Lou Harrison. More on Colin McPhee here.


Buy MP3 downloads of the historic gamelan recordings here. Photo of G'ndérs playing the melody for the lélong dance from A House in Bali by Colin McPhee, Oxford University Press ISBN 0195804481, out of print. Beka record label from Wikipedia.

Hear Colin McPhee's gamelan inspired Tabu-Tabuhan on my Future Radio programme on Sunday December 9 at 5.00pm UK time (convert to local time zones here) I will also be playing Lou Harrison's 1985 Piano Concerto. Listen by launching the Radeo internet player from the right side-bar, or via the audio stream, on Sunday December 9 at 5.00pm UK time. Convert time to your local time zone using this link. Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM.

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.

Colin McPhee - East collides with West

'It seems to me certain that future progress in creative music for composers of the Western world must inevitably go towards the exploration and integration of elements drawn from more than one of the world's cultures.' This remarkably accurate prophecy was made by Henry Cowell in 1947, and was prompted by a radio broadcast of Colin McPhee's gamelan inspired Tabuh-Tabuhan which had received its first performance eleven years earlier.

Carol J. Oja's exemplary biography (jacket below) describes Colin McPhee as a 'composer of two worlds'. He was born in Toronto in 1900, and established a dual career of pianist and composer at an early age. He started his studies at the Peabody Conservatory in 1918, and spent two years studying in Paris before settling in New York in 1926. He quickly established himself as a one of a new generation of American composers, and his music was presented at a concert of Edgard Varèse's International Composer's Guild.

At the time Henry Cowell ranked McPhee in a group that included Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Charles Seeger, Roy Harris, Henry Brant and Ruth Crawford. McPhee's dual career of composer and pianist continued, and in 1927 he played in the infamous Carnegie Hall premiere of George Antheil's Ballet Mécanique alongside Aaron Copland. In New York McPhee also developed an interest in African-American culture, and ignored contemporary prejudices by accompanying the black soprano Abbie Mitchell in a group of his own songs.

While in New York Colin McPhee had heard newly released recordings of the Balinese gamelan. This experience was to change the composer's life, as he explains in his own words: 'I was a young composer, recently back in New York after student days in Paris, and the past two years had been filled with composing and the business of getting performances. It was quite by accident that I had heard a few gramophone rcords that were to change my life completely, bringing me out here in search of something quite indefinable - music or experience, I could not at this moment say.'

In 1931 McPhee travelled to Bali for the first time accompanied by his wife Jane who he had married the previous year. As well as being an established researcher in her own right, Jane McPhee contributed much of the funding for her husband's work in Bali. The marriage lasted for seven years despite Colin McPhee's undisguised homosexuality. There was genuine interdependence in the marriage, but extraordinarily, Jane McPhee, née Belo, is completely written out of the composer's accounts of his time in Bali, all of which are written in the first person singular.

In 1932 the McPhee's started to build their own house on Bali. The story is beautifully told in McPhee's own words in his book A House in Bali (jacket above), albeit without any mention of his wife who bankrolled the whole project. During his first stay on the island McPhee immersed himself in Balinese culture, and studied the gamelan from close quarters. In 1935 the McPhees returned to America for an extended period, and the composer renewed his close working relationship with the Mexican conductor Carlos Chávez, who has already featured on these pages. Chavez had founded the Orquestra Sinfónica de México in 1928, and he invited McPhee to visit Mexico in 1936 to compose an orchestral work for the Mexican orchestra using material from Bali. This work was to become the Toccata for Orchestra and Two Pianos, Tabuh-Tabuhan. Its title is a Balinese collective noun for a collection of percussive rhythms and sounds.

Tabuh-Tabahan was completed in a rented house in the exquisite silver mining town of Taxco, south of Mexico City. The two photographs here were taken in Taxco in 1987 when I was staying in the town while working with Chavez's Orquestra Sinfónica de México. They are anachronistic, but, nevertheless, somehow reflect the different worlds of Colin McPhee.


There is another interesting musical connection to Taxco. Igor Stravinsky, his wife, Robert Craft and his secretary, later turned unauthorised biographer, Lillian Libman had visited the town on Good Friday 1964 to see the Passion Play that is performed there every year. The procession through the town is led by small boys from the village, like the one above, and the whole town follows with lighted candles. The Stravinsky party had stayed at the Hotel de la Borda, which is where I also stayed twenty-three years later.

The ambience of Taxco clearly suited Colin McPhee's muse. The first performance of Tabu-Tabuhan conducted by Carlos Chávez in Mexico City in September 1936 was a major critical success, and it looked as though McPhee's advocacy of World Music would relaunch his career as a composer. But he was a prophet before his time. Despite support from Aaron Copland and Carlos Chavéz further performances did not follow, although those interested in the score included Leopold Stokowski and Serge Koussevitzky.

After failing to secure further performances of Tabuh-Tabuhan McPhee returned to Bali in early 1937, and he contunued to study the culture and the arts of the island. He and his wife had been living separate lives for some time, and they were divorced in 1938. The gamelan groups, with their male players with naked torsos, seemed to meet an emotional as well as musical need, and McPhee was known to have had a number of male lovers. During his stay in Bali a young male child dancer, Sampih, lived in McPhee's house. Tragically, Sampih was murdered long after McPhee had left the island.

By 1938 the political climate in Bali had changed. The Dutch colonial authorities had started to hound homosexuals, despite their acceptance by the Balinese, and the spread of Fascism in Europe semed likely to spread to the Dutch East Indies. McPhee returned to New York in February 1939, a decision also prompted by his reduced financial circmstances following his divorce. From 1943 to 1947 McPhee lived in the famous communal house in Middagh Street, Brooklyn Heights that was also home at varying times to Benjamin Britten, W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Paul and Jane Bowles, Peter Pears, Oliver Smith and Gypsy Rose Lee.

Britten's initial interest in Oriental music is attributed to his friendship with McPhee, rather than his own visit to Bali in 1956. Paul Bunyan was composed while Britten was in New York with McPhee, and Balinese influences can be heard in the 'Moon Turns Blue' episode in the Prologue. McPhee is also thought to have given Britten a grounding in American jazz. In 1941 McPhee and Britten recorded McPhee's transciption for two pianos of Balinese Ceremonial Music in New York, and this recording is available on Chandos 1011 coupled with 2003 recordings of Tabuh-Tabuhan and the Suite from Britten's ballet The Prince of the Pagodas.


The years in New York were difficult for Colin McPhee. Without the company and sponsorship of a wealthy wife, living in sordid accomodation and with little acceptance of his music, he relied on writing to generate an income, and the alcohol misuse that was to finally kill him started at this time. The only glimmer of hope was a CBS radio broadcast for schools in 1947 of two movements of Tabuh-Tabuhan rescored for reduced forces.

But an apparent breakthrough came in 1952 when World Music came to America in the form of a Balinese gamelan group. The resulting interest in Eastern music prompted Leopold Stokowski to conduct the US premiere of Tabuh-Tabuhan at the Carnegie Hall in October 1953, and the reviewers, led by Virgil Thomson, gave the work a positive reception. This performance and the growing interest in cross-cultural music prompted further performances of the work (including a recording by Howard Hanson) and new commissions followed.

It would be nice to report a happy ending to the story. But it was not to be. It seemed that the creative fires that had blazed in 1936 had been dimmed by the physical, emotional and financial traumas of the following years. A noteworthy Second Symphony was premiered in 1958, but McPhee's other compositions of the period lack the creative fire that shines through Tabuh-Tabuhan.

But his last years at least gave a degree of reward. In 1960 Colin McPhee took the option chosen by many American composers of the time and became a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles. He was well-liked and respected by his students despite his deteriorating health. But advancing cirrhosis of the liver killed Colin McPhee on January 14, 1964. Roy Harris and Charles Seeger spoke at his funeral, and a telegram from Leopold Stokowski was read out.

Although Colin McPhee is usually only remembered for Tabu-Tabuhan, his legacy is considerable. He was a pioneer of World Music, and his use of repeating musical cells predated the minimalist composers by several decades. But it was probably through his writings that McPhee was most influential. His book A House in Bali asserted that music and the environment in which it is performed are inseperable (a topical subject this week). But McPhee's life work was his monograph Music in Bali which was finally published two years after his death, and is still regarded as one of the definitive work on the subject. His writings influenced a generation of composers, and Lou Harrison has recounted how McPhee's 1949 article on the five-tone gamelan music of Bali had a major impact on him.

I will be celebrating the music of Colin McPhee and Lou Harrison in my Future Radio programme on Sunday December 9. At 5.00pm UK time (convert to local time zones here) I will be playing Tabuh-Tabuhan and Lou Harrison's 1985 Piano Concerto. There are many links between the two composers, from their fascination with the East, through their homosexuality to the sublime slow inner movements of both works. Broadcasts of either work are rare, so don't miss this collision of East and West on Sunday. There is more on the Lou Harrison Concerto here.


Tabuh-Tabuhan was first performed in 1936. Now read about some other new music first performed at that time, but in very different circumstances.

Principal sources:
* Colin McPhee - Composer in Two Worlds by Carol J. Oja, Smithsonian Institution Press ISBN 0874747325, out of print.
* A House in Bali by Colin McPhee, Oxford University Press ISBN 0195804481, out of print.
* February House by Sherill Tippins, Scribner ISBN 0743257243
* Benjamin Britten, A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, Faber ISBN 0571143253

Listen to Tabu-Tabuhan by launching the Radeo internet player from the right side-bar, or via the audio stream, on Sunday December 9 at 5.00pm UK time. Convert time to your local time zone using this link. Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM.

Taxco photos are (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. 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.

Britten's reed-fringed path

'Snape is a straggling village just off the road to Aldeburgh. The River Alde, broad and marshy in its lower reach, becomes a small stream above the sluice at Snape Bridge. In 1938 the Garrett family was still operating the big Maltings by the old bridge, and lorries, barges and railway goods wagons came and went. Britten's Mill stood about half a mile north of this activity, in Snape village proper, but in a few minutes he could be walking on the reed-fringed path that wound past the Maltings towards Iken Marshes, with only the wildlife of the estuary for company' - from Benjamin Britten, A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter.

The photo was taken on Monday (Dec 3) from the reed-fringed path through Iken Marshes that Britten used to walk. The viewpoint is a mile downstream from Snape, the white speck on the horizon in the centre is the roof of the Maltings concert hall.
Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Britten's sea interludes via webcam

See the Suffolk seascape that inspired so much of Benjamin Britten's music in real time via the new Snape webcam, screen grab above. You will also see the weather that I'm experiencing!

Check out the multi-media clips while on the Aldeburgh Music website. And more images of Aldeburgh here.
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

Making music accessible desirable and different

'Orchestral concerts must become like football games, accessible, desirable and different' suggests the principal of the Royal Academy of Music, Curtis Price. His advice comes in a Guardian Comment feature by Simon Jenkins who has caught the Gustavo Dudamel and Hugh Masekela bug. Jenkins goes on to explain that in the coming 'revolution in appeal' classical music must include 'added value in congregation'.

Simon Jenkins is better known as a writer on church architecture than classical music. So we can forgive him for not knowing that there has been 'added value in congregation' (which when translated from Gordon Brown speak means, I think, audience participation) in classical music for a long time. From the chorales in Bach's Passions, through the Radetzky March at the Vienna Philharmonic's New Year's Day concerts, to the congregation hymns in Britten's St. Nicholas.

But why does every performance today have to include audience participation? Why do the BBC Proms audience have to be part of the action by contributing meaningless dribbles of applause between movements? Why do our future performers need to be selected on TV reality shows? Why do we need to condense Benjamin Britten's holy triangle of composer, performer and listener down to a single point where the listener is king? Why do we need, to quote Simon Jenkins, to make concerts 'a shared experience of laughing and dancing'?

Why don't we study that football analogy more closely? In football the laughing and dancing often ruins the performance. The major teams are controlled by power brokers with connections to the oil industry. Our much-hyped national team failed even to qualify at an international level. Ever younger stars are heaped with cash and adulation, and fail to deliver. And the media's darling, who was proclaimed as the saviour of the sport, has fled to Los Angeles with a lucrative contract in his pocket.

The revolution isn't about making concerts like football matches. The revolution is about finding shared musical languages and shared media that together reinforce, not undermine, Britten's holy triangle. The revolution is already happening, with many of the new composers and performing groups featured on this, and many other blogs, creating desirable and different music. The revolution is already happening by making their music more accessible through MP3 downloads, internet radio, a few old-fashioned CDs, and innovative live performances.

I don't pretend to have any influence over the future of classical music. But I was in the Future Radio studios the other day checking levels on Alvin Curran's Inner Cities for our forthcoming 'all-night vigil' webcast. A young DJ came off-air after presenting her hip hop show, and caught a few measures of Inner Cities. 'Wow, she exclaimed 'what is that? It is really cool.' That is the future of classical music, not conga lines.

Now playing - Techno Parade by Guillaume Connesson shown in my header image. Music from a leading French contemporary composer that is accessible, desirable and different, and not a football game in sight. Take your choice from the tracks, Disco-toccata, Jurassic Trip, and more. It even uses shared media; the eye-catching double disc pack (priced as a single) contains an audio CD and video DVD. That is the future of classical music.
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

Simple Gifts on internet radio

My Future Radio programme at 5.00pm UK time on Sunday November 25 has an all American theme for the Thanksgiving Holiday, but with an East Anglian twist. Aaron Copland’s first set of Old American Songs was commissioned by Benjamin Britten and Peter Pears for the 1951 Aldeburgh Festival here in East Anglia. There are five songs in the set, and the fourth is the traditional Shaker tune Simple Gifts, and that melody appears in different guises in all the works in the programme. I am playing Susan Chilcott's performance of the Old American Songs accompanied pianist Iain Burnside. Tragically Susan Chilcott died of cancer at the age of 40 just a year after this recording was made.

Simple Gifts has appeared in many different versions over the years, including one by Wilson Picket. But for the central sequence of the programme I'm going back to the song in its original version. It is sung by the Shakers of Sabbathday Lake in Maine augmented by the Schola Cantorum, Boston in a sequence of five Shaker chants and spirituals. The recording I am playing is a real find, read about it here.

For the final music in the programme I turn to one of the most celebrated re-imaginings of Simple Gifts. Aaron Copland's ballet Appalachian Spring was commissioned by the Martha Graham Dance Company, and uses the Shaker melody in the scene where the newly-weds are blessed. The ballet was first performed in Washington DC in 1944, and my header photo is from the original production.

Listen by launching the Radeo internet player from the right side-bar, or direct from the audio stream at 5.00pm on Sunday November 25. Convert to local time zones here. My programme of Simple Gifts is dedicated to Maurice Béjart who died on November 22, 2007, aged 80.

Now read how Aaron Copland found 'tis the gift to be free.
No photo credit, just who owns Martha Graham? Windows Media Player doesn't like the audio stream very much and takes ages to buffer. WinAmp or iTunes handle it best. Unfortunately the royalty license doesn't permit on-demand replay, so you have to listen in real time. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM. 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

A big day for Britten and America

Today is the big one. America is celebrating Thanksgiving, and we are all remembering the assassination of President John F. Kennedy on November 22, 1963. And in the musical world not only is today the nameday of St. Cecilia, the patron saint of musicians. It is also the day when Jacob Obrecht was born in 1450, Wilhelm Friedmann Bach in 1710, Joaquin Rodrigo in 1901, and Benjamin Britten in 1913. Follow the links for related articles.

Now playing - Gerald Finzi's For St. Cecilia on the 1979 Argo LP ZRG 896 seen above. Finzi's Ode for tenor, chorus and orchestra also has a birthday today. It was first performed exactly sixty years ago, on November 22, 1947, by René Soames, the Luton Choral Society and BBC Symphony Orchestra conducted by Sir Adrian Boult. Another fine choral work that deserves to be heard more often.

Do you mind if I leave you now with these birthday links? You see, I'm off to celebrate my own birthday.
Header image (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Music and chance