Now playing - the Hallelujah Chorus

'Hang on a minute, and take a deep breath. Now take another. The Rest Is Noise is a great book, with loads of insights and a unique way of joining musical history to cultural history to political history, and I've said so. Ross is an exceptional writer, and his blog is the hub for a great deal of classical activity on the web and in the blogosphere. But "He is the answer to all the lamentations about who will build the new audiences"?

No one can live up to that, not even SuperAlex. It's a bit of a conceptual leap to believe that people with only a passing interest in classical music up till now will become avid concertgoers, or even occasional concertgoers, once they've read The Rest Is Noise.'

Thank you Marc Geelhoed.

Picture credit Northeastern State University. My preferred version of the Messiah is Christopher Hogwood's with the Academy of Ancient Music and Choir of Christ Church Cathedral, Oxford, but it is now deleted I fear. 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

Now - Joyce Hatto the book

I have been contacted by a journalist researching a book on the Joyce Hatto 'forgeries'. Presumably 'Joyce Hatto - the movie' will follow shortly. But deciding which pianists to put on the soundtrack album could be interesting.

Or will 'Joyce Hatto - the book' meet the same fate as a work in progress about a musician who has featured here several times? Reports suggest that biography may have been canned following threats of legal action from the musician's surviving spouse.

Before anyone asks, no I am not contributing to the Joyce Hatto volume. Photo, which is NOT Joyce Hatto is from Jans' piano page. 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

The Rest Is Poise

Best wishes to fellow blogger Alex Ross on his book launch this week. Now read about the man who talked to cats, and listen to twentieth-century symphonies by Paul Creston and Malcolm Arnold on the Overgrown Path radio programme today.
Photo taken in Chalon sur Saône, France by me. (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Horizons Touched - The Music of ECM

This should be on everyone's Christmas gift list.
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

The perfect ethical, and musical, Christmas present

If you want to give an ethical present this Christmas why not give 'An Unfinished Destiny', the biography of the brilliant harpsichordist Scott Ross whose complete Scarlatti Sonata recordings were my choice as the best thirty-four CDs of 2005?

No nasty corporate publishers or booksellers are involved with this wonderful book. But before buying it you need to read the small print. You will not find the book in your local Borders
or Waterstones, and it isn't on any of the Amazon databases. There is only one way to get a copy. Send 15 Euros in banknotes wrapped in black paper by post to the author (right) who lives in Montpellier in France (lucky man). You may have to wait for your copy, although mine came in four days - which is a lot faster than Amazon. Its absence from the inventories of Borders and Amazon is guaranteed by the lack of a standard ISBN identifier.

The book is available in French and English. This is genuine 'print on demand', but the process is reasuringly technolgy-lite. Both language versions are hand produced in batches of around twenty volumes by photo-copying the 215 pages, sticking in the numerous good quality photographs, cutting them on a guillotine (very French), then folding and hand sewing them into a finished volume. In the past fifteen years around 350 copies of the French version, and 20 of the English version, have been produced this way. So you are getting a genuine hand-crafted limited edition for your £10.20 ($18.02).

Author Michel Proulx (that is a self-portrait above) is as charismatic as his book. His credentials are fine, as an accomplished harpsichord maker he built an instrument for Scott Ross himself. But his CV includes working as a Club Méditerranée animateur, and a lorry driver and a meat delivery man from 1989 to 1991, as well as serving an apprenticeship in violin making, and taking a Master's at the Université Paul Valery in Montpellier. He is also something of an authority on Zen Bhudism.

If all this makes you think the book is going to be a bit cuckoo, you are wrong. This is an authoritative and well researched book, and because it is the only biography of Scott Ross (below), it is by definition the best. Sure, sometimes the English version needs translating - into English, the editing is a little short of Harper Collins standards, and Michel Proulx's way with words falls a little short of Norman Lebrecht's (but I guess his views on Mozart are a bit more acceptable). But don't let any of that put you off, this biography is valuable precisely because it is miles away from the standard record company biogs that are the only real source of information on Ross. There is a bibliography, list of sources, lexicon, and details of Ross' instruments. But what makes this eccentric little book so appealing is the way it takes the reader into the mind of a great, and tragically departed, musician. It is fascinating, for example, to read that Scott Ross was a follower of the 18th century French philosopher and man of letters, Denis Diderot (whose famous quotes include 'From fanaticism to barbarism is only one step'), and that his approach to performance was influenced by Diderot's Paradox sur le Comédien (Paradoxes of the Actor).

'An Unfinished Destiny - Scott Ross, Master of the Harpshichord' is not only a wonderful ethical Christmas present. It is also a valuable addition to the resources about this important musician who, in his complete Scarlati Sonatas, left one of the greatest recorded legacies of the 20th century. And it will only cost you 15 Euros - wrapped in black paper of course.

Ordering details for 'An Unfinished Destiny - Scott Ross, Master of the Harpshichord' are available from author Michel Roulx's web site which is unsurprisingly somewhat unconventional.
Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
Image credits: Self portrait and Scott Ross - Michel Proulx
Scarlatti Sonatas - Warner Classics
Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. If bandwidth is a problem with your permission I will host your image.
If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to If you only buy thirty-four CDs this year buy these!