I've seen the future and it's orange

Regular readers will know I am not a fan of the infernal combustion engine. Which is why I photographed the car currently standing on our drive. It doesn't use an internal combustion engine. This little orange number goes from 0 to 60mph in under 4 seconds, its energy consumption is the equivalent to 135mpg, and it is electric powered. It is a Tesla Roadster, and it is the brain-child of a Silicon Valley start-up backed by A-list names including Sergey Brin and Larry Page. There is a waiting list for the Roadster which goes on sale in the States next year, and George Clooney and Matt Damon are among the names down for the $98,000 car of the future.

Once you are on the road two things strike you. It is very fast, and it is very quiet. In fact it is so quiet that there have been problems with pedestrians stepping in front of it because they couldn't hear a car coming. The Tesla Roadster comes from a Californian company, and will go on sale on the West Coast - if you look carefully this UK registered pre-production model is left-hand drive, wrong side for us. But the development and building of the car takes place at Hethel, a mile and a half from our house here in rural Norfolk, and one of our family is working on the technology in it.

The only downsides I can see are the 245 miles range per battery charge and the absence of a CD autochanger. Now that would cause problems on our annual one thousand mile pilgrimage to Les Saintes-Maries-de-la-Mer.

None of which will stop the Tesla becoming the de rigeur Hollywood fashion accessory of 2008. Electric cars are the big thing there, as today's Guardian report on the current screenwriter's strike confirms - The police are threatening to hand out tickets for "contributing to noise pollution" if the pickets continue to hold up their "honk" signs to passing motorists - "There are a lot of Priuses honking," says Andy McElfresh, another Jay Leno writer, "a lot of non-writing Priuses".

And creative people going on strike takes us back to when market forces and music collided.
Interesting background here on the Tesla name. 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

How green was my concert?

As the G8 leaders discuss a global target for reductions in greenhouse gases in Heiligendamm perhaps it's time to ask how green was my concert? This year's BBC Proms features the premiere of Rachel Portman's The Water Diviner's Tale. As her publisher says, Portman is "known for her incredibly lush movie scores", and for writing the score for the film that launched Hugh Grant's career. If we forgive her that, the The Water Diviner’s Tale is billed as "a fresh and innovative production exploring the hot issue of climate change." Great to see the BBC putting climate change on the classical music agenda. But shouldn't we be more concerned about the greenhouse gases that are produced by a season like the 2007 BBC Proms?

Here are the ensembles that will be flying, or bussing into London this summer for the eight week BBC Proms season, with their points of departure in bold. Chorus and Orchestra of the Academy of Santa Cecilia, Rome, Bach Collegium Japan, Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, BBC National Orchestra and Chorus of Wales, BBC Philharmonic (Manchester) and BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra, Bergen Philharmonic Orchestra (Norway), Birmingham Contemporary Music Group, Black Dyke Mills Band (Bradford), Boston Symphony Orchestra, Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra, Britten Sinfonia (Cambridge), Buskaid Soweto String Ensemble (South Africa), City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra and Chorus, Compagnie Roussat-Lubek (Paris), Ensemble Sequentia (Germany), European Union Youth Orchestra, Frankfurt Radio Symphony, Freiburg Baroque Orchestra (Germany), Grimethorpe Colliery Band (Yorkshire), Hallé Orchestra (Manchester), Handel and Haydn Society of Boston, Henschel Quartet (Germany), Lahti Symphony Orchestra (Finland), Leipzig Gewandhaus Orchestra, Les Musiciens du Louvre–Grenoble (France), Lucerne Festival Orchestra (Switzerland), Mahler Chamber Orchestra (Berlin), National Youth Choir of Wales, Orchestre National de France, Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra (Amsterdam), Royal Northern College of Music (Manchester), San Francisco Symphony, Scottish Ensemble, Simón Bolívar National Youth Orchestra of Venezuela, Tanglewood Festival Chorus (Boston), Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra. Plus there is the roster of international soloists and conductors who will be flying in separately.

On An Overgrown Path has always stressed the importance of an international and inclusive approach to music making. But this orgy of travel is counterproductive, both in terms of environmental impact and music making. Of the six ensembles travelling to London from outside Europe, only two (Boston and San Francisco Symphony) are performing more than one concert. Of the eighteen European ensembles only two (Bavarian Radio Symphony and Vienna Philharmonic) are playing more than one concert.

Just who is this serving? I've already written here, and here, about the routine performances that result from "these London today, Germany tomorrow" tours by the 'brand name' orchestras. As an example, in just two weeks the Boston Symphony are crossing the Atlantic twice, and performing in seven cities in four European cities. That kind of frantic musical chairs isn't doing audiences, the musicians or the environment any favours. But it is great for the income of music agents who book these whirlwind itineraries, and its great for the BBC who are targetting an international audience in their strategy of global digital domination.

There are constructive answers. The BBC needs to re-establish its own BBC Symphony Orchestra as the core Proms ensemble. This year the BBCSO is playing in just twelve of the seventy-two concerts (that is only five more than the Manchester based BBC Philharmonic), and just four of the BBC Symphony dates are being conducted by its absentee chief conductor Jiří Bĕlohlávek. Of the four concerts Bĕlohlávek conducts, one is Beethoven 9 (astonishingly the first of two in the season), one is Mahler 1 (albeit with a Thea Musgrave premiere), and one is the Last Night. Where is the authority and diversity that Pierre Boulez and Colin Davis established when they headed the BBC Symphony? I suspect the BBC management no longer considers the BBC Symphony to be 'box office' for their global and digital markets.

We, of course, still need to welcome international ensembles to London. But let's welcome fewer, and let's establish longer term residencies where the musicians can really get the measure of the difficult Albert Hall acoustics and its idiosyncratic audience. And let's make the programmes enterprising, instead of yet another Brahms 1 (Boston Symphony Prom 71 - with a token nine minutes of Elliott Carter, and with misspelling of Elliott Carter on the composer index page), Shostakovich 5 (San Francisco Symphony Prom 64 with a token nineteen minutes of Ives), and Beethoven 9 (Bavarian Radio Symphony Prom 62 - with a decent thirty minutes of Honegger).

Global warming is forcing everyone to rethink the way they live. Why not the classical music community?

Now read how Mahler's music sent an important environmental message to the German parliament.
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Winds of change at Glyndebourne

Rows at Glyndebourne are usually confined to polite disagreements over a picnic spot or the staging of The Magic Flute. But the organisers of the quintessential summer opera festival now find themselves at the centre of a planning dispute over a proposed wind turbine that would be higher than the face of Big Ben.

Lewes District Council will determine the fate of a scheme that has divided opinion in East Sussex. Glyndebourne Opera House wants to build a 70m (230ft) turbine in its grounds in the South Downs, an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and National Park designate. It claims that, by using the 850kw turbine to generate electricity, the opera house will cut its carbon emissions by 71 per cent.

However a coalition of four environmental groups – the South Downs Society, the Council for National Parks, the Campaign to Protect Rural England (CPRE) and the Ramblers’ Association – is determined to block the application, to Lewes District Council, which is expected to be heard on June 20.

They say that the turbine will ruin the surrounding countryside, destroying views over “hundreds of square kilometres”. While the organisations are in favour of renewable energy, they say they do not want a turbine on land due to become a National Park.

From today's Times. But there's better news on Glyndebourne in Britten's women.
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How political leaders indulge their ambitions

Political leaders are invariably ambitious, and that ambition comes at a cost. In the early 16th century Albrecht of Brandenburg pulled off a series of political coups that left him as the head of the church in the German empire. But his ambition came at quite a cost, he was in debt to Pope Leo X and the great medieval banking house of Fuggers to the tune of 29,000 gulden.

But the wily Albrecht had a solution. He authorised the sale of papal ‘indulgences’ in the form of certificates guaranteeing the remission of sins in the regions under his control. The practice of using indulgences to offset sins was well established. Leading theologians, such as Thomas Aquinas, supported it with the explanation that the church in Rome had the equivalent of as a spiritual bank account that was substantially in credit, and this spiritual credit could be offered to mortal sinners. Initially indulgences were earned by spiritual endeavours such as taking part in a crusade, or visiting relics or shrines. But by the 16th century indulgences were being openly sold in a tawdry trade. They may have simply left the purchaser with a worthless piece of paper, but they offered an attractive way for Albrecht of Brandenberg (picture above) to pay off his papal credit card.

Meanwhile last week, following press criticism, Tony Blair tried to restore his green credentials by announcing he would offset carbon emissions from his family holidays, including their Christmas stay at Bee Gee Robin Gibbs' Florida villa. To offset the indulgence of his long-haul short break it is calculated that the prime minister will simply need to purchase carbon credits to the value of £90. In support comes today’s announcement that carbon offsetting is getting the 21st century equivalent of papal approval. The UK government is to define criteria for offsetting schemes that use certified credits. And in a remarkable reminder that there is nothing new under an increasingly strong sun, the UK government scheme introduces a gold standard for carbon offsetting, neatly reflecting the 29,000 gold coins that Albrecht of Brandenberg was in hock for.

Of course, Albrecht’s sin offsetting scheme ended in tears. While his chief spin doctor was giving a media briefing in Brandenburg he crossed paths with a troublesome activist called Martin Luther. It was obvious to Luther that the indulgences being sold by Albrecht made promises far beyond what was realistically practical. Martin Luther was so incensed that he wrote his Disputation on the Power and Efficacy of Indulgences, and then, like any good activist, he posted them on the the 16th century equivalent of the internet - the door of the castle church in Wittenberg.

The rest is history, or more correctly the rest rewrote history. Luther’s stand against indulgences in October 1517 sparked the Reformation, and his proselytizing against Rome was taken up by Calvin in Geneva, and by Zwingli and Bullinger in Zurich. The first great split in the Christian Church had been the schism in 1054 between Rome and the Orthodox congregation, and the Reformation in the 16th century sparked the second great split, this time between Rome and the Protestant Church. This split changed the political map of Europe and the religious map of the world forever, and sparked wars and conflicts that continue today. As well as creating a religious movement, Martin Luther (left) also created a cultural movement that stretches from Bach’s St Matthew Passion to Benjamin Britten’s 1962 War Requiem. And it all happened because a greedy leader decided that indulgences were a cool way to finance his ambitions.

Now read how the Pope has another Regensburg moment
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