The individual is sovereign

'That principle is, that the sole end for which mankind are warranted, individually or collectively in interfering with the liberty of action of any of their number, is self-protection. That the only purpose for which power can be rightfully exercised over any member of a civilized community, against his will, is to prevent harm to others. His own good, either physical or moral, is not a sufficient warrant. He cannot rightfully be compelled to do or forbear because it will be better for him to do so, because it will make him happier, because, in the opinions of others, to do so would be wise, or even right. These are good reasons for remonstrating with him, or reasoning with him, or persuading him, or entreating him, but not for compelling him, or visiting him with any evil, in case he do otherwise. To justify that, the conduct from which it is desired to deter him must be calculated to produce evil to some one else. The only part of the conduct of any one, for which he is amenable to society, is that which concerns others. In the part which merely concerns himself, his independence is, of right, absolute. Over himself, over his own body and mind, the individual is sovereign' - from On Liberty by John Stuart Mill, who was born in London on 20th May 1806 and died in Avignon, France, where my pictures were taken, on 8th May, 1873.

Mill wrote against repression in Ireland and as a Member of Parliament introduced the first vote on women's suffrage. He campaigned for free speech and proportional representation and against slavery. But we are most indebted to him as a defender of individual conscience and expression. He is buried alongside his wife in the cemetery of St. Veran on the outskirts of Avignon and his tomb, seen in my photos, is marked 'En hommage à John Stuart Mill Défenseur des Femmes'. The plaque has been added by Centre d'Hébergement et de Réinsertion Sociale "Stuart Mill", a refuge for women victims of violence in Paris.


Now playing Motet (Excerpta Tractati Logico-Philosophici) by Elisabeth Lutyens sung by Exaudi directed by James Weeks. Lutyens was a defender of individual conscience and expression but was not a supporter of organised feminism as this extract from Meirion and Susie Harries' excellent biography of her tells - 'Why, she asked, did people speak of 'women's music' and 'female composers' and yet stop short of implying that male homosexuals wrote 'queer music?''If women are to be butts,' she argued, 'let homosexuals be also ... and impotence or any other private sexual consideration, all of which, no doubt, affects one's work.' In 1973 she would write to The Times complaining that William Glock was labelled a supporter of Women's Lib because he had included four pieces by female composers in that season's Proms, and yet no one drew the obvious inference that he had programmed the work of no less than sixteen male homosexuals.'

More on Elisabeth Lutyens here, and listen to a podcast about her music here.
Photos (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The secret life of an Arab record label

Congratulations to French architect Jean Nouvel for winning the prestigous Pritzker prize. Nouvel's work in the field of music includes the new hall for the Philharmonie de Paris (do view the stunning images via that link) and the Copenhagen Concert Hall. But his masterpiece is his 1987 l'Institut du Monde Arabe in Paris which won a huge following for modern architecture a decade before Frank Gehry's Bilbao Guggenheim. The photos of l'Institut have all been kindly supplied by fellow blogger Tara Bradford.


The award of the Pritzker prize has deservedly put l'Institut du Monde Arabe in the spotlight. But the glorious building also has a little secret, it is the home of an enterprising record label with a small, but very interesting catalogue of Arab music. An example of their output is Saïd Chraïbi’s La clef de Grenade (The Key to Granada). This CD features the Moroccan ud (lute) virtuoso playing his own compositions and improvisations, all of which are linked to Muslim Spain, al-Andalus, and the residence of the Muslim kings of Granada, the Alhambra palace.


The Alhambra palace is a gem of 14th century Islamic architecture, and the l'Institut du Monde Arabe (Arab World Institute or AWI in English) is a gem of late twentieth century modern architecture. The AWI was conceived in 1973 by French president Valéry Giscard d’Estaing as a way of forging closer links with the Arab world, not the least with the North African countries from which many migrants had settled in France. The project was planned as a French showcase for Arab culture, with sponsorship from eight leading Arab nations, and participation from all member states of the Arab League.


Despite these lofty aims the AWI remained nothing more than a concept for seven years while local left wing politicians blocked Giscard d’Estaing’s proposals. A change of president to François Mitterrand in 1981 suddenly meant that the AWI became a priority presidential project, and Jean Nouvel won a competition to design the building with an ambitious design for the site on Rue de Fossés Saint Bernard on the Left Bank of the Seine. Construction was completed in 1987 at a cost of $100m, and the striking modern building houses an important museum of Arabic and Islamic culture, a large library, and an auditorium that stages music, cinema and drama. The huge south-facing courtyard with its Islamic motifs provides a symbolic link to the patio delos leones in Granada.


L'institut du Monde Arabe positions itself as having no political agenda, and in its early days an official explained that its aim was to “satisfy widespread curiosity about the Arab world by correcting the often factual ignorance about it.” The political landscape and the image of the Arab world has changed dramatically since those words were spoken in the late 1980’s. But despite Western leaders’ current preoccupation with the ‘war on terror’ L'institut du Monde Arabe is a remarkable building and educational resource, and not a bad little record label either.


Now celebrate Islam in the art of the mosque
All images are reproduced with permission from Paris Parfait. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Carla Bruni's musical connections

French first lady Carla Bruni has some interesting classical music connections. Her mother Marisa Borini is an actress and classical pianist who is reported to have had an affair with Arturo Benedetti Michelangeli. Depending on your sources Bruni's biological father is Maurizio Remmert, an Italian businessman who now lives in Brazil Marisa or Marisa Borini's husband, the contemporary composer Alberto Bruni Tedeschi seen in my header photo. Alberto Bruni Tedeschi's distinctions included writing four operas and having one of them filmed with a cast including Charles Aznavour, his own daughter Valeria Bruni and Isabel von Karajan, the daughter of the conductor.

President Sarkozy seems to appreciate ladies with musical connections. His divorced second wife, Cécilia Ciganer-Albéniz, is the great grand-daughter of Spanish composer Isaac Albéniz. Which, interestingly, means the families of both the President's second and third wives are of Sephardic descent.
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Inside the musical avant-garde

Britain is having a love affair with all things French. As well as hosting the current state visit by President Sarkozy and his new wife we have the first IRCAM academy in the UK in April. Is it a sign of these devolved times that the event is not in London, but is being hosted by the BBCSSO and led by Jonathan Harvey in Glasgow on April 7-12? Or is it because, as I've said here before, the BBCSO is on a roll? Read more in today's Guardian, including the inside track by Jonathan Harvey on new IRCAM technologies.

One of the few books to explore IRCAM is the snappily-titled Rationalizing Culture, IRCAM, Boulez and the Institutionalization and the Musical Avant-Garde. Anthropologist and Cambridge don Georgina Born spent a year in IRCAM in Paris producing her ethnographic analysis and if both the title and the book itself reads like a Ph. D. thesis it is not surprising as that is how the book originated. Which means that, unlike Joan Peyser, Georgina Born leaves Boulez's private life off-limits; although it is not all the stuff of dissertations and Michael Jackson receives no less than five mentions.

The 1995 publication date means that the avant-garde is today rather more avant. But, nevertheless, Rationalizing Culture is a brave attempt to get inside the culture of an important and little-understood creative hot-house. Quite appropriately the book is published by the University of California Press using the latest print on demand technology.

More on Jonathan Harvey 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

Old meets new on the Santiago pilgrimage

Recycling is an essential part of the creative process. My photo above was taken last September and shows the West Portal of the Benedictine Abbey of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard, which is generally considered be the most outstanding example of Provencal Romanesque architecture in southern France.

Below is the magnificent portal recycled in the Carnegie Museum of Art, Pittsburgh. Industrialist Andrew Carnegie paid the town of Gard 2000 gold francs to allow plaster casts to be taken of the portal. The casts were shipped across the Atlantic in 195 packing cases and assembled in Pittsburgh for the 1907 opening of the museum's Hall of Architecture.

The Abbey of Saint-Gilles-du-Gard is one of the staging posts on the most southerly of the pilgrimage routes to Santiago in Spain, which starts in nearby Arles. In 2005 composer Joby Talbot indulged in some creative recycling when he incorporated the hymn Dum Pater Familias and other pilgrim tunes into his choral work Path of Miracles which celebrates the Santiago pilgrimage. Read more about Path of Miracles here.

On Sunday February 3rd I will be playing the final two of the four parts of Path of Miracles on Future Radio. My programme is broadcast at 5.00pm on Sunday afternoon, and will be repeated at 1.00am on Monday morning for transatlantic listeners, which is afternoon or evening Sunday in their time zones.

I'm framing Path of Miracles with two excerpts from the 1991 recording of music from the Pilgimage to Santiago made by the New London Consort directed by Philip Pickett. This draws on the 12th century Codex Calixtinus also used by Joby Talbot. The New London Consort disc is a classic release from L'Oiseau-Lyre's Indian summer, and it has recently been re-released at budget price - grab it while you can. Read the L'Oiseau Lyre story here.


Listen on Future Radio at 5.00pm UK time this Sunday Feb 3 and Monday Feb 4 in real time here (convert to local time zones here). 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. Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The almost submerged cathedral

Claude Debussy's La cathédrale engloutie (The submerged cathedral) in his Préludes Book 1 was inspired by the legend of the sunken city of Ys off the Brittany coast. My photograph above was taken in France, but not in Brittany. It shows the Church of Champaubert which is almost submerged by the waters of the Lac du Der Chantecoq in the Champagne region. The lake was created in 1974 as part of a massive flood prevention scheme for the tributaries of the River Seine. It covers 4800 hectacres, and its creation submerged three villages whose 345 residents had to be relocated. Champaubert was one of the villages flooded, but the church remains in eerie isolation by the lakeside.

The huge man-made resovoir has been put to good use. A cycle path runs round the lake, and the area is now a major centre for watersports and cycling. The photo below shows me on the lakeside path. For cycling readers, I am riding my Moulton APB, which is the bike I travel with when serious off-roading is not on the agenda. My ride round the lake was a lot more pleasant than that taken by Debussy's friend Ernest Chausson. In 1899 he lost control of his bicycle on a downhill slope, ran straight into the brick wall of his estate in Limary, Seine-et-Oise, and died instantly, aged 44. But no such mistakes by me on the big downhills.

An interesting bit of music trivia. In 1930 Leopold Stokowski and the Philadelphia Orchestra performed an orchestral transcription of Debussy's La cathédrale engloutie with the bass line augmented by a theremin. But the low frequencies caused nausea in the back ranks of the srting section and the experiment was not repeated.

Now playing - Debussy's La cathédrale engloutie, on a piano, what else? Gordon Fergus-Thompson is the pianist on the Brilliant Classics reissue of his ASV recordings of the complete piano music of Debussy and Ravel. Another brilliant bargain from the Dutch label.


More on floods here and here.
Photographs (c) 2007 On An Overgrown Path. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

On the path of Stockhausen's teachers

In 1950 Karlheinz Stockhausen was accepted into Frank Martin's composition class at the Cologne Musikhochschule. The relationship was not a success, Stockhausen had only a few hours of tuition with Martin, and most of this was spent analysing his teacher's own compositions. More Frank Martin down this path.

Two years later Stockhausen started studying composition with Darius Milhaud in Paris. But once again Stockhausen was dissatisfied with his teacher, and after a few weeks he stopped attending Milhaud's classes. My photo above shows the house that Milhaud was born in at 4, Bd de la République, Aix-en-Provence. His birthplace, which I visited in September, is now the Hotel Artea and not a museum. There is a discount if you check-in after 8.00pm, which cannot be said for many composer's birthplaces.

Milhaud's other pupils at various times included Philip Glass, Steve Reich and Burt Bacharach. Alvin Curran was not among them, but there are connections. Aix-en-Provence supplied my recent Inner Cities photos, and from 1991 to 2006 Curran was Milhaud Professor of Composition at Mills College in Oakland, California. This Chair was endowed in memory of Milhaud who taught there after being forced to leave France in 1940 because of his Jewish backgound. Milhaud's Jewish ancestors had lived in the ghetto in Cavaillon. This town is close to Avignon, sometime home of the Popes, which is where Stockhausen's third teacher, the devout Catholic Olivier Messiaen was born.

Stockhausen's relationship with Messiaen more than made up for his failures with Martin and Milhaud. Stockhausen and Messiean shared the Catholic faith, and the young composer attended Messiaen's course in aesthetics and analysis in Paris twice a week for a year. Stockhausen later said: 'In many respects Messiaen did the opposite of what I wanted. He never tried to convince me. That made him a good teacher. He did not give instruction in composition, but showed me how he understood the music of others and how he worked himself.'

Olivier Messiaen was born on December 10, 1908. His birthplace Avignon is only a short distance from Milhaud's in Aix-en-Provence. In fact all my paths converge in Avignon as the city also has connections with Pierre Boulez, who was another pupil of Messiaen and a colleague of Stockhausen.

The work of Messiaen, Stockhausen and Boulez also converge in London in one of the highlights of 2008, which is, of course, Messiaen's centenary year. The event is the Southbank Centre's festival The Music of Olivier Messiaen - From The Canyons to the Stars. If anything was to tempt me to move back to London it would be this year long feast of twentieth-century music. Full details here, and below are some of my personal 'must attends'.

* Opening concert February 2 - Messiaen Des canyons aux étoiles played by Ensemble Intercontemporain conducted by Susanna Mälkki
* February 7 - Southbank Gamelan Players followed by Messiaen Turangalîla-Symphonie with Philharmonia Orchestra conducted by Esa-Pekka Salonen.
* February 13 - Messiaen Vingt Regards sur l'Enfant Jésus played by Pierre-Laurent Aimard.
* February 15 - concert by Royal Academy of Music Manson Ensemble including Stockhausen Kontra-Punkte and Xenakis Jalons.
* February 17 - must be THE concert of 2008. Boulez Rituel in memoriam Bruno Maderna and Messiaen Et exspecto resurrectionem mortuorum with London Sinfonietta conducted by Peter Eötvös (who is one of the conductors of Gruppen in my Future Radio webcast this Sunday Dec 16).
* May 1 - Ascension Day service in Westminster Abbey including the organ version of Messiaen's L'Ascension.
* May 11 - Pentecost Mass including movements from Messiaen's Pentecost Mass for organ, Gregorian chant and Victoria's Missa Dum complerentur.
* October 20 - organ recital in the London Oratory that includes a rare chance to hear the Kyrie from Satie's Messa des Pauvres, and movements from Tournemire's L'Orgue Mystique. The Satie fragment was composed for the church that the composer founded, and at which he was the only worshiper, the Eglise métropolitaine d'Art.
* Centenary concert Dec 10 - Messiaen Couleurs de la cité céleste and Sept Haïkaï, Boulez sur Incises with Ensemble Intercontemporain conducted by Pierre Boulez.

I'm just adding up how much a ticket for every concert will cost ...


Now playing - Messiaen's Des canyons aux étoile (From the canyons to the stars) on the double Apex CD with Yvonne Loriod-Messiaen, and Ensemble Ars Nova. The couplings are Messiaen's Hymne au Saint-Sacrement and Les offrandes oubliées, the sound is excellent, and there are decent sleeve notes. You can buy it from Amazon resellers for not much more than a Starbucks latte. What can I say, other than ask that seasonal roast chestnut? - is recorded classical music too cheap?

Header photo (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

The rumour about Aids was swelling ...

Around forty million people are living with HIV around the world, and that number increases every day, with ignorance and prejudice fuelling the spread of a preventable disease. Since HIV was first identified a quarter of a century ago, it has been a stigmatised disease, resulting in silence and denial. Stigma discourages people from testing for HIV or disclosing their status to their partner, and this fuels the spread of the disease. Today is World Aids Day, an event committed to breaking down the stigma and silence.

Classical music, and the other creative arts, have suffered terribly from the impact of Aids. I have already written in these pages about the magnificent recording by Scott Ross (left) of the complete Scarlatti harpsichord sonatas. Here, as a small contribution to World Aids Day, is Michel Proulx’s account of Scott’s last years. The idiomatic translation is Michel’s own from his biography of Ross.

From then on, he did nothing but tour and record, and from records to concerts, rapidly becoming the most media covered harpsichordist, to the point of attracting to the instrument, thanks to his performance, a variegated public of which a good part should never have got interested in the harpsichord but for him.

But already there was an urgency. When Catherine Perrin saw him in 1984, at a time when the rumour about AIDS was swelling in a terrifying rumble, he confided with her of his fears. He actually had had bronchitis, the winter before, which had degenerated in pneumonia, and knowing that this was one of the associated diseases, he said he was “mort de trouille” (he got the wind up). And he added that he didn’t want to do the test because he was sure to get confirmation of his fears. There may lie part of the reason for the intense activity which he spread during his last years.

In April 1989, he went to Rome, at the Villa Médicis, where he gave a masterclass for the French Television. One can see him very thinned down and weakened by the attacks of the disease. As he had no Social Security (Medicare), he did not take care of himself well, and it is also possible that he saw no good reason for looking after himself correctly. I have been told that he took whatever he could find as medicine, and one might speculate that (but what is it that couldn’t be done with ‘ifs’) maybe he would have survived, with good medical care.

Actually, he was an illegal alien for the French administration who wanted to have him expelled, and would have, had it not been for the intervention of some friends of him, of which some influent members of the Regional Council for Culture, who represented the Prefect how silly he would have looked for the media, if this happened.

In the course of his last months, he was looked after by his friends, especially David Ley, harpsichord maker, who had built his second double manual instrument, and Monique Davos, who had been an assistant director for the first Festival de Radio-France et de Montpelier, in 1983. According to testimonials, there was a sort of competition between both these persons for the care of Scott, and Mrs Davos was an advocate of the use of intensive medication. It seems that this was the cause of a Homeric struggle between her and those who wished him to die in peace. It was James Ross Jr. who finally brought Scott back to Assas, by the end of May.

On the following June 13, he passed away in his little house in Assas. His brother James, who had insisted upon coming to see him, assisted him right at the end. As, obviously, Scott had prepared nothing for the circumstances, it is James who took care of everything and it is he who asked for the rights of his records to be paid to the profit of an organization devised to help young harpsichordists. Unfortunately, I could find no trace of that organization, if ever it existed, nor could I trace back Scott’s brother who seems to have vanished in the haze.

After the cremation at the Grammont Funeral Center in Montpelier, Scott’s ashes were dispersed over the village of Assas from a small aircraft, according to his last wishes.

The recording of Scarlatti's 555 sonatas was started by Scott Ross on 16th June 1984. Ninety-eight sessions were required, and the last take was completed on 10th September 1985. In all, there had been eight thousand takes.
Scott Ross died of an Aids related illness on 13th June 1989, he was 38

Follow this link for more Scott Ross resources.
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Music and politics collide in France

'I've lit shows at the Bastille opera house (above) for 17 years. Paris Opera's special pension deal dates back to Louis XIV in 1698. It was put in place for the king's dancers - it's a historical monument. So why change it? We're only around 1,500 backstage employees. Our salaries are low, between €1,500 and €2,000 a month for stagehands and lighting technicians. Sarkozy's catchphrase is "work more to earn more". But he's asking us to work for an extra two and a half years and lose up to 25% of our pensions. Already Paris Opera has had to cancel 10 shows due to strikes, including Wednesday night's opening of the Nutcracker. That's never a pleasure. But the mood is tense and it will worsen if the government doesn't agree to full negotiations' - Gilles Cortesi, 49, striking lighting operator, Paris Opera in today's Guardian.

And here is presidential candidate Nicolas Sarkozy speaking in April 2007 - 'The music we call 'classical' is the most popular since it has transcended time, fashion, and society to become contemporary. The music of Mozart and Beethoven was perhaps revolutionary, even elitist at the time, but how we can claim it's not popular?'

Read about another time when music and market forces collided. Could this mean the disappearance of classical music in Paris?
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

New music for an ancient instrument

This tympanum crowns the restored west front of the Romanesque abbey church of Vézelay in Burgundy, France, which we visited in September. During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries Vézelay was an important monastic and pilgrimage centre, and today it is still one of the four starting points for the Santiago de Compostela pilgrimage route. The Abbey is one of the great architectural achievements of the Romanesqe period, although a major fire in 1120 and other disasters forced extensive renovation in the nineteenth century.


The nave, seen above, dates from the third decade of the twelth century. Although it is Romaneque at its most glorious there are some other interesting influences. See my article on the Rüstem Pasa Camii in Istanbul to understand how the alternating patterns in the stones of the arches echo Islamic architecture, an influence that probably found its way to Burgundy from Muslim Spain to the south-west. The view below is from the apse looking back through the choir to the nave. The apse and choir are Gothic additions dating from the end of the twelth century, and the change of styles is clearly evident at the transept.

The abbey of Vézelay is a wonderful performing space, and you can hear a unique recording made there in my Future Radio programme this Sunday, November 11 at 5.00pm UK time. Takafumi Harada studied in Tokyo and Rome, and was professor of musicology at the University of Kochi in Japan. He has composed for radio, television, the cinema and rock bands. In 1993 he took monastic vows and joined les Fraternités Monastiques de Jérusalem based in Vézelay, and became Brother Damien. He has applied his musical talents to the celebration of the liturgy at Vézelay, and in particular he has worked to rehabilitate the kithara into liturgical music.

The kithara (cithare in French) was an ancient Greek member of the zither family, and in modern Greek a kithara is a guitar. It was used to accompany worship in Biblical times, but subsequently fell out of use. Brother Damien's revival of the instrument is not a dry musicological exercise. He has composed contemporary works for the kithara and monastic choir, and I will be playing some of these on my radio programme from recordings made in the abbey church at Vézelay. His compositions use Japanese and Buddhist themes as well as setting the Psalms, and his work has been supported by L'Association des Amis de la Cithare japonais who have sponsored a CD of his compositions Eveille-toi, cithre! (Arise, kithara!). It can be bought from the website of les Fraternités Monastiques de Jérusalem, where short audio samples are also available.

Takafumi Harada's compositions for the kithara will be coupled with an apposite work, Toru Takemitsu's From me flows what you call Time. This concerto for five piece percussion group and orchestra is built around a five note theme, and its preoccupation with the number five reflects the numbers symbolism in Tibetan Buddhism. This will be a fascinating programme, and I am almost certain that the four pieces for kithara that I am playing are broadcast premieres. Do join me at 5.00pm UK time on Sunday November 11 if you can.


Now read about columns of plainsong soaring upwards.
* Listen via the audio stream on Sunday Nov 11 at 5.00pm UK time. Convert Overgrown Path radio on-air times 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. All photographs (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

New music with a Benedictine habit

My love of Gregorian Chant started years back when I first stayed in L'Abbaye Sainte Madeleine at Le Barroux in France and heard the Benedictine monks singing the Holy Offices according to the scholarship of Solesmes. Once you've heard plainsong at 3.30 in the morning during Matins you never forget it! The two photos here were taken by me a few weeks ago when I visited the monastery again.

On this Sunday's Overgrown Path programme on Future Radio I will be playing a twentieth century Requiem which is closely based on the Gregorian original. Composers from Victoria to Ligeti have set the Requiem Mass, but the non-restored Gregorian funeral chants of the Roman Rite are rarely heard. To rectify this I am starting my programme with the Introit, Kyrie, Dies Irae, Sanctus and Agnus Dei from the Gregorian Mass for the Departed sung by the monks of l'Abbaye de Fontgombault in central France.

The recording I am playing is on the invaluable Art & Musique label. Unfortunately, their CDs are very difficult to find outside France. My copy was bought in the wonderful Abbey shop at Le Barroux the day I took the photographs here. You can buy the recording online from the shop. This is my sort of CD - the sleeve notes say the following: 'The recording sessions took place in the 12th century abbey church of Fontgombault on the cold and windy days of March 12-14 2001. One can hear a little of the windstorm in the background.'

Maurice Duruflé wrote his Requiem Op. 9 in 1947 for full orchestra and organ, and it is is closely modelled on the Gregorian original. In 1961 Duruflé made a revised version for reduced orchestra and organ, and it is this version I will be playing to give continuity from the austerity of the opening plainchant. In fact the transition from the plainsong to the Duruflé is so seamless the linking announcement almost seems an intrusion.

The programme will be broadcast at 5.00pm UK time on Sunday 21 October. Listen online in realtime only via this link. And after that windstorm in Fongombault it must be raindrops falling on my chant.


Listen to the Future Radio audio stream here. Convert Overgrown Path radio on-air times 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.

All photos (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 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

The Glass Bead Game

Yet another interview with Philip Glass in today's Guardian. Appropriately the title is Play it again... A virtual prize for any reader who can send a link to a newspaper interview this weekend with a contemporary composer who is not Philip Glass.

Much more interesting is James Fenton's article on the electric harpsichord which refers to Wolfgang Zuckermann's 1970 book The Modern Harpsichord. Zuckermann was born in Berlin, and became an American citizen in 1938. He was one of the first harpsichord makers in the United States and in the late 1950's created a self-assembly harpshichord kit which sold in large quantities and revitalised interest in this neglected instrument.

In 1969, Zuckermann, in despair over US involvement in Vietnam, left New York to live first in England, and later in France. He sold his harpsichord business to David Jacques Way, who had been the publisher of The Modern Harpsichord. Although Zuckermann continued his musical activities, he became involved in the environmental debates of the 1970s and 1980s, taking an active part in creating small local collaborative projects in England that cut away from the values and patterns of the dominant consumer society.

In 1987 Zuckermann began his collaboration with The Commons, an independent non-profit policy research group based in Paris. He moved to France in 1994 and opened La Libraire Shakespeare in Avignon which is our local bookshop when we are in that part of the world. This gem of a bookshop featured here some time back.

I was in Avignon a few weeks ago. Among the books I came away with were Sophie Fuller's Pandora's Guide to Women Composers and Barry Miles' life of Allen Ginsberg. My copy of Thomas Merton's Seven Storey Mountain also came from La Libraire Shakespeare some years back when I was on my way to a retreat in L'Abbaye de Sainte-Madeleine at le Barroux, and that's a destination that will feature here again in the next few days. My photo shows Wolfgang Zuckermann in La Libraire Shakespeare - much more interesting than another picture of Philip Glass.

The Glass Bead Game is the title of Hermann Hesse's book that influenced many musicians including Karlheinz Stockhausen. And Hesse's poetry supplied the texts for Richard Strauss' Vier letze Lieder which were in the concert I wrote about on Sunday. More passion about books 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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

A quieter splash

Music - John Cage ~ Complete Music for Prepared Piano.
Book - The Roaring Silence ~ John Cage A Life by David Revill.
Location - Les Gargoris, France. Photographer - Sorojini.
Swimmer - me. Now read about David Hockney's private passions, and John Cage's silence.
Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Classical - the music of the Whites

October is Black History Month here in the UK when we celebrate African and Caribbean contributions to our society with a month long programme of events. We have celebrated classical musicians of colour On An Overgrown Path recently with features on the Guyanese clarinettist and conductor Rudolph Dunbar and the Afro-French composer Le Chevalier de Saint-Georges, and with contributions from John McLaughlin Williams. Today, to mark the start of Black History Month, here is the story of 32 year old Nigerian pianist Sodi Braide, with thanks to the excellent AfriClassical and Le Piano Bleu websites.

Sodi Braide (above) was born in 1975 to Nigerian parents in Newcastle, U.K. His parents were academics; both were scientists but music lovers as well. In December 1979, Sodi returned to Nigeria with his parents, where it was very difficult to find good teachers. At the time, there was no conservatory of music in the country, and he had to travel 60 miles for piano lessons, saying "When I think back on it, I tell myself it is a miracle that I became a pianist."

In 1987, as a result of a competition supported by the French Cultural Center in Lagos, Sodi Braide was awarded a scholarship to study in France with Françoise Thinat. He was successful in a number of high profile competitions, including Pretoria, South Africa (1996), Leeds, UK (2003) and the Van Cliburn (jury discretionary prize, 2005).

Sodi now lives in Paris where he has benefitted from the enlightened support of the Cultures France programme. This has allowed him to undertake a number of overseas tours, notably of Latin America, and he has recently recorded a CD of works of César Franck for the Lyrinx label (right).

The story of Sodi Braide is another resounding endorsement of visionary educational programmes, and his achievements provide a powerful role model for young people from ethnic minorities everywhere. His own words about the 1996 competition in Pretoria say it all in Black History Month:

“It was just after the end of apartheid, and some were really thunderstruck to discover that in fact there was not a cultural barrier due to skin color! ... I had already played one or two times in South Africa, and I remembered that most of the South Africans, at the time, had never seen seen a Black pianist of classical music, “music of the Whites”, what's more in the finals of such a competition. It was just after the end of apartheid, and some were really thunderstruck to discover that in fact there was not a cultural barrier due to skin color!"

Now read about the Berlin Philharmonic's first Black conductor.
The interview with Sodi Braide was originally published in French on Le Piano Bleu website, which is where my photos also come from. 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 day the music died

For four weeks in France my appetite for music was met by France Musique, a wide ranging selection of CDs and books (see above), and much fine live music.

When I drove off the cross-channel ferry last Monday I retuned the car radio to BBC Radio 3. Within an hour the presenter had plugged the BBC's New Generation Artist Scheme so many times that I concluded she was earning a bonus for every mention. Between the plugs there was much other useful information, such as "the violinist was born in 1983, which means she is now 24". And later in the afternoon Sean Rafferty fawned over every act a desperate record company or concert agent sent along to the In Tune studio.

The next day the morning presenter helpfully explained to me why I should appreciate Jordi Savall's Bach, while in the evening classical-jock of the week Tom Service started the network's birthday tribute to Sir Colin Davis by leaving studio guest Mitsuko Uchida's microphone closed for the first thirty seconds of her contribution. Then, yesterday, a tribute to record label Lyrita, which promised so much, sounded like a promotional video for a bio-tech company. It came complete with customer endorsements delivered over Stanford's Second Piano Concerto, a work which sounds like film music even when it is not being used as the background for a voice-over.

The patronising presenters could be ignored if they were introducing great radio. But, today's ratings driven Radio 3 has come up with its own inversion of Lord Reith's vision for the BBC, and the network's programmes now, invariably, offer the public 'something worse than it ever thought it wanted'.

This kind of post doesn't make happy reading, or happy writing. But there will not be many more like it, which will please my regular readers at webgw2.thls.bbc.co.uk (British Broadcasting Corporation). After 40 years of almost daily listening I have decided that BBC Radio 3 will no longer be my default radio station. Instead, my default will be Radio 4 and the long tail of internet stations, supplemented by CDs and some much needed silence. Radio 3 will now be a 'destination station', only listened to for worthwhile concerts and programmes such as Iain Burnside's and Michael Berkeley's. Iain's programme today, with his guest, A. C. Grayling, and the Elisabeth Lutyens motet, was an oasis in a desert of mediocrity.

Coincidentally, today is the 40th anniversary of the first day's broadcasting on BBC Radio 3. But for this listener it is the day the music died. There are now much better alternatives. Access one of them by clicking on the image below to to launch the Radeo internet player, and listen to Polski Radio Dwojka.



Now read more about the future of radio.
For the lyrics of American Pie follow this link. Photo taken by me at Le Romarin, Les Gargoris, France, copyright On An Overgrown Path. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk