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This photo shows Olivier Messiaen pinning the award of Chevalier de la légion d'honneur on Iannis Xenakis in his Paris apartment in 1977. Xenakis was a pupil of Messiaen and I will be playing music by both of them on my Future Radio programme on Sunday April 13 at 5.00pm UK time (repeated 12.50am April 14).
The programme opens with Xenakis' Komboi and closes with another award winner, Angelin Chang, John McLaughlin Williams and the Cleveland Chamber Symphony's Grammy winning recording of Messiaen's Oiseaux Exotiques. The two works are separated by music from a composer who shared Messiaen's deep Catholic faith. Hildegard of Bingen is the earliest composer with a detailed biography and her music drama Ordo Virtutum is considered to be the prototype of the art form that became opera and eight centuries later came full circle in Messiaen's massively underrated Saint François d'Assise which only had its U.S. premiere in 2002. I will be playing the instrumental lament and Scene 3 from Hildegard's Ordo Virtutum performed by Sequentia directed by Barbara Thornton and Benjamin Bagby on Sunday.
Now here's a little quiz. Which famous musician said this after hearing tapes of Xenakis' Mists and Synaphaï?
'This is the first time I've heard any music by Xenakis; it's completely bowled me over, even though I'm not sure I've really understood it (or not understood it). Intuition? But can one always trust it? ... It seems to me that this, in fact, is what I'd call real 'new' music.'
To finish some quick visual arts trivia. Olivier Messiaen died on April 27, 1992 and the figurative painter Francis Bacon, whose masterpiece is the disturbing Three Studies for Figures at the Base of a Crucifixion, died the following day. Staying with the visual arts remember Iannis Xenakis also composed in glass.
Photo credit Iannis-Xenakis.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
Today's big art story is that Prince Charles is joining great 20th century artists Joan Miró, Marc Chagall, Wassily Kandinsky, Andy Warhol, Salvador Dali, Pablo Picasso, and Francis Bacon as the designer of a label for a Château Mouton Rothschild wine vintage. You can view their labels by opening those preceeding artist links, the Royal artwork is above, and Charles' label for the 2004 vintage is here. This story would really have made the late John Drummond laugh, as the following anecdote explains:
I have always found the Prince's lack of interest in anything to do with the arts in our time depressing, since all his opinions get so widely reported. It seems to me that he has had unrivalled opportunities to get to understand the twentieth century, but he has rejected it without hesitation. Both Denys Lasdun and Colin St John Wilson of the British Library, found work hard to get in the UK in the aftermath of the Prince's criticisms.
I cannot believe it is a proper use of royal patronage to increase unemployment among architects. And it is the same with music. Having listened together at a Bath Festival concert to a superb performance of Alban Berg's String Quartet, written in 1910, the Prince turned to me and said, 'Well you can't call that music, but I suppose you would John.' 'And so should you, sir,' I repled defiantly. We had quite an argument, and later that evening he told our host that he liked me but unfortunately I was wrong about everything.
* View all the Chateau Mouton Rothschild labels here.
For more on the Royal taste in music read That's Harrison Birtwistle, - quick, let's hide.
Extract from John Drummond's autobiography Tainted by Experience, published by Faber, ISBN 0571200540. Any copyrighted material on these pages is included for "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
Photograph above taken at the Carmelite Monastery, Quidenham, Norfolk on November 18th 2006 by Pliable.
Now playing - November Woods (1917) by Arnold Bax, performed by the Ulster Orchestra conducted by Bryden Thomson (Chandos LP ABRD066). Bax described himself as a 'brazen romantic', so you won't find him on Sequenza21. His life and music were informed by literature and nature, and he drew on Celtic and Nordic mythology for inspiration. November Woods is a close companion to two other Bax tone poems, The Garden of Fand and Tintagel.
The legends of King Arthur and the knights of the Round Table are linked to the Cornish castle of Tintagel, and Bax's eponymous tone poem is available on one of my nomination for the greatest records of the 20th century. This EMI recording was made in No 1 Studio, Abbey Road with Robert Kinloch Anderson producing in 1967. The coupling is one of the great 20th century symphonies, Vaughan Williams 5th, the score of which was completed in 1943, and is dedicated to Jean Sibelius 'without permission'. Both works are conducted by one of the great 20th century conductors, Sir John Barbirolli. As you may have guessed I recommend it. Also recommended is Bax's autobiography Farewell My Youth. Sadly it is now out of print, my copy is of a 1949 edition and expect to pay quite a high price if you find a copy.
The words on the crucifix at Quidenham in my header photo are: Wanderers stay and think of me here a while, how I hung on the cross so that thou could come to me. This message is reflected in Vaughan Williams' magnificent 5th Symphony which draws on material from his 1951 opera The Pilgrim's Progress which in turn was based on John Bunyan's 17th century allegorical novel. There is a classic EMI recording of the opera with Sir Adrian Boult conducting, and John Noble singing The Pilgrim. It was made in London's Kingsway Hall in 1972 with exemplary sound from the legendary producer and engineering team of the two Christophers - Bishop and Parker. My webname, Pliable, comes from one of the characters in Bunyan's novel. I have been married for 30 years today, and my wife thinks it significant that Pliable was one of the two residents of The City of Destruction in Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress. The other was Obstinate.
That mention of The City of Destruction brings this Overgrown Path through more November Woods to its final destination. The two photographs above were taken yesterday as we walked through the campus of the University of East Anglia to the Sainsbury Center for Visual Arts to view their magnificent Francis Bacon exhibition. Bacon shared Celtic connections with Bax, and was born in Dublin in 1909, although he spent much of his creative life in London. The exhibition focuses on Bacon's work from the 1950s, and quite stunning it is. Just as even the very best audio system cannot realistically reproduce an orchestral fortissimo from a recording, so Bacon's paintings cannot be done justice on the printed page. They must be seen in the flesh. Some are massive, black statements from the City of Destruction, but others, by contrast, celebrate with colour Bacon's love of van Gogh and travel. And those contrasts brings me the end of this Path. It has travelled from the enlightenment, through romanticism to the modern, and is a reminder, if we neeed one, of how fortunate we are to live in a society of contrasts that can embrace equally Bunyan, and Bax, and Bacon, and beyond.* Listen to a 43 minute BBC audio programme on Vaughan William's Fifth Symphony - 
* For more recordings of Bax, Vaughan Williams and their contemporaries take An Overgrown Path to Treasure trove of 20th century composers
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
