Making the case for contemporary music

In his masterly book A Concise History of Western Music Paul Griffiths explains that “The past is not a path we and our predecessor's have travelled but a labyrinth, and a labyrinth forever in flux”. Concert planners usually view the musical past as a narrow path that must be followed closely, and as a result they produce predictable programmes that overlook the many riches hidden in the labyrinth of music history.

So how wonderful to see the King of Hearts in Norwich departing from the familiar narrow path for its Autumn Festival, and challenging performers to explore the musical labyrinth. This Journey Across Time provided fascinating perspectives. Not only was it a rewarding musical experience, but it was also very enlightening to see how both audiences and performers responded to the challenge of musical diversity.

The Festival started rather unpromisingly with a recital by violinist Catherine Macintosh and harpsichordist Maggie Cole. These performers are no strangers to contemporary music, and played two works by Stephen Dodgson, including his Inventions which are dedicated to Maggie. But, despite this, the music was presented in a strangely detached way, rather like being introduced to a teenage relative with body piercings. But perhaps it wasn’t just the contemporary music. The Bach and Biber in the programme were rather like being introduced to an elderly relative with a taste for Agatha Christie. Not the most vibrant of starts, and not helped by empty seats. Teenagers with piercings may be the norm outside in Norwich's Magdalene Street, but sadly they are a lot less popular in the King of Hearts.

No lack of spark in the lunchtime Bach from King of Hearts’ regular Carolyn Gibley. There may have been a capacity audience, but her Journey Across Time stopped at 1750, apart from one singularly inappropriate pastiche item. I know Carolyn is quite upfront in her preference for eighteenth century harpsichord music. But a work such as John Palmer’s Koan from 1999 would have taken us much further into the labyrinth than P.D.Q. Bach.

Different strokes for different folks, and both The London Handel Players and Jane Chapman proved just how rewarding exploring the labyrinth can be. Bohuslav Martinů’s Promenade for flute, violin & harpsichord from The London Mozart players showed that twentieth century music need not be feared, while, in the same concert, Rachel Brown’s performance of a work for flute and tape by Barry Guy eased the King of Hearts into the age of electronica.

Either by luck or good planning Aude Gotto had left the best to last. Jane Chapman (photo above) fears nothing in contemporary music. No tokenism or apologia in her harpsichord recital, which went for the jugular with music by Gyorgy Ligeti, Tōru Takemitsu, plus a first performance, with the composer present, from Jeremy Peyton-Jones who is right there in the labyrinth as a colleague of John Cage. Those that chose the competing television coverage of England losing the Rugby World Cup final instead of Jane’s recital missed a real opportunity to celebrate.

The concerts by The London Mozart Players, Jane Chapman and others were a triumphant endorsement of the vision of a Journey Across Time. I really don’t feel that in 2007 I should be making the case for contemporary music. But the empty seats at several of the concerts suggest I should. If you only feed children baby food they never develop proper teeth, and can’t move on to a nourishing diet that allows them to grow. There is too much baby food in today’s concert programmes and radio schedules. Contemporary music is the aural equivalent of the spicy Hungarian goulash served in the King of Hearts restaurant after Jane Chapman’s inspirational recital. More please Aude.

(c) Bob Shingleton 2008, first published in the newsletter of the King of Hearts Centre for people and the arts winter 2007 newsletter. Related articles:

* Contemporary music - I really enjoyed it! - link
* More of Martinu's music please - link
* Brand new music for harpsichord - link
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Scott Ross's Scarlatti on YouTube

This wonderful video clip of Scott Ross playing Scarlatti's Sonata K209 has come via Nuno Lemos' Portugese music blog.



More Scott Ross on YouTube here, and on the Path here.
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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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Staying at home with Couperin

"My ideal day would be staying at home and playing the harpsichord works of Couperin - new inspiration on every page" said Thomas Adès, and François Couperin is a major influence on the music of Adès, including his Sonata de Caccia, a trio for baroque oboe, horn and harpsichord.

If you don't have a harpsichord at home all is not lost. Michael Borgstede (photo above) has recorded the complete harpsichord music of Couperin. The performances are excellent, and the the sound captured by engineer Peter Arts in three different Dutch churches is very good. The 11 CD box is on the Brilliant Classics label, and that means it's at budget price - I paid £30 ($62) in the UK.

Michael Borgstede's background is interesting. He lives in Tel Aviv, and is the Middle East correspondent for the Frankfurter Allgemeine Sonntagszeitung as well as being a highly regarded harpsichordist and organist. Follow this link for a wide range of MP3 downloads from his website.

No excuse now for not staying at home with Couperin. And follow this path for another big harpsichord box.
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Brand new music for harpsichord

Jean-Philippe Rameau - Suite in D
Wilhelm Friedemann Bach - Fantasia in A minor
Franz Joseph Haydn - Sonata No 31 Hob XVI/46
Vicent Rodríguez Monllor - Sonata XXVII in C minor
Interval
Jeremy Peyton Jones (photo above) - In Memoriam Gát and Brodsky - first performance
Johann Sebastian Bach - Sinfonia No 8 BWV 794
JS Bach - Sinfonia No 9 BWV 795
György Ligeti - Passacagli ungherese
JS Bach - Invention No 13 BWV 784
Toru Takemitsu - Rain Dreaming
JS Bach - Invention No 14 BWV 785
G Ligeti - Hungarian Rock
G Ligeti - Continuum

This was the programme for last night's risk-taking harpsichord recital by Jane Chapman at the King of Hearts in Norwich. What a delight to see so much contemporary music in a thoughtfully compiled programme, and it was an even greater delight to attend the world premiere of a brand new work for harpsichord. Jeremy Peyton Jones (photo above) was born in Devon in 1955, and has worked with John Cage, Christian Wolff and the British pianist John Tilbury who is a leading exponent of Morton Feldman's music. Here are Jeremy Peyton Jones' programme notes for the new work:

In Memoriam Gát and Brodszky - When it was suggested that in order to fit with the rest of the programme this new piece for Jane Chapman might have a Hungarian theme, I was at first at a loss to know how to make the connection. However the combination of Hungary and the harpsichord led me to János Sebestyén's (right) fascinating brief history of the harpsichord in Hungary in which two of the key players are the pianist and harpsichordist József Gát, one time student of Béla Bartók, who taught piano and methodology at the Academy of Music and became interested in early instruments, and the eccentric Hungarian music scholar Ferenc Brodszky who owned one of the only two harpsichords in Hungary in the 1930s.

One of my main preoccupations in the creation of new music is how music both connects us to the past and also, as with any new creative endeavour pushes us forward into the future. A precedent of my approach here is Ravel's Tombeau de Couperin in which he both makes a homage to the sensibilities of the Baroque French keyboard suite while at the same time specifically making dedications in the music to friends and fellow sodiers who had died in the First World War.

In evoking the memory of József Gát (photo below) and Ferenc Brodszky (two people I know very little about) I am not so much evolking a personal memory of them as making a connection with two of those who have been closely connected with the harpsichord, its music and its history and who are therefore two links in the chain which connects us both across our cultural landscape and to our forebears. My piece is actually about the process of memory and connection in general, and could be dedicated to the memory of any person who is no longer with us through the specific connections of keyboard vituosity and the regular shapes and forms of much baroque keyboard music.

A programme such as tonight's is all about links - the links between baroque music, the music of Ligeti in Hungary, the history and legacy of harpsichord music in Hungary, which join periods and locations of creativity and human artistic activity.

My piece explores our relationship with the Western musical heritage through the use of virtuoso harpsichord techniques achievable by the simulataneous use of the two keyboards along with references to more contemporary contemporary music styles. There is another connection to József Gát who acquired an Ammer harpsichord and, assisted by an engineer friend, tried to install a discrete anplier that touched the strings - similar to the guitar - so that there was no need for a complicated solution with microphone.

In Memoriam Gát and Brodsky is in three sections. I Fast and Furious; II Calm and Measured; II Rocking and Rolling.

The János Sebestyén website really is worth visiting, there are music samples and wonderful photo albums. And take this path for a harpsichord recording I could not live without.
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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.
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Bach and the art of noise

To the Goldberg Variations this morning played by up and coming young harpsichordist Matthew Halls (above) as part of the ever stimulating Norfolk and Norwich Festival. That most magical of all musical journies managed to survive separate interruptions from a mobile phone and a serial cougher. Matthew Hall proved why he is a professional musician and I am not. He cooly played through the ringing of the mobile phone. If it had been me at the keyboard I would either have asked the offender to leave, or left myself.

I witnessed one of the more imaginative responses to intrusive coughing at a concert conducted by Bernard Haitink at the Festival Hall in the 1970s. A serial cougher decided to accompany the posthorn solo in the third movement of Mahler's monumental Third Symphony. Maestro Haitink continued to beat time with his baton while using his left hand to extract a white handkerchief from his pocket and hold it high over his head.

Talking of phones read about an unexpected Steve Reich premiere
Photo credit Clarion Seven Muses. 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

Encore - new music for prepared keyboards

Piano stories are the Da Vinci code of music blogs. After huge readers for that notorious story, the saga of the dropped Bösendorfer broke reader records here last week. So now, if you are prepared, why not read about a burning harpsichord and a grand piano up a mountain?

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The rumour about Aids was swelling …

Around forty million people are living with HIV throughout the world, and that number increases in every region 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 that is 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 my 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

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

If you only buy thirty-four CDs - buy these ...

At the turn of the millennium BBC Radio 3 asked listeners to choose the greatest recording of the 20th century. The recording chosen was deservedly, but somewhat predictably, Solti's Ring cycle. The runners up were Carlos Klieber's interpretations of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh symphonies, the Britten War Requiem conducted by the composer, and English String Music conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, which includes Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

One recording that I considered to be a definite contender didn't even make the long list. But now the great news is my nomination has been re-released at budget price, and is easily my choice for the thirty-four best CDs of 2005.

Scott Ross was a musical maverick. He was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and following the death of his father moved to France with his mother in 1964. He studied harpsichord at the Conservatoires of Nice and Paris, and won the prestigous Concours de Bruges, at the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp in 1971. In 1971 he recrossed the Atlantic to begin a teaching career at the School of Music, Laval University, Quebec. While teaching there he made award-winning recordings of the complete Pièces de Clavecin by Rameau. Ross wore the same clothes as his students (even to perform), and his 'granny' spectacles aligned him more with John Lennon than Gustav Leonhardt. For a concert at Laval University, attended by the university chancellor and French Consul General, he wore jeans and a red lumberjack shirt. He was also self-effacing to a fault, explaining - "I started the Goldbergs 'cause I quit smoking and, to keep one's fingers busy, it's better than knitting".

He was a passionate collector of orchids, and his other hobbies included vulcanology, mineralogy, and mushrooms (!). His keyboard interests extended beyond the harpsichord. He played Debussy, Chopin and Ravel on the piano, and accompanied Schubert Lieder. The music of Brian Eno and Philip Glass were among his other passions, and he was a fan of the punk performance artist Nina Hagen. Comparisons with Glenn Gould are inevitable, but wide of the mark. In fact Ross had his own views on Gould, saying: "When I hear Glenn Gould, I say, he understood nothing about Bach. An artist who doesn't show himself in public has a problem. He's so much off-target that you'd need a 747 to take him back".

In 1983 Scott Ross took an indefinite sabbatical from Laval, and kicked it off with a recording of François Couperin's Suites pour le Clavecin. By now he had rented property in Assas, near Montpelier, in his beloved France. In 1984 he signed a five year recording contract with Erato , but also experierienced his first premonition of the illness that would ultimately kill him.

The main fruit of his new contract was the recording project that I consider to be one of the greatest in the history of recorded sound. The recording of the complete keyboard sonatas (555 in total) of Domenico Scarlatti started off as a broadcast project for Radio France to celebrate the composer's three hundredth anniverary in 1985. During the eighteen months of recording Ross (right) knew he had a fatal illness. Despite, or possibly because of, this he produced one of the great musical achievements of the 20th century. His playing is technically stunning, his scholarship is impeccable, but above this is a living, breathing and at times dancing testament. The whole staggering project is enhanced by superb recorded sound from the Radio France engineers, using three different venues and four harpsichords to avoid monotony.

Scott Ross began his recording of Scarlatti's 555 sonatas on 16th June 1984.

Ninety-eight sessions were required, and the last take was completed on 10th September 1885. In all, there had been eight thousand takes.

On 13th June 1989 Scott Ross died in Montpellier's Lapeyronie Hospital of an Aids-related illness, aged 38.

Ross' complete Scarlatti Keyboard Sonatas have been re-issued by Warner Classics in a thirty-four CD budget priced box. In the UK they are selling for around £90 ($160) which is very little to pay for one of the great musical achievements of the last century. In fact last week I saw the set in HMV in London for £50 ($89) - stupidly cheap. Included is an excellent 254 page booklet which includes notes on all the sonatas.

For more Scott Ross resources see harpsichord maker Michel Proulx's web site where a privately published English language biography is available, from which the quote in my article is taken. Follow this link for my article about this biography. There are also other French resources here.

Image credits: Harpsichord - Alan Gotto, Orchid - Mystic Arts Center , Scott Ross – Louvre.or.jp, CD pack - Warner Classics. 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
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* This article was originally published on December 18, 2005, and is reblogged here as part of On An Overgrown Path's second anniversary celebration of Music beyond borders. Follow this link to read the comments posted to the original article.

Harpsichord magic from Don Angle

'I always found his Bach to be scandalously empty of whatever musicality, crammed with fantastic and meaningless inventions. And I'm not mentioning the articulation nor the phrasing' - Harpsichordist Scott Ross on Glenn Gould.

Ross, who gave us the heavenly Scarlatti sonatas that I wrote about recently, was sparing with praise for his peers, although he did acknowledge a debt to Kenneth Gilbert.

But there was one harpsichordist Scott Ross admired unreservedly, and amazingly that player has never recorded any baroque music.

To find out why Ross admired Don Angle (photo above) so much listen to these three samples of his playing -and prepare to be amazed:

* * * *

* Scott Ross resources On An Overgrown Path include * If you only buy thirty-four CDs this year - buy these ..... * The perfect ethical, and musical, Christmas present *

* Visit Don Angle's web site via this link.

Audio clips from Don Angle's Harpsichord Magic at amazon.com. Image credit - Trinity Episcopal Church, Tariffville, CT. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
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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
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If you only buy thirty-four CDs this year - buy these .....

At the turn of the millennium BBC Radio 3 asked listeners to choose the greatest recording of the 20th century. The recording chosen was deservedly, but somewhat predictably, Solti's Ring cycle. The runners up were Carlos Klieber's interpretations of Beethoven's Fifth and Seventh symphonies, the Britten War Requiem conducted by the composer, and English String Music conducted by Sir John Barbirolli, which includes Vaughan Williams' Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis.

One recording that I considered to be a definite contender didn't even make the long list. But now the great news is my nomination has been re-released at budget price, and is easily my choice for the thirty-four best CDs of 2005.

Scott Ross was a musical maverick. He was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and following the death of his father moved to France with his mother in 1964. He studied harpsichord at the Conservatoires of Nice and Paris, and won the prestigous Concours de Bruges, at the Royal Conservatory in Antwerp in 1971. In 1971 he recrossed the Atlantic to begin a teaching career at the School of Music, Laval University, Quebec. While teaching there he made award-winning recordings of the complete Pièces de Clavecin by Rameau. Ross wore the same clothes as his students (even to perform), and his 'granny' spectacles aligned him more with John Lennon than Gustav Leonhardt. For a concert at Laval University, attended by the university chancellor and French Consul General, he wore jeans and a red lumberjack shirt. He was also self-effacing to a fault, explaining - "I started the Goldbergs 'cause I quit smoking and, to keep one's fingers busy, it's better than knitting".

He was a passionate collector of orchids, and his other hobbies included vulcanology, mineralogy, and mushrooms (!). His keyboard interests extended beyond the harpsichord. He played Debussy, Chopin and Ravel on the piano, and accompanied Schubert Lieder. The music of Brian Eno and Philip Glass were among his other passions, and he was a fan of the punk performance artist Nina Hagen. Comparisons with Glenn Gould are inevitable, but wide of the mark. In fact Ross had his own views on Gould, saying: "When I hear Glenn Gould, I say, he understood nothing about Bach. An artist who doesn't show himself in public has a problem. He's so much off-target that you'd need a 747 to take him back".

In 1983 Scott Ross took an indefinite sabbatical from Laval, and kicked it off with a recording of François Couperin's Suites pour le Clavecin. By now he had rented property in Assas, near Montpelier, in his beloved France. In 1984 he signed a five year recording contract with Erato , but also experierienced his first premonition of the illness that would ultimately kill him.

The main fruit of his new contract was the recording project that I consider to be one of the greatest in the history of recorded sound. The recording of the complete keyboard sonatas (555 in total) of Domenico Scarlatti started off as a broadcast project for Radio France to celebrate the composer's three hundredth anniverary in 1985. During the eighteen months of recording Ross (right) knew he had a fatal illness. Despite, or possibly because of, this he produced one of the great musical achievements of the 20th century. His playing is technically stunning, his scholarship is impeccable, but above this is a living, breathing and at times dancing testament. The whole staggering project is enhanced by superb recorded sound from the Radio France engineers, using three different venues and four harpsichords to avoid monotony.

Scott Ross began his recording of Scarlatti's 555 sonatas on 16th June 1984.

Ninety-eight sessions were required, and the last take was completed on 10th September 1885. In all, there had been eight thousand takes.

On 13th June 1989 Scott Ross died in Montpellier's Lapeyronie Hospital of an Aids-related illness, aged 38.

Ross' complete Scarlatti Keyboard Sonatas have been re-issued by Warner Classics in a thirty-four CD budget priced box. In the UK they are selling for around £90 ($160) which is very little to pay for one of the great musical achievements of the last century. In fact last week I saw the set in HMV in London for £50 ($89) - stupidly cheap. Included is an excellent 254 page booklet which includes notes on all the sonatas.

For more Scott Ross resources see harpsichord maker Michel Proulx's web site where a privately published English language biography is available, from which the quote in my article is taken. Follow this link for my article about this biography. There are also other French resources here.

Image credits: Harpsichord - Alan Gotto, Orchid - Mystic Arts Center , Scott Ross – Louvre.or.jp, CD pack - Warner Classics. 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
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