Messiaen and Xenakis - Oiseaux Exotiques

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.
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Indeterminacy in music blogging

Stockhausen, Xenakis, Marcel Duchamp, Man Ray and Francis Picabia, Mozart and Mahler beckon from London - as one savant wrote about the contemporary music scene in England over on Sequenza21 "I do hate ... the lack of diversity in performance (not much range/choice) and all the self aggrandising anti-’intellectual’ inverted snobbery regards the ‘continentals’". I'm away from the keyboard for a few days enjoying the live music, so below is the schedule for my Future Radio show for this Sunday (March 16) plus the following five weeks with links to related articles.

March 16 - Angela Hewitt recital:
* J.S. Bach Toccatas
* Messiaen excerpts from Vingt Regards sur l’enfant Jésus


March 23 - Celebrating Easter with A Love Supreme
* Yuval Ron Ensemble play music from Iraq and Muslim and Jewish Andalucia
* John Coltrane's jazz suite A Love Supreme

March 30 - Vaughan Williams anniversary
* Thomas Tallis Felix Namque for organ
* Vaughan Williams Third Symphony 'A Pastoral Symphony'


April 6 - Contemporary Karajan, to mark the conductor's centenary his recordings of:
* Berg Three pieces from the Lyric Suite
* Honegger Symphony No 3 'Liturgigue'.


April 13 - Pupil and teacher
* Xenakis Komboi
* Hildegard of Bingen lament and Scene 3 from Ordo Vitutum
* Messiaen Oiseaux Exotiques

April 20 - Modern English music
* Maxwell Davies Missa Parvula
* Rubbra Symphony No 6


Photos (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Whitewashing the history of music

'The 150th anniversary celebrations give the impression that the whole of Elgar’s reputation is based on the Cello Concerto: the Classic FM view of Elgar' writes David Derrick over on The Toynbee convector.

That's a view I totally agree with. On Friday Radio 3 started its Elgar celebration with a concert of his overture In The South, the Cello Concerto and the First Symphony, a typically unimaginative piece of BBC programming that made no attempt to place the composer in a wider context. Elgar was composing on the cusp between late-Romanticism and the twentieth-century. The anniversary programmes would have done him far more justice by juxtaposing his music with contemporaneous works such as Stravinsky's Fireworks, Webern's Passacaglia, Bloch's Suite for Viola and Orchestra, and the rarely played Symphonic Fantasia from Richard Strauss' opera Die Frau ohne Schatten.

Elgar's wonderful String Quartet and Piano Quintet were another missed opportunity. They deserve to be programmed, and could have been framed by music from those strange years of transition after the First World War, Bloch's Violin Sonata No. 1, Shostakovich's Five Preludes for Piano, and Béla Bartók's String Quartet No. 2 . Sadly David Derrick's description 'The Classic FM view of Elgar' says it all.

Meanwhile another reader raises concerns about BBC Radio 4's new six week series The Making of Music which starts tomorrow with James Naughtie as presenter. The trailer for the first programme sets the Western, white and Christian agenda: 'It was in the churches and monasteries of the Christian world, from Constantinople in the East to Iona in Scotland, the building blocks of classical music were formed. These places were the crucibles of cultural and intellectual life - and, as we'll discover, classical music has always been bound up with the centres of power.'

The description of the next Making of Music programme then perpetuates another common error: 'As Notre Dame was being built, two men were writing the music that would fill it. They are the first named composers to come out of history, and their music still survives. Their names are Perotin and his pupil Leonin.' In fact Notre Dame was not consecrated until 1163, and Hildegard of Bingen, who lived in Germany from 1089-1179, is recognised as the first composer whose history and music are known.

Hardly acceptable at Classic FM, definitely not acceptable at the BBC. But, if you want the Western, Christian, white, male and inaccurate view listen to the first webcast of Radio 4's Making of Music at 3.45pm BST tomorrow June 3.

Meanwhile inclusiveness is also taking a hammering over at London's newly refurbished Royal Festival Hall. If you want to make a telephone booking for a concert you have to use a premium rate 0871 phone line, and you also get whacked for a £2 'transaction charge'. But that's not all. The top price for the Philharmonia's Mahler 3 on June 12 is £50, plus a £1.50 booking fee. And we wonder why audiences are down for classical music.

Now read more about music history rewritten.
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Medieval mystics with musical connections

Today we literally follow an overgrown path down a narrow alley in search of a remarkable woman. She was the author of, what is believed to be, the first book written by a woman in the English language, and a thinker who is now venerated alongside such great medieval mystics as Hildegard of Bingen and Hadewijch of Antwerp.

After years of blight following severe war damage the area around St Julian's Alley in Norwich is once again a vibrant area. The surviving medieval houses are beautifully restored, new town houses and apartments are filling the vacant lots, entry-phones and security alarms are de rigeur, and the pavements are lined with BMWs and Range Rovers.

Things were very different in the 14th century. St Julian's Alley was within the medieval city walls, and the prosperous port with its thriving wool trade with Europe was a short distance away. The prosperity which made Norwich England's second city after London was celebrated in a profusion of churches, no less than 22 monasteries and convents, and the construction of the magnificent Norman Cathedral.

One of the many churches, St Julian's, was in a narrow alley leading from one of the main thoroughfares, and was one of 37 churches in the city with an attached anchorage; this was a small cell built against the wall of the church in which an anchorite or anchoress followed his or her vow of living a solitary existence. The anchorage at St Julian's was occupied by a woman, and, as was the tradition, the anchoress took the name of the church, which explains why many people today still think Julian was a man. My photo below shows the rebuilt anchorage on the east wall in the peaceful churchyard surrounded by the bustle of the city centre.


Julian of Norwich had a mystical revelation in May 1373 when she was critically ill. Following her recovery she wrote The Revelations of Divine Love over a 20 year period living as an anchoress. Julian was a contemporary of Chaucer and wrote in Middle English which means all today's editions are 'translations'. A pioneering edition published in 1901 brought her writings to popular attention, and their importance was confirmed by a Penguin edition in 1966. The Revelation of Divine Love is now regarded as a spiritual classic throughout the world, and has never been out of print over a 106 year period.


Julian's cell was destroyed during the Reformation, and the church was severely damaged by a direct hit by a bomb in 1942. After the war the church was rebuilt, and the cell was reconstructed on foundations discovered during earlier excavations, and my photo above is of the shrine in the cell. The restoration of the church, which is still accessed by the original narrow alley, was inspired by the sisters of the Community of All Hallows, Ditchingham. Today Julian's cell, the main church, and the nearby Julian Centre draw pilgrims from all around the world, and there is a flourishing contemplative Order of Julian of Norwich in Southern Wisconsin.

Now playing - Roger Mayor's choral work Julian - Mystical revelations. Hildegard of Bingen is the medieval mystic with the musical reputation, but Roger Mayor's 2002 composition is a very worthwhile addition to the catalogue with its settings of Julian of Norwich's writings. There is an excellent commercial recording made in Norwich Cathedral with the fine Keswick Hall Choir and soloists conducted by John Aplin. Norfolk based Roger Mayor (above) studied under Dr Paul Steinitz, and is best known for his sacred compositions. The hour long Julian - Mystical revelations is more Rutter than MacMillan, but the tuneful score does an excellent job in bringing Julian's writings to a new audience. The CD is available from Prelude Records.

* Revelations of Divine Love can be read online via this link.
* Follow this link for the Penguin edition of Revelations of Divine Love.
* In Search of Julian of Norwich by Sheila Upjohn (Dartman, Longman & Todd ISBN 0232518408) provides an excellent introduction.
* Julian of Norwich shrine website via this link.
* Fiona Maddock's Hildegard of Bingen - the Woman of Her Age is highly recommended. (Image ISBN 0385498683). This is the book that inspired contemporary composer James Wood's exciting, and avant garde, choral work that I wrote about in Hildegard comes to Norwich via IRCAM and Darmstadt.
* Canticles of Ecstacy is a wonderful CD of Marian antiphons, sequences and responsories sung by Sequentia. The Hildegard industry was started by Hyperion's A feather on the breath of god, read Paying the piper for an interesting slant on that best-selling recording.

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Paying the piper

The question as to what is a reasonable reward for those involved in the creation of music is a fascinating one. I have been reading Fiona Maddock's excellent life of Hildegard of Bingen , and it offers an interesting perspective on the reward for intellectual property creation, which may also just be relevant to the Sawking versus Hyperion court case.

In 1983 Hyperion recorded a collection of sequences and hymns by Hildegard titled A Feather on the Breath of God. The music was edited and directed by Christopher Page, and sung by Gothic Voices (which included Andrew Parrott and Emma Kirkby). The sound engineer on the recording said at the end of the session, 'Lovely music, shame no one will buy it." To remind you just how lovely the music is here is a five minute Real Audio sample linked from Hyperion's web site.

The book says Christopher Page was paid the princely sum of £45 (80 US dollars) for the recording.

A Feather on the Breath of God went on to win a Gramophone Award, became a Classic CD Magazine 'Top 100 CD of all time', and was the Guardian 'Choral record of the year'. It kickstarted the whole Hildegard and chant industry, sold half a million copies, and presumably made a shed load of money for Hyperion. Twenty two years later it is still in the catalogue at full price.

Now I have a great admiration for Hyperion. And I know that for every Feather on the Breath of God there are many, many similar recordings whose sales don't even register on the Richter scale. But it does make you think doesn't it?

If you enjoyed this post take an overgrown path to Hyperion Records face 'catastrophic' damages bill

Hildegard comes to Norwich via IRCAM and Darmstadt

The Norfolk and Norwich Festival has a long and illustrious history of first performances. Probably the best known took place in Norwich Cathedral in 1899 when Sir Edward Elgar premiered his composition Sea Pictures, while Ralph Vaughan Williams gave the first performance of his Five Tudor Portraits in the Cathedral at the 1936 Festival. (Vaughan Williams noted 'I think they thought they'd get 'O Praise the Lord, but I sent them the Five Tudor Portraits.') Last night, in the very same performing space in the former Benedictine Abbey, the world premiere of James Wood's opera Hildegard was staged as part of this year's Festival.

James Wood (photo below) studied composition with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, before reading music at Cambridge (a recurring destination on this overgrown path) where he was an organ scholar, and then going on to study percussion and conducting at the Royal Academy of Music. He was Professor of Percussion at the Darmstadt International Summer Courses from 1982 to 1994, and has had two BBC commissions played at the Promenade Concerts. He has increasingly used electronic and electro-acoustic techniques, and has composed two works for the IRCAM institute in Paris including Mountain Language for alphorn, MIDI cowbells and computer. In 2002 he conducted the world premiere of Stockhausen's Engel-Prozessionen at the Amsterdam Concertgebouw.

It was pretty clear form those credentials that his new opera was going to be an uncompromising piece. The commission came from the avant-garde Percussion Group The Hague, the New London Chamber Choir, and the Belgian Ensemble, Champ de Action. It was conceived originally as a contemporary version of the traditional liturgical drama, based on the life and visions of celebrated twelfth-century writer, composer and mystic, Hildegard of Bingen. (the concept was inspired by Fiona Maddocks excellent book, Hildegard of Bingen). The score which uses microtonality and multiphonics is for substantial forces, two soloists, mixed ensemble of ten players, percussion ensemble of six players (in this performance the co-commissioning Percussion Group The Hague), chamber choir and electronics. Electronics are central to the work. Sound images are managed by a proprietary technolgy known as the Spatialisateur developed in the research labs of IRCAM. Multiple arrays of speakers from Taguchi surrounded the audience (loudspeakers are the new black in Norwich this year, see my post Tallis' Forty Loudspeaker Motet), and spatial effects are an important part of the score. In some sections the percussionists play from points around the audience, the soloists and choir move around the Cathedral, and one section is delivered by a secondary ensemble with its own conductor from behind the audience.

Doing a staggering job of conducting this complex score was Jonathan Stockhammer (photo below). Originally from Los Angeles he studied Chinese and Political Science before majoring in Composition and Conducting. He is now based in Europe, and works closely with the Percussion Group The Hague. He is also closely associated with the New London Chamber Choir and Critical Band which provided the excellent performing forces. For Hildegard Norwich Cathedral was reversed in layout (the pews are not fixed) so the audience faced the mighty West Door with its magnificent stained glass window above. Starting at nine o'clock at night, and lasting for more than an hour and a half without a break the performance was a challenge for performers and audience alike. (In true Rite of Spring fashion a number of the audience left during the performance. It wasn't their fault, or the composer or performers. It was the fault of the Festival publicists who had inexplicably failed to convey the avant-garde nature of this wonderful and inspiring work in the brochure. Surely better to lose the conservative parts of the audience before they book, rather than during the performance?) . The theatrical elements did support the texts, but this was more staged oratorio (a fashionable concept at the moment) than real opera. At times though the costumes and strobe lighting were more Phantom of the Opera than Pompidou Centre.

Hildegard is at the cutting edge of contemporary composition. It uses voices, instruments and technology to produce some very beautiful sounds. There are also some very ugly sounds, but these were planned as 'inharmonic' music for the Devil, as the composer explained in an excellent programme booklet. (Norwich and Norfolk Festival organisers note, the programme book produced by the performers was exemplary, unlike the meagre offerings for other Festival performances this year). Sometimes though it did seem that the sheer range of performers and technology available to James Wood tempted him to use complexity for its own sake. Less can be more, even when so many sonic toys are available. (Photo above The Critical Band).

The central role of the Percussion Group The Hague brought back memories of Peter Maxwell Davies and the Fires of London in his Eight Songs for a Mad King, and the score for Ken Russel's 1971 film The Devils. The overall atmosphere in the Cathedral, the late hour, the tiredness after a day at work, the range of instruments and electronics surrounding the audience, the buzz of the unknown, it all took me back to the Round House, Chalk Farm in London in the 1970's when Pierre Boulez was at the helm of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, and the opera houses were designated for arson.

There are further performances in London (St John's Smith Square), St David's Cathedral Pembrokeshire, and Salisbury Cathedral. The Salisbury performance is being recorded for broadcast by the BBC on Hear and Now on Radio 3 on a yet unidentified Saturday evening at 11.00 o'clock. This should be available as a webcast from the BBC Radio 3 website, check there for more details. More details of the other performances are available on the New London Chamber Choir web site.

Overall a brilliant evening. A great credit to the composer, performers (special mention for conductor Jonathan Stockhammer and Sarah Leonard in the fiendishly difficult role of Hildegard), and to the Norfolk and Norwich Festival organisers (no accusations of 'dumbing down'on this one) for pushing the envelope so far. (But more transparent promotional material next time please). The work was a triumph, and it was wonderful to see the beautiful old Benedictine Abbey with its echoes of Elgar approving. The final effect of the opera was the simplest, and most striking. As darkness fell during the performance the luminous stained glass of the mighty West Window darkened. With Jonathan Stockhammer conducting the closing pages of James Wood's wonderful score (and parallels with Parsifal are not over the top) external lighting illuminated the stained glass. Once again we saw that Art and Truth will always triumph over the everyday, the bland and the unadventurous.

Update 13th May: Andrew Clements, who famously savaged Maazel's opera 1984 (see my post 1984 - the sequel) was less positive in his review of Hildegard in today's Guardian giving it just two out of a possible five stars, and saying "there are moments in Wood's score suggesting what might have been, and what still might be." Open this link for the full review. Different strokes for different folks.....

Update 14th May: Composer James Wood has kindly corrected a couple of facts in his biographical details.

Update 15th May: Richard Morrison's Times review of Hildegard seems to be more on message that Andrew Clement's in the Guardian. Richard Morrison writes...' once you accepted that you were trapped for 90 minutes in a dark nave with a chorus that attacked you from front, side and rear (the brilliantly drilled New London Chamber Choir), six frenetic drummers (Percussion Group the Hague) and an instrumental ensemble (the Critical Band) whose jagged fanfares were bounced electronically a round the nave like aural boomerangs — well, it was all rather ear-popping and thrilling.'

Update 26th July: For the last laugh on this story follow this link Classic misunderstandings - Hildegard

Stained glass in Norwich Cathedral

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