Stravinsky - oh wow sacred cow!

'The more new things we try — the more we step outside our comfort zone — the more inherently creative we become, both in the workplace and in our personal lives ... It turns out that unless we continue to learn new things, which challenges our brains to create new pathways, they literally begin to atrophy, which may result in dementia, Alzheimer’s and other brain diseases. No one is sure why, but scientists speculate that getting out of routines makes us more aware in general' This extract from a New York Times article by Janet Rae-Dupree could be the mission statement for the Michael Clark Company's Stravinsky Project.

Last night's double-bill by the company at the Norwich Festival, showed the power of working outside comfort zones with an ultra-modern Rite using nudity in the sacrificial dance as a talisman against dementia. Budgetary comfort zones also took a battering as the forty-minute Rite in the first half used the economical four hand reduction, while for the second half two more Steinways, a supplemented Britten Sinfonia, four soloists, the New London Chamber Choir and conductor Jurjen Hempel were added for a marginally less modern, but still sublime, twenty-five minutes of Les Noces - see header production shot.

Visual comfort zones were also up for grabs, with the second half of Les Noces (except it wasn't - see below) opening with a stunning video of Stravinsky himself conducting the closing pages of The Firebird (how did the players ever follow his beat?), with the maestro's virtual performance drawing enthusiastic applause from both the live and recorded audiences before the real dancing started. The Stravinsky video filmed at the Royal Festival Hall was courtesy of the BBC, and is a timely reminder of the priceless riches locked away in the BBC archives while their 'culture channel', BBC4, fights Alzheimer’s with challenging programmes such as Val Doonican Rocks.

Aural comfort zones become dead-meat with the Michael Clark Company with the exemplary musical forces 'benefitting' from substantial amplification and remixing via a state-of-the-art sound system. Strange when the words don't actually come from the mouths of the New London Chamber Choir, but if it stops dementia who is complaining? (Apparantely some of the audience did by walking out of the previous evening's performance of a different programme which featured very loud music by the Sex Pistols and Wire).

Pesky box-office comfort zones were also ignored by billing the two works as Mmm.. and I Do rather than The Rite and Les Noces. Thankfully there are some big sponsors behind the Stravinsky Project, but I wonder whether the 40% audience capacity would have been bigger had the publicity talked a little bit more clearly about a good old fashioned Rite of Spring?

But overall one of the most stimulating and dementia defeating evenings we have spent in the theatre for a long time. And the headline is for real, it is back-projected during The Rite, sorry Mmm... .

Now watch a video sample of Mmm.. here, read about the four pianists in Les Noces here and about the piano reduction of the Rite here, while Stravinsky has a topical Tibetan connection here.
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A stong commitment to the new

'It has been said that William Glock had a greater influence on musical culture in post-war Britain than anybody, and perhaps that is true. He would have been happier, I am sure, with a more modest epitaph: that he helped to make the understanding of music more acute. Inside and outside the BBC, he sought constantly for a repertory that was stimulating, and he made a strong commitment to the new, but one might say he did as much for Haydn and Schubert as for Stravinsky and Boulez. As for his BBC legacy, it needs re-articulating and defending by his successors in the same way as John Reith's does; it cannot be denied. More particularly, at the Proms every summer we take it for granted, and there, surely, there can be no going back' - from Stephen Plaistow's Guardian obituary of Sir William Glock (above) who was born on 3rd May, 1908 and died on 28th June, 2000. His centenary passes without any celebration on BBC Radio 3. But find lots more celebration here.

Photo credit Sunday Times/Thomson Regional Newspapers. 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

Stravinsky and Walton are opera's poster boys

Back in 2006 my article about Mahogany Opera's excellent production of Britten's Curlew River was followed by a discussion about operatic double-bills. Nice to see it wasn't just an academic discussion, the company is presenting a double bill of Walton's The Bear and Stravinsky's The Fox at Aldeburgh and London in April. Also good to see the art of poster design isn't dead. More details here and another classical music poster boy here.
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Stockhausen chaotic music and communism

'Dr. Trey notes that music has lost its way since the nineteenth century. It has changed from earlier eras—the Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic epochs (1600-1900)—to trends starting in early 1900's. These earlier eras spanning 300 years represent the pinnacle of classical music in the West and are based on higher principles and values. Composers such as Stravinsky, Schoenberg, and Stockhausen composed music from a listener's perspective as if experimenting with noise.

When this chaotic music appeared, atomic bombs, communism and cold war also surfaced. He believes this chaotic music in no small way contributes to the chaos in modern times. Destructive political movements, such as communism, thrived by killing people in its own society.

Europe boasted excellent philosophers and scholars when classical principles were followed. When music lost its classical values, chaos developed in societies and so for 100 years, music has been struggling to find direction' - from an Epoch Times interview with Dr. Torsten Trey, German medical practioner and oboeist with the New York based Divine Arts Performing Orchestra.

Now read about music, acid and the collapse of communism.
Header photo is of a performance of Stockhausen's suitably chaotic Hymnen at St John's Smith Square, London in 1971. The composer is in the centre. The Epoch Times is a New York based independent free newspaper specialising in reporting on China. 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 Rite of Spring

Photo taken at the Lost Garden of Heligan, Cornwall. Now playing - Fazil Say's recording of the four-hand piano transcription of the Rite Of Spring. The starting point of this CD is Stravinsky's own four-hand score for the Rite, but the finishing point is some way away from the composer's original. Not only does Say use multi-tracking to play both piano parts, but he builds up further layers with his own additions to the score mimicking percussion and cymbals, with the different layers using different microphone perspectives.

As if this is not enough Say does a Glenn Gould and offers an interview with himself in the sleeve notes justifying his approach and also justifying releasing a full price CD containing just 31 minutes and 12 seconds of music. (He does threaten a coupling of his take on Verklärte Nacht, but thankfully refrains). Not so much Stravinsky as a technical tour de force, and, surprisingly, it is still in the catalogue at full price eight years after release. Certainly not a first choice or even tenth choice Rite but a fascinating musical and technical curiosity if you don't mind few bangs for your bucks.

More interesting orchestration in my Future Radio programme this Sunday (March 9 - check sidebar for details) in Lou Harrison's Concerto for Violin with Percussion Orchestra with a score that includes 12 brakedrums, 6 flowerpots, dustbins, a double bass laid on its back and tin cans. The recording is a new one by Madeleine Mitchell and Ensemble Bash.

No short change with this excellent Signum release (sleeve below) which offers 66 minutes of music from Anne Dudley, Tarik O'Regan, Stuart Jones, and Simon Limbrick and a traditional Sengalese drumming piece which I will finish the programme with. An excellent release, but the Fiddlesticks title, with no mention of Lou Harison on the cover, doesn't do it justice. Retailers are saying it would sell far more copies if it had been marketed as a Lou Harrison recording and filed in the browser under 'H'. Signum are best known for their choral recordings, but are doing some interesting things in contemporary music including a new recording of the complete Philip Glass String Quartets.


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

The composer conducts - badly?

In the summer of 1919 John Barbirolli was a member of the orchestra for Diaghilev's second post-war season of the Russian ballet ... His particular memory of this season, apart from the pleasure of playing in Stravinsky's Firebird and Petrushka, was of Diaghilev's insistence that Manuel de Falla should conduct his own ballet, Tricorne. Despite the composer's protestations that he was not competent to do it, Diaghilev almost dragged him to the pit at rehearsal. After a few bars they reached some cross-rhythms. Falla stopped beating so the orchestra stopped. 'No, no,' he cried, 'you go on.' He was totally unable to conduct the rhythms he had devised - from Barbirolli the authorised biography by Michael Kennedy.

No, my header photo is not Manuel de Falla; it's Michael Tippett conducting in St Louis in 1968. On March 2 I am playing a recording of Tippett conducting his Second Symphony on my Future Radio programme. Composers have rather a chequered history of conducting their own music, and Elgar, Stravinsky and Copland all received varying reviews for performances of their own works. In his autobiography Those Twentieth Century Blues Tippett confesses "But I don't have the real conductor's technical proficiency ... the main hazard I find is that I begin to listen to the playing as a composer and not as a conductor - which means I can lose my objective control of the performance: and I have to train myself not to go that way".

Tippett's Second Symphony is a notoriously difficult work to perform and the first performance in 1958 under Sir Adrian Boult actually broke down when the BBC Symphony Orchestra's string section lost its way in the complex first movement. But despite the difficulties and his own reservations about his conducting technique Tippett's own version, which was made with a somewhat more secure BBC Symphony Orchestra in 1993, has the Beethovenian energy that is manifestly lacking in Richard Hickox's later, and acclaimed, interpretation on Chandos. But, although Tippett's own recording is very fine, it wouldn't be my first choice; that accolade would go to Colin Davis' electrifying 1968 performance which still sounds fantastic on my Philips LP pressing. The timings of the two versions says it all, Tippett 36' 54", Davis 33' 29"

But judge for yourself how the composer conducts at 5.00pm Sunday March 2 UK time on Future Radio, with a transatlantic friendly repeat at 12.50am Monday March 3. The coupling with Tippett's Second Symphony is Arcangelo Corelli Concerto No 8 in G Minor 'Christmas Concerto'. Check the right-hand side-bar for the audio feed.

YouTube offers Tippett conducting The Midsummer Marriage, Stravinsky conducting The Firebird and best of all Elgar conducting the Pomp and Circumstance March No. 1.
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). Listen on Future Radio at 5.00pm every Sunday and 12.50am every Monday UK time 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. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Colin McPhee - East collides with West

'It seems to me certain that future progress in creative music for composers of the Western world must inevitably go towards the exploration and integration of elements drawn from more than one of the world's cultures.' This remarkably accurate prophecy was made by Henry Cowell in 1947, and was prompted by a radio broadcast of Colin McPhee's gamelan inspired Tabuh-Tabuhan which had received its first performance eleven years earlier.

Carol J. Oja's exemplary biography (jacket below) describes Colin McPhee as a 'composer of two worlds'. He was born in Toronto in 1900, and established a dual career of pianist and composer at an early age. He started his studies at the Peabody Conservatory in 1918, and spent two years studying in Paris before settling in New York in 1926. He quickly established himself as a one of a new generation of American composers, and his music was presented at a concert of Edgard Varèse's International Composer's Guild.

At the time Henry Cowell ranked McPhee in a group that included Charles Ives, Carl Ruggles, Charles Seeger, Roy Harris, Henry Brant and Ruth Crawford. McPhee's dual career of composer and pianist continued, and in 1927 he played in the infamous Carnegie Hall premiere of George Antheil's Ballet Mécanique alongside Aaron Copland. In New York McPhee also developed an interest in African-American culture, and ignored contemporary prejudices by accompanying the black soprano Abbie Mitchell in a group of his own songs.

While in New York Colin McPhee had heard newly released recordings of the Balinese gamelan. This experience was to change the composer's life, as he explains in his own words: 'I was a young composer, recently back in New York after student days in Paris, and the past two years had been filled with composing and the business of getting performances. It was quite by accident that I had heard a few gramophone rcords that were to change my life completely, bringing me out here in search of something quite indefinable - music or experience, I could not at this moment say.'

In 1931 McPhee travelled to Bali for the first time accompanied by his wife Jane who he had married the previous year. As well as being an established researcher in her own right, Jane McPhee contributed much of the funding for her husband's work in Bali. The marriage lasted for seven years despite Colin McPhee's undisguised homosexuality. There was genuine interdependence in the marriage, but extraordinarily, Jane McPhee, née Belo, is completely written out of the composer's accounts of his time in Bali, all of which are written in the first person singular.

In 1932 the McPhee's started to build their own house on Bali. The story is beautifully told in McPhee's own words in his book A House in Bali (jacket above), albeit without any mention of his wife who bankrolled the whole project. During his first stay on the island McPhee immersed himself in Balinese culture, and studied the gamelan from close quarters. In 1935 the McPhees returned to America for an extended period, and the composer renewed his close working relationship with the Mexican conductor Carlos Chávez, who has already featured on these pages. Chavez had founded the Orquestra Sinfónica de México in 1928, and he invited McPhee to visit Mexico in 1936 to compose an orchestral work for the Mexican orchestra using material from Bali. This work was to become the Toccata for Orchestra and Two Pianos, Tabuh-Tabuhan. Its title is a Balinese collective noun for a collection of percussive rhythms and sounds.

Tabuh-Tabahan was completed in a rented house in the exquisite silver mining town of Taxco, south of Mexico City. The two photographs here were taken in Taxco in 1987 when I was staying in the town while working with Chavez's Orquestra Sinfónica de México. They are anachronistic, but, nevertheless, somehow reflect the different worlds of Colin McPhee.


There is another interesting musical connection to Taxco. Igor Stravinsky, his wife, Robert Craft and his secretary, later turned unauthorised biographer, Lillian Libman had visited the town on Good Friday 1964 to see the Passion Play that is performed there every year. The procession through the town is led by small boys from the village, like the one above, and the whole town follows with lighted candles. The Stravinsky party had stayed at the Hotel de la Borda, which is where I also stayed twenty-three years later.

The ambience of Taxco clearly suited Colin McPhee's muse. The first performance of Tabu-Tabuhan conducted by Carlos Chávez in Mexico City in September 1936 was a major critical success, and it looked as though McPhee's advocacy of World Music would relaunch his career as a composer. But he was a prophet before his time. Despite support from Aaron Copland and Carlos Chavéz further performances did not follow, although those interested in the score included Leopold Stokowski and Serge Koussevitzky.

After failing to secure further performances of Tabuh-Tabuhan McPhee returned to Bali in early 1937, and he contunued to study the culture and the arts of the island. He and his wife had been living separate lives for some time, and they were divorced in 1938. The gamelan groups, with their male players with naked torsos, seemed to meet an emotional as well as musical need, and McPhee was known to have had a number of male lovers. During his stay in Bali a young male child dancer, Sampih, lived in McPhee's house. Tragically, Sampih was murdered long after McPhee had left the island.

By 1938 the political climate in Bali had changed. The Dutch colonial authorities had started to hound homosexuals, despite their acceptance by the Balinese, and the spread of Fascism in Europe semed likely to spread to the Dutch East Indies. McPhee returned to New York in February 1939, a decision also prompted by his reduced financial circmstances following his divorce. From 1943 to 1947 McPhee lived in the famous communal house in Middagh Street, Brooklyn Heights that was also home at varying times to Benjamin Britten, W.H. Auden, Carson McCullers, Paul and Jane Bowles, Peter Pears, Oliver Smith and Gypsy Rose Lee.

Britten's initial interest in Oriental music is attributed to his friendship with McPhee, rather than his own visit to Bali in 1956. Paul Bunyan was composed while Britten was in New York with McPhee, and Balinese influences can be heard in the 'Moon Turns Blue' episode in the Prologue. McPhee is also thought to have given Britten a grounding in American jazz. In 1941 McPhee and Britten recorded McPhee's transciption for two pianos of Balinese Ceremonial Music in New York, and this recording is available on Chandos 1011 coupled with 2003 recordings of Tabuh-Tabuhan and the Suite from Britten's ballet The Prince of the Pagodas.


The years in New York were difficult for Colin McPhee. Without the company and sponsorship of a wealthy wife, living in sordid accomodation and with little acceptance of his music, he relied on writing to generate an income, and the alcohol misuse that was to finally kill him started at this time. The only glimmer of hope was a CBS radio broadcast for schools in 1947 of two movements of Tabuh-Tabuhan rescored for reduced forces.

But an apparent breakthrough came in 1952 when World Music came to America in the form of a Balinese gamelan group. The resulting interest in Eastern music prompted Leopold Stokowski to conduct the US premiere of Tabuh-Tabuhan at the Carnegie Hall in October 1953, and the reviewers, led by Virgil Thomson, gave the work a positive reception. This performance and the growing interest in cross-cultural music prompted further performances of the work (including a recording by Howard Hanson) and new commissions followed.

It would be nice to report a happy ending to the story. But it was not to be. It seemed that the creative fires that had blazed in 1936 had been dimmed by the physical, emotional and financial traumas of the following years. A noteworthy Second Symphony was premiered in 1958, but McPhee's other compositions of the period lack the creative fire that shines through Tabuh-Tabuhan.

But his last years at least gave a degree of reward. In 1960 Colin McPhee took the option chosen by many American composers of the time and became a professor at the University of California in Los Angeles. He was well-liked and respected by his students despite his deteriorating health. But advancing cirrhosis of the liver killed Colin McPhee on January 14, 1964. Roy Harris and Charles Seeger spoke at his funeral, and a telegram from Leopold Stokowski was read out.

Although Colin McPhee is usually only remembered for Tabu-Tabuhan, his legacy is considerable. He was a pioneer of World Music, and his use of repeating musical cells predated the minimalist composers by several decades. But it was probably through his writings that McPhee was most influential. His book A House in Bali asserted that music and the environment in which it is performed are inseperable (a topical subject this week). But McPhee's life work was his monograph Music in Bali which was finally published two years after his death, and is still regarded as one of the definitive work on the subject. His writings influenced a generation of composers, and Lou Harrison has recounted how McPhee's 1949 article on the five-tone gamelan music of Bali had a major impact on him.

I will be celebrating the music of Colin McPhee and Lou Harrison in my Future Radio programme on Sunday December 9. At 5.00pm UK time (convert to local time zones here) I will be playing Tabuh-Tabuhan and Lou Harrison's 1985 Piano Concerto. There are many links between the two composers, from their fascination with the East, through their homosexuality to the sublime slow inner movements of both works. Broadcasts of either work are rare, so don't miss this collision of East and West on Sunday. There is more on the Lou Harrison Concerto here.


Tabuh-Tabuhan was first performed in 1936. Now read about some other new music first performed at that time, but in very different circumstances.

Principal sources:
* Colin McPhee - Composer in Two Worlds by Carol J. Oja, Smithsonian Institution Press ISBN 0874747325, out of print.
* A House in Bali by Colin McPhee, Oxford University Press ISBN 0195804481, out of print.
* February House by Sherill Tippins, Scribner ISBN 0743257243
* Benjamin Britten, A Biography by Humphrey Carpenter, Faber ISBN 0571143253

Listen to Tabu-Tabuhan by launching the Radeo internet player from the right side-bar, or via the audio stream, on Sunday December 9 at 5.00pm UK time. Convert time 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.

Taxco photos are (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.

Stravinsky mashed up with hip-hop

Decadance Vs. The Firebird is an urban ballet for the 21st Century. Mashing up Stravinsky's score with original, hip-hop beats, fusing breakdancing with ballet, and remixing the classic story into a contemporary text, the all-female cast challenges the ballet convention of a 'handsome prince' and instead creates a world where women battle for the right to rule the dance floor. A high energy dance performance ready to entertain diverse audiences of all ages, Decadance Vs. The Firebird presents a new vision for hip-hop dance theatre.

Sample Stravinsky mashed up with hip-hop, if you dare, by following the path from here to multimedia to the video of Decadance Vs The Firebeird.

Now read how dance is not an inferior art form.
Image credit Bumbershoot. 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

One for the boys

Equality is a recurring theme On An Overgrown Path. So it was good to see the fine young conductor Ivan Volkov pulling out of his Edinburgh concert this week due to 'impending fatherhood', and being replaced by the excellent Susanna Mälkki. Slightly disturbing, though, that the main work in the BBC Scottish Symphony Orchestra's programme was Stravinsky's Oedipus Rex.

Find Oedipus Rex, and a lot more Stravinsky here.
Image of Antigone Leads Oedipus out of Thebes by Charles Francois Jalabeat from Wikipedia. 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

Britten and Stravinsky - after the flood

Finally the rains have stopped, and summer has arrived in East Anglia. Photographs taken this morning as I cycled out of our village.

Benjamin Britten's wrote Noye's Fludde here in East Anglia, and it was first performed at the 1958 Aldeburgh Festival. It is Britten's most substantial work for children, and is based on one of the 16th century Chester Mystery Plays using an edition by Alfred W. Pollard. The main vocal parts are written for children, with the exceptions of the adult parts of Noye himself, Noye’s wife and the Voice of God. Noye's Fludde is scored for strings, recorders, bugles, handbells and a range of percussion, and also calls for home-made instruments including sandpaper blocks and slung mugs. Every CD collection should include the definitive 1961 recording made in Orford Church.

Igor Stravinsky wrote the musical play The Flood in California to a commission from CBS television. The libretto is a compilation of texts by Robert Craft from the Book of Genesis and the Chester Mystery Plays. The Flood, with choreography by Balanchine, was premiered in June 1962 as a CBS telecast, and received a hostile press reception. The composer's own recording, made in Hollywood in March 1962 for the telecast, is included in the newly released Works of Stravinsky, which also should be in every CD collection.


Now take the same path to Spring Symphony.
Photographs (c) On An Overgrown Path. 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

Complete Stravinsky at a crazy price

Columbia have released a new compilation of the Works of Stravinsky conducted by the composer and Robert Craft. I paid £29.95 ($60) at Prelude Records for the box, you may find it cheaper online. The twenty-two CD's comprise all the stereo recordings made for Columbia with the composer conducting, one CD with Robert Craft conducting and Stravinsky in attendance, and several older recordings of works not remade in stereo by the composer. The remastering and sound is excellent, far better than earlier issues of these recordings.

When Eugene Gossens conducted Les Noces in its London premiere with the Ballet Russe in 1926, the four pianists were composers Vittorio Rieti, Georges Auric, Francis Poulenc and Vladimir Dukelsky (Vernon Duke). Stravinsky wanted to replicate this for the 1961 recording included in this set, and the pianists were the composers Samuel Barber, Aaron Copland, Lukas Foss and Roger Sessions. When invited, Lukas Foss accepted on the condition that he played Piano Number One, while Roger Sessions insisted on the easiest part. For the record (literally) Pianos One and Three were played by Lukas Foss and Samuel Barber, Two and Four by Aaron Copland and Roger Sessions.

This starry line-up was bettered by a 1966 New York performance of The Soldier's Tale which Stravinsky conducted with the speaking parts of the Narrator, the Devil, and the Soldier taken by Aaron Copland, John Cage and Elliott Carter respectively. Sadly this performance isn't in the Stravinsky box.

I'll be dipping into this set on the Overgrown Path radio programme in the autumn, Requiem Canticles (or 'Requicles' as Robert Craft called them) will be top of the list. The Works of Stravinsky are a delight from start to finish. Buy it before Sony realise they made a mistake with the price.

Now follow this path for another unmissable bargain box of CDs.
Anectdotal information from the controversial And Music at the Close: Stravinsky's Last Years by Lillian Libman (Macmillan ISBN 333143043). Photo (c) On An Overgrown Path, taken on the living room carpet a few minutes ago! 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

I was revolted by Schoenberg

Largely positive reception for John Tavener's new work The Beautiful Names. So here is an interesting aspect of Tavener:

I have always been drawn more to the archetypal levels of human experience and human types, which is why I think I was drawn to Stravinsky and revolted by Schoenberg. Schoenberg (left) was for me the filthy, rotten 'dirt dump' of the twentieth century. I personally could not stand the angst-ridden sound of decay in his music, the vile post-Freudian world. Basically, I do not respond to the so-called 'Germanic Tradition', whose by now rotting corpse - the hideous sound world of its fabricated complexity - smothers archetypal experience that I have always sought. - John Tavener writes in The Music of Silence, A Composer's Testament (Faber ISBN 0571200885).

But Schoenberg could be just as bitchy. Read here what he said about Toscanini.
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Stravinsky - the cricket wearing spats

'It was November, extremely cold with an east wind. I crossed the Channel and called on Stravinsky. He was living in the Fauborg St Honore, in a very elegant apartment. He was spruce and gnome-like, immaculately dressed, and looking more like a business executive than a composer. But this impression changed as we sat talking: he was precisely like a cricket wearing spats. Just as a cricket will stay immobile, then suddenly bound into the air with a spring of compressed energy, so I had the feeling that Stravinsky might bound through the ceiling at any moment. He looked alert, nervous though not neurotic, as though he had just emerged from one of those baths where you are rubbed with ice and beaten with birch-sticks.

... Suddenly...the cricket sprang, 'I want to show you something,' he said, and led me into his study. It was a small room, clinically tidy with an upright piano. Stravinsky went straight across the room to a shelf beside his piano and took down a portrait bust which he gave me to hold. I held the bust, which I did not recognise, and Stravinsky stood beside me as though he were observing a two minute's silence. 'Webern is the greatest composer of this century,' he said finally. He took the portrait from me and put it back on the shelf.

From that moment our relationship was less formal. He told me he always composed at the piano: he had to hear the note to be absolutely certain it was precisely the sound he wanted. Dozens of kinds of pencils, paper-clips, contraptions for punching papers and threading them together littered a side-table. The room was full of gadgets or desk-toys which he believed made him more efficient.

Stravinsky was pathetically pleased that I had called on him. He feared my generation 'had got lost in Sibelius and had never heard of his music'. I told him how much I admired the Symphony of Psalms and his Octet for Wind Instruments - especially. I said, the very last part of it. He picked up a score and went to the piano. 'You mean from here?' he asked. 'Precisely.' 'Yes,' he said., 'I joined that bit on. I wrote it originally as an epitaph for Debussy.'

I tried to interest him in Britten, but he was too self-absorbed to be aware of anybody else's work. He was interested only in Webern, somebody he could use. I mean nothing derogatory in that.'

Ronald Duncan describes a 1936 meeting with Stravinsky in his book Working With Britten (The Rebel Press ISBN 0900615303). Duncan was the librettist for The Rape of Lucretia and also worked on Peter Grimes.

Igor Stravinsky was born in Oranienbaum (now Lomonosov), Russia at noon, June 5th 1882 in the old Russian calendar. This birthdate is usually translated as June 17th in the new calendar, but sometimes as June 18th, and even June 19th by Naxos. Whichever day, happy birthday Igor!

Now read about Stravinsky's Tibetan connection. View Stravinsky videos on YouTube via this link, and here is a 3 minute copyright cleared sample from his 1944 Mass - .

The photo shows Stravinsky in his Paris studio in 1929. The audio sample is via Boosey & Hawkes and is performed by the Gregg Smith Singers and Columbia Symphony Winds & Brass from Sony SM2K 46301. 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

Elgar - carrying on Beethoven's business

Edward Elgar, the figurehead of music in England, is a composer whose rank it is neither prudent nor indeed possible to determine. Either it is one so high that only time and posterity can confer it, or else he is one of the Seven Humbugs of Christendom. Contemporary judgements are sound enough on Second Bests; but when it comes to Bests, they acclaim ephemerals as immortals, and simultaneously denounce immortals as pestilent charlatans.

Elgar has not left us any room to hedge. From the beginning, quite naturally and as a matter of course, he has played the great game and professed the Best. He has taken up the work of a great man so spontaneously that it is impossible to believe that he ever gave any consideration to the enormity of the assumption, or was even conscious of it. But there it is, unmistakeable. To the north countryman who, on hearing of Wordsworth's death, said 'I suppose his son will carry on the business' it would be plain today that Elgar is carrying on Beethoven's business. The names are up on the shop front for everyone to read. ELGAR late BEETHOVEN & CO, Classics and Italian Warehousemen. Symphonies, Overtures, Chamber Music, Oratorios, Bagatelles.

This. it will be seen, is a very different challenge from that of, say, Debussy and Stravinsky. You can rave about Stravinsky without the slightest risk of being classed as a lunatic by the next generation. Without really compromising yourself, you can declare the Aprés Midi d'un Faune the most delightful and enchanting orchestral piece ever written. But if you say that Elgar's Cockaigne overture combines every classic quality of the concert to Die Meistersinger you are either uttering a platitude as safe as a compliment to Handel on the majesty of the Hallelujah Chorus or else damning yourself to all critical posterity by a gaffe that will make your grandson blush for you.

Personally, I am prepared to take the risk. What do I care about my grandson? give me Cockaigne. But my recklessness cannot settle the question. It would be much easier if Cockaigne were genre music, with the Westminster chimes, snatches of Yip-i-addy, and a march of the costermongers to Covent Garden. Then we should know where we are: the case would be as simple as Gilbert and Sullivan. But there is nothing of the kind: the material of the overture is purely classical. You may hear all sorts of footsteps in it; and it may tell you all sorts of stories; but it is classical music as Beethoven's Les Adieux sonata is classical music: it tells you no story external to itself and yourself. Therefore who knows whether it appeals to the temporal or the eternal in us? in other words, whether it will be alive or dead in the twenty-first century?

George Bernard Shaw on Elgar in Music & Letters in 1920. Well the good news is that Sir Edward Elgar is very much alive in the twenty-first century, and we wish him a very happy one-hundred-and-fiftieth birthday today, June 2nd 2007.

Now read about Elgar - the first of the new
If the portrait of Elgar looks unfamiliar it is. It is by an unknown artist, the original hangs on my study wall and it has never been published before, copyright On An Overgrown Path. 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

Pointed questions raised in musical circles

And while we are all getting excited about Joyce Hatto ...

Stravinsky always liked to record, and if sessions went well his satisafaction was deep, for the unarguable reason that his recordings under such conditions, represented the truest expression of the ideas he had set down on his manuscript paper. In this sense the three-score-plus Stravinsky listings in the Columbia catalogue form a true document. But it would be equally correct to say that after Stravinsky's eightieth birthday, Robert Craft's assistance was vital for many of the recordings, and these discs may certainly be referred to as the end result of a collabaration. And this poses an intriguing question: how far does this collabaration extend in the final record which the public buys under the title Stravinsky conducts Stravinsky?

By the time Stravinsky stood up for the final run-through and the official take, the orchestra was thoroughly indoctrinated with Robert's tempo (which was generally more rapid than the composer's) and his interpretation (which might also differ), and would therefore have difficulty adjusting. Stravinsky's beat, usually very clear, suffered under the pressure of this situation. Add these circumstances to just time enough for a maximum of two takes and it is easy to understand the pointed questions raised in musical circles in the last five or six years about the authenticity of certain Stravinsky recordings made in the final decade. How much is Stravinsky, and how much is Craft?

Extracted from And Music at the Close: Stravinsky's Last years, the distinctly unauthorised 1972 memoir by Lillian Libman (Macmillan ISBN 333143043, out of print)

18 Feb - Important update

Now read about the authorised version by Robert Craft.
Header photo of Stravinsky with Robert Craft from RobertCraft.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 other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The arts are about controversy

The danger of all arts broadcasting is that everything is treated as equally important, with a permanent mood of celebration. No one on BBC Radio 3 ever says that some composers are second rate, or that some writing is vapid and some poetry gobbledegook: everything is presented with equal reverence, as if it all had profound importance. You would never believe from listening to Radio 3 that the arts are as much about controversy as about achievement. When I began as Controller there were very few lighter moments on the network, and far too many dull hobby-horses being ridden. The Music Department was particularly susceptible to that favourite feature of the gramophone industry, 'the complete works' - all the quartets, all the sonatas, or whatever. Anniversaries were relentlessly celebrated ...

John Drummond recalls his time as Controller of BBC Radio 3 in the 1980s in his autobiography Tainted by Experience (Faber, ISBN 0571200540). And plus ça change, today BBC Radio 3 starts a celebration of Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky that plays all their music in a week, at the expense of anything else. The BBC's Tchaikovsky Experience is fronted by 'classical jock' of the moment Tom Service, and the nearest it comes to controversy is the chance to vote online for your favourite piece from the Tchaikovsky Top Ten, after listening to a 60 second download of the 1812.

Now try this cure for Tchaikovsky and Stravinsky fatigue.
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

Serial downloaders click here

My research for yesterday's Mendelssohn article uncovered a website that is going to delight the many serial downloaders among my readers. Carolina Classical has been created by Charles Moss for the music students he teaches at two universities in South Carolina. There are lovingly constructed articles on a range of composers from Palestrina to Zemlinsky, and many of these are liberally illustrated with music downloads: try one by clicking the image above - and it's not the Eminem Show!

But serial downloading at Carolina Classical doesn't end with audio files. There is also a host of downloadable scores, including many Bach cantatas and Mendelssohn's Songs Without Words, the latter in what are identified as public domain scores in Adobe Acrobat format.

So, serial downloaders are in clover - but, a health warning is needed. We all know that there are very few free lunches in the world of downloads, so I fired off a quick email asking for reassurance from Professor Moss as to the provenance of his downloads. Here is his reply, so I must qualify this feature with the audio download equivalent of caveat emptor.

Dear Sir - The Mendelssohn scores are 100% in the Public Domain, being late 19th Century editions (mostly European) that have long been out of print, and their 75-year copyright now long expired and not renewed since the publishers no longer exist either. The scores and sound files on my Web site are either recorded by me, my friends, or used in RealAudio format with permisson of the copyright owners. No one objects to the use of RealAudio content since it has a far lesser sound quality than MP3. To be blunt, RealAudio offers a small file size with "passable" quality that does not compete with CD-quality audio at all. It merely offers listeners a "sound image" to use when selecting material that they may wish to purchase on CDs.

I teach for two colleges: The University of South Carolina at Sumter and Saint Leo University at Shaw Air Force Base. My Web articles were really written for the use of my college students in my music classes. So now you will understand the motivation of my Web site. I do not make a profit of any kind from this site.

Sincerely, Charles K. Moss




While elsewhere in the US, the indefatigable Walt Santner has uncovered a veritable vault of downloads of complete operas recorded in Bulgaria that don't appear to need any health warnings. Full length Russian works to download are Borodin Prince Igor, Dargomizhsky Rusalka, Mussorgsky Boris Godunov and Khovanshchina, Andrey Petrov Peter I, Prokofiev Betrothal in a Monastery, Rachmaninoff Aleko,