On An Overgrown Path

My photos shows Wolfgang Zuckermann who has died at the age of 96. During the second half of the twentieth century the harpsichord made the remarkable transition from almost extinct historical curiosity to concert hall staple; not just for early music, but also for new music from composers including John Cage, Elliott Carter and Maurice Ohana. Wolfgang Zuckermann's $150 harpsichord kits, which were launched in 1959, were a major factor in the rehabilitation of the harpsichord, and Zuckermann supplied instruments to John Cage and many other musicians from his workshop in Greenwich Village, New York. The legendary 'Model T' harpsichord kit is Wolfgang Zuckermann's best known contribution to music history. But he had been making high quality finished instruments for a decade before entering the self-assembly market and his manufacturing business continues today under different ownership . In 1969 he published his influential book The Modern Harpsichord . This advocated ...

To collect, first scatter. To weaken, first strengthen. To abolish, first establish. To conclude, first initiate. This is called subtle illumination. Soft and weak overcome stiff and strong. Fish cannot escape the deep pool. A country's sharpest weapons Cannot be displayed. That wisdom is from a  translation of Lao-Tzu's Tao Te Ching . My recent rewarding listening has included Azahar (orange blossom in Spanish) from Simon-Pierre Bestion's vocal and instrumental ensemble La Tempête . This new release from burgeoning independent label Outhere Music takes listeners beyond their comfort zones by presenting performances of Guillaume de Machaut's Messe de Notre Dame , Igor Stravinsky's Mass, Alfonso X El Sabio's Cantigas de Santa Maria and Maurice Ohana's Cantigas with the sections of the four works juxtaposed instead of being programmed sequentially. As well as challenging accepted programming conventions this new CD is notable for showcasing M...

Warner are releasing a set of Bach's complete keyboard works played by Zuzana Růžičková to mark the harpsichordist's 90th birthday. Zuzana Růžičkováwas was married to the composer Viktor Kalabis (1923-2006), and in a 2013 post about Kabalis I said that the standout on a new 3 CD Supraphon anthology of Kalabis' concertos and symphonies was his Concerto for Harpsichord and Strings conducted by the composer with his wife as soloist. Zuzana Růžičková's advocacy of new music needs recognition. As well as performing her husband's works she collaborated with pioneering figures including Maurice Ohana and Iannis Xenakis . Moroccan-born Maurice Ohana in particularly remains a puzzlingly neglected composer; he was profiled here in a 2008 post which highlighted Zuzana Růžičková's advocacy. Let's hope that the well-deserved birthday accolades for Zuzana Růžičková draw some attention to these forgotten late 20th-century composers. No review samples or other comp...

Don't open the door to the study and begin reading Take down a musical instrument Let the beauty we love be what we do Those wise words are by the Sufi master Mevlana Jalaluddin Rumi , and the photo shows an original Zuckermann harpsichord kit from 1968 . I have recounted here before how during the second half of the twentieth century the harpsichord came back from the dead to reclaim its rightful position on the concert platform. Wolfgang Zuckermann's $150 harpsichord kits, which were launched in 1959, played a major roler in this rehabilitation, which extended beyond early music into the works of John Cage , Elliott Carter and Maurice Ohana . In the 1960s John Cage and Merce Cunningham were neighbours of Zuckermann in Greenwich Village, and the premiere of Cage's HPSCHD in 1969 used Zuckermann harpsichords . Wolfgang Zuckermann sold his harpsichord business in 1969 and left America in protest against the Vietnam war. He eventually settled in France and ran an idio...

In that photo of Groupe Jeune France , the senior composer of the influential group, André Jolivet, is seated at the piano, and Olivier Messiaen is standing on the left, with Yves Baudrier and Jean Yves Daniel-Lesur to his right. The provocative observation by Igor Stravinsky which forms my headline leads to another turning in the Messiaen path . My recent post How Olivier Messiaen became part of the Vichy myth explained that one of the chapters in La musique à Paris sous l'Occupation - the book that has prompted a reappraisal of Messiaen's wartime activities - is contributed by musicologists Yves Balmer and Christopher Brent Murray . Now Caroline Rae , who is a senior lecturer in the School of Music at Cardiff University and an authority on André Jolivet, has contacted me with some pertinent information about her forthcoming book André Jolivet: Music, Art and Literature *. Yves Balmer and Christopher Brent Murray have also contributed a chapter to her new book, a contri...

Now let me try to understand this one more time... Universal Music’s chief executive Max Hole tells us that classical musicians “need to think about the way they dress, and to appear more excited and engaged” and “the very buildings in which they play are often seen as forbidding and not places many people think they’d be comfortable entering”. So to reach a new audience Decca TV promotes a CD of traditionalist nuns decked out in habits singing Gregorian chant in one of the most forbidding and difficult to enter places on earth, the monastic enclosure of a cloistered religious order - see image above from Decca promotional video . And the label then follows the best selling Voices: Chant from Avignon with the album below sung by a Franciscan friar in full fig . Is it me or is it them? If you want your music dressed-down, exciting and engaging but still with a monastic connection, you must look beyond Decca and the other corporate labels. French independent Editions Hortus has ...

“Nothing, nothing is worth the crime of the abuse of a child” was the heartfelt comment added by a reader to a recent post . Child abuse is currently in the public eye , but the despicable crime has a history stretching back centuries. Tasteless coverage of this sensitive topic must be avoided at all costs; but treating child abuse as the crime that dare not speak its name must also be avoided. So, today's post takes us to France on the path of arguably history’s most notorious child abuser. And the reason for writing this post is that the villain is the subject of an undeservedly overlooked oratorio by an acclaimed contemporary composer; a composer who, coincidentally, is a woman. Prior to becoming probably the most notorious child abusers in history, the Breton knight Gilles de Rais fought alongside Joan of Arc against the English. Born in 1404, Gilles de Rais was heir to a family fortune that included several castles in the west of France; he earned early notoriety by first ...

There are two positions available to us - either crime which renders us happy, or the noose, which renders us unhappy. I ask whether there can be any hesitation, lovely Thérèse , and where will your little mind find an argument to combat that one? - D.A.F. Sade : Justine That is the epigraph from the first of Lawrence Durrell's tetralogy of novels The Alexandria Quartet which presents four perspectives on a single set of events in Alexandria, Egypt, at the time of World War II. Moroccan-born composer Maurice Ohana's Signes for flute, piano, percussion and two zithers (one tuned chromatically, one tuned in micro intervals) played by Ensemble "Ars Nova" de l'ORTF directed by Marius Constant is the soundtrack for this post. More on Lawrence Durrell here and more on that Erato recording and Maurice Ohana here . Background image of Maurice Ohana is from the unofficial blog of the Analog Arts Ensemble . Any copyrighted material on these pages is included as "...

During the second half of the twentieth century the harpsichord made the remarkable transition from almost extinct historical curiosity to concert hall staple not just for early music but also for new music from composers including John Cage , Elliott Carter and Maurice Ohana . Wolfgang Zuckermann's $150 harpsichord kits, which were launched in 1959, were a major factor in the rehabilitation of the harpsichord, and Zuckermann supplied instruments to John Cage and many other musicians from his workshop in Greenwich Village, New York. The legendary 'Model T' harpsichord kit is Wolfgang Zuckermann's best known contribution to music history. But he had been making high quality finished instruments for a decade before entering the self-assembly market and his manufacturing business continues today under different ownership . In 1969 he published his influential book The Modern Harpsichord which advocated a return to authentic specifications for contemporary instruments and...

December 1st was a chance day. Having closed up our rented apartment in Paris my wife headed back to London while I took the TGV train from the Gare de Lyon to Avignon en route to Le Barroux . When I arrived in Avignon in the late afternoon I dumped my backpack at my hotel and hurried off to Wolfgang Zuckermann's Libraire Shakespeare ( post follows ) before enjoying a leisurely meal and what I planned to be an early night. After the usual reasonably priced and excellent fare (and red wine!) at Les Artistes I was walking back to my hotel along La Rue de la République at 8.15pm when I noticed a large poster for an interesting concert at L'Opera . The performers were the Trio Chausson and what caught my eye particularly was that there was a composer on the programme who I had never heard of. Moreover the concert was that evening, it started in fifteen minutes and I was ten minutes brisk walk away from L'Opera . As I do not benefit from BBC-style expenses I settled for ...

... Ohana's imagination created a unique, complex and highly intense musical language which makes immense demands on both player and listener. Naxos deserve two very big thank yous. The first for treading where other major labels fear to go and releasing this outstanding CD of the guitar music of Maurice Ohana (1913-1992), complete with dazzling playing by Graham Anthony Devine and first rate sound from the St John Chrysostom Church, Newmarket , Canada. The second big thank you is for having the courage to put the words above on the CD sleeve. Naxos are famous for swimming against the tide. But, in an age where the increasingly frantic search for accessibilty makes it almost obligatory to remove any demands on the listener , it still takes courage to tell customers that they are in for a difficult listen. This challenging and immensely rewarding new CD reminded me of a story I read recently. It may be rather folksy, which is not surprising as it comes from Judy Collins' auto...

For some time I have I have been pondering on how to share with readers some of the huge selection of music that features here. My Overgrown Path programme on Future Radio , which ran for fifteen months, gained a good following and podcasts from some of the programmes are available on the right-hand side bar. But I felt the format was too rigid and production of the precisely timed programmes was very time consuming. So, as you can see from the header photo, I was back in the Future Radio studio last week preparing a pilot of a very different new programme. When I was writing about Mario Formenti's superb linked piano cycle Kurtag's Ghosts in April I admitted: I have always opposed the practice of breaking down complete works (e.g. Holst's The Planets ) into audience-friendly samples (Jupiter). But Kurtág’s Ghosts has made me realise that, in the right context, the sum of the parts can be greater than the whole. This thought-provoking double CD has led me to question m...

Judging by the emails offering free CDs, the major classical labels have finally realised that people buy music after reading about it here and on other leading music blogs . Elsewhere BBC Radio 3 famously offer bloggers a little bit on the side from their inexhaustible expenses account to write about their programmes, while others have received this message from Amazon: 'As a top reviewer, we would like to invite you to join Amazon Vine. Open to a limited number of customers, Vine members receive pre-release and new products--free of charge--in exchange for customer reviews'. I do not have a problem with free CDs, books or concert tickets per se and they sometimes feature here , although I do have a problem with the BBC's barely coded offer of accomodation and travel "in return for support". But would I be writing about Letting Go of the Glitz - the true story of one woman's struggle to live the simple life in Chelsea if Amazon Vine had not offered me a ...

'I'd have got rid of the creaky stuff on the Early Music Show, which was neither by Felix nor very Felixcitatious ...' writes the official BBC Radio 3 blogger about the network's Mendelssohn weekend. The creaky stuff was music by JS Bach, CPE Bach and WF Bach . A different perspective is provided in Angelique Chrisafis' excellent interview with Cannes film festival jury president Isabelle Huppert in Saturday's Guardian . From the article we learn that, unlike the official BBC blogger, Ms. Huppert is a big fan of the creaky stuff - 'In 2001 she appeared on the [Cannes] red carpet with a tattoo across her back and arms, quoting the Romanian writer Emil Cioran , "God can thank Bach because Bach is the proof of God's existence." ' I know a lot of readers share my own and Isabelle Huppert's passion for the creaky stuff. So I am featuring a newly released CD that has brought me a lot of pleasure. Le Clavecin et Son Histoire is one in a ser...

Maurice Ohana's musical influences are truly multi-cultural. He was born in Casablanca , Morocco in 1913 one year after the Treaty of Fès imposed French rule on the country. He came from Sephardic-Jewish stock and his parents were of Spanish-Gibraltarian origin and held British nationality as a result of the Gibraltar connection. This meant that Ohana was a British citizen until he became a French national in 1976. But although the British side of his parents determined his nationality it was his Spanish ancestry coupled with his exposure to traditional tribal music from Morocco and sub-Saharan Africa and Afro-Cuban folk-music that helped forge his musical style. The photos accompanying this post were all taken during my recent visit to Morocco and I hope they give a flavour of the unique culture that helped mould the young composer. The teenage Ohana left Morocco to study architecture in Paris, a vocation he shared with Iannis Xenakis . But he soon switched his studies to mu...