Goodbye Western art music

The storm was so bad even Peter Grimes would have stayed at home and watched BBC TV's repeat of a Steptoe film on its so-called culture channel. But a good-sized audience braved the worst Easter weather for decades to travel to Snape Maltings on Good Friday for a celebration of something more multi-cultural.

The collabaration between between early music group The Dufay Collective and the Spanish-based Al-Quimia was the outcome of one of Aldeburgh Music's pioneering artist residencies. This musical exploration of the multi-cultural society that flourished in Andalucia seven hundred years ago was a high risk project; this isn't exactly mainstream repertoire and hybrid projects such as this are rarely box-office hits. But that's not what Aldeburgh is about. Britten and Pears created Snape to celebrate the holy triangle of composer, performer and listener and on Friday evening, despite the stacked odds, the spirit of place prevailed and the vital electricity sparked from composer through performers to listener.

In fairness it wasn't so much a collabration as a triumph for Al-Quimia. When the two groups played in concert the collabaration really added no more than a strengthened rythym line. But when the players of the Spanish group took centre stage the music soared, and the Dufay musicians were quite content to join the audience in silent admiration. And what a vindication of Britten and Arup Associates' acoustic vision for Snape, even from our seats at the back of the 830 seater hall the nuances of the oud, dumbek, nay flute and kanun were crystal clear.

I have written here before about adventurous programming such as the celebrated concert comprising an Ockeghem Mass and a Mahler symphony in Berlin in 2000, while none other than Philip Glass has said that world music is the new classical. So, now Aldeburgh Music has seen what electifying musicians Al-Quimia are, please can we have a concert with a set by them in the first half and the Britten-Pears Orchestra playing Messiaen's might multi-cultural Turangalila Symphony in the second? Yes, I know there are boring problems like the platform lay-out. But I live close to Aldeburgh and will happily help swap the oud for the ondes Martenot and oboes in the interval.

Now see the art of the mosque.
Header image is Al-Quimia's only CD to date, available from Samsaoui in Spain. 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

Breaching the great firewall of China

My post identifying music blogs blocked by the Chinese government has caused justified indignation over on Renewable Music, Soho the Dog and elsewhere. But here is how you breach the great firewall of China. Make sure New Music Reblog mirrors your site, because that's not blocked.

Martin Scorsese's 1997 film Kundun, with its Philip Glass score, was a brave and pioneering anti-Chinese government statement. Remember you read it here first.
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A composer who rebelled against modernism

Mr. Holland: I doubt that you would enjoy any of the Naxos McKay discs, and I would not waste your time and money on them if I were you. I think you probably would be appalled by all three of them.

However, I bet you might enjoy all three Naxos George Rochberg discs: the Violin Concerto, the Second Symphony and the Fifth Symphony. The Naxos recording of the Rochberg Violin Concerto is the original version, before Isaac Stern imposed severe cuts on the piece.

The Second Symphony is serial, and very, very beautiful. I think you would love it. I am told that George Szell admired the work. The Fifth Symphony is mostly tonal, and also a very strong work. It was written for Solti and Chicago.

I suspect that you would find the three Rochberg discs to be very rewarding, while I think any of the McKay discs would cause you to grind your teeth.

Writes Andrew on my post about puffery and closed-mindedness. Read more about George Rochberg in this tribute headed Composer Who Rebelled Against Modernism which quotes Rochberg as saying he 'experienced mounting disaffection with the New York avant-garde, which dominated intellectual circles in the 1960s. "I ran in to New York as often as I could to hear concerts, and it all sounded gray and dull, by people with vast reputations based on what, I'll never know," he recalled in a 2001 interview.'

As Philip Glass himself said: These were the factors that brought about the rise and fall of 'the twentieth century music' that became so familiar during the century's final decades, because in narrowing the field down to one that was financially supportable, it also narrowed down the musical options.

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Cleaning the ears of the musically educated

It was, as I remember, through Jean [Erdman} - who is to dancing what Vivaldi was to music - that we met the other member of the party, composer John Cage, who had then become interested in the relationship of music to Zen and was beginning to explore the melodies of silence. My principal tie with John was that we had the same kind of humour, for he would simply bubble with laughter whenever describing his latest plans for musical outrage, such as a very formal piano recital in full evening dress, complete with an assistant to turn the pages, in which, however, the score consisted entirely of rests.

The joke wasn't merely that he was getting away with murder in the hopelessly deranged world of avant-garde music, so as to constitute the master charlatan of all, but that beyond all this and to make matters still funnier, he had also discovered and wanted to share the meditation process of listening to silence. This is simply to close your eyes and allow your ears to resonate with whatever sounds may be happening spontaneously, making no attempt to name or identify them, just as when one listens to formal music. After a while one hears the sounds emerging, without cause or origin, from the emptiness of silence, and so becomes witness to the beginning of the universe.

John slept that night on a divan in the living room, where we kept a hamster in a cage furnished with a vicous wheel, or bhavachakra, wherein the benighted creature could run forever without getting anywhere. This particular wheel squeaked abonimably as the hamster ran, so I told John to put the cage out in the passage if it bothered him. "Oh, not at all!" he said. "It's the most fascinating sound, and I shall use it as a lullaby."

What may not be generally understood about John is that he is an extremely accomplished musician who has, however, realized that we do not know how to listen. Conventional music, as well as conventional speech, have given us prejudiced ears, so that we treat all utterances which do not follow their rules as static, or insignificant noise. There was a time when painters, and people in general, saw landscape as visual static - mere background. John is calling our attention to sonic landscape, or soundscape, which simultaneously involves a project for cleaning the ears of the musically educated public.

As painters once framed "mere" landscape, John is using the ritual of the concert hall to frame silence and spontaneous sound, which we shall in due course find as beautiful as sky, hills, and forests. Imagine, then, the sonic equivalent of those places in national parks usually called Inspiration Point where tourists from Kansas exclaim at the view, "Oh, it's just like a picture!" Buddhahood is the state in which all sensory input is viewed in this way.

Priceless 'John Cage for dummies' from Alan Watts' autobiography, which has recently been republished by New World Library, Novato, California. Alan Watts, who is seen in my header photo, was born in England in 1915. He met the Zen scholar D.T. Suzuki at an early age, and moved to America where he became an Episcopal minister.

After leaving the church Alan Watts wrote more than twenty books on Zen Buddhism, and his teachings were one of the triggers for "beat Zen" in the late 1950s which saw expression in Jack Kerouac's novel Dharma Bums, Franz Kline's black and white abstractions and John Cage's compositions. In the 1960s Watts was considered by many to be a counterculture 'guru', and his circle included Timothy Leary, Aldous Huxley and Richard Alpert (Ram Dass). Watts was also an early environmentalist, and he died at his mountain retreat near Muir Woods, California in 1973.

Buddhism has been an important influence on many other modern composers including Philip Glass and Lou Harrison in the States, and Edmund Rubbra, John Palmer and Jonathan Harvey in England. In My Own Way is the compelling story of one man's pursuit of the Buddhist way, and the impact that his teachings had on many other important twentieth-century figures. Highly recommended, together with the Asian Journals of the Catholic mystic Thomas Merton.

* I am sure my readers' ears do not need cleaning, but this Sunday (Feb 10) you can hear John Cage's Concerto for Prepared Piano and Chamber Orchestra on my Future Radio programme at 5.00pm on Feb 10 and 12.50am Feb 11 framed by Canzoni by the 17th century Italian composer Girolamo Frescobaldi.


Now read about Zen and the art of new music.
Alan Watts website here. Listen on Future Radio at 5.00pm UK time this Sunday, Feb 10 and 1.00am Monday Feb 11 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. If you are in the Norwich, UK area tune to 96.9FM. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

The Buddhist way on internet radio

'Meaningful dialogues between religions is no doubt one of the most pressing challenges of the modern world. Developments over the past few years clearly confirm what a significant role this aspect of human communication represents. Despite breathtaking technological breakthroughs and the related trend of rational scepticism, man still remains a religous creature. Ignoring this sphere of human personality not only leads to an impoverishment of the spiritual culture of a nation, but also to mutual estrangement of nations. And so what a wonderfully enriching experience it is when two cultures meet in mutual dialogue rather than confrontation.'

These words introduce the inspiring new CD Close Voices from Far-away released by Sony in the Czech Republic. The mutual dialogue is provided by the Buddhist monks of Gyosan-ryu Tendai Shomyo from Japan and the Schola Gregoriana Pragensis from Prague, who are seen together in my footer image. The CD was recorded in a former Augustian monastery in České Lípě in November 2006, and was the brainchild of the Schola's founder David Eben.

Close Voices from Far-away is both a moving musical experience and a remarkable work of scholarship. Sources and editions are listed, and the comprehensive documentation includes short essays on the Shomyo Chants, the Buddhist Liturgy, the Tendai school of chant (Gyosan-ry Tendai Shomyo) as well as Gregorian Chant.

Hearing the two vocal groups individually is a privilege. But hearing the two ensembles singing together and layering Buddhist and Greorian Chant on two of the tracks takes us into a unique sound-world that is more contemporary than medieval. Read a fuller appreciation of this remarkable release here. Close Voices from Far-away is not easily found outside the Czech Republic. I bought my copy online from cdMusic.cz who provided a very fast and problem free service. Here is a link to the CD on their site.

I will be playing music from Close Voices from Far-away on my Future Radio programme this Sunday December 2 at 5.00pm UK time. The Buddhist and Gregorian Chants will be interleaved with music from Philip Glass' score for Kundun. This film by Martin Scorsese depicts the exile of the 14th Dalai Lama from Tibet. Both Close Voices from Far-away and Kundun are vivid reminders of the Buddhist culture that is under continued threat from the Chinese occupation of Tibet.


Now follow the Buddhist way with Lou Harrison. And remember that at 12.01am UK time Wednesday December 5 Future Radio is giving the world broadcast premiere of Alvin Curran's complete Inner Cities, with an introduction from pianist Daan Vandewalle. Full details of this webcast here.
Listen by launching the Radeo internet player from the right side-bar, or via the audio stream. Convert broadcast times 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. 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

Erik Satie - twenty hours of Vexations

Portrait of Erik Satie by Santiago Rusiñol

'There is also one curiosity on this CD: a short quotation from Vexations - its "motif", made up of a theme and two variations - which Satie required to be played 840 times in a row; depending on the tempo chosen, this would take between twelve and twenty-four hours.

Without entirely playing the composer's game, for obvious reasons, Jean-Yves Thibaudet here simply reveals the different elements of the task, by playing the theme alternately with the two variations, as requested by the composer, then the theme again, this time followed by the two variations, one after the other.'

That is how Jean-Yves Thibaudet avoids the Vexations issue on his 5 CD set Satie - The Complete Solo Piano Music, and his performance of the work lasts for just 3 minutes 38 seconds. But at Cambridge University the pianists of Sidney Sussex College Musical Society are made of tougher stuff. On Saturday November 24th at 7.00pm UK time they are performing Vexations the way Satie intended, and the performance (poster below), in the College's Mong Hall, should last around 20 hours - non-stop.


This rare performance of Vexations is much more than an interesting curiosity. Today Satie is remembered for his Gymnopedies and Gnossiennes, and little more. But his piano music was a major influence on minimalist composers such as Philip Glass. Glass' early Piece in the Shape of a Square for two flutes is a homage to Satie, while Alvin Curran followed Satie in the adoption of epic time scales. Curran's Inner Cities for solo piano lasts for four and a half hours, and it is a work you will, literally, being hearing a lot more of On An Overgrown Path in the next few weeks.

Erik Satie's Vexations has an important place in the history of twentieth-century music. You can experience it in full via a live stream of the performance over the internet starting at 7.00pm on Saturday November 24th UK time - time zone convertor here.

Congratulations to Sidney Sussex College Musical Society for going where others dare not tread, and for putting Vexations on the web. The pianists deserve a credit. They are Kim Ashton, Thomas Athorne, Will Buchanan, Jesper Carlson, James Freeman, Paul Kilbey, Sarah Latto, Joe Scott, Lydia Slobodian, Emily Smith, Jamal Sutton, and Matthew Tait. The photo below shows the quadrangle in Sidney Sussex College, Cambridge. There are worse places to experience twenty hours of Vexations.


Back story on music in Cambridge here.
Header image is part of one of the portraits of Eric Satie by Santiago Rusiñol. 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

Weaving the Web Wider

Diversity is the lifeblood of music. I was reminded of this when reading the following in Robert Maycock's thought-provoking, but opinionated, book Glass - A Portrait:

"Unfortunately the dream of twentieth century music became corrupted. With hindsight the corruption was inevitable, because there was never enough money for everyone who wanted it. The system required selection and the exercise of power. These were the factors that brought about the rise and fall of 'the twentieth century music' that became so familiar during the century's final decades, because in narrowing the field down to one that was financially supportable, it also narrowed down the musical options.

Judging the claims, making the choices, redirecting the money: traditionally these would be grounds for exercising a Solomon-like wisdom, purified by detachment from the circumstances. The trouble was that it was becoming hard for non-specialist officials or members of committees to grasp the musical issues, particularly when it came to new music as it burgeoned off into the intricate and unfathomable realm of post-war modernism. They needed guidance. They went to the people who knew this world best, the people it had trained. Experts in new music were invited into the system. And that was how the system came to be run by those who benefited from it."

Is Robert Maycock right? Just a few years into the new century is the cycle repeating itself? Are the musical options narrowing? Are the experts running the system?

If music blogs are an indication the answer is yes. The Blognoggle elite are getting bigger, and are now part of the system. And sure, I include On An Overgrown Path in that statement. I am frequently contacted, via the blog, by journalists wanting background on music news stories. Flattering, but also frightening.

Where are the new blogs? Where are the musical options? Where is the risk-taking? Where are the young Turks ready to challenge the so-called experts? Where is the diversity on the musical web? Please email me with more newcomers like this one, this one, and this one.

Photo credit Spiderz Rule! - diverse but definitely not for arachnophobes. 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 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.
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

Stranger music from Leonard Cohen

I'm a big fan of Leonard Cohen's words and music. There is an interesting article in today's Independent by Philip Glass about his settings of Cohen's poetry in his new work Book of Longing. And here is some inimitable Leonard Cohen prose:

ALL THERE IS TO KNOW ABOUT ADOLPH EICHMANN



EYES:......................Medium
HAIR:......................Medium
WEIGHT:....................Medium
HEIGHT:....................Medium
DISTINGUISHING FEATURES....None
NUMBER OF FINGERS:.........Ten
NUMBER OF TOES.............Ten
INTELLIGENCE...............Medium

What did you expect?
Talons?
Oversize incisors?
Green Saliva?

Madness?

By Leonard Cohen, from his Stranger Music, Selected Poems and Songs (McCelland& Stewart ISBN 077102231).Now read about a Holocaust opera's rare performance.
Biography of Eichmann here. 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

Essential minimal piano collection

June 2007 is rather early to be talking of CDs of the year, but it is going to take a lot to trump the treasure I have for you today. The Minimal Piano Collection is a survey of minimalist works for the solo piano. The breadth of the survey is shown by the composers represented - Philip Glass, John Adams, Simeon ten Holt, Arvo Pärt, Erik Satie, John Borstlap, Yann Tiersen, Michael Nyman, Jeroen van Veen, Wim Mertens, Tom Johnson, Jacob ter Veldhuis, Klaas de Vries, Carlos Micháns, Terry Riley and Friedrich Nietzsche - yes, you read that last name right. The joys are too numerous to list, but include John Adams' China Gates, Arvo Pärt's Variatonen zur Gesundung von Arinuschka, and a complete In C from Terry Riley, here is the complete track listing.

The pianist for this extraordinary 9 CD survey is the Dutchman Jeroen van Veen, who also contributes his own Minimal Preludes Books 1 and 2. The record label is the Dutch independent Brilliant Classics which has featured here several times before, including their 2 CD survey of John Cage's complete music for prepared piano.

If all that isn't enough good news, I paid just £21.99 for the 9 CD box in London last week. The recordings were all made in Barbara Church, Culemborg, in the Netherlands in October 2006, and the sound is excellent. The project is a tour de force for Jeroen van Veen, as well as appearing as pianist and composer he also engineered and produced the recordings himself through his own production company.

Not only is the Minimal Piano Collection essential in any CD collection, it is also one of the bargains of the decade.

For more minimalism try a different take on Terry Riley's In C.
Image credit - Plaster Surrogates 1982/84 by Allan McCollum. In the past I have recommended buying Brilliant Classics from Amazon reseller. That recommendation is now withdrawn, my last orders with them have been plagued by problems, and the customer support is non-existent. 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

What exactly is a contemporary classic?

'Peter Sellars doesn't think the age of genius - of great classical music - is dead. At all. When I last met him, wandering the streets of Vienna, he was raving about John Adams's latest opera A Flowering Tree - 'You can put his recent pieces up against anything of Verdi' - and the new Kaija Saariaho oratorio La Passion De Simone, which he called 'breathtaking'.

Sellars could be right. This is the most interesting time in classical music for at least a generation. It's safe to get back in the water after the chilly era of the over-intellectual avant-garde (the legacy of Arnold Schoenberg's 12-tone technique) or the initially exciting but occasionally facile repetitions of the Philip Glass and Steve Reich generation (cited as an influence by pop acts as different as Giorgio Moroder and Sonic Youth). Some of the most inspiring, moving and challenging - and also some of the most daft and insane - music of this century has been written by contemporary composers.

10 contemporary classics

1. El Nino - John Adams (2000)
2. Tevot - Thomas Ades (2007)
3. St Mark Passion - Osvaldo Golijov (2003)
4. L'Amour de Loin - Kaija Saariaho (2000)
5. 3rd String Quartet - Gorecki (2007)
6. Neruda Songs - Peter Lieberson (2007)
7. You Are (Variations) - Steve Reich (2006)
8. A Flowering Tree- John Adams (2006)
9. Nuevo - Kronos Quartet (2001)
10. The Tempest - Thomas Ades (2003)'

From a major feature in today's Observer Music Monthly. Great to see contemporary music getting the exposure it serves. But the article rather misses the point that there is a lot of exciting new music, and even some contemporary classics, beyond the corporate bandwagons of Adams, Ades, Glass, Gorecki, Golijov, Reich et al.

Now read about inspiring, moving and challenging new music from a host of other contemporary composers.
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New music for bells

An exciting new audio installation at this year’s Norfolk and Norwich Festival proves, once again, that some really creative things are happening at the summer music festivals if you know where to look. The Norwich Festival has built quite a reputation with its audio installations; two years ago I featured Janet Cardiff’s 40 Part Motet which went on to New York's Museum of Modern Art, and last year Helen Ottoway’s Thin Air featured on the path.

This year’s installation features the work of contemporary composer Terry Mann whose previous post-minimalist compositions include an interlude for gamelan orchestra written for Joanna MacGregor to play in a concert of John Cage’s prepared piano pieces, and No Ordinary Piano Suite for Prepared Piano. Follow this link to hear samples of Terry Mann’s past work.

His new commission, The Bells of Paradise, is a complex hour work score for church bells, with seven scored sections linked by intervals of urban ambient sounds. Bells from twenty-two churches and cathedrals in East Anglia and London were used to give a wide range of voices. The recording is made in 5.1 multi-channel format, and was performed in Norwich in the church of St John Maddermarket during the 2007 Norfolk and Norwich Festival. The installation is a joint commission by Norwich and three other festivals at which it will be performed, Spitalfields London, Bury St Edmunds and Lichfield.

Terry Mann’s new work is the second electronic composition for church bells in recent years. Jonathan Harvey’s 1980 Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco was commissioned by the Centre George Pompidou in Paris and created at IRCAM by sampling the sound of the great tenor bell at Winchester Cathedral. Appropriately The Bells of Paradise and Mortuos Plango, Vivos Voco are being performed together on June 16 at a Spitalfields Festival concert in London. Also on the programme, which is a celebration of bells, is Chris Dench's work for solo piano passing bells: night. At the Lichfield concert Bells Of Paradise is being previewed before Philip Glass' opening concert of solo piano music.

The Spitalfields concert will be recorded by the BBC for later broadcast, but On An Overgrown Path has scooped Radio 3 for the first opportunity to hear The Bells of Paradise online. Terry Mann has agreed to the complete opening section ‘Birth’ (3’ 18”) being made available on the path, and if your speakers are live you will have heard it, with those gamelan echoes, as you read this post.

And talking of IRCAM and the Norwich Festival …
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New music from the East

Hello Pliable, I read your article "Philip Glass - World Music Is The New Classical". I thought you might find this interesting - www.biswabratachakrabarti.com/composition/
Kind regards, Manuel

Nice cue for Classic misunderstandings - Eastern tunings
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What a bum note, Norman

It's Critics 2 Creatives 0 in today's Observer. First English National Opera's production of Philip Glass's Satyagraha concedes an early goal to Anthony Holden:

"Oh, do get on with it ~ As music, extremely well performed, it is interesting for 10 minutes, pleasant for another 10, then insufferably monotonous for the ensuing three hours-plus. Some will emerge believing they have seen an inspirational affirmation of the human spirit, others a non-violent attempt to bore the oppressor into submission."

But that's nothing to Norman Lebrecht's defeat by Adams Mars-Jones:

"What a bum note, Norman ~ The strange fascination of reading the book lies in seeing how an unstable emulsion of attitudes breaks down into its components. The style is desperately uncomfortable, full of high-impact, low-logic phrasemaking: 'He was on a vertical curve'; 'Prolific? He invented the word'; 'Vladimir Horowitz had more comebacks than Lucifer.' If this is a serious book on an important subject, it should look to its own standards."

Which is precisely what many of us have been saying for some time. Just glad the critics didn't review Peter Maxwell Davies' speech to the Incorporated Society of Musicians. Its style suggests that Max has been reading too much Norman Lebrecht.
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Simple gifts – Philip Glass

As we prepare for Philip Glass’ seventieth birthday on 31st January 2007 his Etudes for solo piano have been one of my great discoveries of 2006. There is a variety in these beautiful miniatures that I sometimes find lacking in his more elaborate compositions. Glass’ own recording on Orange Mountain Music is definitive, and the composer really says it all in the sleeve note: ’The Etudes began for me in the mid-90s and I am still adding new music to this collection as I write these notes in 2003. Their purpose was two-fold. First, to provide new music for my solo piano concerts. And second, for me to expand my piano technique with music that would enhance and challenge my playing. Hence, the name Etudes, or “studies”. The result is a body of work that has a broad range of dynamic, tempo and emotion.'

Simple music, simple gift, and simply great. And now read Philip Glass explaining that World Music is the new classical
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Allen Ginsberg live via streamed audio

Philip Glass' Symphony No. 6 - Plutonian Ode was co-commissioned by Carnegie Hall and Brucknerhaus Linz to celebrate the composer's 65th birthday. The work's libretto was written by his late friend, Allen Ginsberg, and Glass takes up the story: 'During the last ten years of Allen's life we had performed frequently together in poetry/music collaborations. Allen was a superb reader of his own work and I was often inspired to compose new piano music for these occasional collaborations. In the case of Hydrogen Jukebox, we developed an evening length opera which was designed by Jerome Sirlin and directed by Ann Carlson. We presented that work in over 30 cities as part of an international tour. It had been our plan to make a new, major collaboration based on his epic poem Plutonium Ode (1978). Before he died in 1997, Allen had made several recordings for me of the poem in preparation for the new work. At that time I had in mind simply an extended piano work to accompany Allen in live performance. I put aside the project in 1997, feeling that I wouldn't want to go ahead without Allen. '

But the opportunity then came to make the present recording as Philip Glass explains: 'A few years passed and the commission of a new symphony from Carnegie Hall and the Brucknerhaus Linz reawakened my interest in the project. I felt, then, that Plutonium Ode was unfinished business between Allen and myself and this would be the opportunity to complete it. By then, the piano music I had originally imagined had grown to a full orchestra and Allen's resonant speaking voice to a lyric soprano. The three movements of the symphony follow the three parts of the poem, and follow, also, the passage of the poem -- the first movement is a passionate outcry against nuclear contamination and pollution, the second a turn towards healing, and the final movement an epiphany arrived at through personal transformation.'

The new world-premiere recording from Orange Mountain (photo below), performed by soprano Lauren Flanigan accompanied by the Bruckner Orchester Linz conducted by Dennis Russell Davies, brings this powerful work to life. The set includes a disc of Allen Ginsberg reading the original poem. Here to complement this excellent new release is Ginsberg's poem America (with parental warning on lyrics). But the words are only part of the story, for the full impact follow this link to hear Allen Ginsberg himself reciting the complete poem in nine minutes of streamed audio. Do listen to it, it is the most powerful performance you will hear for years. Just one of the free streamed recordings available on the wonderful new Poetry Archive web site which celebrates the music of words.

America I've given you all and now I'm nothing.
America two dollars and twenty-seven cents January 17, 1956.
I can't stand my own mind.
America when will we end the human war?
Go fuck yourself with your atom bomb
I don't feel good don't bother me.
I won't write my poem till I'm in my right mind.
America when will you be angelic?
When will you take off your clothes?
When will you look at yourself through the grave?
When will you be worthy of your million Trotskyites?
America why are your libraries full of tears?
America when will you send your eggs to India?
I'm sick of your insane demands.
When can I go into the supermarket and buy what I need with my good looks?
America after all it is you and I who are perfect not the next world.
Your machinery is too much for me.
You made me want to be a saint.
There must be some other way to settle this argument.
Burroughs is in Tangiers I don't think he'll come back it's sinister.
Are you being sinister or is this some form of practical joke?
I'm trying to come to the point.
I refuse to give up my obsession.
America stop pushing I know what I'm doing.
America the plum blossoms are falling.
I haven't read the newspapers for months, everyday somebody goes on trial for murder.
America I feel sentimental about the Wobblies.
America I used to be a communist when I was a kid and I'm not sorry.
I smoke marijuana every chance I get.
I sit in my house for days on end and stare at the roses in the closet.
When I go to Chinatown I get drunk and never get laid.
My mind is made up there's going to be trouble.
You should have seen me reading Marx.
My psychoanalyst thinks I'm perfectly right.
I won't say the Lord's Prayer.
I have mystical visions and cosmic vibrations.
America I still haven't told you what you did to Uncle Max after he came over from Russia.

I'm addressing you.
Are you going to let our emotional life be run by Time Magazine?
I'm obsessed by Time Magazine.
I read it every week.
Its cover stares at me every time I slink past the corner candystore.
I read it in the basement of the Berkeley Public Library.
It's always telling me about responsibility. Businessmen are serious. Movie producers are serious. Everybody's serious but me.
It occurs to me that I am America.
I am talking to myself again.

Asia is rising against me.
I haven't got a chinaman's chance.
I'd better consider my national resources.
My national resources consist of two joints of marijuana millions of genitals an unpublishable private literature that goes 1400 miles and hour and twentyfive thousand mental institutions.
I say nothing about my prisons nor the millions of underpriviliged who live in my flowerpots under the light of five hundred suns.
I have abolished the whorehouses of France, Tangiers is the next to go.
My ambition is to be President despite the fact that I'm a Catholic.

America how can I write a holy litany in your silly mood?
I will continue like Henry Ford my strophes are as individual as his automobiles more so they're all different sexes
America I will sell you strophes $2500 apiece $500 down on your old strophe
America free Tom Mooney
America save the Spanish Loyalists
America Sacco & Vanzetti must not die
America I am the Scottsboro boys.
America when I was seven momma took me to Communist Cell meetings they sold us garbanzos a handful per ticket a ticket costs a nickel and the speeches were free everybody was angelic and sentimental about the workers it was all so sincere you have no idea what a good thing the party was in 1935 Scott Nearing was a grand old man a real mensch Mother
Bloor made me cry I once saw Israel Amter plain. Everybody must have been a spy.
America you don're really want to go to war.
America it's them bad Russians.
Them Russians them Russians and them Chinamen. And them Russians.
The Russia wants to eat us alive. The Russia's power mad. She wants to take our cars from out our garages.
Her wants to grab Chicago. Her needs a Red Reader's Digest. her wants our auto plants in Siberia. Him big bureaucracy running our fillingstations. That no good. Ugh. Him makes Indians learn read. Him need big black niggers.
Hah. Her make us all work sixteen hours a day. Help.
America this is quite serious.
America this is the impression I get from looking in the television set.
America is this correct?
I'd better get right down to the job.
It's true I don't want to join the Army or turn lathes in precision parts factories, I'm nearsighted and psychopathic anyway.
America I'm putting my queer shoulder to the wheel.

America is published in Collected Poems 1947-1980 (Harper & Row, 1984), and the version here is taken from the web site Modern & Contemporary American Poetry

International Physicians for the Prevention of Nuclear War (IPPNW) is a non-partisan international grouping of medical organisations dedicated to the abolition of nuclear weapons. They work with the long-term victims of nuclear explosions and accidents from Hiroshima to Chernobyl, and their work has been recognised with the 1984 UNESCO Peace Prize, and 1985 Nobel Peace Prize. For the last 21 years IPPNW-Concerts has been working from its Berlin office with top musicians world-wide to raise funds for their work. The organisation is run by medical practitioner Dr Peter Hauber and his wife.

As well as being a fantastic cause there is some music well worth exploring available on IPPNW-Concerts' own CD label, and in co-productions with Swedish label BIS. These are all live recordings of concerts promoted by IPPNW over the years. There are forty-nine CDs in the catalogue with composers ranging from Monteverdi to Elliot Carter. Of particular relevance to this article is Wort und Musik - 60 Jahre nach Hiroshima. This is a live recording made at the March 2005 'Nuclear Weapons Inheritance Project' which mixes readings in German from a range of authors including Robert Oppenheimer, Enrico Fermi, Albert Einstein and Sadako Kurihara with relevent music including the aria from Bach’s Goldberg Variations, Shostakovich's String Quartet No 8 and Schubert’s Quartettsatz. On 24th April IPPNW have a fund raising concert in the Philharmonie Berlin with the Grammy winning baritone Thomas Quasthoff singing Mahler's Kindertotenlieder. All proceeds from this concert and the sale of their CDs benefit those in dire need as a result of war, industrial and natural catastrophe. Need I say more?

Text on Glass' Sixth Symphony and cover shot from Orange Mountain. Image credits - Allen Ginsberg Trust. Image owners - if you do not want your picture used in this article please contact me and it will be removed. Report broken links, missing images and other errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk
If you enjoyed this post follow An Overgrown Path to The Winter's Tale * For unto us a child is born * Farewell to Stromness * 'Tis the gift to be free * The radiance of a thousand suns *