On An Overgrown Path

Have been listening to the wonderful Hilliard Ensemble recording of Gesualdo' Tenebrae responses (recorded incidentally in the Benedictine Abbey of Douai, Berkshire, England , see picture below). Supremely beautiful music, but the product of a very troubled mind. In 1590 Gesulado created one of the great sixteen century music scandals when he had his first wife, her lover, and his son murdered. Hearing the wonderful Sacconi String Quartet (now it is not just policemen that are looking younger........................... ...........it is also string quartets) playing Schuman's Quartet no 3 (opus 41) reminded me of how much great music is written in chaotic regions. After this great work Schumann abandoned the quartet format forever. His latter years were dogged by periods of depression, he began to suffer halucianations, attempted suicide, and died two years later cared for by his wife and the young Brahms Nick Drake, see A troubled cure..for a troubled mind also spent his last y...

The inspiration for Jean-Paul Satre's Being and Nothingness came to him in a Paris cafe, when he asked the waitress for a cup of coffee with no cream. "I'm sorry," she replied, "we're out of cream. How about with no milk"?

Improvisation 31 (Sea Battle) 1913 by Wassily Kandinsky The Nick Drake thread below started from Brad Mehldau's improvisations on his new Live in Tokyo CD. I keep coming across improvisation on The Overgrown Path, and am starting to understand its importance. One of the most progressive record labels around is the French company Alpha (at the risk of sounding boring why are so many good things like this French? - does anyone know an innovative baroque recording company from the US? But that's probably an unfair comment because this thread started with Brad Mehldau ,who was born in Jacksonville, Florida). I bought Nobody's Jig by the wonderfully named Les Witches in Heffer's splendidl CD shop in Cambridge at the weekend. Then I moved on to All' Improviso with L'Arpeggiata and Christina Pluhar also on their Les Chants de la Terre label. Now no prizes for guessing what All' Improviso is about. In the very good sleeve notes for this recording Christina Plu...

If you put a bunch of healthy fleas into a jam jar which they can can easily jump out of, then put on the lid, the fleas will keep jumping up and hitting their heads. After a while, they'll jump just short of the lid because they don't want to get a headache. If you take the lid off, the fleas won't be able to jump out any more. There are two ways to get them to jump out: either put a Bunsen burner underneath, or put in a normal flea which jumps out straight away and the others will follow it. People are either motivated by force or by inspiration.

Silence is the monk's greatest treasure: it favours everybody's prayer, work and rest; that is why we are happy to share it with you. Silence is absolute from Compline to Lauds of the following day; during the day, avoid loud conversation in the cells and the corridors. It is not possible to listen to the radio or cassette without earphones. Lastly, out of respect for the recollection of others, we would ask our guests to keep silence during breakfast and tea. Extract from leaflet Welcome to The Abbey +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Music is the space between the notes - Claude Debussy ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The best writer is the one who communicates his thoughts in the least number of words - anon ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ The word " noise " is derived from the Latin word "nausea," meaning seasickness. Noise is among the most pervasive pollutants today. Noise from road traffic, jet planes, je...

Put bacteria in a test tube with food and oxygen, and they will grow explosively, doubling in number every twenty minutes or so, until they form a solid, visible mass. But finally multiplication will cease as they become poisoned by their own waste products. In the centre of the mass will be a core of dead and dying bacteria, cut off from the food and oxygen of their environment by the solid barrier of their neighbours. The number of living bacteria will fall almost to zero, unless the waste products are washed away. From The Doomsday Book by Gordon Rattray-Taylor

Saw the black gospel group GK Real live last night - very good. The excellent lead singer said the Lord is claiming music back - reminded me of how both today's pop and classical music are built on the platform of religous performances. Servant and Master am I: Servant of the dead And master of the living. Through my spirit the immortals speak the message That make the world weep and laugh, And wonder and worship.For I am the instrument of God: I am music. -Anonymous This thread leads me to a wonderful recording of Giovanni Battista Pergolesi's Five Part Mass that I bought in France recently on the K617 label. Nick Drake has featured in several recent postings, and by another of those fascinating pieces of synchronicity Pergolesi and Nick Drake both died at the shockingly young age of 26, albeit nearly 250 years apart. The pictures at the beginning and end of this post show some haunting similarities despite their totally different musical genres. The purpose of this posting ...

I've just returned from France, the whole trip was very stimulating. I tried to make it a pilgimage (personal rather religous) and travelled light (relatively - I took seven books!) with just a rucksack and used public transport - which is very good in France. I got a lot out of my time at Ste Madeleine, but equally learnt a lot from being close to the French people, and on my own which meant I was closer to the local people. Once again I'm afraid I was left wondering what we are doing wrong in Britain, the French education system seems to be so much better, their town centres are so much more civilised and safe, and the absence of rubbish tipping (fly tipping) by the edge of public roads was noticeable compared with England. It was also interesting to see numbers of young people at Mass in Nimes on a Sunday. (By the kind of serendipidity that this site was created to exploit I was reading Patrick Humphries' Nick Drake - the biography (see A troubled cure...for a troubled ...