Found On An Overgrown Path recently

* I think Simple Song is a wonderful song to live by. I think the Mass is greatly misunderstood, Maybe we have better understanding these days - posted by Dave on Critical Mass

* "The last concert" of the Berlin Philharmonic Orchestra is mentioned in: Cornelius Ryan: The Last Battle and in Antony Beevor: Berlin. There the date mentioned is April 12,1945. This seems to be corrobarated by Taschners widow, who said, that the day after they arrived in Thurnau, Bavaria, they were liberated by the US Army. According to military reports and maps, this was April 13 or 14.(2nd US Armored Division). So far no documents of Taschners arrival in the USA could be found. All, that is known about his being there in 1938 is from Taschners own stories.
On passenger lists of ships arriving in New York and Boston, his name does not appear. Do you know more? Tijn Vellekoop (Taschner pupil, E-Mail bodio at xs4all dot nl) Netherlands - posted by Tijn Vellekoop on The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

* Would you be interested in My Bible, which I have been making since 1987? I am James G. Pepper and if you google "The Pepper Bible" you will find my page with links to CBS and ABC and the United Methodist Church videos on my work. I have done what they have done, but I did it all by myself in Dallas and I have more illuminations in my set of Gospels than they have in their entire bible! And Saint Johns has known about my work ever since the Dallas Morning News interviewed them comparing the two bibles in 2001 - posted by James Pepper on The Saint John's Bible - illuminating dark times .

* Recall, pliable, that Eugene Ormandy also lead the first U.S. performance, in Philadelphia, of the Shostakovich Symphony No. 13, in 1970, eight years after its Moscow premiere. Rostropovich was reported to have smuggled the score to the work out of the Soviet Union - posted by Garth Trinkl on Condoleezza's musical mystery tour revealed.

* I found your father's photograph of Clark Gable during an internet search. We are in the development stages of production on a documentary for Discovery Communications, Inc.'s Military Channel about celebrities in uniform and would love to see if there was a way we could utililize your photograph in our documentary. Thanks very much. Andrew Tilles, Production Manager, Bill Brummel Productions, Inc. 12031 Ventura Blvd., Suite 2, Studio City, CA 91604 - posted by Andrew Tilles on Farewell to Stromness

* Oh, if only this were true. I could see the "retinue" stomping out in disgust .. or would they be forced to sit thru the whole thing ?
We can dream, can't we. How many times have we daydreamed that we could put some world leader in a room, in chains, while we try to explain to them why they are such idiots!
Thanks for the day dream! - posted by Richard Friedman on Security scare changes Condoleezza's concert

And some very interesting links found travelling the Path. First, thanks to Carol Murchie (see A Year at the Symphony) for The Face of Bach, a fascinating web site solely devoted to portraits of the master, and The Church of the Transfiguration, Cape Cod, a wonderful new Romanesque style church with a superb organ and artworks, and I am told, liturgical music to match . And two more Bach web sites, JSB Workshop is an excellent blog that is linked to JSB Chorales which has a lot of downloads and other resources. Finally a really fascinating oddity, a Danish web site with a database of 930 composers and musicians who have really made the big time and had their portraits published on postage stamps. The image page takes a while to load, but hang on in - it's worth it. All the stamps in this article come, with many thanks, from Paul Kristensens online collection. A fascinating, and valuable resource, and I leave you to work out who the musicians are.

The last few days have also been very rewarding away from the blog. An infinitely moving Bach St John Passion in Norwich Cathedral on Saturday. 'He is the sun, whose light blots out the feeble rays of other composers. There are many whose music I enjoy, but I would throw their entire opus on the bonfire to save one fugue of the divine Bach' - so wrote fellow pilgrim Anne Mustoe.

Back in August 2004, in the first month of posting, I featured a Robert Frost poem because it summed up what I was trying to do with this blog. It still does, so here it is again:

The Road Not Taken (1915) by Robert Frost

Two roads diverged in a yellow wood,
And sorry I could not travel both
And be one traveler, long I stood
And looked down one as far as I could
To where it bent in the undergrowth.

Then took the other, as just as fair,
And having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was grassy and wanted wear;
Though as for that the passing there
Had worn them really about the same.

And both that morning equally lay
In leaves no step had trodden black.
Oh, I kept the first for another day!
Yet knowing how way leads on to way,
I doubted if I should ever come back.

I shall be telling this with a sigh
Somewhere ages and ages hence:
Two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I took the one less traveled by,
And that has made all the difference.

Image credit: Fractal from Archipress.com. 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
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