The musical tastes of our politicians

Downing Street last night insisted that Tony Blair had paid properly and in full for his winter break, after a day of confusion over the arrangements surrounding his stay in the Miami mansion of former Bee Gee Robin Gibb (left). As yet another political storm rages around Blair's holiday arrangements it is difficult to know what is more suspect, his financial judgement or his taste in music. But appalling musical taste is not limited to the prime minister, as Michael Church pointed out in an Independent article in July.

What it adds up to is the rampant anti-intellectualism that I found Sir Peter Maxwell Davies (below) raging against, when I visited him at the Royal Academy of Music. The Master of the Queen's Music has just been listening to David Cameron's Desert Island Discs choice on BBC Radio 4, and he's not amused. "In any other European country," he says, "a politician who chose that sort of garbage would be laughed out of court. The anti-artistic stance of our leaders gets up my nose. Their main aim is to turn us all into unquestioning passive consumers who put money into the bosses' pockets. That is now the purpose of education."

David Cameron is the leader of the Conservative Party, and here is the music which caused Max to rage.

1. Tangled Up In Blue, Bob Dylan, CBS 26334
2. Ernie, Benny Hill, EMI CDGO 2040
3. Wish You Were Here, Pink Floyd, EMI 536112
4. On Wings of Song, Mendelssohn, Kiri Te Kanawa and Utah Symphony Orchestra
Decca 475 6013
5. Fake Plastic Trees, Radiohead, Parlophone CDRS6411
6. This Charming Man, Smiths, WEA, YZ000ICD2
7. Perfect Circle, R.E.M, I.R.S.DMIRHI
8. All these Things that I've Done, The Killers, Lizard King,Lizard012

Book:The River Cottage Cookbook by Hugh Fearnley-Whittingstall
Luxury: A crate of Scottish whisky.

For more on the musical tastes of politicians visit Condoleezza's musical mystery tour revealed, and for more Maxwell Davies visit A musician with teeth,.
Image credit - MaxOpus. 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

Comments

Pliable said…
Today's Guardian leader tells us that Bill Clinton used focus groups to select his holiday destinations.

Not too surprising as many thought that David Cameron's media-friendly selection of music came from his political strategist Lynton Crosby.
2:54 pm
Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

David Munrow - more than early music

Image
'David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London transformed our view of medieval music. The impact of their performances far surparssed any that had gone before: by demonstrating how medieval music could sound normal, they created a niche for it in the concert hall and on record that it has never lost' ~ From Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's notes for Music of the Gothic era May 15 2007 is the thirty-first anniversary of the death of David Munrow. His contribution to the acceptance, understanding and performance of early music almost defies summary. He was born in 1942, and learnt the bassoon and recorder as a child. Between school and university he travelled and taught in South America , and started the collection of ethnic instruments that were to give him, and the world, a new perspective on early music making. He read English at Pembroke College , Cambridge, and was encouraged by Thurston Dart to take an active role in the music-making of that most musical of cities. ...
Read more

Classical music must be doing something wrong

Image
Classical music's website of choice Slipped Disc  today runs a story on the latest RAJAR UK radio listening figures . This story states that a "...record number of individual hours was spent listening to [BBC Radio 3]. They must be doing something right". Which is good news; but only for those who believe that facts should never stand in the way of a good story. Because simple arithmetic shows that BBC Radio 3 is not doing very much right, while UK classical radio in its entirety is doing something wrong.   In the quarter ended September 2024, BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM audiences were 2.039m and 4.416m respectively. Which gives a total audience for the two classical stations of 6.455m. For the same quarter in September 2023 the audiences were 2.002m and 4.467m, giving a total classical radio audience 12 months previously of 6.469m.  So BBC Radio 3's "something right" turns out to be a fractional increase in its audience year on year, and a contribution ...
Read more

Soundtrack for a porn movie

Image
"No, you have not landed on Slipped Disc by mistake. Respected electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze tells the story himself.  The origins of " Body Love " are quite funny. I received a call from a movie producer named Manfred Menz and I wound up becoming his principal composer for a period of time. Amongst others, I composed the "Barracuda" soundtrack for him [1978, previously unreleased on album]. This led to a friendship which lasts till today. Menz now lives in Malibu, California where I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy calls me and asks if I would compose the score to a porn movie. I said: "Porn? Nah, I don't do that kind of thing".  As it turned out, the director of the movie, Lasse Braun, had already shot it and had used my albums " Timewind " [1975] and " Moondawn " [1976] as a kind of "working soundtrack". This was obvious because the couples in the film were moving in time to my gro...
Read more

Why Simon Bolivar is important

Image
The opera Simón Bolívar by Thea Musgrave was a joint commission by the Los Angeles Music Centre and Scottish Opera . Born in Scotland in 1928 Musgrave studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, knew Benjamin Britten , and has lived in the United States since 1974. For more on Thea Musgrave, and other women composers, follow this path . Thea Musgrave's two act opera tells the story of the Venezuelan folk hero Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), who liberated six South American countries from Spanish colonial rule. Bolívar was a passionate idealist, and brilliantly successful freedom fighter (he is seen in the painting above finalising his campaign). But he failed to unite the liberated countries under one flag, and today they are the independent states of Venezuela , Colombia , Ecuador , Peru , Panama , and Bolivia . In the 21st century Simón Bolívar is still revered for defeating the Spanish and liberating the region from colonial domination. There is no commercial recording of the opera Si...
Read more

The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Image
Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol...
Read more

Where are classical music’s alternative voices?

Image
"Their style is early cunnilingual, late patricidal, lunchtime in the Everglades, Black Forest blood sausage on electrified bread, Jean Genet up a totem pole, artists at the barricades, Edgar Allan Poe drowning in his birdbath, Massacre of the Innocents, tarantella of the satyrs, L.A. pagans drawing down the moon... Jim Morrison [seen above] is an electrifying combination of angel in grace and dog in heat... The Doors are musical carnivores in a land of musical vegetarians... The Doors scream into the darkened auditorium what all of us in the underground are whispering more softly in our hearts: We want the world and we want it... NOW!" Young music critic of the year contender Andrew Mellor would do well to study that purple prose by Tom Robbins , which describes a 1967 Doors concert in Seattle. Robbins was writing for the underground paper Helix , and his plea of “We want the world and we want it… NOW!" chimes with Mellor’s recent musings in the New Statesman about cl...
Read more

Late night thoughts after listening to BBC Radio 3

Image
My thoughts about Radio 3 today are summarised very well in this saying attributed to the sixteenth century  Hindu mystic poet Meerabi . I have felt the swaying of the elephant's shoulders, and now you want me to climb on a jackass?   Try to be serious.  More than a thousand sacred songs - bhajans - and Hindi poems are said to have been composed by Meerabi. Header image is cover artwork from the album Ineffable Mysteries from Shpongleland by the Goan trance duo Shpongle .
Read more

Easter at Aldeburgh

Image
Iken Church in the distance from Iken Cliff, all photos taken today under a typical East Anglian sky. The overgrown path led me to Iken Church this Easter Saturday morning. The church is on a promontory sticking out into the River Ald downstream from Snape . It is a place of inspiring beauty and peace, a wonderful setting for a monastery. St Botolph built his minster at Iken in the 7th century, and became the first person in Britain to follow the Rule of St Benedict . The monastery was destroyed by raiding Danes in the winter of 969/70, and parts of the current church date from the rebuilding which started in the 11th century. The story of destruction by Viking invaders is a reminder of how this part of East Anglia is on the margins of civilisation. During World War 2 the village of Iken was evacuated and the church closed to make way for a practice battleground. And despite the beauty of the area the Sizewell nuclear power station to the north is a constant, and visible, reminder ...
Read more

Mahler with such human warmth and soul

Image
'A greater triumph awaited [Sir John Barbirolli] in January 1963 when he conducted Mahler's Ninth Symphony. Mahler was not often played in Berlin, and the [Berlin Philharmonic] orchestra frankly confess that they did not particularly like his music - 'but,' said one of the principals, 'Sir John made us love it as much as he did himself and we played it as he wanted.' So well, indeed, that a leading Berlin critic wrote: 'Not since Furtwängler have we heard such human warmth and soul combined with superb musicianship.' The orchestra themselves asked that Barbirolli should record the symphony with them, the first English conductor to record with the Berlin Philharmonic since Beecham in 1937. During the cold January of 1964 this famous recording was made in the Jesus-Christuskirche , in the suburb of Dahlem' - from Barbirolli, the Authorised Biography by Michael Kennedy. Sir John Barbirolli's Mahler Nine is currently available in the EMI Great ...
Read more