Two hands clap and there is a sound


Today's Koan.
Now playing - music by an American composer, James Tenney's 1971 Koan for violin and piano.
Photo is one of a sequence by me which you can view here, (c) On An Overgrown Path 2007. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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David Munrow - more than early music

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'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. ...
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How Wagner redacted Parsifal's Muslim brother

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That photo was taken when I visited the remote Tinmel Mosque in Morocco's Atlas Mountains. My visit prompted the post Is this Wagner's legendary Monsalvat? which highlighted the tenuous links between Wagner's Parsifal and the Islamic culture of al-Andalus. My further exploration of this subject has since uncovered some surprising and little known facts. Parziva l, the epic poem on which Wagner based his music drama, is a medieval romance by the knight-poet Wolfram von Eschenbach . In the poem Parzival's father, the knight-adventurer Gahmuret , served the caliph of Baghdad; which meant a Christian knight was serving a Muslim. While in the caliph's service Gahmuret married the Black pagan queen Belkane. She became pregnant with their child, but their mixed-ethnicity son Feirefiz was born after Gahmuret returned to Wales. On his return to Wales he won the hand of a queen called Herzeloyde, and that union resulted in the birth of Parzival. Which meant Parzival h...
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Musicians against indifference

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Third rate music on Naxos' American Classics?

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Male American pioneers

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What stunning sound the BBC engineers achieved for their live broadcast of Valery Gergiev's Mahler 8 with the London Symphony Orchestra this evening. Yes, the close miking of the instruments necessitated by the very long resonance of the building was evident. But St Paul's Cathedral is one of the most difficult spaces in the world both to perform and record in, and the BBC Radio 3 technicians produced some of the best sound I have heard from my B & W Nautilus 803 loudspeakers for a long time. Valery Gergiev's operatic approach to symphonies is not usually to my taste, but it worked a treat with Mahler's flawed but exhilarating Eighth. Quite unmissable radio, catch it for the next seven days here. One of the talking heads introducing the performance recounted how the work fell out of favour after Mahler's death and how surprising it was that the work was considered for a time to be lacking the genius of the composer's other symphonies. Well that is a view t...
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Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares

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