Gone fishing


Well not exactly, but I'm away from the keyboard and off to the fine county that was the birthplace of composer George Lloyd, home to Malcolm Arnold who wrote a set of his English Dances there in the 1960s and the location of the castle that inspired Arnold Bax's Tintagel. Back soon, there may be a delay in uploading comments but keep them coming. In the meantime please support other music blogs here and here and don't forget Elliott Carter and Michael Tippett on Future Radio.

Fishing boat on Aldeburgh beach (c) On An Overgrown Path 2008. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

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Travels beyond TripAdvisor

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The concert would not be worth presenting

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Robert Roper's biography of Everest climber and professor of philosophy Willi Unsoeld  contains the following thought-provoking quote from the great mountaineer: "In the Outward Bound programs parents would ask us, 'Can you guarantee the safety of our Johnny?' And our response would usually be, 'No, we certainly can't , ma'am. Fact is we go the other way and and guarantee you the genuine possibility of his death . And if we could guarantee his safety, the program wouldn't be worth running - do you see?'" This important wisdom can be paraphrased as follows: "Concertgoers would ask the music director, "Can you guarantee I will like everything in your program?" And the music director should reply, 'No, we certainly can't , ma'am. Fact is we go the other way and and guarantee you the genuine possibility that you will hate at least one work. And if we could guarantee you will like everything, the concert would not be wort...
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The purpose of puffery and closed-mindedness

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Two contrasting responses from America to my post Third rate music on Naxos' American classics? Flinging merde - ' Granted some of the stuff that Naxos has packaged in that series has been less than distinguished but operating in a cultural establishment where critics treat every cow patty ever dropped by the likes of Alwyn (above) and Bax and Finzi and Michael Tippitt (sic) as if it were fois gras, Clements is hardly in a position to fling merde' - from Sequenza21 , and I'm sure Norman Lebrecht would approve of that misspelling of Tippett. The true beauty of the effort - ' Personally speaking I expect listener reaction to concert music is heavily dependent on emotional mood and cultural/historical context . The concept of "ratings" and "tiers" for composers is pretty much an over-rated specialization of critics, which serves the purpose of puffery and closed-mindedness. My father is the American composer George Frederick McKay (photo be...
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Who am I?

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While researching another post I came across, completely by chance, a perceptive appreciation of Leonard Bernstein's Mass. The following was written by a well-known musical figure. But who was it? Answers please to be added as using the comments feature at the foot of the post. I'm interested to see if anyone can correctly identify the author as the tone of the piece is quite surprising once you know who wrote it. On Friday I'll add the next section that the mystery author wrote, which should make the answer clearer. "Kennedy Centre opened on September 8th 1971. The opening of the Opera House preceeded that of the Concert Hall by one day with Leonard Bernstein's Mass, written for the occassion. The work made a deep impact upon the emotionally pre-charged audience, not least because of the re-emergenceof the Kennedy name and the Kennedy tragedy. This worked-up state of mind of the public was, perhaps, detrimental to a true appreciation of the work, and the fixed da...
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Music can be magic, it enriches and inspires

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New music from the old world

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Death on an unimaginable scale

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Dreadful though it would have been if 12 passenger jets had been blown up over American cities, how can this be described as death on an "unimaginable" or "unprecedented" scale? The daily kill rate over the first two months of the Rwandan genocide averaged 11,500. Is that more imaginable because the people were African? Letter from Rev Jenny Dyer , Coventry, in today's Guardian Image credit - BBC News: 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 If you enjoyed this post take An Overgrown Path to The act of killing from 20,000 feet
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The composer without a shadow?

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As a Wagner conductor he has no equal

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