The view from a major record label

'Polydor executives were not known for diplomacy: the man sent to open their American office startled the crowd at the New York press launch by telling them he had wanted to live in the city ever since he had seen its skyline from Long Island Sound through the periscope of his U-boat in 1943.'
Joe Boyd writes about music in the 60's in White Bicycles, one of the most entertaining and best written books about rock. Now read Joe Boyd on Dylan and the blues, and, of course, he was Nick Drake's producer.

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Soundtrack for a porn movie

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"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
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All aboard the Martinu bandwagon

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Depressing, but predictable, to see the mainstream media scrambling aboard the Bohuslav Martinů bandwagon as soon as BBC Radio 3 announces a cycle of his superb symphonies . Equally depressing, but a sign of the times, to see the Independent publishing an appreciation of the composer's symphonies by a writer who confesses elsewhere to never having heard a single note of them. As Norman Lebrecht famously wrote in the Evening Standard back in 2006: ‘... until bloggers deliver hard facts … paid for newspapers will continue to set the standard as the only show in town’. Sadly the hard facts now show that Norman is no longer at the Evening Standard , and, as from next Monday, the Evening Standard will no longer be a paid for newspaper . But you can find pre-bandwagon appreciations of Martinů here and here . 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
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Whatever happened to the long tail of composers?

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Reader Antoine Leboyer writes to point out that the New York Philharmonic has made its programme archive available online and that the archive shows how past programmes were far more varied than those played today. Here are just some of the composers that Antoine highlights from past concerts by the orchestra: Siniaglia, Busoni, Bosi, Chadwick, Stanford, Loeffler, McDowell, Hadley, Goldmark, Pfitzner, Enesco, Vieuxtemps and Grétry. Antoine also remarks on how Webern's music has virtually disappeared from New York concerts in recent years. One of the many confidence tricks of the digital era is how a long tail of cultural riches was promised , but a short head immaculately coiffed by audience whoring celebrities was actually delivered. I suggest that one of the key search criteria for the New York Philharmonic's new music director should be a passion for giving audiences permission to like unfamiliar music . Graphic is grabbed from the New York Philarmonic archive lan
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Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

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On that sleeve for his 1985 recording of the Goldberg Variations , Scott Ross is seen standing in the grounds of Château d'Assas in Languedoc. It was here that many of the harpsichordist's great recordings were made. Then, as today, the château dwelt in the twilight zone between grandeur and dereliction, and thirty years ago the recording sessions were regularly interrupted by the sound of rats scurrying across the floor. Scott Ross was born in Pittsburgh in 1951, and moved to France with his mother following the death of his father in 1964. He studied at the conservatoires in Nice and Paris, and first came to Château d'Assas in 1969 to give music lessons to the grandson of its owner Mme. Simone Demangel . When an early music academy was established at the Château d'Assas, Scott Ross gave masterclasses and became a frequent visitor. At first he stayed in a room in one of the towers, but from 1983 he rented a small house across the road from the château. The photos b
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What price the BBC Proms?

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My life was changed by a Henry Wood Promenade Concert on 4th August, 1975. In the second half Sir Adrian Boult gave us Vaughan William's Fifth Symphony , and the blazing intensity of that performance remains unmatched, in my experience, in the concert hall or on record. Sir Adrian's 86 years had no relevance to his music making. Music, not age, was what mattered then. In the summer of 1975 punk was at its peak and the Vietnam War had ended after Communist forces took Saigon in the spring. Back with classical music, Pierre Boulez was in his last season as principal conductor of the BBC Symphony Orchestra, which was at the top of its game , while William Glock's golden period as BBC controller of music and Proms administrator still informed music making in London. Your life could be changed for £1.30, which was the price of a balcony seat in the Albert Hall. All of which set me thinking, what price today's BBC Proms? In 2009 Promenade Concerts are one of few remaining
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Specialisation is damaging classical music

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'I would go a little further. One of the issues we face today is the ever-increasing division of classical performances into small, ghetto-like compartments. Forty years ago Fischer-Dieskau could be a giant among singers whether he was performing Bach or Wagner, Schubert lieder or Weber operas. For modern performers that doesn't seem possible. The baroque period has largely been abandoned to specialists. Even performances of Mozart, Hadyn and even early Beethoven, which used to be a staple of most symphony orchestras' concert seasons, are becoming rarities. This over-specialisation makes for less rounded and perceptive musicians. What's more it creates a uniformity of performance style which becomes more and more difficult to challenge. What isn't clear to me is why this should have become the norm. As a lifelong listener it isn't a development I ever wanted and I can't believe the move towards clinical uniformity has done anything except drive audiences awa
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Standing on tradition

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Do audiences outside Britain stand for the "Hallelujah” chorus in Handel's Messiah ? I assume not, as the tradition is said to originate from our King George II once standing for this number, possibly to alleviate his gout. The Britten Sinfonia and Polyphony are very models of modern performing ensembles . At last night's Norwich Messiah there was not a tuxedo in sight . But still conductor Stephen Layton gestured expansively for the audience to stand for the words 'Hallelujah, for the Lord God Omnipotent reigneth' . Isn't classical music strange? Stephen Layton's used his own edition of the Messiah for the performance. So he missed an opportunity to end the royalist tradition with a pithy annotation in the score. It was a cracking performance from the Britten Sinfonia, Polyphony and four outstanding young soloists. Hearing the Messiah played by a top-of-their-game chamber orchestra on modern instruments in the acoustics of a concert hall underlined j
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Who needs Rob Cowan's bloody rucksack?

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Within minutes of uploading WFMT Chicago shows the Brits a thing or two I received the first email of support. It came from Graham Hardwick, a reader who, like me, says he pays his BBC license fee "through gritted teeth". Before dismissing my criticism of BBC Radio 3 as a lone voice two points are worth considering. First independent analysis shows On An Overgrown Path is the most widely read UK classical music blog . And secondly, I am the only prominent UK classical music blogger who does not take paid work from the BBC . Now read Graham Hardwick's email: I was interested to read your comments on WFMT Chicago. Thoroughly fed up with BBC Radio 3, I recently bought an internet radio - swiftly followed by a iPod Touch - and it's been a real ear opener to explore some other stations. On WFMT I have been particularly enjoying Andrew Patner and his Critical Thinking programme - also available as a podcast. Hard to describe, usually conversation-based and Chicago-cen
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Philippa Schuyler - genius or genetic experiment?

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A child prodigy fêted by Leonard Bernstein and Virgil Thomson, performed by five leading American orchestras while still a teenager, accompanied by the New York Philharmonic at age 16, ranked alongside Aaron Copland and Marc Blitzstein, mourned with a Pontifical Requiem Mass in St Patrick's Cathedral, New York, and the rumoured subject of a Hollywood biopic. That is the executive summary of an American musical legend who was born eighty years ago tomorrow. Child prodigies, anniversaries and even executive summaries are the common currency of classical music today. But there are several reasons why the story that is going to be told On An Overgrown Path over the next two days is important. The first is that the legendary figure was a woman who had a black father and white mother. The second is that she experienced the barriers to musicians of colour that still linger on today. And thirdly, despite her legendary status, until the second part of this feature appears tomorrow h
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Also sprach the composer

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I see from the autumn publishing schedules that Paul Griffiths has a new novella being published titled Let Me Tell You . It is written in the Oulipo tradition of constrained writing, and uses only the vocabulary allotted to Ophelia in Hamlet . I know that Paul is not a composer, but he is, among other things, an authority on Stockhausen , scholar of Messiaen and librettist for Tan Dun . So, in the style of my composer as painter thread , it started me thinking about composers as authors of literary works, as opposed to music theory books and memoirs. Here for starters are two composers as authors. The most obvious one is in the photo above. Paul Bowles studied with Aaron Copland, composed a considerable amount of music most of which was for the theatre, and wrote five very successful novels and a number of short stories. My second composer as author is slightly more arcane. The Minimal Piano Collection which was featured here last year includes on CD 4, among contributions from
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