Small is sonically beautiful

Is gnat-sized the new minimalism? One of the few critics who hasn't been down-sized writes about the gnat-sized attention-span of multi-media audiences, a best selling book describes how the internet is chipping away the capacity for concentration and contemplation and back in 2006 I revealed how the stopwatch was dictating BBC Proms programming. Bring on the Webern revival. But how long is long enough?

Image of toy piano is from Schoenhut website. Many fine contemporary composers from John Cage onwards have written for the toy piano. E.F. Schumacher's book Small is Beautiful is a must-read, especially for the BBC. 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 errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk