Third Construction


Turner Prize nomination? New York stock exchange after melt-down? CERN Large Hadron Collider after magnet failure? New ECM CD sleeve? Scene from Fritz Lang's Metropolis? Graphic inspired by John Cage's 3rd Construction? No, an image from the post scheduled for On An Overgrown Path this Friday.

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

Comments

Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

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

Master musician who experienced the pain of genius

Image
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
Read more

All aboard the Martinu bandwagon

Image
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
Read more

Whatever happened to the long tail of composers?

Image
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
Read more

Specialisation is damaging classical music

Image
'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
Read more

Who needs Rob Cowan's bloody rucksack?

Image
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
Read more

Philippa Schuyler - genius or genetic experiment?

Image
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
Read more

Elgar and the occult

Image
Aleister Crowley was a practicioner of the occult, ceremonial magician and recreational drug experimenter. Sir Edward Elgar was Master of the King's Music, practising Catholic and composer of Land of Hope and Glory . A connection between the two may seem highly improbable. But this post explores a little known path linking Elgar to Crowley's world of the occult. In 1915 the actress Lena Ashwell asked Elgar to write the incidental music for a play she was producing. The Starlight Express was based on the recently published novel A Prisoner in Fairyland and the adaption was by the books' author Algernon Blackwood and Violet Pearn. Elgar's original intention was to reuse music from his early composition The Wand of Youth, but as the project progressed he added a substantial amount of new music to the score. The Starlight Express opened in London on 29th December 1915 to mixed reviews. The critical consensus was that the play was too long and the staging inappropriat
Read more

Is syncretic music the future?

Image
Western classical music's search for a new more inclusive paradigm has led it to world music. Many, including Philip Glass , leading critics and this blog , have said the world music is the future. But so many east meets west project sound like awkward forced marriages . Yet beyond world music the path leads onwards towards a destination which may be a mirage or may be the future. Syncretism is the process of reconciling contrary beliefs and involves melding practices of differing schools of thought. Syncretic music has been around for many centuries, notably in the blend of the three monotheistic religions in Moorish Spain, as captured by Jordi Savall and many others . The Middle East is also home to musical syncreticism and the recent budget re-release of Sister Marie Keyrouz and L'Ensemble de la Paix performing Hymns from Lebanon , which sets Christian texts in Arabic using early Eastern music scales is an excellent example. More recently French gypsy musician Titi Robin
Read more

Best and worse covers please

Image
John has left a new comment on " China gates ":- This is not - for once - one of my 'fantastically tenuous links' , and I must declare an interest as a director of The Sixteen Productions, which produces the CORO CDs. I am glad to see the debate about cover designs (I am, of course, very glad also to see the positive comments about the contents of our Acoustic World series!): it seems to me to be such a subjective issue (look at the changing trends in book covers). If one could identify the perfect cover to shift the maximum number of CDs, well, how cool would that be? It would be great to see people's suggestions of the best and worst covers in their collections, with an honest appraisal of whether they affected their purchasing decisions. Come on readers, the best and worst covers in your collections, and do they affect your purchasing decisions? Here's a starter for ten. Early last year regular reader David Cavlovic wrote that 'Some of the best cover
Read more