Every missing picture tells a story


The iTunes 'Get album artwork' function does not always locate the required graphics. The missing artwork during a recent update of my iPod included Jordi Savall's Francisco Xavier and Jerusalem, Valentin Silvestrov's Stille Lieder and the Niles/Merton Songs. Which started me thinking. If someone could write a routine to identify all the missing iTunes artwork, that would be a list of music very well worth exploring.

It just confirms, a picture is worth a thousand words.
Yes, I know the artwork can be manually imported into iTunes. That's how it appeared on to the screendump above. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk

Comments

Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

Image
Wilhelm Furtwängler was born on 25th January 1886. He was Music Director of the Berlin Philharmonic from 1923 to his death in 1954, and held this position for the twelve years that Hitler was in power. In January 1945 he was conducting in Vienna, and fled from there to Switzerland where he remained until the Battle of Berlin ended in the defeat of the Nazis. The musicians of his orchestra remained in Berlin during its darkest hour. Here is their story: On 28th March 1945 the Russian forces commanded by Marshal Georgy Zhukov were just twenty miles to the east of Berlin. A month previously Albert Speer had been replaced as Nazi armaments minister after trying to persuade Hitler that defeat was inevitable. Speer now turned his energies to preventing the musicians of his adored Berlin Philharmonic from perishing in the inevitable final battle. Reich Commisioner Dr Joseph Goebells, who was in charge of the defence of Berlin, had ordered the entire orchestra to be drafted into the Vol
Read more

Watch Michel Petrucciani video online

Image
Back in January 2005 I wrote about legendary jazz pianist Michel Petrucciani (right), and that article remains high in my 'popular pages' listing after fifteen months. Since writing that piece Overgrown Path reader Andrew Nathan and I have been tracking down Petrucciani video footage, and just this week Andrew came up with an absolute gem that is available free on Google video. In my original article I wrote that Michel Petrucciani was a 'pianistic genius' , and it is no coincidence that he is buried in the Pierre Lachaise cemetery in Paris alongside Chopin. This 38 minute video with excellent sound (and a bonus guest appearance from the gorgeous Charlotte Rampling ) is not just essential viewing for jazz fans, it should be watched by all students of the piano - whatever their discipline. Just click here to view this important document. (The video is not hosted by On An Overgrown Path , this is a link to an external site). And to set the video into context here is m
Read more

Music blogger heal thyself

Image
Two of the First Ladies of music blogging have sparked a useful debate on the future of music blogs. Elaine Fine started the ball rolling on Musical Assumptions with her generally pessimistic post The Gradual Fall of Musical Bloggery . In it Elaine candidly shares readership data for her blog, which shows an apparent decline of more than 50% over a seven month period. I say apparent, because in a comment on Elaine's post I raise the point that during this period many readers have migrated from desktop to mobile internet access, and the traffic monitoring services are very fallible when it comes to tracking mobile access. Which means the apparent drop in readership for Musical Assumptions may not be a drop at all, but simply a change in technology platforms. Lisa Hirsch takes a more bullish view in her response on Iron Tongue of Midnight , suggesting that readership fluctuations are simply due to the "ebb and flow of blogging". Although Elaine's concern about
Read more

BBC launches free classical MP3 downloads

Image
An important new development for BBC Radio 3 is their move into online MP3 file downloads, as opposed to audio streaming. MP3 files of the Beethoven Symphonies played by the BBC Philharmonic under Gianandrea Noseda are available from their web site for two days after broadcast as part of their Beethoven fest . Open this link to access the downloads , but hurry as the downloads are available for a limited period. These downloads are free. There is a fair amount of small print on the site about the files only being available for personal, non-commercial use. Radio 3 controller Roger Wright has said in a press release "We hope it will encourage audiences to explore online classical music." The motive of trying to reach more listeners for classical music is very laudable, and has taxed music bloggers for some time . But since the Beethoven MP3 files became available in early June the BBC has said that more than 700,000 listeners downloaded files of the first five symphonies.
Read more

Why cats hate Mahler symphonies

Image
My recent post ' Your cat is a music therapist ' was well appreciated judging by site traffic. So here is a codicil which raises some interesting points about synaesthesia. Reportedly Alexander Scriabin, Jean Sibelius, Olivier Messiaen, György Ligeti and Franz Liszt were among the classical composers who experienced cross-over between sensory channels. The impact of narrowing sensory bandwidth as music moves from a live to a recorded environment, and then from analogue to lossy digital formats is little understood and little researched.But it may have important implications for classical music's attempts to reach a new audience, and, topically, it may be very relevant to the post-COVID experience of Zoom concerts and live music in socially distanced auditoriums . I will discuss how what we see influences what we hear in a forthcoming post. Meanwhile here is an extract from Akif Pirinçci and Rolf Degen ’s book Cat Sense which explains the synaesthetic impact of a Ma
Read more

Nada Brahma - Sound is God

Image
It may be my age, but those moments when a piece of music really hits me in the solar plexus seem to get rarer and rarer. But during my recent extended travels in India I was metaphorically punched time and time again when listening to ECM's Codona recordings on headphones. Recent posts have touched on the potential of virtual concert halls and the fact that no one mixes for speakers these days , and the Manfred Eicher produced Codona sessions from between 1978 and 1982 really demonstrate the impact of the up close and personal sound of headphones . The line up for Codona was African-American trumpeter Don Cherry, Brazilian percussionist Nana Vasconcelos, and Colin Walcott on sitar, tabla, hammered dulcimer, sanza, timpani, and voice. The band took its name from a circus trapeze act of the early 20th century called the Flying Codonas , and the three albums packaged by ECM for CD as The Codona Trilogy capture the peerless musicians-beyond-frontiers performing their creative hig
Read more

Neil Armstrong finally reveals his moon music

Image
To celebrate today's total eclipse of the sun in Africa and Asia here is An Overgrown Path exclusive on a lunar story that has fascinating musical connections. Notoriously taciturn first man on the moon Neil Armstrong reveals his choice of fly-time music in a book that just been published. And his musical tastes open up undreamt of connections to Russian government research projects, Soviet agents and Communist propaganda films. Moon Dust by Andrew Smith is a new study of how the lives of the Apollo astronauts were changed by their lunar experience. Most of the nine surviving astronauts agreed to be interviewed for the book, but true to form the first man on the moon did not. But in an email exchange Armstrong identified the cassette of ' strange electronic-sounding music' that fellow Apollo 11 astronaut Michael Collins had reported him taking to Luna. The cassette in question was transcribed from Neil Armstrong's own LP of Music Out of the Moon featuring Dr Samuel
Read more

Benjamin Brittten's relationship with children

Image
From early in life, Britten had close relationships with handsome teenagers. On his side, there was often a sexual attraction. The boys themselves were sometimes unaware, sometimes complicit. Ronan Magill, the last such figure in Britten's life, wasn't conscious of the charge in their relationship at the time, but says now: 'If he did [feel attraction], then I'm glad that he did - if I could make him think that way for even five seconds. ' When it comes to the question of how far attraction was physically expressed, Bridcut sometimes leans on the evidence. In 1936, Britten invited Harry Morris, 13, on a family holiday in Cornwall (Britten's brother and sister and their families were also present). According to Morris, Britten came into his room one night and made what he understood to be a sexual approach. The boy screamed and hit his host with a chair, attracting the attention of Britten's sister, Beth. Harry returned to London in the morning. With Pea
Read more

France says "No" - with help from Father Joe

Image
So the French referendum has rejected the EU constitution, and the pieces of the jigsaw that make up Europe are once again thrown up into the air. Political bloggers such as Clive Davis are better qualified than me to analyse the implications of the "No" vote, but I cannot let the result pass without some personal comment. In a few days time I depart for my annual extended stay in France. It is a country I love, but also find deeply puzzling. The "No" vote seems to be more of a vote of no confidence in the Chirac government than a rejection of the new EU constitution. France is a fascinating mixture of traditionalism and extremism, and this is nowhere better illustrated than in the French attitude to religion. Although the national constitution makes France a secular state, Catholicism is still a strong force in society. I had written the post below a few days ago ready to upload while I was on the road south to the Vaucluse next weekend, but I am posting it today
Read more

Now we rise and we are everywhere

Image
A sesquialtera is a mixed stop popular in English organs of the 19th century. It uses several ranks of pipes to reinforce the fundamental and produce a brighter ( Bryter ?) sound. The sesquialtera stop seen in my header photo was added to the organ in the church of Saint Mary Magdalene in Tanworth-in-Arden in memory of Nick Drake. Below is a view of the 14th century church with Nick's grave visible bottom left. The words Now we rise and we are everywhere , which are inscribed on the back of his headstone, come from the last track on Nick Drake's final album Pink Moon , recorded in 1971. Read more in A skin too few and I am a camera - St. Tropez 1967 . The overgrown path that brought me to Nick Drake was Brad Mehldau's performance of River Man on his double CD Progression: Art Of The Trio (Volume 5) released in 2000. Wonderful solo performance of the Nick Drake classic on the video below, non-German speakers should fast-forward to 1.00 minutes. Photos are (c) On An Ove
Read more