On An Overgrown Path

We can be deceived by popular images. Every now and again a religious CD gets into the charts, a CD of Gregorian chant maybe. People who are bored by the Spice Girls turn instead to the Incense Boys. And religious pundits greet the news by babbling away about how it all reveals a deep spiritual hunger. How tranquil the music in the abbey sounds to people caught in the rat race! And for a few well-marketed moments the world changes its take on convents It used to hear nuns chanting and say how cold and fruitless. Now it seems to hear monks chanting and say how cool! But either way, the conclusion seems to be: fine for them: irrelevant for me. Surprisingly topical in view of the signing by Decca of the nuns of L'Abbaye de Notre-Dame de l'Annonciation near Avignon but clearly dated by the reference to the Spice Girls, those wise words come from a sermon by Father Cormac. As Cormac Rigby he was presentation editor of BBC Radio 3 from 1971 to 1985, and was a Roman Catholic priest ...

This is the artwork for the forthcoming Decca CD from L'Abbaye de Notre-Dame de l'Annonciation du Barroux with added ornaments to reflect the topical playlist for my Chance Music programme on Sunday, August 1. 1. Titi Robin - Kali Sultana, troisième mouvement 2. Lady Gaga - Poker Face 3. Monks of l'Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux - Gregorian antiphons and responsories 4. Bells of l'Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine du Barroux 5. Xavier de Fourvière, Te Saludan - Jean Coutarel (organ) and Jean-Sébastien Bressy (galoubet) 6. Jonathan Harvey , Mortuos plango, vivos voce for eight channel tape 7. Titi Robin - Kali Sultana, septième mouvement and épilogue Titi Robin's daughter features on vocals on the opening track. My daughter will be talking about the Lady Gaga track as she was at the diva's O2 gig in London a few months ago and, I have to confess, I wasn't. But is it art or entertainment , or is it just quick and dirty media ? Does it matter? As broadcaster a...

How unfair that Edward Elgar has been painted into a patriotic corner . As I listened again this morning on CD to Sir Adrian Boult's towering interpretation of The Apostles I was reminded of how Elgar's music is rooted not in England's Protestant culture, but in a great and inclusive mystical tradition. Elgar was a Roman Catholic, and Catholics are banned from the throne of the United Kingdom by the Act of Settlement of 1701 and Catholic emancipation was not made law until 1829, just 28 years before Elgar was born. Elgar is seen in the header photo putting the finishing touches to the Dream of Gerontius . This uses a text by Catholic mystic Cardinal Newman and Pope Pius XII described the work as "a sublime masterpiece" after a performance conducted by Sir John Barbirolli at the pontiff's summer residence in 1958. Bede Griffiths (1906-1993) was another Catholic mystic and is known for his pioneering and controversial links with Hinduism. In the late 1930s ...

Philip Glass' 2005 prediction that 'world music is the new classical' is confirmed by my recent listening . World music is exposing the tired formulas and vested interests of 'big music'. Musique sans frontières, world music, or ' knowing music ', call it what you want , but that is where it is happening right now. And it is not only musique that is sans frontières , equally exciting things are happening in cinéma sans frontières . Last night we watched Persian director Bahman Ghobadi's 2009 film No One Knows About Persian Cats . This is a portrait of contemporary Tehran framed by the city's underground rock scene and the movie won the Cannes Film Festival's 'Un Certain Regard' special jury prize in 2009 for “original and different” films, a prize worth a million of those annual awards dedicated to perpetuating tired formulas and vested interests, the Oscars. No One Knows About Persian Cats is certainly original and different as wel...

'At Cambridge I became very absorbed, quite suddenly, in mystical writing, like that of St John of the Cross . Christian mysticism seemed to lead out of a framework that I knew and understood fairly well into a more general, more heteredox consciousness, which of course had many resonances in oriental religion. Someone said, 'You only had to squeeze St John of the Cross like a sponge and you are left with pure Buddhism.' The experiences were enhanced by visits to monasteries, where I would stay a few days; usually lonely, quiet peaceful places'. Those words from contemporary composer Jonathan Harvey lead us down yet another fascinating overgrown path. To my surprise yesterday's post about the forthcoming Gregorian Chant CD by the nuns of L'Abbaye de Notre-Dame de l'Annonciation near Avignon in France attracted a record number of readers. As Jonathan Harvey said monasteries are "usually lonely, quiet peaceful" and the header and footer photos ( t...

'That inner spirit has been embodied very vibrantly in Benedictine monastic life and liturgy. This helps to explain the paradox of a music which when sung really expresses the spirit of silence; which with almost wordless vocalization really attempts to express the very word of God; which with the action of singing really is meant to be a vehicle of contemplation' - Abbot Marcel Rooney, O.S.B. The glories of Gregorian Chant, or "the mysticism of the octave" as Abbot Rooney describes it, have drawn me back again and again to the Benedictine L'Abbaye Sainte-Madeleine at Le Barroux near Avignon in France. The monastic community at Le Barroux are orthodox Catholics who celebrate the Holy Offices eight times a day in plainsong which respects the scholarship of Solesmes . This glorious liturgy is one of the reasons why I have stayed at the Abbey as a guest of the monks quite a few times over the years despite my discomfort with other aspects of Catholicism . As a resul...

'When I was fourteen, and still in junior high, we read a Hemingway story in class that opened, "In the fall the war was always there, but we did not go to it any more." It was a sad story, and that line stayed in my head; it felt like my own truth. War had always been present in my life, although I never went to it myself.' That is the opening of The Love Children by Marilyn French. This fictional memoir of the 1960s and beyond is set against the backdrop of the Vietnam War and is particularly interesting for a couple of reasons. First, it was not written by a rose-tinted spectacles wearing soixante-huitard . Marilyn French was born in 1929 and The Love Children was published shortly before her death in 2009. Secondly the novel comes from The Feminist Press , an activist and independent imprint based at the City University, New York . Sadly war is still very much present, but Abbie Hoffman summed up the 1960s pretty well when he said : 'We were young, self-r...

Generous and much appreciated sentiments are expressed elsewhere . But they do remind me of the danger of this blog becoming a venerable institution. For, as we have seen with BBC Radio 3, this inevitably leads to complacency, arrogance and finally decay. Ferenc Molnár's explanation as to why he wrote plays equally applies to bloggers and classical radio executives. 'It's like a prostitute; first, she does it to please herself; then she does it to please her friends; finally, she does it for money.' Screen dump is from my October 2005 post Furtwängler and the forgotten new music . This post is available via Twitter on @overgrownpath 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

Mythical resting place of Noah's ark, frontier post between East and West, witness of genocide, Mount Ararat certainly radiates a powerful aura. Many musicians have experienced the aura, including Tigran Mansurian, Djivan Gasparyan and Alan Hovhaness with their laments for Armenia, the Armenian Church with its Divine Liturgy , and Benjamin Britten and Igor Stravinsky with their evocations of the Flood. Dutch author Frank Westerman too fell under the spell of Ararat and his obsession is chronicled in Ararat - In Search of the Mythical Mountain , an absorbing mix of memoir, meditation, history and travelogue. Reader reviews on Amazon are sometimes entertaining but rarely informative. The only review for Frank Westerman's meticulously researched and elegantly written book, which ranges from intelligent design through personal belief to the first genocide of the twentieth century, describes it as " Interesting, but a little anti-climactic ." Quite so. * Soundtrack -...

'On stage I have always been surrounded by French and Gypsy musicians as well as musicians from the Eastern nations - because this mix is my universe, my world and it is the only thing which brings me the stability I need in order to live and to survive, like the balance that is found in the bosom of a large and closely-knit family. Among us there are no castes and when the time comes for singing and breaking bread, the time for dancing, the people becomes king'. As my seventh year of blogging approaches I find myself less and less interested in rumours about the next career move of a jet set conductor or the latest hyperbole lavished by the twittering classes on last night's BBC Prom. Which is just fine; celebrity classical music is well served elsewhere leaving me to find sustenance where the people rather than personalities are king. Which brings me to the musician who supplied my opening quote. Titi Robin, seen in my first two photos with 'the gypsy queen of Ra...

'Nationalism is the chief force impelling our civilisation to its doom ' - Bertrand Russell 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

Spanish independent classical label Enchiriadis has a tribute on its website to tonmeister Antonio Palomares y Montes who died in July 2009 aged 65. Antonio , seen above, worked on many of the label's releases. There are only twenty-seven titles in the Enchiriadis catalogue and it is one of the few labels whose new releases can be bought unauditioned, everyone is a gem musically, technically and visually. Much of the credit for this goes to Antonio for it was not only in the technical domain that he excelled, he was also deeply interested in the visual arts and his photographs were used on many of the label's releases. The photo above was taken at the sessions for Enchiriadis' first and probably most celebrated release, Cristóbal de Morales' Requiem performed by Musica Ficta using five young voices directed by Raúl Mallavibarrena. For me this is still the finest account on disc ( this notwithstanding) of this sublime work, despite stiff competition from Jordi Sav...

BBC Radio 3's mercifully Petroc Trelawny-free Proms relay of Die Meistersinger plays as I write. Listening to Act II reminded me of a long forgotten detail of the legendary 1968 Sadlers Wells production of the opera conducted by Reginald Goodall (and later by Charles Mackerras ) and produced by Glen Byam Shaw and John Blatchley . The night watchman has a small but vitally important role at the end of Act II. As the riot subsides he makes his second appearance to sing 'Watch out for ghosts and goblins, lest an evil affright your soul' and, after a G flat on his horn, peace is restored and the curtain falls. It is one of the most magical moments in all music and for this reason the role attracts top singers. But that is his last appearance as Wagner gave him no part in the valedictory final act. This not withstanding the producers at Sadlers Wells in 1968 created a non-singing role for the night watchman in the festival meadow scene. As the guilds entered he took their emb...

'Culturally sensitive, yes; but journalism on bended knee, no' - BBC spokesman on negotiations to set up the aborted Saudi-BBC satellite news channel in 1994. I was reminded of those words while reading Antoine Leboyer's new post about the BBC Proms . Is it a coincidence that 'BBC Radio 3' rhymes with 'BBC bended knee'? Read more from culturally sensitive Antoine in The truth about those French orchestras . Header photo is of a hoarding outside the opera house in Nantes, France and is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2010 (Translation - 'To make a film you must be in love' ). Quote comes via Al-Jazeera by Hugh Miles. 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

'A festival consists of two things: concerts and personalities'. Cornelius Cardew got it dead right when he wrote those words in a 1963 review of a contemporary music festival in Cologne. Today, July 16, the 2010 season of Promenade Concerts starts. The series was founded by Sir Henry Wood in 1895 and the BBC has been involved with the concerts since 1927 but did not take full control until 1942 . Since then personalities have become as important as the concerts, and not all the personalities appear on the platform. But my photo does show Herbert von Karajan on the Albert Hall platform, which leads us to this story from Tony Palmer's 1982 book Julian Bream, A Life on the Road : Peter Maxwell Davies - 'Have you ever played in the Concertgebouw in Amsterdam?' Julian Bream - 'Yes, why?' PMD - 'Because that is Karajan's favourite hall. Do you know why?' JB - 'No.' PMD - 'He has to enter down that long flight of steps at the back...

The sad news comes of the death of Sir Charles Mackerras at the age of 84. Many obituaries and tributes are appearing and inevitably these focus on his excellence in the music of a few specific composers. But there was much more to Sir Charles than specialisation, so I am adding a few personal thoughts to the appreciations elsewhere. We live in an age that categorises people by their specialisms, which means the role of the all-rounder is accorded little value. Of course Sir Charles Mackerras excelled in the music of Leoš Janáček and others. But he was also an all-round professional who brought great music to a wide audience. In fact he was especially valued by other musicians for his lack of specialisation. My colleague at EMI the late Douglas Pudney , an authority on neglected music, talked in repertoire meetings about 'Chuck 'em up Charlie'. This was a compliment not a disparagement, and was prompted by Sir Charles' ability to learn and record obscure music without...

Three kinds of souls, three prayers: 1] I am a bow in your hands , Lord. Draw me, lest I rot. 2] Do not overdraw me, Lord. I shall break. 3] Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break! That quotation is from the prologue to Cretan author Nikos Kazantzakis' autobiographical novel Report to Greco . Bohuslav Martinů's opera The Greek Passion is based on another novel by Kazantzakis. Greek electronic composer Vangelis' 1998 album El Greco has the famous painting The Knight with His Hand on His Breast by the Greek artist on its cover. As does Jordi Savall's Don Quijote de la Mancha , seen below. My copy of the double CD and book was signed by Jordi Savall on the day of our just in time interview . Jordi Savall is living testimony to the 'Overdraw me, Lord, and who cares if I break!' approach to life . But, as the audio file of my interview tells, he also places great value on inner peace. I was reminded of that recently when I came across these words by Black...

In 1968 Petula Clark generated a storm of controversy when she held the arm of Harry Belafonte while singing an anti-war song on her primetime CBS TV show, as seen in the still above. Petula Clark had become a major international celebrity following the success of the song Downtown which sold more than three million copies in America alone. Among Pet Clark's many fans was Glenn Gould who made a famous 1967 radio documentary titled The Search for Petula Clark . In February I wrote of my attempt to clear royalty hurdles and broadcast/webcast this and other Glenn Gould documentaries, an attempt which failed because copyright holder CBC told me " We could be looking at thousands of dollars " in royalties. Now a reader has emailed pointing out that The Search of Petula Clark and other Glenn Gould documentaries (but not, it appears, the commercially released Solitude Trilogy ) are available as a free stream and download from website UbuWeb . Wikipedia gives the following in...

Sibelius' house at Järvenpää is a dark and forbidding place on a gloomy December morning. Ten years ago I was in Helsinki on business with a morning to spare and had decided on the spur of the moment to travel out of the city to visit the legendary Villa Ainola , where the photo of Sibelius above was taken in 1944. What I saw on the journey out of the city set the mood. Southern Finland does not have any of the snow-capped peaks mirrored in lakes that grace the covers of Sibelius CDs. It is low-lying glacial country, and December is not always freezing. While I was there in 2000 the few hours of daylight were mild, grey and damp. After a 45 minute drive through the ribbon developments on the outskirts of Helsinki the coach dropped me on the main road beyond Järvenpää, and I was left standing outside the locked gates of Ainola. I knew that the house would not be open as it was closed to the public during the long Finnish winter. But I had never visited Järvenpää and simply could not...