Free thinking BBC?


BBC Radio 3 is having a free thinking festival this weekend. Here is my contribution.

And it is not just me. Report broken links, missing images and errors to - overgrownpath at hotmail dot co dot uk Also on Facebook and Twitter.

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Is classical music obsessed by existential angst?

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So I asked Elliott Carter "What if you don't feel existential angst? What if you want to write music that expresses joy or some other kind of emotion?" And he goes "Jeff, if you do that you'll never have a career in music." I find that electronic music has a real problem to it, because, at this point, there is no good way to get across the kind of energy and vitality that the performer brings to acoustic music. It has been a kind of meme of mine that the problem of classical music is that there just isn't enough bass, there isn't enough visceral quality to it. When the oil spill hit we decided that enough is enough. I am a little concerned about how America is being controlled by the corporations... We had always flirted with the idea of moving to France, we has been trying to do it since Reagan was elected in fact, and we just decided to do it. That is composer and new technology guru Jeff Harrington talking on the Chance Music programm
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Closer to Vaughan Williams than Phil Spector

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This year's BBC Proms season includes ' Nick Drake - An Orchestral Celebration ' with Jules Buckley and the BBC Symphony Orchestra. That is Nick in the photo above; on the night in 1974 he died at the tragically young age of 26 a disc of the Brandenburg Concertos was on the record player in his room , and Black Eyed Dog , one of the last tracks he recorded before he died, has striking similarities to the Preludio of Bach's Lute Suite in E Major. But there is also an important and little-known contemporary connection between Nick Drake and the world of classical music. While at Cambridge University Nick met and worked with fellow student Robert Kirby. When Nick recorded his first album Five Leaves Left he chose Robert Kirby to arrange and conduct the backing for the majority of the tracks using strings, brass and woodwind. It is widely acknowledged that these arrangements were a major contribution to the success of the album and also to Nick's next LP Bryter Late
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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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Being particular is not important

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These photos are of my guide Rashid and cook/muleteer Mohammed on my recent trek in Morocco's High Atlas. My listening while in the mountains included Norman Del Mar's recording of Rubbra's Second and Eighth Symphonies for Lyrita and Vernon Handley's Bax Second and Fourth  for Chandos . Both those discs will be familiar to long time OAOP readers, but less familiar may be Einojuhani Rautavaara 's symphonies. Since the 1990s I had known and admired Rautavaara's  Second and Seventh - Angel of Light - Symphonies for Bis and Ondine respectively. But his other symphonies in Ondine's complete cycle were new and very rewarding territory for me. In his booklet essay for the Ondine box set Kimmo Korhonen quite accurately describes Rautavaara's eight symphonies as "one huge journey through life, a voyage of the soul..."  My reading also produced a strong recommendation for like-minded readers. David Darling is an English astronomer, freelance scie
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Holy birds go mobile

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In Marrakech storks are considered to be holy birds, and historically they have nested in the minarets of the city's many mosques. But recently they have moved to the top of telecommunication towers. If those antenae are 5G and QAnon is correct there will soon be two headed chicks in that nest.
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The Berlin Philharmonic's darkest hour

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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
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Nada Brahma - Sound is God

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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
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Your cat is a music therapist

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A recent post told how a cat crossed my path at the Sufi shrine of Nizamuddin Auliya in Delhi. Cats are cherished in Islam , and in response to my post a friend who is an adept of the Naqshbandi Sufi Order sent me a link to an article on a Sufi resource . This is about the healing power of cats, and I thought it worth sharing an edited and annotated extract with my readers. The article can be read at two levels. At one level it can be taken as an amusing mix of fuzzy science and New Age babble, as indeed can this whole and many other Overgrown Paths . But drilling down further reveals another level. The power of music to nourish and heal the human spirit and body has been conveniently forgotten in the headlong rush to turn classical music into just another tawdry entertainment . Classical music is not about snackable access , celebrity maestros , live tweeting , self-promotion , free streaming , and all those other big new idea . It is about only one thing - sound. Ancient wisdom te
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A Philippa Schuyler moment

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An earlier post painted a word portrait of child prodigy, pianist and composer Philippa Schuyler. Her music is rarely heard today and difficult to find. So we are very fortunate that John McLaughlin Williams agreed to record her Nine Little Pieces for piano specially for On An Overgrown Path . His recording can be heard via the YouTube video above, and in the article below he analyses her music Philippa Schuyler. Just hearing the name takes me back to a place in my childhood I have not revisited in memory more than a couple of times in decades. Philippa Schuyler’s name was but one of dozens lodged in my parent’s large sheet music library, occupying shelf space alongside the giants and talented lesser lights of our canonic music literature. Even among those lesser lights Schuyler seemed to me an odd duck a the time, for here peering at me from the cover of the sole piece of music by her in our possession was a picture of a seven year old girl of mixed race, rather than an aged, w
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Why new audiences are deaf to classical music

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One important reason why classical music is failing to attract a new young audience is being ignored - today's much sought-after digital natives are fast becoming tomorrow's hearing loss natives. As the Clínic de Barcelona explains , until recently, hearing loss had always been related to age: the older you are, the worse your hearing is. This situation, however, has changed in recent years, as increasingly younger people are suffering from hearing loss. There are many reasons for this widespread hearing loss. There are now high levels of ambient noise - for instance the average daytime ambient noise  without PA announcements inside a US airport terminal is 66 decibels which approaches that of a a washing machine. Then there is the noise from the headphones, earbuds, etc used for long periods with digital devices. In addition the overlooked widespread  use of ototoxic drugs , including macrolide drugs and non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs), contributes to hearin
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