Whatever happened to vexation?


Finding the right balance between adoration and confrontation is not easy. So it was pleasing to see a recent tweet describing On An Overgrown Path as “agreeably vexed”. And watching last night’s BBC Four TV documentary smoothing its way through late-20th century music while camera-checking every possible media-friendly minor celebrity in the process, it struck me that classical music might reach that elusive new audience if it was rather more vexed. Portrait by Santiago Rusiñol shows Eric Satie who influenced 20th century music with his agreeable Vexations.

Also on Facebook and Twitter. 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).

Comments

Philip Amos said…
Believe me, Bob, some of us are very vexed indeed. I graduated to apoplectic a few years back. (-:
3:11 pm
Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

I have seen the future and it is cardboard

Image
This striking structure is the work of the Japanese architect Shigeru Ban. It houses one of the electric powered tugs that worked on the Burgundy Canal until the 1930s, and is part of the Cap Canal museum at Pouilly-en-Auxois in France which we visited recently. By any criteria this is a remarkable work of art, but it becomes quite exceptional when it is explained that this is one of Shigeru Ban's famous paper tube structures. Shigeru Ban is famous for his innovative work using paper and cardboard tubing as a material for building construction, and he is particularly known for using recycled cardboard paper tubes to quickly and efficiently house disaster victims . His designs are influenced by the pioneering geodesic domes created by Buckminster Fuller, who made a guest appearance in Karlheinz Stockhausen - part of a dream . Free thinking chamber music ensemble Domus used a geodesic dome when they performed outside the comfort zone , while maverick architect Louis Kahn's
Read more

New classical audiences need new music

Image
A reader's  perceptive comment  explained that to reach a new audience classical music must help listeners across the classical/non-classical divide.  Electronic Dance Music  (EDM) is the immensely popular staple fare of classical's elusive new young audience, and EDM lacks any narrative progression. Classical music can also be non-linear: one example is John Luther Adams' Become Desert , a seamless 40 minute sonic mirage which   abandons the horizontal narrative structures of works such as Beethoven's Pastoral Symphony  with its 'Awakening of cheerful feelings on arrival in the countryside'.  Become Desert sits comfortably in the concert hall, yet it would not be out of place in a sunset session at Ibiza's Café Del Mar or a full moon trance party on Koh Pha Ngan . As John Luther Adams described in a New York Times essay ,  Become Desert  literally entrances its audience - "You find yourself listening in ways you never have before. The scale of yo
Read more

Towards infinite potential

Image
The Copenhagen interpretation of quantum mechanics postulates that "atoms form a world of potentials and possibilities, rather than of things and facts". Following a parallel path Ajahn Sumedho , a teacher from the Thai Forest Buddhist tradition , has proposed that: We do not know the future. But we do not need to know. We can let the future be the mysterious unknown, the infinite potential - the possibility for pleasure, the possibility for pain, the possibility for peace. As we let go of the fear of the unknown, we find peace. My photo of a stormy sky over Colombo in Sri Lanka hints at that infinite potential. There are many ways to experience it, and music is one of them. For me two examples particularly relevant to this post are Claude Vivier's Siddhartha and Jonathan Harvey's Body Mandala . It is now time for me to defy my advancing years and travel into the mysterious unknown of the future. Which means On An Overgrown Path  will fall silent, When, or indeed i
Read more

Have all the really great musicians come and gone?

Image
Bernard Haitink's 2016 recording of Mahler's Third Symphony is arguably the greatest interpretation of that towering work committed to record. It is also one of the last testaments from a conductor who together with Georg Solti, Herbert von Karajan, Sir Adrian Boult, Colin Davis and others defined a golden age of classical music. In response to my post ' Classical music's biggest problem is that no one cares ' reader David has posted a comment that starts by asking "...have all the really great performances, recordings indeed all the greatest musicians come and gone?" He then goes on to observe that  "I haven't heard anything in the last twenty or more years that compares with previous generations". The classical industry has spent much time agonising over its failed attempts to reach a new audience. But an even bigger problem has received little attention. Not only is the new young audience remaining elusive, but the older lon
Read more

When classical musicians fought against tuxedo fascism

Image
In the late 1960s artist Tom Philips was also known for his music activities. These included compositions performed by pianist John Tilbury , and he also played in the Portsmouth Sinfonia and Cornelius Cardew's Scratch Orchestra . The Portsmouth Sinfonia was inspired by Cardew's Scratch Orchestra. It was formed in 1970 by a mischievous  Gavin Bryars  from staff and students at Portsmouth College of Art as a one-off ensemble to participate in a talent competition. But the Sinfonia took on a life of its own as a reaction against what its members termed 'tuxedo fascism'.  Ability and experience were not a criteria for playing in the Portsmouth Sinfonia, however attendance at rehearsals was mandatory and intentionally bad playing was not allowed. Early repertoire comprised classical warhorses such as The Blue Danube and Also Sprach Zarathustra . The Sinfonia went on to play at the Purcell Room, Festival Hall, and Albert Hall, and was rewarded with a recording contract; y
Read more

Virtue signalling does not sell concert tickets

Image
This article is unique among the 4554 posts uploaded to On An Overgrown Path since August 2004. Because it agrees with a Slipped Disc post. Last week Norman uploaded a Slipped Disc reader's contribution headlined ' Why I won't be going back to concerts '. The thrust of the contribution was not the reader's fear of COVID, but how for him concerts had become "just a bit too often ordinary... a bit of a ritual". Which resonates with my recent post 'Where has all the musical adventurousness gone?'  lamenting the demise of musicians who is transcend conventions and pursue their own unique musical visions. David Munrow is talking to Peter Maxwell Davies in that photo. In the early 1970s David Munrow’s Pied Piper radio programme was broadcast four times a week for five years and introduced a new audience to early music. He presented a successful TV series, and wrote scores for the BBC TV series The Six Wives of Henry VIII and Elisabeth R , and
Read more

Four great albums that are victims of clickbait correctness

Image
Clickbait correctness - if ain't clickable, don't hype it on social media - means some great albums are not receiving the attention they deserve. My recent rewarding listening has included the new Alice Coltrane release Kirtan: Turiya Sings . Kirtans are sacred Vedic chants, and  Turiya Sings  was originally released exclusively on cassette in 1982 for the students of Alice Coltrane's ashram at the The Vedantic Center, northwest of Los Angeles. For this cassette release synthesizers, strings, and sound effects were added to Alice Coltrane’s voice and organ. Although this mix was never commercially released, it achieved cult status as a bootleg recording. The reason for the absence of a commercial release remains unclear, but the most plausible explanation is that the complete master tapes were not retained, making quality remastering impossible. But in 2004 Ravi Coltrane , who is Alice’s son by John Coltrane and producer of this new release, discovered tapes of just Ali
Read more

Classical music must woke up and smell the coffee

Image
As pointed out here previously Norman Lebrecht's Slipped Disc receives the unequivocal support of the classical music industry in the form of advertising, exclusive news and interviews, advertorial partnerships, and complimentary concert tickets and CDs. Yesterday Norman published an article headlined 'US orchestra: Conductor wanted. No whites need apply' which was sourced from the National Review .  This conservative publication has a certain notoriety, including being one of the few media outlets to publish material written by Jeffrey Epstein's publicist Christina Galbraith . The National Review also publishes contributions by Dinesh D'Souza who has tweeted "So Rosa Parks wouldn't sit in the back of the bus--that's all she did, so what's the big fuss?" and this year ran an article bylined 'The Editors' proposing that the Equality Act "represents is a cynical attempt to use the Civil Rights Act as a Trojan horse for radi
Read more

There is a compelling case for hi-fi concert halls

Image
There is not a shred of evidence that the fortunes of classical music are linked to what audiences wear, or don't wear. But the subject of dressing down versus dressing up continues to exercise the minds of classical music's movers and shakers. However, there is clear evidence that the sound audiences hear is vitally important. Yet, despite this, there is very little interest in the possibility that reshaping the sound may be the key to reshaping the future of classical music. In his influential book The Tuning of the World , composer and acoustic ecologist R. Murray Schafer coined the word ' schizophonia ' to describe the disparity between an original sound and its electroacoustic reproduction. Schizophonia* is a form of cognitive dissonance , a condition that creates unease in a person. The Tuning of the World was written in 1977, and, until very recently, schizophonia resulted from the inability of electroacoustically reproduced sounds to mirror their unmediate
Read more

Scott Ross and the paradox of popularity

Image
After seven years my post ' Scott Ross and the paradox of genius ' is still one of the most widely read Overgrown Path articles. This popularity at first sight seems pardoxical, as Scott Ross lacks any click bait or celebrity appeal. But his flame is kept alive by thoughtful articles such as the one in today's FranceSoir by Moufid Azmaïesh which links to my 2004 post.  What is remarkable and heartening is that Moufid Azmaïesh's article  is given prominence in a respected international publication without the clickable hook of virtue signalling , an anniversary or a scandal to hang the story on. In his thoughtful appraisal Moufid Azmaïesh avoids the sensationalism that blights so much of today's classical music writing . Instead he ponders on how art, and Scott Ross' art in particular, takes us to a better place beyond today's ailing materialistic culture. Moufid Azmaïesh goes on to explain how at this time of global crisis art exposes us to "the s
Read more