Topical thoughts on listening to Britten's Noye's Fludde


The Golden Vanity ends with the ensemble singing 'I'm sinking in the Lowland Sea!', a description that today applies to parts of south-west England. Britten was, of course, influenced by Eastern cultures and that coupling of The Golden Vanity with Noye's Fludde - which sets The Chester Miracle Play - takes us on an overgrown path to the mysticism of author and traveller Paul Brunton (1898-1981). Brunton was one of the first to introduce the Eastern esoteric practices of yoga and meditation to the West, while his exposition of mentalism anticipated recent developments in quantum entanglement by half a century; yet, despite this, he is a forgotten figure. While listening to the Golden Vanity and Noye's Fludde this morning as yet another positively Biblical downpour battered at the windows, I was reminded of these wise words written by Paul Brunton in 1937:
We humans have become so self-important and do self-conceited in our own eyes that it does not occur to us that the Great Mother who bears us so patiently upon her earthy breast, feeds us with such abundant variety of foodstuffs, and takes us back again when we are sufficiently tired, has a purpose of her own which she wishes to achieve in us if we will but let her. We have set up our own schemes and projects, we have decided what we want to get from life, and we are thinking striving, struggling and even agonizing in our efforts to obtain the satisfaction of our desires. If, however, we devoted a quarter of our time to ceasing from self-efforts and quietly letting Nature's mind permeate our own, we might make a wise revision of things wanted, yet at the same time secure Nature's co-operation in obtaining them.
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

Pliable said…
There is video footage of the current floods with a classical soundtrack here - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7aEyxzcu4oE
2:57 pm
Pliable said…
My thanks go to Stephen Whitaker for pointing out quite rightly that the opening sentence of the original version of this post confused the closing lines of The Golden Vanity and Noye's Fludde. My mistake entirely, a case of water on the brain I think - now corrected.
4:30 pm
Pliable said…
Norman Perryman comments via Facebook - 'Such beautiful words by Paul Brunton! Read, all!'

Norman, if you don't know them I strongly recommend Paul Brunton's A Search in Secret India and A Hermit In The Himalayas; the quote is taken from the latter book -
http://www.randomhouse.com.au/.../a-hermit-in-the...
4:56 pm
Pliable said…
It should be pointed out that in the generally dependable Journeys East - 20th Century Encounters with Eastern Religious Traditions Harry Oldmeadow has a generally negative view of Paul Brunton, pointing out that his doctorate was self-bestowed and saying that "His ideas in his later years... are almost self-parodic, quirky, sometimes proposterous, and anticipate some of the wilder shores of the later New Age movements".

Paul Brunton is one of the figures in esotericism - Idries Shah is another - who generate awe and incredulity in roughly equal measure. But that is not a reason for ignoring them.

http://www.worldwisdom.com/public/products/0-941532-57-7_Journeys_East_20th_Century_Western_Encounters_with_Eastern_Religious_Traditions.aspx?ID=117
7:27 pm
David said…
Thanks for those wise words from Paul Brunton, so beautifully expressed in a rather Mabeyesque way. I didn't know this writer; I'll go and find out more.
7:45 pm
Post a Comment

Recent popular posts

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

Classical music has a lot to learn

Image
In June and July 1945 Yehudi Menuhin performed at camps for “displaced persons” – Holocaust survivors – including outside where the demolished Bergen-Belsen concentration camp had stood. He was deeply shocked by what he saw; yet in 1947 he returned to Germany to perform with the Berlin Philharmonic conducted by the recently de-Nazified Wilhelm Furtwängler. Menuhin was the first Jewish musician to perform in post-World War II Germany, explaining that he did so in order to support the rehabilitation of German music and to help heal the spirit of the German people.  My header photo shows Menuhin playing Mozart's Violin Concerto No. 5 in 1966 with the Vienna Philharmonic conducted by the  now fashionably-reviled Herbert von Karan. The Jerusalem Cinematheque - Israel Film Archive describes that collaboration as an example of how "how music can still contribute to reconciliation today". Coincidentally, or possibly not, both Menuhin and Karajan were yoga practitioners. Menu
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

Tribalism is ruining classical music

Image
Marketing is now an accepted tool for trying to reach classical music's elusive new audience. In the world of marketing there are two separate entities, the product and the brand. Classical music's product is the music itself. Fortunately there is very little that can be done to damage the product. The transcendental genius of Beethoven, Mozart, Bach and their peers across the ages will continue to shine for decades and centuries to come. But the classical music brand is a different matter.  One definition is that a brand is the personality of an organisation, communicated through an identifying.....voice and tone. So what is the personality, voice and tone that the classical music brand is communicating today? The self-styled 'world's most-read cultural website' is  Slipped Disc . This high-profile face of the classical music brand enjoys the full support of the classical music industry. Yet for years Slipped Disc has leveraged tribalism through its on-line lync
Read more

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

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

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

Audiences need permission to like unfamiliar music

Image
That photo of Sir Malcolm Arnold and Julian Bream appears on the late composer's website . Ten years ago I was literally very close to Sir Malcolm's music. He spent his final years being tended by his carer Anthony Day in Attleborough just a few miles from where I live in Norfolk. I managed Sir Malcolm's website and one of my first posts  about his music dates from that time. Following Sir Malcolm's death in 2006 I never lost my appreciation of his music, but it featured less frequently in my listening. However, recently I have returned to his symphonies, and listening to them again has raised some important questions. His nine symphonies are the product of a master craftsman. They move forward from Mahler and Shostakovich, yet should be immediately accessible to contemporary audiences saturated in the music of those two composers. But, despite this, Sir Malcolm Arnold's symphonies remain unknown outside a small circle of admirers. Why? Let me make it clear
Read more

Intimations of mortality

Image
Over the last few weeks I have been following an interesting medical path in French Catalonia. On May 24 a short ride in a fast ambulance and an emergency operation brought to a halt the painful effects of an inflamed appendix coupled with an abscess on my abdomen wall. I was discharged from hospital a couple of days ago and am now holed up in a hotel near Perpignan with my wife, an iPod full of Bach , Jonathan Harvey and Titi Robin , and some good books while awaiting medical clearance to fly back to the UK next week. Thanks go to my quite wonderful family and apologies to the monks at the Dashang Kagyu Ling - Temple of a Thousand Buddhas for cancelling my stay at such short notice. Blogging will be resumed but bear with me if it is somewhat sporadic. Header photo was taken at the Abbey of Arles-sur-Tech shortly before my appendix intervened. More on the composer who set Thomas Traherne's Intimations of Immortality here . Photo is (c) On an Overgrown Pat h 2011. Report bro
Read more

Label me obsessed

Image
In Scott Fitzgerald's The Great Gatsby , one of the characters, Tom Buchanan, a rich man who's also a well-known polo player, says, "I've heard of making a garage out of a stable, but I'm the first man who ever made a stable out of a garage." Not to brag, but I'm doing the same thing. Whenever I find a quality LP recording of a piece I have on CD, I don't hesitiate to sell the CD and buy the LP. And when I find a better-quality recording, something closer to the original, I don't hesitate to trade in the old LP for a new one. It takes a lot of time to pursue this, not to mention a considerable investement of cash. Most people would, I am pretty sure, label me obsessed. The kindred spirit is Japanese novelist Haruki Murakami writing in his new memoir What I talk about when I talk about running . And talking of the same piece on LP and CD my photo shows three generations of a recording I couldn't possibly live without. The HMV LP of Sir John Bar
Read more