On An Overgrown Path

A tweet by a music industry journalist prompted by yesterday's post advises me to "get a life". The ubiquitous social media epithet of 'get a life' is the polar opposite of the Zen teaching of 'expect nothing'. In preparation for a journey to the Dalai Lama's Kalachakra empowerment in Ladakh, India I have been living with Eliane Radique 's Jetsun Mila , which is a homage to the Tibetan yogi, poet and saint Milarepa . My reference to Peter Matthiessen in yesterday's post was lost in obfuscation. So, to make amends, I offer another quote from The Snow Leopard . In it Peter Matthiessen is referring to the Tibetan Buddhist mantra Oṃ maṇi padme hūṃ . But it also applies to Eliane Radique's Jetsun Mila , which can be sampled here : The deep resonant Om is all sound and silence throughout time, the roar of eternity and also the great stillness of pure being; when intoned with the prescribed vibrations, it invokes the All that is otherwise in...

Blame for the relentless suburbanization of classical music is invariably laid at the door of radio stations, record companies and the media. But some of the blame must be taken by the musicians themselves. In his classic The Snow Leopard Peter Matthiessen, who died earlier this month , wrote of the "debasement of our vision, the retreat from wonder, the backing away like lobsters from free-swimming life into safe crannies". It is this retreat from wonder that is leaching the lifeblood out of classical music, and it is happening with the tacit approval of people who should know better. Now let's get one thing straight. I am a fan of Sakari Oramo and I applaud his programming William Alwyn's First Symphony at this year's Proms - the first Alwyn symphony for thirty-two years . But the performance on August 13 will have to be very good to make up for the loss of credibility the BBC Symphony Orchestra's new chief conductor has suffered in my eyes from the Pro...

My thesis that the premier league composers are not played often enough is supported by the 2014 BBC Proms season. Understandably, if regretably , there is a bias towards Richard Strauss. But, beyond the anniversary effect, there are eight performances of Mahler's music - seven symphonies and a chamber work - and not a single note of Haydn . Moreover, Haydn was also totally absent from the 2013 season, while, by contrast, Mahler's Second Symphony was performed in 2011 and 2013. It is unfair to blame outgoing Proms director Roger Wright for either the Mahler glut or the Haydn drought, and it is is unlikely the balance will change in the seasons created by his successor. (Incidentally, my money is on Tony "breaking down walls" Hall appointing Classic FM boss Stephen Miron to an expanded arts role in the BBC including Radio 3 and the Proms). But back to feast or famine concert programming; the love affair with big name orchestras is partly to blame - will there e...

'All artists try different paths. They constantly change, and they have their 'this' period or their 'that' period. I am not saying the Buddhist 'thing' is my Buddhist period. I think it goes back rather longer than that. I came across Buddhism perhaps after [Rudolf] Steiner, but even before that when I was a student at Cambridge, but I was never really wholeheartedly into it. So I have been Buddhist most of my life. But the Buddhist phase would be quite recent if you look at the titles of my music and the explicit musical themes - maybe ten of fifteen years - and I don't mind being called a Buddhist composer. But like all artists I don't particularly like being called only a Buddhist composer. So, of course, it's a subject I could expound on for a long time, about what being a Buddhist composer is. But that's another story ' ~ Jonathan Harvey speaking in a 2010 radio interview with me*. Jonathan's ... towards a Pure Land for large...

"I am in many ways surprised and not surprised by what seems to be today your choice of music you cover and likely listen to" writes a longstanding reader. Music exists only in constant flow and flux , which means the music I listen to is also in constant flux . Alan Watts described how conventional music has given us prejudiced ears, so that we treat all sounds that do not follow their rules as insignificant noise. Challenging our prejudiced ears is an essential part of the lost art of listening ; because it gives a fresh perspective on the familiar. Yesterday, after listening to unfamiliar Arabic-Turkish court music , I returned with heightened awareness to Bartók's familiar String Quartets - there is a connection - and moved on, with great pleasure, to Elizabeth Maconchy's less familiar Quartets . Jan Willis writes : "Ultimately, what I have come to know is that life - precious life - is not a destination... life is the journey". Today the demand fo...

At the Last Night of the 2013 BBC Proms soprano Joyce DiDonato dedicated Somewhere Over the Rainbow to gay victims worldwide as a protest against Russia's hardline stance towards homosexuals. On Sept 7, 2014 the Qatar Philharmonic Orchestra appear at the Proms for the first time. The orchestra was founded in 2007 by Her Highness Sheikha Mozah bint Nasser Al Missned, one of the wives of the ruler of Qatar. As was pointed out here recently , and I quote verbatim from the UK government foreign travel website : "Homosexual behaviour is illegal in Qatar". Why are some gay causes more fashionable than others? 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).

Much trumpeting from Sony about a Billboard classical chart number one for Iranian composer Hafez Nazeri 's Rumi Symphony which "crosses cultural boundaries through a new universal blending of Eastern and Western classical music". That PR speak sets the alarm bells ringing, because as one of the leading exponents of traditional Middle Eastern music, Julien Jaleddin Weiss , explains: "European stringed instruments (violin, viola, cello, double bass) were integrated relatively recently into oriental ensembles, to the point where they have acquired a dominant, indeed overwhelming position. I have always taken care to eliminate them as far as possible, for they were designed to play our polyphonic music. In my view their introduction is tainted with an original sin, namely an absurd complex of inferiority to the symphony orchestra. Not to mention, of course, the total incompatibility of the language of the maqām with the equal temperament of the piano, the guitar...

"Do you remember the first time you heard classical music" asks a tweet from the Bienen Music School linked to my recent post about Jan Willis . Some years ago I recounted how my parents took me in the early 1960s to hear Tchaikovsky's Sixth Symphony played by the Bournemouth Symphony Orchestra under the young Singaporean maestro Choo Hoey . That was one of my music epiphanies, and another is also worth recounting. Sometime in the late 1950s I borrowed a record by Tommy 'Mister Twist' Steele from a schoolfriend to play on our home radiogram. My mother, who was an accomplished pianist, said just one thing when she heard it: "You can do better than that, Bob". I have always remembered those wise words, and classical music can also learn much from them. If it really wants to build a new audience, classical music should forget all the notably unsuccessful nonsense about reinventing itself as entertainment . Instead concert promoters, record companies, m...

One of my earliest and fondest memories is of standing in the center of our kitchen at about age four, stick baton in hand, "conducting" symphonies by Dvořák and Rimsky-Korsakov*. My mother had given in to my pleas for the 78 rpm records. She thought the music completely unappealing and constantly yelled at me for turning the volume up, but I loved her without bounds for buying me the ninety-eight cent record. For days and weeks, I was completely lost in the roaring sonorities of Scheherazade and in the somber strains of the New World Symphony . My head and arms sunk and rose in waves and flurries as the music wholly enveloped me. I thought the New World particularly moving, somehow divinely captivating. Its sound struck a deep, still, soul-place in me, though I did not and could not say why. It was only much later that I learned of Dvořák's interest in black spirituals. I do not remember when I first heard classical music. Nor do I know how I could have known the ...

There was an overwhelming response on Facebook to yesterday's feline photo . It was taken at  Sidi Ifni in southern Morocco, as are the two photos in this post. Fishing is the main industry of the town, and the daily fish market is home to many contented moggies as Muslims are taught that cats should be cherished and loved. These images are certainly heartwarming, but I am also aware that cats are a very powerful social media clickbait . However there are strong links between cats and art music; this is almost certainly because the condition of synaesthesia - experiencing one sensation (sound) in terms of another (sight) - which is found in many classical musicians,  is hardwired into cats. John Tavener was asked by Brian Keeble how he knew if something was going wrong with his music, and could he tell by looking at it whether it was right or wrong. This was the composer's reply: Yes, I can, and not only by looking at the music. It could be by looking at the cat, whic...

'A   cat sits until it is done sitting , then gets up, stretches , and walks away' - Alan Watts Photo taken at Sidi Ifni , Morocco; another cat plays a cameo role in On the road with a Sufi saint . Photo is (c) On An Overgrown Path 2014. Any other copyrighted material is included as "fair use", for critical analysis only. Also on Facebook and Twitter .

Dependent arising means that while travelling I have been spending much time with Egyptian Sufi music, particularly with the CD seen above from the master of the munshidin - sacred song - Sheikh Ahmad Al-Tûni . This disc is living proof of the unfashionable view that music is humanity's most direct expression of its better self, and I recommend that readers intrigued, or indeed puzzled, by my preoccupation with the esoteric tradition of Islam should exit their comfort zones and enter its force field. My heavy rotation of the sultan of munshidin is evidence of how far I have strayed from today's " it's 2014, so it must be Richard Strauss " monoculture. Audience data and social media trends show that many others are being disenfranchised in the same way. Fortunately the quaint notion that classical music is more than entertainment lives on, and this week the Britten Sinfonia present Bach's St John Passion in Cambridge, Amsterdam, London, Saffron Walde...

Composing a World: Lou Harrison, Musical Wayfarer appears to have been remaindered as new copies are available from the States on Amazon at very low prices . This definitive study of a grossly underrated composer comes complete with a CD of Harrison's music that is worth the discounted price alone. Running to almost 400 pages with chapter headings inclusing 'Music and the Dance', 'Lou Harrison and East Asian Music', 'Sounding off: Music and Politics', 'Harrison, Homosexuality and the Gay World, and 'Not Just Music: Criticism, Poetry, Art and Typography', Composing a World is a refreshing antidote to today's all-pervasive clickbait music journalism . Also on Facebook and Twitter . No review copies involved in this post. Any copyrighted material 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).

Today I am leaving. I am leaving the Library, my house, my friends, the city where I live. I do not know where I am going. Strangest of all, I am leaving the Library in order to find a book. The only thing I have to guide me is the notebook of the last Librarian. I can scarcely ask him, for he has gone, and his disappearance is precisely what drives me to find out what he found - if indeed there is anything to discover. This postcard from my travels comes from the south of Morocco. Above is a detail of the shrine of the Sufi marabout Sidi Ali Ifni, in the photo below his shrine is in the foreground with the eponymous town behind it. Sidi Ifni was the Spanish enclave and art deco military garrison of Santa Cruz de la Mar Pequeña until it was reclaimed and renamed by Morocco in 1969 after a long-running territorial dispute. The quotation comes from Sufi inspired The Book of Strangers by Ian Dallas who became the controversial Shaykh Abdalqadir as-Sufi before writing The New Wagn...

Roger Wright's recently announced move from the BBC to Aldeburgh has been described elsewhere as a " bombshell " and " surprising "; but personally I would describe it as another predictable step in the remorseless suburbanization of classical music . Roger Wright has not left the BBC: he has been moved sideways by the music establishment to a "safe house" at Aldeburgh. As has previously been pointed out here , the chairman of Aldeburgh Music council Simon Robey is also chairman of the Royal Opera House , while Aldeburgh Music president Lord Dennis Stevenson of Coddenham is a director of Glyndebourne productions as well as listing consultancy to Universal Music in his parliamentary declaration of interests . Their colleague Laura Wade-Gery sits on both the Aldeburgh Music council and the Royal Opera House board of trustees, another Aldeburgh Music council member David Robbie is a former non-executive director of the BBC , and the Barbican Arts Cen...