A fable for our networked age

A man climbed to the top of the highest mountain, and standing on tiptoe, seized hold of Truth. The Devil, who had suspected mischief from this upstart, had directed one of his underlings to follow him. When the demon reported with alarm the man's success in seizing hold of Truth, the Devil was unperturbed. "Don't worry" he yawned. "I'll tempt him to share it on Facebook"
That sequel to yesterday's post 'Social media ate my music' is an update by me of a fable told by the American investigative journalist Lincoln Steffens. The photo of the announcement of the dawn puja was taken by me at the Thiksay Tibetan Buddhist monastery in Ladakh, India. This was the venue for the Scriabin in the Himalayas concert in June, but in the past two weeks the area has been hit by disastrous flash floods.

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If you like Spem in alium try this …

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Read next week's Proms picks by Pliable here. Tuesday's late night BBC Prom by the Tallis Scholars includes a little known work by Alessandro Striggio. A search on Amazon.com for Thomas Tallis’ mighty forty part motet Spem in alium returns 43 results. But a search for Striggio’s motet for the same forces, Ecce beatam lucem , returns just 2 results . The popularity of Tallis’ masterpiece is perfectly understandable, but the neglect of its progenitor is something of a mystery. Alessandro Striggio worked in Florence and Mantua in the 1550s, and developed a luxurious and opulent style of choral writing that culminated in a Sanctus for sixty voices that has sadly been lost over the intervening centuries. The motet Ecce beatam lucem was composed in 1561 as a celebration of Catholicism. It was written to mark the visit of Cardinal Ippolito d’Este to France where he was preaching against Protestantism, and uses forty voices organised in varying groupings through the course of t...
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Travels beyond TripAdvisor

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Reginald Goodall – the holy fool

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Goodall showed that as a Wagner conductor he has no equal. His control of the musical architecture is absolute. The huge span of the score was shaped as if in a single phrase. At the same time the music seemed to move spontaneously, by its own inner force, and with a glowing beauty of sound, an inevitability of rise and fall and a kind of natural momentousness of expression that will remain ideal. These were the words of David Cairns writing in the Sunday Times in August 1987. The occasion was Reginald Goodall’s last ever conducting engagement, the Proms concert performance of Act 3 of Parsifal shown in the rehearsal photo above. Wagner’s saga of the holy fool somehow sums up Goodall; as David Cairns wrote he was a Wagner conductor without equal, he was also a champion of Britten’s music who conducted the first performance of Peter Grimes , yet he flirted with fascism and alienated himself from many who tried to help him during a career that lasted more than sixty-five years. Goodall...
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A treasure trove of Stokowski downloads

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Sound yoga - ancient wisdom or New Age nonsense?

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Cleveland leave a bit of a Missa behind in London

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You say Mariinsky - I say Mravinsky

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What was on Hitler's iPod?

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Music exists within silence

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