On An Overgrown Path

Given the desperate need to find common ground between the Christian and Islamicate worlds it is surprising that more attention has not been paid to the influence of Persian literature on 19th century Romanticism, an influence which left its mark on many of the great minds of the West. The bridge between the two cultures was built by the German poet, translator, and professor of Oriental languages Friedrich Rückert (1788-1866) who translated into German the poetry of Rumi (who he described as "a great Sufi"), Sa'di , Jami and Hāfez. It was Goethe's admiration for the gazals (lyric poems) of Hāfez in translation that inspired his West-östlicher Divan (West-Eastern Divan) which was published in 1819 and from which Daniel Barenboim's band takes its name. Little is known about Hāfez. He lived all his life (1320-1389, which is contemporaneous with Chaucer) in the Persian city of Shiraz. He was a Sufi master, philosopher, mystic of Islam and spiritual rebel who w...

We are a music that longs to be free and set others free. What happens when we listen to music and just after? Music mixes and becomes part of our waiting and opening to improvisation. Listening was central to Rumi's practice. There's an inner patience that allows inspiration. We wait to learn the timing of art. I have a friend who as a child when she took piano lessons would sometimes go back and add a note she hadn't played. "The time for that note is over," said the teacher. Was it a New Yorker cartoon? There's a kid in the subway listening to a man noodling on the sax. His mother is pulling on him. "Come on honey. That's not real music. He's just making it up."Following inspiration and the nudges of intuition sets the vitality of our music in motion. That is Coleman Barks' introduction to the section Music: Patience and Improvisation in his poetry anthology The Soul of Rumi . Classical music's biggest current problem is u...

Money was doubtless the reason for franchising the BBC Proms to the oil-rich but ethically-challenged emirate of Dubai. However just one of many concerns about classical music's endorsement of the United Arab Emirates is the regime's overt homophobia , which makes demonised Russia look distinctly gay-friendly. As stated by UAE lawyer and government spokesperson Dr. Habib al-Mulla : "This is a conservative society. Homosexuality, conducted homosexuality is an illegal act*. And we are not ashamed of that”. Presumably BBC Radio 3 presenter Petroc Trelawny, who has publicly expressed support for LGBT+ causes and who travelled without demur to Dubai to present the franchised Proms , and BBC Proms controller Alan Davey who is also aligned with the LGBT+ community , are both well aware of the UAE's stance on homosexuality. But in classical music today money speaks louder words, and the Gulf media's critical appreciation of western classical music was clearly not the ...

Understanding the ordinary: Enlightenment Not understanding the ordinary: Blindness creates evil. Understanding the ordinary: Mind opens. Mind opening leads to compassion, Compassion to nobility, Nobility to heavenliness, Heavenliness to TAO There is definitely nothing ordinary about the keyboard music of Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach, which forms an important but too often overlooked bridge between the high baroque of his father's circle and the emerging classicism of Haydn and Mozart. And there is nothing ordinary in the playing of the Croatian pianist Ana-Marija Markovina whose discerning interpretations on a 'modern' Bösendorfer are faithfully captured in Hänssler Classics' 26 CD anthology of C.P.E. Bach's complete works for solo piano . But in an age when the classical promotion machine practises its own nuanced version of 'if it bleeds it leads' , I suspect that this admirably bleed-free release will be misguidedly judged ordinary. The TAO...

In tune with the zeitgeist , the London Philharmonic dedicated yesterday's performance of Mozart's Requiem to the four victims of Wednesday's terrible attack at Westminster. But the orchestra passed on the opportunity to dedicate the other work in their programme, Strauss' Death and Transfiguration, to the 200+ Iraqi civilians killed in the coalition airstrike on Mosul five days before the London atrocity - see photo above. Predictable but ironic: because the concert was a central event in the Southbank Centre's much-trumpeted Belief and Beyond Belief festival , which "looks at the broader questions of what it means to be human... in the 21st century". Photo via LA Times . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s). Also on Facebook and Twitter .

A conductor making great music with a first class orchestra is a delight. A conductor making great music with a third class orchestra is a miracle. I will remember Louis Frémaux, who has died aged 95, for the miracles he worked with the City of Birmingham Symphony Orchestra. In the 1970s when Frémaux was its principal conductor, the CBSO was a third rate and ill-disciplined band: Simon Rattle tells of how at the time if a conductor asked the violin section to play a passage using the same part of the bow the players would laugh and ask why. Given this, Frémaux's recordings with the CBSO such as the Saint-Saëns Organ Symphony - still one of the finest interpretations committed to disc - and Massenet's ballet music from Le Cid are nothing short of a miracle . EMI recorded the Saint-Saëns in the Great Hall of Birmingham University, although the artwork, of course, shows the Cavaillé-Coll instrument in La Madeleine, Paris. In 1978 relations between the CBSO's management a...

To fresh matters must I now refer, indeed there's much to say. One night I spent as a passing guest in a friend's house. Sufficient was the meal, even though today, come what may, Some men are reluctant to open their doors to visitors. It takes but little patience to spend the evening together, Enough time for intentions, worthy and unworthy, to show. Say what I must, these times are at one good and bad. As to what fate holds in store, how should we know? We lack nothing material, yet our minds are in turmoil! That is the opening stanza of the contemporary Berber ballad Hospitality Betrayed from the Atlas Mountains of Morocco composed by Sheikh Assu of Ishishawn*. The photo is from Cette Lumière by Dominique and Miloudi Nouiga which takes its title from Jiddu Krishnamurti 's teaching " L’important c’est d’être à soi-même sa propre lumière, son propre maître et son propre disciple [What is important is to be a light unto yourself, to be your own Master and d...

Recent compelling rail trip listening included the new CD La Voix de la Passion (Voice of Passion) from the young Syrian singer and oud player Waed Bouhassoun . In 2015 I wrote about her previous album L'Âme du luth (Soul of the oud) and on this new disc she juxtaposes settings of Nabataean poetry from southern Syria and Arab poetry from the cultural Indian summer of Al-Andalusia - sample via this link . In his 2011 book The Filter Bubble: What the Internet is Hiding from You Eli Pariser explained the dangers of the little-understood filter bubbles created by the personalisation algorithms used by Facebook, Google and other major Internet players. These algorithms maximise web traffic by personalising - in other words skewing - content to pander to the known likes of individual web users. In very simple terms this means that clicking on or 'liking' Facebook statuses about Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla means your news feed will be skewed to Mirga Gražinytė-Tyla-related c...

That photo was taken by me a few days ago and shows the Marrakesh Express pulling in to Meknes. The train was immortalised in a track on Crosby, Stills & Nash's 1969 debut album which tells how on the journey "Ducks and pigs and chickens call". In a Rolling Stone interview Graham Nash explained that on the 1960s Marrakesh Express "Just like the song says, there were ducks and pigs and chickens all over the place and people lighting fires". As pigs are notably scarce in Muslim Morocco we must surmise that the lyric's reference to "Blowing smoke rings from the corners of my my, my, my, my mouth" describes something more potent than Marlboros. Also on Facebook and Twitter . Any copyrighted material is included as "fair use" for critical analysis only, and will be removed at the request of copyright owner(s).