On An Overgrown Path

That is E.J. Moeran (left) in the photo with John Ireland on the Norfolk Broads. I have been spending time recently listening to the Sketches for Moeran's Symphony No. 2 as realised and completed by Martin Yates in the recently-released recording on the Dutton Epoch label . Leonardo da Vinci declared that "No work of art is ever finished; only abandoned." Some music compositions are abandoned at a later stage in their gestation than Moeran's Second Symphony, which was abandoned as no more than fragments when the composer died in 1950. But every composition, even if considered completed by the conventional definition, is not finished but simply abandoned to the musicians who perform it. And those musicians do not finish the work, because they in turn abandon it to the audience. And when the audience leaves the hall the work is not finished; because the musicians and audience are again abandoning it to all those participating in the next performance. It is an endle...

John McLaughlin Williams - seen above - has added the following comment to yesterday's post Classical music is exploiting #female : 'How I wish they would deign to exploit #blackconductors. Is that even a thing?'

Deutsche Grammophon has spun the story of signing its first ever female cellist Camille Thomas , and the news has dutifully been re-spun by clickbait master Norman Lebrecht. Why is such a story circulated when anyone with even a cursory knowledge of classical music knows that Anja Thauer in 1968 - see above - and Jacqueline du Pré in 1979 - see below - not to mention other soloists and chamber players have made recordings for DG, for which they must have signed a contract? Not to mention the countless rank and file female cellists in orchestras contracted to record for DG over the decades. And coming to that, why would Vladmir Spivakov's Moscow Virtuoso Orchestra promote a concert of male composers' music as a celebration of International Women's Day ? The inconvenient truth is that #female has become just another exploitable marketing gimmick in an industry that is addicted to marketing gimmicks . Now before the music thought police take further sanctions against me , ...

Two of the albums that I return to time and time again during my explorations of mystic turuq  are Brian Jones Presents the Pan Pipes at Joujouka from 1971 and Bill Laswell 's 1995 Apocalypse Across the Sky , both of which capture the literally entrancing sound of the legendary Master Musicians of Jajouka in their home village in Morocco's Rif Mountains. Six years ago I collaborated with Led Zeppelin biographer and Michael Jackson ghost writer Stephen Davis on a two-part profile of the Master Musicians. Between 1973 and 1989 Stephen made a number of visits to Jajouka, and he is therefore an important and reliable source on an important cultural tradition in which the music is sometimes drowned-out by the sound of axes being ground . When I asked Stephen to choose between the Brian Jones and Bill Laswell productions he plumped for the more atmospheric and authentic 1971 recording, but conceded that Apocalypse Across the Sky "sounds great". Personally I love Brian ...

That is my 1970s vintage Technics stylus pressure gauge being used today. This beautifully engineered strain gauge measures stylus pressure accurate to 0.1 grams. The Thorens TD 125 turntable with SME Series IIIS tone arm and Audio-Technica AT-F3 cartridge are also all more than 40 years old. I wonder how many of today's CD players, yet alone MP3 devices, will still be in daily use in 2057? Coming to that how many of today's music streaming services will still be in business ? And I wonder how many Malcolm Arnold symphonies will be performed at the BBC Proms in the next 40 years ? 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).

Iraqi visual artist Riyadh Neam supplies the three accompanying graphics which are used in the booklet for Rahim AlHaj's new CD Letters from Iraq . Riyadh Neam explains that in his paintings depicting the children of post-invasion Iraq in the streets of devastated Baghdad “I’m always trying to show the relationship between stasis and movement, between a still life and a moving life.” He uses color to symbolise the dynamics of his war-torn country, with the dominant grey, black and white symbolising destruction, bright green indicating grief, and red signifying inextinguishable hope. This use of colours to symbolise emotions is a form of the cross-talk between different sensory channels known as synesthesia . Music appreciation involves cross-talk between hearing and emotion, and many celebrated musicians have experienced synesthesia in various forms, including Alexander Scriabin, Amy Beach, Olivier Messiaen and György Ligeti, while the word raga from the Indian classical traditi...

Robert M. Pirsig, the author of Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance has died at the age of 88 . That photo shows him with his son Chris, and the pair are the main protagonists in the book. Like many I was influenced by Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance at the time of its publication in 1974 and I have re-read it many times. The quasi-autobiography is enlightening and thought-provoking, but the little-known codicil is deeply disturbing. In later editions Robert M. Pirsig added an afterword , from which the following is taken: The receding Ancient Greek perspective of the past ten years has a very dark side: Chris is dead. He was murdered. At about 8:00 P.M. on Saturday, November 17, 1979, in San Francisco, he left the Zen Center, where he was a student, to visit a friend's house a block away on Haight Street. According to witnesses, a car stopped on the street beside him and two men, black, jumped out. One came from behind him so that Chris couldn't escape, a...

Dear Bob Yesterday's post was enjoyable as always, but your assertion that you've never been to a concert where the musicians were dead came as a challenge to people like me, who love to find exceptions to every rule! So how about this? Of course, it would be a Prom; how I agree with all your other comments... best wishes Angus O'Neill 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).

In a Telegraph article about the 2017 BBC Proms the concert series' director David Pickard raises hopes for an possible important change in direction. Discussing the move away from Proms themed to TV shows, Pickard observes that "what we need to be thinking of is nurturing a long-term audience for classical music". This statement may be blindingly obvious, but it is important for two reasons. First, it is a welcome sign that somebody at the BBC has finally realised what many of us have known for years, that dumbing down classical music does not build a long-term audience . The second reason why his observation is important is because it is a much-needed admission that quality and not quantity of audience is what matters . In the past the spin-masters at the BBC have been eager to point out the numbers of first-time concertgoers at the Proms. For instance the number of 33,000 first-time concertgoers was trumpeted for the 2014 Proms season ; but drilling down below th...

More than 2 million cat videos on YouTube have generated in excess of one billion views, with one cat video alone viewed 77 million times. Cat pictures are more popular than selfies on social media , with around 4 million feline photos and videos shared each day, and 350,000 cats have their own Twitter or Facebook account. We know that cats have remarkable powers of hearing and exhibit an advanced form of synaesthesia by which they can switch sensory information between the visual channel (eyes) and hearing channel (ears) as required - e.g. while hunting. And there are long-established links between cats and classical musicians, with the feline friend of the legendary harpsichord Scott Ross being just one of many examples. The cat is one of the few animals that is found on every continent except Antarctica. There are around 500 million domestic cats in the world and the annual global cat food market is worth US$70 billion . So it is surprising that there have not been many ...

According to the planners of the 2017 BBC Proms, it takes five Mahler symphonies to fill the Albert Hall. In a year when there is not the usual excuse for overkill of an anniversary , half the composer's symphonic output is featured in one Proms season, with three of the symphonies played in a five day period. The five symphonies include the First; this has been performed thirteen times at the Proms since the turn of the century, with this year's performance the fourth in four years. That other perennial excuse of planners that a warhorse coupled with a 'difficult' work broadens audience tastes also doesn't apply. Two of the Mahler symphonies have no coupling, Haydn, Schubert and Dvořák are coupled to the other three, and the only paired contemporary work is a seven minute amuse bouche from John Adams . That header graphic is a pencil sketch of Sir Malcolm Arnold by his son. Sir Malcolm wrote symphonies that surely would appeal to today's Mahler-satia...

Vedanta teaches that sound is god - Nāda Brahma - and in the past Western classical music has had a long and distinguished connection with the hi-fi industry. In the 1970s Herbert von Karajan and also Miles Davis promoted the Acoustic Research loudspeaker brand - see advertisement below - and the great EMI and HMV record labels had their roots in the Gramophone Company which manufactured both record players and records. The high-end audio industry continues today, championed by magazines such as Stereophile and The Absolute Sound . But there is now a massive disconnect between classical music and recorded sound quality . When did you last see an audio brand mentioned in a music blog post or tweet? Coming to that when did you last see recorded sound quality, as opposed to performance quality, mentioned in an album review? In the frantic search for that elusive mass market the classical music industry has actively encouraged recorded sound to be dumbed down to the lowest comm...

In Different Trains Steve Reich juxtaposed his music with reminiscences about the Holocaust to create a contemporary masterpiece. In Letters from Iraq the Iraqi-American composer and oud player Rahim AlHaj takes the reminiscences of those - including himself - who have suffered in Iraq since the 2003 U.S. led invasion as inspiration for eight instrumental tone poems; sample below. Letters from Iraq draws on both Middle Eastern and Western musical traditions and is scored for oud, percussion and a string quintet which for the newly-released recording was drawn from members of the New Mexico Philharmonic . The album is on the Smithsonian Folkways label and the 40 page booklet includes striking paintings by Iraqi visual artist Riyadh Neam. Rahim AlHaj explains that: “Music can make us laugh, make us cry, make us march into war. I want to make music to make us realize peace”. Letters from Iraq is protest music par excellence with one of the tone poems depicting the carnage of a c...