On An Overgrown Path

That spectacular spike in On An Overgrown Path 's readership graph was caused by the economics blog Marginal revolutions linking to my posts about the older classical audience and the Ultimate Classic FM chart . I have no time for the 'mine is bigger than yours' bragging that Norman Lebrecht and other bloggers indulge in. But I do think there are lessons to be learnt from how a blog which assiduously avoids eulogising classical music's 'next big things' has retained a significant and wide audience . The classical record industry was built on the vision of figures such as Fred Gaisberg, Walter Legge and John Culshaw whose roots were deep in classical music. But the 1960s boom sparked by Elvis Presley, the Beach Boys, the Beatles and others meant that rock music called the shots in the record industry, and it has stayed that way ever since. Rock music is driven by a remorseless search for 'hits' and 'the next big thing'. Because classical h...

Publication of the Ultimate Classic FM Chart and a subsequent Guardian article has sparked some useful debate about what Kate Molleson terms in her article 'gateway drugs to classical music'. This debate prompts me to republish an article I wrote back in 2005 titled 'My first classical record ' which I have conflated with a relevant extract from an even earlier post about collaborative filtering . Too little attention is paid to how people 'get' classical music. I hope republishing these somewhat discursive pieces from a more innocent time of music blogging may prompt others to usefully share the experience of their first classical record. What was the first classical record you bought? Mine was an LP of Herbert von Karajan conducting Tchaikovsky's 6th Symphony, the 'Pathetique', with the Berlin Philharmonic on Deutsche Grammophon 13892SLPM. I bought it in 1969 from a music shop in Reading where I was at University. The shop had listening bo...

Classical music has always had its high earning high profile celebrities. But in the era of Karajan and Stokowski healthy admiration for their music making was mixed with an equally healthy scepticism about their excesses off the podium - see above. In the era of Dudamel and Rattle admiration for their music remains; but scepticism about their excesses - see below - has been replaced by remorselessly enforced approval. This unwillingness to accept that those with golden batons can also have feet of clay is driven by the widespread misapprehension that classical music needs a new messiah, and therefore any prospective saviour must be worshipped without question . Classical music is not dead. But it is under attack by the music Taliban who zealously enforce their own interpretation of the classical revelation. These Taliban use public platforms to deride anyone whose views deviate from the orthodoxy as a " tedious collection of cynics, snobs and the professionally underwhelmed ...

Hopefully all the classical music experts who zealously tweeted news of Classic FM's "huge increase in under-35 listeners" have seen the just-announced Ultimate Classic FM Chart of best-selling albums. For those who haven't the top five albums are shown above in reverse order. Is this really the future of classical music? Why don't otherwise very intelligent people think before they tweet ? 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).

Like many in the late 1960s the jazz flautist and saxophonist Paul Horn was a devotee of the Transcendental Meditation (TM) guru Maharishi Maheshi Yogi. In early 1967 Paul Horn travelled to Rishikesh to attend the Maharishi's academy of meditation. Due to the heat in the Ganges plain the last weeks of the academy were based in Srinagar in Kashmir. Participants were entertained there by Kashmiri musicians who also practised transcendental meditation. The Maharishi became a fan of Paul Horn's playing and brought him together with the Kashmiri musicians and, to quote Horn: "He proceeded to plan an album with the insight of an experienced record producer. He arranged for album cover photos to be taken early the next morning" - see above. Maharishi Maheshi Yogi was, like many religious leaders, a controversial figure. He was allegedly a kundalini opportunist, and the Beatles broke with him because of his reported advances to Mia Farrow during a TM retreat, a break...

That header photo comes from a 2016 Guardian review of a Wigmore Hall recital. Martha Argerich needs no introduction but her fellow Argentinian and recital partner Alberto Portugheis possibly does. Alberto Portugheis is both a celebrated pianist and teacher, and his masterclasses attract pianists of all ages and from around the world. Like his compatriot Daniel Barenboim he also campaign for peace and human rights, and in 2014 he launched his international movement Humanity United for Universal Demilitarisation (HUFUD). My recent post 'How classical music swims in very murky water' highlighted the three year corporate partnership between the the European Union Youth Orchestra (EUYO) and the world's fourth largest aerospace and defence company United Technologies Corporation (UTC). Alberto Portugheis has left the following comment on that post: UTC is only one of many ' Merchants of death ' companies or conglomerates that use classical music to gain new c...

That Guardian subhead of "President Maduro’s cancellation of conductor Gustavo Dudamel’s tour is a clear bid to weaponise the country’s greatest export, its musical education programme" is an unfortunate choice of words. The article , which pleads for the whole world to support Gustavo Dudamel and which condemns a bid to weaponise music education, is written by Marshall Marcus who is CEO of the European Union Youth Orchestra . The European Union Youth Orchestra (EUYO) has a three year corporate partnership with United Technologies Corporation (UTC), a partnership publicly endorsed by Marshall Marcus . UTC is a large military contractor and earns about 10% of its revenue from the U.S. government . It is one of the largest defense industry political donors. The Center for Responsive Politics , the premier research group tracking money in U.S. politics, reports that in 2016 UTC donated $1.2 million to federal candidates of which 64% went to Republicans. Possibly as a res...

In his very influential book The Soundscape: Our Sonic Environment and the Tuning of the World Canadian composer and sound ecologist R. Murray Schafer writes that "For some time I have also believed that the general acoustic environment of a society can be read as an indicator of social conditions which produce it and may tell us much about the trending and evolution of that society". This thesis can be applied usefully to the acoustic environment of today's classical concerts in general and the BBC Proms in particular. The generally accepted explanation for the dribbles of between-movement applause and other non-musical sounds that now punctuate many concerts is that they are simply a product of the fashionable 'let's do away with silly conventions' movement . But I propose another explanation. The majority of the new inter-movement applauders come from the post-album generation. The post-albums have honed their music tastes using streaming and downloa...

Simon Rattle is one of a number of celebrity musicians who have spoken out against Brexit because of their concern over the resulting potential restrictions on freedom of movement . For his farewell Asian tour with the Berlin Philharmonic and soloist Lang Lang, Rattle takes the orchestra in November to Chinese cities including Guangzhou, Wuhan and Hong Kong. Human Rights Watch reports that: "On January 29, 2016, the Guangzhou Intermediate People’s Court’s sentenced Tang Jingling, Yuan Xinting, and Wang Qingying to five, three-and-a-half, and two-and-a-half years respectively for “inciting subversion of state power.” The three men were convicted for promoting the ideas of “non-violent civil disobedience” and of promoting peaceful transformation to democratic rule in gatherings of activists. The guilty verdicts and prison terms reflect the Chinese government’s politicized manipulation of the courts and its increasing hostility toward peaceful dissent". There is more on the p...

Salman Rushdie's novel Midnight’s Children portrays India’s tumultuous journey to Partition and beyond, and the children of the title are those born at the stroke of midnight on August 15, 1947 - the precise moment of Indian independence. It can be argued that the impact of Partition on contemporary Britain is at least equal to that of the Russian Revolution. But, despite this, the centenary of the Russian Revolution takes precedence over the 70th anniversary of Partition in the 2017 BBC Proms season. So there is a veritable glut of Shostakovich, Prokofiev and Tchaikovsky, while works with links to the Indian subcontinent such as Olivier Messiaen's Turangalîla Symphony , Gustav Holst's Savitri and Choral Hymns from the Rig Veda , Jonathan Harvey's Wagner Dream , John Foulds' Song of Ram Dass and Three Mantras , and John Tavener's Requiem are conspicuously absent. But all is not quite lost. There are two Proms featuring music from the subcontinent; the ...

As a counterpoint to the latest manufactured Brexit controversy it is worth retelling* the story of a BBC Prom that was actually censored. The Great Learning: Paragraphs 1 and 2 by Cornelius Cardew was scheduled for performance at a 1972 Prom . The work, which sets translations of Confucius by Ezra Pound , generated genuine controversy before its performance. What the BBC management did not know is that Cardew - seen above in proselytising mode - had revised the work in line with his hardening Maoist views. This meant the revised version came complete with his politically motivated programme note and banners for display in the Albert Hall with the message "Apply Marxism-Leninism-Mao Tse-tung thought in a living way to the problems of the present". A typically unsatisfactory British compromise was eventually struck between BBC controller of music William Glock who had bravely programmed the work and Cardew. This resulted in an emasculated twelve minute excerpt from The...

Sakari Oramo's BBC Proms performance of Mahler's Second Symphony, which I heard via the Radio 3 broadcast yesterday, was unusually satisfying. My guides in appreciating the symphony were Klemperer on disc and Solti and Haitink in the concert hall, and Oramo's interpretation measured up well against those lofty benchmarks. The playing of the BBC Symphony Orchestra was a reminder of how good this band can be if the planets are fortuitously aligned. And the commendable Radio 3 broadcast balance gave the music room to breathe, although it was slightly marred by the usual spotlighting of solo lines and some noticeable gain riding in the final pages. Thankfully the participation of the now notorious Proms audience was minimal, and there was even enough unsullied applause at the end to allow me to mute the sound before Petroc Trelawny gatecrashed the party. That performance was evidence, if any were really needed, that the most powerful promotional tool at classical music...

Then there is the oft-heard, surely apocryphal story of a Glasgow U2 gig when Bono silenced the audience and began a slow hand clap, then whispered weightily: "Every time I clap my hands , a child in Africa dies". A voice cried out from the audience: "Well, fucking stop doing it then". That quote comes from the highly recommended The Frontman: Bobo (In the Name of Power) by Harry Browne . My thanks go to Jayaprakash Satyamurthy for recommending it; the book that is, not the story. 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).

It is mid-August and BBC Proms attendances are struggling. Most genuine music lovers have abandoned the Albert Hall to the clowns of the one-ring music circus that pitches up there every summer. Most of the prized new young audience have given up on the concerts after realising that crowd surfing and laser lights are not on the bill. And most of the Radio 3 audience has been driven away by Petroc Trelawny's relentlessly patronising presentation. So it is time to bring in the spin doctors and serve up some juicy click bait. Last year's bait was applause between movements . But this year something far more appealing has been found - Brexit . So to keep the ailing Proms high on the media agenda yet another Brexit controversy is manufactured . Hopefully when the Proms have finished, the pro and anti-Brexiteers and the malleable music celebrities will move on to another platform. Then we will be able to concentrate once again on the one thing which really matters, the music. ...

That photo was taken by me at Thiksey Monastery in Ladakh looking across to the Himalayas. In the programme note for his orchestral Body Mandala Jonathan Harvey wrote: The score is headed "...reside in the mandala, the celestial mansion, which is the nature of the purified gross body". I was in North India recently where I witnessed purification rituals in Tibetan Buddhist monasteries. This work is influenced by those experiences. The famous low horns, tungchens, the magnificently raucous 4-note oboes, gelings, the distinctive rolmo cymbals - all these and more were played by the monks in deeply moving ceremonies full of lama dances, chanting and ritual actions. There is a fierce wildness about some of the purifications, as if great energy is needed to purge the bad ego-tendencies. But also great exhilaration is present. And calm. The body, when moved with chanting, begins to vibrate and warm at different chakra points and 'sing' internally. As it were, 'lit ...

Muslims and Hindus often play together in India together to celebrate the universal message of humanity , with Hindus singing Sufi qawwali , and Muslims singing Hindu bhajans . The music tradition of the Indian subcontinent stretches back to the Vedic period (c. 1500-500 BCE) and is notable for its religious neutrality. One of the many products of the pluralism practised by the early Sultans of Delhi was qawwali music, which sprang from the poetry of the 13th century Indian Sufi Amir Khusrau . Qawwali is still performed every Thursday evening at the dargah (shrine) of his spiritual master the Sufi Chisti saint Muhammad Nizamuddin Auliya in the old Muslim quarter of Delhi. The dargah welcomes non-Muslims, and I took the photo above of a qawwali session there . But despite the prevailing pluralism Nizamuddin Auliya was accused of heresy, namely indulging in music and dancing with both Muslims and infidels, by the ulema - Muslim scholars - of the court of the notorious Sultan ...

Widespread euphoria over Classic FM's recent announcement of a "huge increase in under-35 listeners" highlights a potentially fatal flaw in classical music's survival strategy. This flaw is the dogma that changing the demographic profile of audiences is key to the future of classical music. This widely accepted dogma was expressed succinctly by Independent journalist Fiona Sturges when she tweeted that "a large proportion of Radio 3's audience should hurry up and die". If we leave aside Ms Sturges' repellent ageism, we are left with the canard that classical music's ageing audience will dwindle by attrition, and that the only way for the art form to survive is to tap into a mythical high growth market of affluent young people. Yes, it is true that the classical music audience is concentrated in middle and older age groups, with 42% in the age group 41 to 60 and 37% aged over 61. Industry dogma tells us that this older audience profile is ...

Only within can you find the answer. The Divine is what we call the macro, and we are the micro. The goal is to merge the two into one. That is the goal and the answer. This quote is paraphrased from Piers Moore Ede's All Kinds of Magic: A Quest For Meaning In A Material World . My photo shows Eliane Radique ; as the sleeve note for the Imprec label CR release of her Triptych explains, after the premiere of Adnos I in San Francisco in 1974, a group of French students introduced Eliane Radigue to Tibetan Buddhism . When she returned to Paris, she began to explore this spirituality in depth, which slowed her musical production up until 1978. Triptych marks her return to composition, and draws its inspiration from "the spirit of the fundamental elements", water, air, fire, earth....Eliane Radigue likes to add that this has often been useful to her in her moments of research and transitions. Eliane Radique is one of many women musicians who are still shamefully over...