On An Overgrown Path

Walk around life like a leaf, knowing you could tumble at any second. Then decide what to do with your time That quote is from Naomi Saihib Nye 's poem The Art of Disappearing . Gerald Finzi 's The Fall of the Leaf is one of the works on that 1978 Lyrita LP with Sir Adrian Boult conducting the London Philharmonic - listen here . Autumn and winter are when leaves fall, and also when small creatures enter the period of inactivity known as hibernation. I certainly hope my corporeal leaf will not tumble for quite a few more years. But priorities change; so it is now time for that small creature known as On An Overgrown Path to hibernate. If or when it will awaken is not decided. Eleven years ago the blog came to life without fanfare, to present an alternative view on the world of art music, and I want it to hibernate in exactly the same way . So there will be some more posts, and after one of these the blog will fall silent without further comment from me. Also on Facebook ...

Inequality results in yearnings; yearnings are often expressed musically. Along with all the political and social chaos that's erupted in the Middle East, interest in the arts of Arabia has increased tremendously. Since sound is universal, music transgresses borders: writing needs translators, while the subtleties of dance, theatre and painting may not make sense to outsiders. This is not to imply these limited: obviously the rich textiles and fabrics of Afghanistan and Africa, a rising economic substance in the West, is vastly appealing. But the astute, subtle gestures of Japan's Noh Theater and high-pitched grating tones of Chinese Opera take time for outsiders to become acquainted with. Lay down a solid groove and plug in instruments and you have instant access. That extract comes from Derek Beres ' book Global Beat Fusion: The History of the Future of Music . It was published in 2005, but the message that music transgresses borders is even more relevant at a time when ...

'Music demands ... some preparation, some effort... It demands as much effort on the listener's part as the other two corners of the triangle, this holy triangle of composer, performer and listener' ~ Benjamin Britten, Aspen Award acceptance speech That is my SME IIIS/Audio-Technica AT-F3/III/Thorens TD125 record deck being serviced on the kitchen table today. Readers who know their SME arms - is there anyone else left who knows their SME arms? - will observe that the counterbalance weight assembly has been dismantled. After four decades the lead weights had started to oxidise badly and shed toxic white powder; so they had to cleaned and varnished to stop further corrosion. Audiophiles will also spot the exquisite Technics stylus balance gauge from the 1970s. The elderly patient recovered fully from surgery, and an original pressing (ASD 3645) of Muti's 1978 Philadelphia Pictures from an Exhibition blazes out in all its analogue glory as I write. You may not need to cl...

No sooner had yesterday's lament been published than classical music's social media channels resounded to the sound of yet more self-serving virtual noise. It has become the fashion for young female - the latter adjective is a statement of fact not gender bias - pianists of unproven talent from former Soviet republics to attract media attention by Katie Hopkins -style social media excesses. These excesses are adored by the Sinfini Music school of churnalists , whose own virtual noise feeds on the virtual noise created by others. So, as in the current example, a virtuous circle of self-promoting social media noise is created to the benefit of all concerned, but, I would suggest, to the detriment of the long term future of classical music. The only way to deal with these self-serving virtual noise makers is to deny them the oxygen of publicity. So no links to them, and, instead, a heads up for my own young pianist of the year. My enthusiasm for René Urtreger's post-bo...

That stormy sky was photographed when I was hiking on the slopes of Mont Ventoux in southern France a couple of weeks ago. It is the quality of the silence that always strikes me in this region. By choice I was travelling with only a basic mobile phone for emergency use; so I was isolated from both environmental noise and the virtual online noise that increasingly deadens our senses in daily life. The assumption that the loudest virtual noise wins is breeding a dangerous strand of dialectic extremism . And it is one of the many ironies of our time, that in the arts sector many who claim to revere John Cage's advocacy of the music of ambient sounds are drowning out those lauded ambient sonorities with their remorseless self-interested virtual noise . 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).

'Wherever you are in the Western world you are psychologically Christian, indelibly marked with the sign of the cross in your mind and in the corpuscles of your habits... Once you feel your personal soul to be distinct from the world out there, and that consciousness and conscience are logged in the soul (and not in the world out there), and that even the impersonal selfish gene is individualized in your person, you are, psychologically, Christian. Once your first response to a dream, a bit of news, an idea divides immediately into the moral 'good' or 'bad' , psychologically you are Christian. Once you feel sin in connection with your flesh and its impulses, you are Christian. When a hunch comes true, a slip-up is taken as an omen, and you trust in dreams, only to shake off these inklings as ' superstition ', you are Christian because that religion bans non-doctrinal forms of communication with the invisibles, excepting Jesus... Once you consider the ap...

Most recently of all, I've been contemplating the return of that great theme at the end of the Elgar's First Symphony, asking myself whence come those extraordinary chords that intermittently add stresses. Tangentially, there is a video of Tod Handley conducting the work on YouTube, and I wish I could make it mandatory viewing for all neophyte conductors, above all, keeping in mind that this was an appearance as guest conductor to boot (with the Melbourne Symphony Orchestra !). This is great conducting, I would say. What my mind kept returning to was what in Elgar's mind inspired him to write those chords, and I came to think that the answer to a question quite often posed is that all we really need to know is what is in the music, though it would be a huge bonus if we could hear from the composer what thought process it issued from, if any. I can't answer the question whether absolute music 'says' something coming from the mind of the composer, but all that i...