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Composer with very mixed feelings about the digital world

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In an online interview LA-based composer Jeffrey Roden explained: I have very mixed feelings about the digital world in general and would hesitate to say that the net worth of it has been positive for music and its listeners... Technology has made many very wonderful things possible. More music is not one of them..  The photo above shows Jeffrey Roden with members of the Bennewitz Quartet during a recording session for his 2016 double album Threads of a Prayer Volume 1 . Swiss philosopher Max Picard lamented how "Nothing has changed the nature of man so much as the loss of silence" and Threads of a Prayer is an extended hymn to that lost silence. This overlooked essay in the power of the silence between the notes can be compared to the music of Morton Feldman, Arvo Pärt, and John Tavener. But as Roden explains, such comparisons are not only meaningless, but disrespectful and demeaning: Although I am paraphrasing, Hemingway said talking about the work too much took away i...

Beware of the blunt fist of art censorship

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Bombing of Dresden by the Allied forces of America and British forces in February 1945 left more than 25,000 dead. Months later the Allies were declared 'victors' in a conflict that cost around 80 million lives globally. Eleven young choristers from the famous Kreuzchor were among the colateral damage caused by the bombing on February 13th 1945. As well as this terrible human loss the famous choir also lost its its Neo-Gothic choir school on the Georgplatz, its library of sheet music and archive, and its very raison d'être , the beautiful Kreuzkirche (Church of the Holy Cross) which dated from the 13th century. In 1948 the cantor of the Kreuzchor Rudolf Mausberger completed his Dresden Requiem , composed as a tribute to the victims of the Allied bombing.  My presciently-titled 2016 post  There are two sides in every war tells the story of Rudolf Mausberger's brave artistic statement. Oscar Wilde wrote in  The Soul of Man Under Socialism  in 1891: Upon the other hand...

Tales of song and sadness

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My recent listening has included  Tales of song and sadness  newly-released on the Dutch Pentatone label .  This captures performances by the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century and Cappella Amsterdam , under the direction of Daniel Reuss , as well as contributions by Sour Cream and of course Frans Brüggen. Centrepiece of this programme is Andriessen’s May. This was   commissioned by the musicians of the Orchestra of the Eighteenth Century to commemorate the death of Brüggen, but eventually turned out to be Louis Andriessen’s swan song as well. Conceived as a double tribute commemorating the demise of two giants of Dutch music culture,  Frans Brüggen  and  Louis Andriessen , this lament for what we have lost has recently taken on  a disturbing wider relevance . My recent reading included   A Fortune Teller Told Me  by  the Italian writer and traveller Tiziano Terzani . Although written in 1995 Terzani's musin...

All is not lost, but where is it?

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It is appropriate today to provide a heads up to the Suns of Arqa 2015 album All is not lost, but where is it? which features contributions from Youth , Raja Ram , The Orb , and the performance poet  John Cooper Clarke . Like all Arqa albums it was masterminded by Michael Wadada, who famously defied the classical nimbies by successfully combining a re-imagined Fauré's Requiem with early rumblings of Dub Step , Hindustani ragas, and Nyabinghi Dub Poetry on another album . My 2020 interview with the now sadly-departed Michael can be read via this link . Track 6 on the album has a sampled John Cooper Clarke - who was a regular Arqa collaborator - reciting his poem The Truth Lies Therein . Here are some of the prescient lyrics.  He shall be taken with out the walls of the city Where pestilence shall hold dominion over all The water will stink and prove bitter on his tongue A plague of isolation shall deliver him to decrepitude Wither shall he fly in such misery He wants t...

Beware of the classical music nimbies

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Ezra Pound proposed that in moments of transition there are almost always moments of clarity. Today, classical music, the arts, and culture in general have all reached a moment of fundamental transition. But in classical music, where is the clarity?  It is incontestable that classical music has reached a moment of transition. Until recently it was struggling to connect with the young rewired audience . But today the problem is far more fundamental. A decade ago the mature cohort despaired at youngsters whose life experience - including music - was confined to the screens of mobile devices. But now the entire Western population - in fact my recent time in India suggests the entire global population - experiences almost every aspect of their life through a mobile phone. In every age group attention spans are diminishing, social media has become the primary tastemaker, entertainment is valued above enlightenment, instant gratification rules, and  quality expectations have dimin...

You cannot aggregate taste

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My recent listening has included Ballett by the legend of German electronic music Klaus Schulze . Spanning four discs for its CD re-release ,  Ballett 1,2,3 & 4 expands Schulze's established electronic sound palett by the addition of violin, flute, cello and oboe. He explains, or rather dismisses, the neo-classical style of the pieces as follows:  'Because of the cello, the songs of course have a slightly classical feeling. But: No! Though I like to connect electronic music with classical sound and structures, I won't suddenly start to compose "classically". Just as I won't publish the many poems I had written before doing my German studies, or exhibit Sunday paintings like McCartney – never mind the fact that I can't paint. I will also never write an autobiography; I stick to that which I'm good at. I never had any hobbies besides music, whether it be painting or writing. I always made music, as if focused on one thing only'. Ballett is m...

New verb for a new year

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To netflix = to align an artform with the genre's lowest common denominator to increase audience size.  Example of use = BBC Radio 3 has been netflixed .