Hogwash franchises all over the world?


Babel Fish doesn't yet offer American to English translations. So can someone help me with the last paragraph of this article? It isn't helped by the fact that I left school before Harry Potter was around.
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David Munrow - more than early music

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'David Munrow and the Early Music Consort of London transformed our view of medieval music. The impact of their performances far surparssed any that had gone before: by demonstrating how medieval music could sound normal, they created a niche for it in the concert hall and on record that it has never lost' ~ From Daniel Leech-Wilkinson's notes for Music of the Gothic era May 15 2007 is the thirty-first anniversary of the death of David Munrow. His contribution to the acceptance, understanding and performance of early music almost defies summary. He was born in 1942, and learnt the bassoon and recorder as a child. Between school and university he travelled and taught in South America , and started the collection of ethnic instruments that were to give him, and the world, a new perspective on early music making. He read English at Pembroke College , Cambridge, and was encouraged by Thurston Dart to take an active role in the music-making of that most musical of cities. ...
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Soundtrack for a porn movie

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"No, you have not landed on Slipped Disc by mistake. Respected electronic music pioneer Klaus Schulze tells the story himself.  The origins of " Body Love " are quite funny. I received a call from a movie producer named Manfred Menz and I wound up becoming his principal composer for a period of time. Amongst others, I composed the "Barracuda" soundtrack for him [1978, previously unreleased on album]. This led to a friendship which lasts till today. Menz now lives in Malibu, California where I visited him a couple of years ago. Anyway, this guy calls me and asks if I would compose the score to a porn movie. I said: "Porn? Nah, I don't do that kind of thing".  As it turned out, the director of the movie, Lasse Braun, had already shot it and had used my albums " Timewind " [1975] and " Moondawn " [1976] as a kind of "working soundtrack". This was obvious because the couples in the film were moving in time to my gro...
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Classical music must be doing something wrong

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Classical music's website of choice Slipped Disc  today runs a story on the latest RAJAR UK radio listening figures . This story states that a "...record number of individual hours was spent listening to [BBC Radio 3]. They must be doing something right". Which is good news; but only for those who believe that facts should never stand in the way of a good story. Because simple arithmetic shows that BBC Radio 3 is not doing very much right, while UK classical radio in its entirety is doing something wrong.   In the quarter ended September 2024, BBC Radio 3 and Classic FM audiences were 2.039m and 4.416m respectively. Which gives a total audience for the two classical stations of 6.455m. For the same quarter in September 2023 the audiences were 2.002m and 4.467m, giving a total classical radio audience 12 months previously of 6.469m.  So BBC Radio 3's "something right" turns out to be a fractional increase in its audience year on year, and a contribution ...
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Good news - classical music's audience is getting older

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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 ...
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Why Simon Bolivar is important

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The opera Simón Bolívar by Thea Musgrave was a joint commission by the Los Angeles Music Centre and Scottish Opera . Born in Scotland in 1928 Musgrave studied with Nadia Boulanger in Paris, knew Benjamin Britten , and has lived in the United States since 1974. For more on Thea Musgrave, and other women composers, follow this path . Thea Musgrave's two act opera tells the story of the Venezuelan folk hero Simón Bolívar (1783-1830), who liberated six South American countries from Spanish colonial rule. Bolívar was a passionate idealist, and brilliantly successful freedom fighter (he is seen in the painting above finalising his campaign). But he failed to unite the liberated countries under one flag, and today they are the independent states of Venezuela , Colombia , Ecuador , Peru , Panama , and Bolivia . In the 21st century Simón Bolívar is still revered for defeating the Spanish and liberating the region from colonial domination. There is no commercial recording of the opera Si...
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Easter at Aldeburgh

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Iken Church in the distance from Iken Cliff, all photos taken today under a typical East Anglian sky. The overgrown path led me to Iken Church this Easter Saturday morning. The church is on a promontory sticking out into the River Ald downstream from Snape . It is a place of inspiring beauty and peace, a wonderful setting for a monastery. St Botolph built his minster at Iken in the 7th century, and became the first person in Britain to follow the Rule of St Benedict . The monastery was destroyed by raiding Danes in the winter of 969/70, and parts of the current church date from the rebuilding which started in the 11th century. The story of destruction by Viking invaders is a reminder of how this part of East Anglia is on the margins of civilisation. During World War 2 the village of Iken was evacuated and the church closed to make way for a practice battleground. And despite the beauty of the area the Sizewell nuclear power station to the north is a constant, and visible, reminder ...
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Pie in the face for a dangerous buffoon

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The automobile laconically runs down pedestrians. It gnaws into the side of a barn or else, grinning, it flies down a slope. It can't be blamed for anything. Its conscience is... clear... It only fulfillls its destiny. It is destined to wipe out the world. from Russian writer Ilya Ehrenburg's , The Life of the Automobile , published in 1929. Worldwide three quarters of a million people are killed every year on the roads. More people between five and 44 die in car crashes in the Third World than are killed by any single disease. 3,508 people were killed in road accidents in 2003 in the UK, and 33,707 were seriously injured. 171 of those killed were children. Since 1899 motor vehicles have killed over 2.5 million Americans, and permanently injured 43 million. The Humane Society estimates that more than one million animals are killed every day on US roads. It has been estimated that motor vehicles kill more animals than the fur trade and animal experimentation industry combined, ...
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Classical music’s love affair with Twitter is misguided

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Write about the exorbitant fees charges by leading musicians , and you generate little response. Write about classical music’s sponsorship by tobacco companies , and you generate little response. Write about music education’s links with a totalitarian regime , and you generate little response. But write about classical music’s love affair with Twitter and the defensive comments come flooding in. My posts about Twitter are not, as one reader suggests, to draw attention to the fact that the medium is “full of lowest common denominator crap” – I do not need to do that because it is self-evident to anyone who spends even a few minutes in the twittersphere. No, my concerns about Twitter go deeper and are directed at its increasing commercial rather than personal use. These concerns revolve around three issues; namely that the classical industry’s love affair with Twitter is consuming increasingly scarce financial resources, is providing a particularly fruitful breeding ground for para...
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Benjamin Brittten's relationship with children

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From early in life, Britten had close relationships with handsome teenagers. On his side, there was often a sexual attraction. The boys themselves were sometimes unaware, sometimes complicit. Ronan Magill, the last such figure in Britten's life, wasn't conscious of the charge in their relationship at the time, but says now: 'If he did [feel attraction], then I'm glad that he did - if I could make him think that way for even five seconds. ' When it comes to the question of how far attraction was physically expressed, Bridcut sometimes leans on the evidence. In 1936, Britten invited Harry Morris, 13, on a family holiday in Cornwall (Britten's brother and sister and their families were also present). According to Morris, Britten came into his room one night and made what he understood to be a sexual approach. The boy screamed and hit his host with a chair, attracting the attention of Britten's sister, Beth. Harry returned to London in the morning. With Pea...
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