A Lark Ascending

A good few years since I read it - but it's astounding.

It's good to be a rookie and take your time exploring an area of music slowly. I'm much the same with music - I've become very interested in more contemporary music in the last few years and enjoy the thought that I've got an interesting, long journey ahead in composers where one or two pieces have caught my ear. Yes, some British accents can be impenetrable - try Geordie (Newcastle) or some Ulster dialects.

I know what you mean by this, essentially, but I wonder (if you wouldn't mind) if you could put into words your definition of this term? Or at least how you're using it here? I've always found it curious for its negative connotation, and I notice (frequently) its use in the (for lack of a better term) "art world" — particularly poetry and painting. I tend to mean that highly self-conscious sense of appreciating (and being seen to appreciate) something a bit rarefied. Along with a sense of aren't I a fine fellow because I'm so discriminating, so hard to please ('Uchida? Atrocious. I only listen to Schnabel'). All carried out in a language that pretends to comment on the 'art' but tends to just spin fancy words and project onto the 'artwork'. Which is no criticism of the actual music, painting etc - just the way that those who need to feel that they have some sort of exclusive appreciation insist on talking/writing about it. Very, very associated with the 'thea-tah' over here. All that 'Larry dah-ling' stuff. There's something very upper crust in Pears' diction that grates on a bourgeoisie nouveaux type like me. And the whole Pears-Britten crowd very much smacked of that exclusivity. Doesn't stop me enjoying the music, though. I suspect it might not be so noticeable outside of Britain (you probably think we all talk like that!)

This looks like one of the more intriguing events in the centenary: Peter Grimes on the Beach http://www.aldeburgh.co.uk/events/grimes-beach I love the seating arrangements: Bench seating £75 Sitting on the shingle £50, £40, £20 ​The beach at Aldeburgh is an amazing place (great fish and chips too!). Just hope the British Summer doesn't do its worst (except, perhaps, in the storm scene).

Not seen that one - though there was a a programme a while back specifically about his relationship with boys. Drew the same conclusion as you mention - a torment but not acted on. One aspect of his personality that seemed unpleasant was a tendency to suddenly 'drop' favourites including these young boys in favour of others. There are a couple of new biographies one of which has launched a storm in a teacup about whether Pears infected him with an STD. I read the Humphrey Burton one about 20 years back which I really enjoyed and I recall it handing such matters at a distance. You get that 'translucent' quality in the chamber-like operas - 'The Turn of the Screw', 'A Midsummer's Night Dream' especially. Very small instrumental ensembles where you really hear the individual instruments rather than great washes of sound. I bought a lot of Britten recordings in the 80s when the Decca material (now in the megalopobox above) first appeared, often the only place on CD you could hear it at the time so I acclimatised to Pears very quickly. He can sound very 'precious' but I find that with classical singing generally. Still can't take Pears/Britten doing folksongs! I've never tired of exploring Britten - there's a huge variety in his music and I've never heard anything that I openly dislike (though there are things I find uninvolving). An unusual one is the pre Peter Grimes opera 'Paul Bunyen' written in America in the early 40s. Has more than a little of the New Deal music for the working man about it - half-way between an opera and a musical. I'm also very fond of the lengthy ballet 'The Prince of the Pagodas' which has some wonderful gamelan-like sounds in the central act. They reappear in his last opera 'Death in Venice' - there's a marvellous suite from that piece arranged by Stueart Bedford that's well worth hearing. Another lesser know piece I love is the suite 'A Time There Was' - a short set of arrangements of English folk songs but instead of the rumpy-pumpy or dreamy nostalgia you usually get these are very eerie. You can see the morning mist rising over the East Anglian fenland.

1st Movement: Going in search of bagels upon arrival in Central Park

There has to be a Wynton joke there somewhere.

Looks good. Hope Mike has my holidays in mind with his summer schedule!

66 CDs!!!!!!!

Having read the fiction of the D-Day landings failing I pulled this off the 'to read' shelves: Very impressive. I've read 'Stalingrad' and his Spanish Civil War book. Might give his WWII overview a go in the summer. When I read things like this I'm reminded just how lucky I am to have been born when and where I was. I cannot imagine jumping out of that landing craft. *************** Read this one a week or so back: I recall an earlier poster not caring for it but I enjoyed it. Especially the Vienna part - can't get enough of fin-de-siecle Vienna.

Just noticed: Friday October 25 Sheffield Jazz Louis Moholo-Moholo Quartet Jason Yarde, ss, as, bars; AH, p; John Edwards, b; Louis Moholo-Moholo, d Looking forward to that very much. And on a Friday!

Didn't know there was a film.

I wasn't aware I had. I've always found Fripp's music first rate entertainment. Hope I've never described it as art!

Really enjoying this. 1944-5. The D-Day landings have failed, Moscow and Stalingrad have fallen and Hitler's revived armies have invaded Britain. A story built round a small group of German soldiers who arrive in a remote Welsh village where only the women remain, the men having disappeared into the resistance. Beautifully evocative of the seasons and the impact of war on both the conquerors and the conquered. The counterfactual historic events are relayed lightly and at a distance, heard through rumour and occasional radio reception. Very impressive.

Not as good as the Neil Young story. Played the whole 'Tonight's the Night' album to a bewildered audience expecting 'Harvest'. Announced that they were now going to play some music the audience had heard before and everyone relaxed and got ready for 'Heart of Gold'. Young and the band then played 'Tonight's the Night' through for a second time.

It's not about 'versus'. It's about 'I like this, you might like it too' balanced by 'So what do you like that I might like?' A pretty good basis for any relationship. I'm reminded of the chap in 'Hi-Fidelity' who bombards his girlfriend with mix tapes of music he loves and desperately want to share. The response he gets is something along the lines of 'Very nice, dear'. A little later he hears her playing her Abba records.

My dad had music on all the time - nothing fancy, light classics, opera favourites, Bing Crosby etc and he regularly told me how much finer it was than what I played. Then one evening - I was about 15 - he proposed we all have an evening one day soon listening to my records. I really looked forward to that - a chance to explain why this music meant something to me and it wasn't just some daft teenage racket. It never happened. I was very resentful. So there's another approach. I'll sent you a CD of really great music I think you might like; you send me one back (or make a list of titles I'll seek out) of music that you like and think I might enjoy. Puts it onto an equal footing.

It is a nice thing to do.

Nothing wrong with making someone aware of the greater breadth that is out there beyond the mainstream. Why not just have it playing when he visits and saying nothing unless he asks?

When I was a kid any adult trying to influence my musical tastes had the opposite effect. Part of being a kid is finding your own distinctive way. My nephew was brought up in a house where everything from classical to punk, jazz to reggae was played. As a young kid he was open to everything (loved Prokofiev's 'Romeo and Juliet') but by mid-teens was a hardcore rap fan. But because no-one every tried to steer him he's still got respect for those other musics. Later in life those early seeds might sprout and give him wider pleasures. The last thing any kid wants are evangelical adults.

Voila http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/If_Not_for_You

Fripp hides his location as 'Bredenborough'. Though he seems happy to share the minutiae of his everyday life on line: http://www.dgmlive.com/diaries.htm?entry=23427 Maybe you recognise the street there, Sidewinder. Then we can all call round for tea. He originates from Wimborne Minster.

Marvellous! "Will the gentleman circling around me kindly hand over that bloody great camera."

Chris Wood. Goes from strength to strength - richly in the English folk tradition but with mainly self-written songs that reflect our current troubled times.