A Lark Ascending

No 5 of the Sib. Overture, Tamara and Symph 2 off latter.

‘What we really need as we welcome in 2017 is some optimism.’ Sunrise in Bradford, West Yorkshire, December 2016. Photograph: Rex/Shutterstock https://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/dec/30/what-is-giving-you-hope-for-2017#img-1 Caption's a bit soppy (even if I agree with it) but I love the picture.

'Wedding Day at Troldhaugen' is one of the few things I remember about music lessons were school. I had no active interest in music at the time (must have been about 12) but that (and something by Falla in another lesson) really caught my attention. Otherwise my school musical education was a disconnected disaster with no sense of a curriculum and most lessons filled in with random singing. And this was in a 'grammar' school (a selective school based on an exam at 11), something our current PM wants to resuscitate in her 'Back to the Empire' enthusiasms! New Year's Day - 141/41/16/171 If you'd played me the Korngold Sinfonietta blind I'd have placed it in the 30s/40s - it sounds very Hollywood. Actually from just before WWI. Prefer Sursum Corda.

Camels on Cable beach, Western Australia took second place in travel - Photograph: Todd Kennedy Drone photography!!!!! I have trouble working out basic depth of field and exposure let alone having the camera whizzing about dodging airliners. https://www.theguardian.com/artanddesign/gallery/2016/jul/13/best-drone-photography-2016-in-pictures#img-4

What do you do when the Sunday after Xmas is also New Year's Day? Went for Sunday after Xmas - 152/122/28/190 and Motet 225. Bruckner is my first call on particularly dark, rainy, winter days (Schnittke fits right in there too). 'Das Rheingold' off latter (Janowski + Staatskapelle Dresden). When I bought it about 25 years ago it was the only cheap Ring on CD. Today you can get scores of them for sixpence. Haven't listened to it for over ten years, exploring DVD versions (one bought, one rented) instead. Really enjoyed it yesterday - dug out the book I have with the libretto where I scribbled all the leitmotifs whilst doing an ear-opening evening class back in 1990. Music and a story line that never grows tired (as long as you leave suitable gaps between listens!) Gorgeous record - the Chamber Symphony (1935) doesn't sound remotely Russian; in fact it constantly brings to mind the two Schoenberg chamber symphonies. The tone poem (1913) is more in the style of those lurid late-Romantic pieces by the likes of Scriabin, early Bartok or Szymanowski. This morning: No. 4.

I liked Thrak for the return of the Gothic Mellotrons.

Music streaming hailed as industry's saviour as labels enjoy profit surge Very different from the articles we were getting a couple of years back. I liked this: “You don’t even have to be a hardcore music fan for it (legal streaming) to seem like good value. People who previously thought they weren’t that into music, or didn’t like artists enough to buy entire albums, are now discovering they are far more interested in music than they thought. I think streaming has woken people up to how music can really find its place in your life.” [Dissenting views towards end of article]

Only started listening to Schnittke a couple of years back - I have a CD of his Fifth I bought in the 80s but it left me cold for years. Then, as often happens, something clicked. Yesterday: The third is one of the most impressive symphonies I've heard in a long while - seems to be aiming at a more conventional flow through the music than 1 + 2 which appear to be built with violent contrasts between sections within movements (not a criticism). Love to hear that live. First hearing (on Spotify) for the second disc - enjoyed the very Shostakovich O; not so engaged by Nagasaki which seemed a bit shouty - maybe I was Schnittked-out. The Leigh is a pleasant if not particularly exciting collection in a vaguely English neo-classical vein. He never got a chance to develop as he was killed in North Africa during WWII.

This was recommended here a number of times. Enjoyable couple of hours but it made me feel about 98. I think I've more in common with Haworth in the 1840s than the bizarre culture on view here (there's a potential Attenborough series!). I do like Anna Kendrick's voice (first noticed her in 'Into the Woods') - I love the 'When I'm Gone' song which was recently used as a UK TV theme ('Mum').

Always picked from the north-east, slightly acidic soils of the plantation. Full body, blackberry aftertaste.

Two deer lock horns in the frost and fog in Windsor Great Park in Berkshire Photograph: Steve Parsons/PA https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2016/dec/28/weather-fog-frost-uk-in-pictures

Hard to see the last one - music by Sculthorpe, Sallinen, Glass, Nancarrow & Hendrix. Listened to this for the first time on Spotify yesterday - recall it being very successful when it came out. I've certainly heard 'Purple Haze' on the radio a fair few times over the years. Britain's Ligeti Quartet, who I've been so taken with live this year, seem to he heavily influenced by the repertoire approach of the Kronos Quartet (if not their Newyawk Hipster visual image [not complaining - certainly beats penguin suits]). 5 & 6 of the Bartok.

All very Vaughan Williamsy Fog lingers around the church spire of St Peter and St Paul as the sun rises over the village of Kilmersdon near Radstock in Somerset Photograph: Matt Cardy/Getty Images https://www.theguardian.com/uk-news/gallery/2016/dec/28/weather-fog-frost-uk-in-pictures

'To Walk Invisible' (BBC1) Sally Wainwright's telling of the Bronte sisters' story. Ee but its grim up't North. Very enjoyable if more conventional than what you usually get from Wainwright. Spent the first half wracking my brains wondering where I'd seen the actor playing Anne (far right) before. Then it clicked - she was the young PC in 'Happy Valley'. Wouldn't want to meet Emily Bronte (middle) on a dark night....scary!

This one is good: Though I didn't care much for the Tan Dun. 24, 25, 30, 31 of the Mozzy. Apologies for size of Prokofiev - doesn't seem to exist in modest dimensions. Just Symph 7 - my favourite of Prokofiev's symphs.

Never really paid much attention to Alan Bennett but really enjoyed both the documentary on BBC2 and the film that followed. What a nice man - and some splendid music too (Walton, Elgar....). Loved the section where he talked about being educated by the state, had his health looked after by the state, was sent to university by the state and could not understand how the term 'the state' had become such a term of abuse when used by the right. My experience precisely. Lovely scenes of rural Yorkshire too. 'The Lady in the Van' was desperately sad - nuns have a lot to answer for. Saw this when it first came out in the cinema (1989) - amazed that rewatching it 30 years later I could not recall a single scene. Sentimental and follows the standard Hollywood template of a group of blokes at odds with one another, gradually forged into a unit of mutual respect and great courage. Enjoyed it - the final scene (storming the fort) was harrowing.

No. 3 of the Sib.

Three of my favourite 'jazzy' bits in early Yes - the version of 'I See You' on the first record, especially the guitar solo against the brushes; the version of Steven Stills 'Everydays' on the second; and Steve Howe's guitar solo in the central section of 'A Venture' on 'The Yes Album' that mutates effortlessly from cocktail jazz to loud rock. Some of the first places I heard jazzy sounds and thought 'I might want to hear more music like this' (rather than hearing jazz as music that old people listened to). Not that being jazzy is necessary to validate rock music.

Happy Winterlude, y'all.

The 'timeless' discussion came out of the assertion that the music of Yes was dated.

They are both at the heavy metal end of KC. Took me some time to get into them but I find I enjoy them now even though they are not favourites. They lack the lyrical element that provides contrast to Thrak - lots of power-chording.

Three of the discs containing Christmas music. Can't have played that in 20 years - what a delightful piece. Wears its Wagner on its sleeve but also has the feel of Wunderhorn era Mahler. Really enjoyed it. No 2 from the Sibelius; 6, In the Fen Country and an orchestral arrangement of 'On Wenlock Edge' from the RVW. 3 & 4

Perhaps not the best track I've heard all week but a Christmas track that had me welling up yesterday: I've played this on a Xmas compilation for years and always loved the chord sequence, every line different. But (as usual) I'd never listened to the lyrics. For some reason I did yesterday and they are devastating. The pay-off is in the last line. Sentimental, a bit 'pretty' in the instrumentation, yes. But, oh dear... (ignore the powerpoint)

Another listen to this record from a few years back. Really engaging compositions from this young composer - especially like the clarinet concerto. I really need to listen to them one at a time rather than all in one go. There's a concert of one of these pieces plus a new piano concerto (along with a music by Boulez and Carter) in Birmingham in March that I'm strongly tempted to make the journey for. Two other discs that have been bewitching me of late. The recording quality of the Norgard is stunning. And today's seasonal choice...

I'd say they are canonised. Anyway, Kind of Blue has only been around for around 50/60 years. It's a bit early to call it 'timeless'. The term is generally a euphemism for "I like it a lot and if you have 'good taste' (like me) you will too". "With Yes, unfortunately, I think you can. Not that any of it is bad, it just really shows its age." 'Kind of Blue', the St. Matthew Passion show their age. But when you connect with music you don't notice it. Music that shows its age is music other people listen to. ********************************** This is all, as ever, about personal taste and listening contexts. Part of the hostility to Yes arose from the fact that for a few years in the mid-70s they were mega-successful - that always provokes a reaction. I also think that one of the reasons many people find them 'cold' is because they deliberately avoided the blues, soul, gospel etc building blocks that were standard to rock at the time. To a 15 year old in a sleepy English town in 1971 that was so refreshing - not that I didn't like lots of the standard rock but as with the folk-rock bands and the Soft Machine/Caravan groups it just felt that this belonged to us. Most British rock bands of the time affected Americanisms (inevitably, given the power of rock and roll) right down to the accents - it was rather nice to hear music sung in Lancastrian (despite the silly lyrics which always sounded silly). The blues/soul/gospel tradition is so important to so much American popular music that it's not hard to see why taking that out might be perceived as 'soullessness'. But for that 15 year old provincial English kid it sounded like music that reflected life in England far more than someone from Bromsgrove singing about how he was going down to Memphis to get him a mojo hand (pork pie, perhaps, but not a mojo hand). ************************************** I still listen to Yes every now and then (did so last night - the forbidden album) - there's oodles of music I've heard subsequently that I value more highly in my own personal listening world (I don't much care for overall pronouncements of 'greatness'). But they hold a special place for me purely because of what they meant at a time that I was just getting obsessed with music and I'd say they shaped a lot of the way I hear music - often very different music - subsequently. Taste is an odd thing resulting from all manner of experience, background, peer pressure, response to prevailing orthodoxies, accidental bumping into things. Queen are a group who aren't that different to Yes - more poppy but full of flash instrumentals, big production numbers, shifting metres and segmented tracks made up of two or three songs. Yet I can't abide them. I know they were incredibly talented, understand why they are so popular (much more so than Yes) and yet they set my teeth on edge. To adopt an Americanism, 'Go figure!' Maybe for as long as 'Western' culture is the dominant culture of the world - they've been long written into the canon of what 'cultured' people 'admire' and 'appreciate' (which is not to knock the writing or music in any way - merely to suggest that the status of such figures is about more than inherent 'artistic' value). The dominance of 'timeless' 'Western' culture, however, doesn't look nearly so certain as it did even a year ago.