A Lark Ascending

Went like clockwork as the weather people said. A lovely white landscape out there at the moment. Hope it warms enough to shift. Snow and schools do not a good mix make.

There are still plenty of kids whose problem is being told 'You can't do anything.'

First flurries at 2.35. Now coming down more seriously (4.10) and settling. Where's Bing and Rosemary when you need them?

Ehhhmm ... just out of sheer curiosity: What would be "bitterly cold" in your neck of the woods? You know me...a fundamentalist relativist! It won't get like the Ukraine!

Bitterly cold last few days but virtually no moisture. We're assured snow today - the first this winter. My area has it arriving at 3.00 pm, white-out by 6.00 pm. Let's see...

Your are not supposed to joke about classical music (specific instances of Mozart/Haydn aside)! You are supposed to grimace over your pince-nez!

Thanks for that clarification. Well, given how unlike Holbrooke's music Bailey's is (I've never heard that trio but doubt there is much connection), it seems quite likely. But I'm not sure why they'd take a dig at a composer few people had heard of; and whose music even fewer would have heard.

Why was that trio called Joseph Holbrooke? I've read it was named after the British composer. Can't see a connection as all I've heard from him is late 19thC romanticism - Wagnerian tone poems etc. Seems an odd hero.

Today's 'irony' award goes to...

Oh, that's a very nice way to talk about our mothers, I must say Well given they way Miles used to talk about acquaintances' relations with their mothers... (Davis, not Kington, by the way. Tu compris?). Actually it's "post-modern," which means it came after the "modern" period -- a period that spanned roughly from the end of the late Middle Ages until some time last year. Always thought there was a great Jazz Messengers or Miles Second Quintet album title in this:

Is that meant to be ironic? ****************** Just in case I get told off for thread creep... Jazzwise is not a learned journal. It tells you what is happening, is not over-reverential to US jazz (actually, in Stuart Nicholson's columns its downright hostile!!!) and tells you a bit about latest releases. One thing I've noticed in music magazines in general in recent years is how much space is cluttered with things like polls, awards, end of year lists, 100 best this or thats. Gramophone recently had a best modern opera houses in the world with sparkly pictures; and BBC Music Magazine had one on composers and their dogs! We've not had that yet in Jazzwise - jazz musicians and their dogs! The most irritating thing for me in Jazzwise is the Bitches Brew panel (maybe the dogs are due to appear there). Various bits of news and hearsay flung together like a gossip column...but nearly always with some adolescent innuendo about which journalist got drunk at which festival party. Who, beyond those in the Jazzwise office, needs to know that? Strange.

Ben? Who's Ben? The dreaded irony, not sarcasm! Seems to have seeped from another thread. Although over here we drink it with our mother's milk.

Not a quintet but should fit your area: Symphonies of Wind Instruments and the Octet - Stravinsky Loads of British and French repertoire in the wind + strings or wind and piano area. The French neo-classicists have the dryness you might be looking for (the old Melos Ensemble disc of Ravel's Introduction and Allegro (flute included) has some great pieces by Poulenc and Francaix - only available in the recent multi-CD Melos set [although mainly Classical/Romantic it ends with woodwind-centric pieces from people like Birtwistle and Maxwell Davies that might suit your Schoenberg starting point.]) These discs have some unusual British pieces: If you're in the mood for something a bit folksier there are wind arrangements of music by Holst (the 2 Suites and a few other things), Vaughan Williams (English Folk Song Suite and Sea Songs) and 2 CDs of Percy Grainger on Chandos (had one of those on today). A long way from Schoenberg, though! The Nielsen wind quintet is lovely too. Jeff should be able to give you some expert advice here - especially in the American repertoire. I know you excluded Classical/Romantic era but if you don't know them you really should hear the Mozart Gran Partita K361 and the Schubert Octet.

I tend to go for pre-Hildegard of Bingen, Hildegard of Bingen and post-Hildegard of Bingen, myself. Not much happened in that last phase.

Many have found Shostakovich more comfortable than Boulez - but only when supplied with a fictitious narrative rehabilitating this core Soviet composer as a dissident. And yes I always ask the experts on this and they always confirm he was no dissident. So there's a Soviet composer people love - him and Prokofiev. Not quite as you tell it. Yes, Shosty as a dissident makes for a nice story to carry a listener along (like Mozart and his scatology). But the real reason that Sh., like Mahler and Prokofiev, are current concert hall faves is because they wrote good tunes, music that was tonal and therefore comprehensible to a wider range of listeners. And, I suspect, the moodiness and musical irony fits very much with our times. I know all three speak direct to me - where, although I enjoy Mozart and Haydn, I always feel like I'm listening to a different country (well I suppose I am - Austria (and a bit of Hungary)).

As I think you well know, I'm all for the common person (we 'middle brows'!) not being excluded by masonic arty-farty-dom. I'm also for the musician being able to produce whatever he or she chooses and welcome those who choose to produce something challenging (alongside all the other options). Just as long as they (or those who rush to their banner) don't use it as a dais to patronise from.

And from the late 1920s the solution was....socialist realism. In the case of music, songs the proletariat could hum, based perhaps on folk song. Clear tonality resolving into triumphant 'victory of the proletariat' endings. In Stalin's eyes there was no doubt that any form of abstraction was 'bourgeois'. ************** Just listened to this. Won't pretend to understand it all or how it hangs together, but there are some very lovely sections. Part 5 particularly caught my ear - delicious flute. As did the opening, which in an odd way, reminded me of the boat rowing across the lake opening to Mahler 7. Probably not what I was meant to hear, but there you go.

I suspect I look like one myself! Though I tend to go for designer beer rather than champagne.

Is there a large working class market out there, waiting to summon experimental/avant garde/free jazz to the struggle? Back in the days of the Appleby Festival in the UK, I used to spend a few hours in Evan Parker's Freezone session on a a Sunday afternoon. Don't recall seeing any miners, dock workers or other politically conscious members of the proletariat there. Most people - Evan included - looked like sociology professors. Or Islington socialists. Maybe they were in disguise, waiting for the opportunity to strike at the heart of the bourgeois capitalist beast when it had its back turned.

I really enjoyed that when I played it a couple of weeks back.

Well there are many ways of discussing music. Some can bring to bear technical knowledge, performing experience; others (like myself) just a lifetime (however long or short) of listening and enjoying. The fact that we come to a place like this again and again suggests a need to communicate how the music is affecting us, regardless of our differing experiences of it. I suspect I've been plaguing a few boards like this for about ten years now. I don't think anyone has ever made me stop listening to something I've previously enjoyed (I still love my 70s Prog-Rock records!); but I've found the positive discussion incredibly enriching, helping me cross boundaries I might otherwise not have done - Scandinavian folk music, the funkier/blusier end of American jazz (the 'grease' side!), Brazilian music, African music, pre-Bebop jazz, inching further into freer jazz than my more limited previous experience. That all came from posters who said 'I like this and you might like it too'. There's nothing more narcissistic and bourgeois/aristocratic than 'Art for Art's Sake'. 'I'm following my muse and I don't give a damn what anyone else thinks.' ECM, Criss Cross, Emanem, Nessa - they're all being predominately consumed by the upper/middle classes. Using class to dismiss one type of niche music against another doesn't work. In the end 'fitness for purpose' is a better measure. If a musician is setting out to challenge, kick over the traces, assemble something in a completely unique way then judge it on how successfully it does that. If a musician wants to make a great party record then judge it on its success in getting people on the dance floor. 'Boustrophedon' should be judged (if you feel the need to judge) on the former criteria. No point in judging it on the latter (unless you go to some rather unusual parties). The same holds true of a Tord Gustavsen (who I don't much care for) or an Eric Alexander (who I do) record. Evaluate them based on what they are setting out to do, not based on what you think they ought to be doing.

Does it really matter? If it's a fool's battle, then leave it to the fools. Does it matter? Only in the sense that there's a great pleasure to be had in discussing music as well as listening to it. For me, at least, that pleasure is greatly diminished when it degenerates into 'You shouldn't be listening to that, you should be listening to this' (thank you, Harry Enfield again).

I'm still a bit unclear as to who these bourgeois are and what they've done wrong. I don't know what it's like in the States, but in Europe listening to alternative, challenging or however you want to describe it music has always been an activity pursued by the self-improving middle class or the aristocracy who own it by birthright. The bulk of the population are hardly queuing up to change the world by listening to free jazz. They're dancing to the latest sounds, enjoying old Abba records, just getting pleasure from music and not giving its 'importance' or 'quality' a second thought. Which is how it should be; different music and different ways of absorbing it can co-exist without any damage being done. You'll convince people that they need to listen to what inspires you by enthusing about what inspires you; not by bashing what others choose to listen to.

Is there a clear dividing line between rubbish and quality? In some cases yes - the cheaply made household item that falls apart a few hours after buying it deserves castigating as rubbish; the inexperienced or badly rehearsed or commercial cash-in act that attempt a performance they are not up to deserve dismissal. But what often happens here is that something that is not rubbish is projected as rubbish. ECM is not to the taste of many; but deciding that it is bourgeois, middle brow, poisonous or whatever is not a clever critical stance - its the labelling of something as inferior in order to bolster an alternative outlook. And it just smacks of one-upmanship. Now why would you put ice in tea? What a rubbish idea! Tea is meant to be drunk hot. That's how it is. You must not dispute me. One of those smiley faces.

Are you saying that ECM are too middle brow for a high brow like yourself? Middle brow, like bourgeois, is another picked off the shelf pejorative. You also seem to have bought into the Whig interpretation of musical history - a straight line where musicians are required to put their shoulder to the wheel of forging the future or be ticked off for their conservatism. I like to think that there are many more options. I want the option of listening to 'Boustrophedon' AND listening to a Criss Cross or Venus or Woodville album. ECM is 'different'; the music on that label is extremely varied; there is an overall feel to the label, sound, approach though there are disks there which don't really fit the house style. That house approach will not appeal to everyone, especially those wedded to an 'American jazz tradition' that might be traced from Armstrong to Braxton (yes, an oversimplification I know). But it can co-exist with that tradition with absolutely no damage done.