A Lark Ascending

Largely covers a rock musical era l had little time for but fascinating nonetheless (I knew him mainly through the Fripp association, though have been catching up of late with his own records on Spotify). A chap who seemed to have little if any musical training yet the imagination to conjure up all sorts of unusual things with whatever he could manipulate.

Just reaching the end of: Utterly compelling. First disc from Season 3 arrived from Lovefilm ready for next week.

Surprised it took them so long. All my life I waited until Friday or, more often, Saturday to chase down a new release. Monday is a work day. Record buying has always been an end of the week pleasure. Since going 'download' I do most of my purchasing on a Friday/Saturday.

Wonderful piece. I have that 'version'. This is well worth a watch from a a couple of years back:

This is interesting: REPRODUCING CLASS? CLASSICAL MUSIC EDUCATION AND INEQUALITY If you are inside the system everything looks classless. An outreach programme here, a family concert there and everything is hunky dory. I was especially intrigued by: As mentioned earlier I found an interest in music designated 'classical' partly through random 'best of' records played at home, largely through prog rock. But I was in a 'grammar' school stream in first a grammar school (a state school that selected according to an exam at 11) and later a comprehensive school (a state school that admits from the local area unselectively, the norm in state education since the 60s) where we were encouraged to aspire to 'the finer things in life.' I recall feeling a mixture of resistance but also guilt. I don't think I consciously chose to start listening to classical music as way of 'learning to be middle class' - but I'm pretty sure that I slid into that route because it seemed to be appropriate to where I hoped to be heading. I find this section very telling: I work in a school of 2500 students. 400 new ones arrive with each intake. Yet the A Level (pre-university) classes for music rarely reach double figures. Lots of kids play guitars etc, there are regular rock pop based talent shows that draw enthusiastic responses, an excellent school choir, a (very) small orchestra that performs in school plays. But the academic route that leads to classical music is virtually non-existent. The music teachers are excellent as is shown by the vibrancy of the non-classical musical life. I'd argue the dearth of interest in classical music (and other non-mainstream musics) is rooted in class and class culture for reasons outlined in that article. I regularly use classical/jazz/folk/blues in teaching - it usually gets a smile and a response of 'here's that weird music again'. The kids have little context for it from their wider lives. But the classical music establishment will maintain that they are doing lots to break down barriers. It probably looks like that from inside the ivory tower.

It's not about enhancing the concert experience. It's about the signals all this 'tradition' gives off. Not to the people who are there but to those who wouldn't even dream of going because it is such an alien world. I've been going to classical concerts since 1974 and I still find the presentation alienating. Talking to your audience is just about establishing a bit of human contact - it's about breaking down the barriers between the maestros and the listeners. I find some jazz concerts equally at fault - that atmosphere of 'you are here to commune with my art, I don't need to speak to you'. Give me Alan Barnes any day. I'm not arguing for the sort of 'club' atmosphere that has been experimented with. The quiet while the music is playing is important to me too. Just could do without the whole 'going to church' atmosphere of the classical concert. I went to a wonderful small group concert a few years back where the leader introduced each piece with a few words about why they'd chosen to perform it. Created a warm atmosphere a world away from the stony faced maestro accepting the adulation of the cognoscenti (even before he's lifted his or her baton). As for the proposed new London concert hall, there's a huge conurbation of cities with good transport links on either side of the Pennines. How about building it there? Doesn't London have enough?

Classical musical presentation is about music loving. Private education is about excellence. Private medicine is about choice. Inequality is about being business friendly. No class there at all.

In Britain being a 'chamber music' aficionado will get you far more connoisseur-points than attending an orchestral concert. If you want to be seen as a person of taste and discrimination you're better off saying you are going to the Wigmore Hall than the Barbican or South Bank. I've seen so many attempts to demystify classical music, try to make it sexy etc - I remember in the late-80s at the time of the CD boom orchestras popping up using amplification and light shows. Didn't last long. The trouble here is that classical music is so tied up with the class system. Audiences might be more diverse than fifty years ago and no-one expects you to dress up but the rituals of performance haven't changed at all in my lifetime (and I suspect much longer than that). The penguin suits, refusal of anyone on stage to speak to the audience, the maestro idolatry etc. Exactly the sort of thing you see in Parliamentary 'tradition' and the endless royal rituals elsewhere. They all exist as a way of saying 'we shouldn't rock the boat too much or we will lose all these lovely things'. The rituals of classic music presentation seem to be upheld for the same reason. I did read somewhere of places in London where classical performances were taking place in clubs. People sit on cushions, drift in and out, there's a bar etc. But that doesn't seem usual. If you want evidence that nothing is changing just look at the recent reports that a new London concert hall is being explored with George Osborne (the Chancellor of the Exchequer) declaring his interest. Now here is a man who is part of a government dedicated to wrecking the public sector yet he suddenly finds a new concert hall a good idea. You can be sure that if it is built it will follow the traditional way of presenting classical music. Probably an election gimmick on Osborne's part (also brought on by envy of the new Paris hall - 'world class' concert halls and opera houses are big virility symbols for governments like nuclear missiles). I like going to live classical concerts in a variety of genres - you do get a different experience. Yet, recorded classical music was where I cut my teeth and has been the main way I've engaged with and enjoyed it. You can always turn the lights out, lose yourself in music and then all the bolloxing that swirls around the music simply vanishes into thin air.

Most of that makes sense to me with regards to Dylan's actual influence. But I'm sceptical as to whether many of those developments would not have happened without Dylan. A bit like saying that vaccine and drug development would not have happened without Louis Pasteur. It would have happened, but differently. Rock and Roll had already mesmerised a generation, the folk revival in both the USA and Britain was claiming the obsession of thousands of young people. Dylan was part of that but because of his particular angle, skills, charisma he was able to put the folk part (and I'm using 'folk' in the broadest sense) much deeper into general public perception. Even without an iconic figure like Dylan, I'd suspect that wider social and musical forces would have brought about changes similar (but not the same) to what happened in his wake. I'd suggest that the bunch of young north Londoners who became Fairport Convention had more than enough influences to have still have emerged without Dylan. The influence I appreciate most from Dylan, and again I feel he was channelling something already there, was the ambiguity of his lyrics. I'm not that knowledgeable about poetry but have never really bought into the 'great poet' line on Dylan - a lot of his wording seems random and stream of consciousness. Yet some of that wording sounds great and often appears to have a meaning even if you don't know what it is (just as a lot of stream of consciousness free jazz appears to have a meaning even if you can't define it like tonal music). The mystery that creates may not be the work of the skilled, dexterous poet - but it gives an intrigue to songs that the standard 'I love you and you love me' lyrics of pop/rock didn't have before. Yes, he was channelling and it wasn't just beat poets or late-19thC French poets - he also seemed to be wise to the inconsistencies, gaps and muddles you get in a lot of blues and traditional folk songs where decades of retelling have worn away significant sections leaving something that does not quite make sense but is all the better for it. The obvious example is what happened to Beatles songs after Dylan started having an impact (compare Norwegian Wood to Help). Sticking to the Fairport line, to my ears Sandy Denny's most intriguing songwriting happened on the Fotheringay and Northstar Grassman albums - the Dylan influence lyrically is huge there, with songs that never give up their meaning but allude to all sorts of things. When she moved away from that to more conventional lyrics on subsequent albums I'd say her music lost a lot of its allure. Yes, Dylan added a mystery to pop/rock lyrics - but as well as leading to some utterly compelling lyrics it also led to drivel. MacArthur Park anyone. Or the lyrics of Yes!

Martin Carthy - the wisest man in Christendom - greatest line 'The only thing you can do to ruin a folk song is not play it'. Interesting to hear him talking elsewhere about his experiences with Dylan in London in the early 60s, just before Dylan became huge. Dylan borrowed a few tunes off Carthy [More than you'll every need to know here]. When asked is he resentful, Carthy insists he feels honoured - and anyway, that is what folk music is anyway. Borrowing and adapting (he was less generous to Paul Simon for many years over Scarborogh Fair but has rethought that one too and become reconciled). I'm not a Dylan obsessive but I have a lot of Dylan records. What's good and what isn't? Well, I have my own preferences but with someone as distinctive as Dylan it's just interesting to hear the OK and the tedious too (I don't actually find a lot of The Basement Tapes all that interesting (sacrilege!) but I'm glad to be able to play them every once in a while). You get a rounded picture of a real person rather than some saint who is supposed to be perfect. I feel the same way about Richard Thompson - my shelves have acres of his music and on most of his albums between a third and two thirds of the songs are humdrum or uninvolving (for me). But the chap fascinates me so much that I just want to hear it all. So I can understand Dylan (or Springsteen or Beatles or Arnold Bax) completists. I find it harder to understand people who feel that only the best is good enough for them (and the best is what they say is best).

Indeed. I'm pretty sure that if I'd had a proper musical education, formally learning an instrument etc, I'd have got locked into classical music and missed most of everything else. Auto-didactism might well lead to a haphazard and eccentric view of music (with huge gaps everywhere), but it doesn't half bring you to some interesting places.

This must be more or less the equivalent what I don't like about a certain type of books about music usually written by the sociologically inclined ... They've got an agenda and stipulate their "findings" (in accordance with their personal agenda) FIRST and THEN present the facts and evidence in a way that reeks very much like they go out of their way to make that evidence fit their intended "findings". Not very convincing and certainly awkward to read in many cases ... Reminds me of the Marxist interpretation of history (and other 'schools' of history). What should be a worthwhile attempt to explore the past from a different angle than the usual establishment view, ends up as a desperate attempt to shoehorn history into the model of determinist phases - The English Civil War was the 'Bourgeois Revolution' etc. The one I remember getting really annoyed with was Bill Cole's book on Coltrane. Though the recent prize goes to "Trad Dads, Dirty Boppers and Free Fusioneers: British Jazz, 1960-1975" - the worst book I've read in years in any genre. Contains some useful information on the music of the period but reads like it was written by a GCSE sociology student utterly in thrall to a very clunky interpretative model several decades out of date.

I believe it came out on CD in the 1990s - have definitely listened to a CD copy of it before. Really good one. I've never seen a cd copy of that. . . I'd buy it in a heartbeat, a great ECM record. I've a cdr of my lp somewhere. . . . saw CD release in Japan in the early 90`s........ Well, if that's the case perhaps it will get reissued again........ I don't think that ever came out on CD as a regular release in Europe. It was one I was looking for for many years. It has appeared as a download. http://www.amazon.co.uk/Lookout-Richard-Beirach-Frank-Liebman/dp/B009U1JG7I/ref=sr_1_cc_2?s=aps&ie=UTF8&qid=1424337145&sr=1-2-catcorr&keywords=dave+liebman+lookout The mysteries of why things appear in one format and not another utterly bemuse me.

I think this was the best jazz book I've read. Humph takes a track to represent what he sees as a significant performer or development, sets it in context and then explains why he thinks it's striking (without getting bogged down in the technicalities that might lose the non-musically trained listener). Although he makes judgements and develops interpretations you never get that thing that drives me nuts in writing about music - where the writer dreams up an interpretation and then proceeds to project it on the music, insisting that this is how it is. That makes clear what I try and avoid in books. The Humph book really opened up pre-Bebop jazz for me.

Seems to be plenty of Der Rosenkavalier on Spotify, so I am starting to investigate Bev. Thanks. Well worth spending some time with. On the surface it seems like a rather silly farce. But there's a wonderful rumination on moving from youth to middle age running through it. And of course, if you are susceptible to Strauss's over-the-top approach to melody and orchestration, the music is overwhelming. Seek out the 'Presentation of the Rose' scene in Act II and the final Trio and Duet from the end of Act III for tasters.

Really interesting to read these experiences. Thanks, all. I think I had a similar experience. My first major classical burst went from around 1978 to 1980 (when I first starting working full time). I then shifted to jazz and folk. But buying my first CD player in 1985 I also experienced the limited options on CD - for a while releases were dominated by classical (the classical industry was well ahead of the game) and mainstream rock/pop. From then until around 1991 my buying was dominated by classical. The two hiatuses (hiatai?) in 1980 and 1991 were brought about by buying new playing equipment that troubled me. In both cases I sense irritating pitch distortions that were far more noticeable in classical music. So I went off in the jazz/folk direction again. The first problem turned out to be the cartridge I was using; the second a fault in my amp. Classical returned as an area of major interest again in the mid-noughties. I think breaking past the mid-20thC and also backwards into pre-18thC music helped there, giving me new areas to explore (of course there are still several lifetimes of exploration left in my usual stamping grounds).

Can't claim to have more than touched on her records but she's certainly the most interesting guitarist I've heard in a while - a very independent voice. Someone I'd very much like to see live.

Wow...an online course at 90! That is really impressive. Your father sounds very wise - introduce the music he valued but don't force it. The seeds fall and lie...and then later.

reg Harvey, this is IMO an excellent recording... I am sure it is, will check it out. I was all paid up to do a day of the Arditti Quartet last spring (one of those complete jump into the unknown days I like every now and then) - sadly the mysterious appearance of water in my ceiling the day I was meant to drive down to London put paid to that! Harvey is a composer I've become very drawn to in the last ten years. My sister was taught by him 30 or so years back on a general music as culture course in Sussex (she was German/History, not music). You've both reminded me to dig out that quartet disc and listen to it properly. The Marriage of Figaro is such an enjoyable piece. A while since I've seen it on stage though it seems to come round regularly. Look out for 'Der Rosenkavalier' (Strauss - Dicky, not Johnny) - different style but has a similar 'feel good' nature to it. And some of the most liquidly beautiful melody you'll hear this side of The Carpenters!

When I opened IE it told me I'd had a malware attack that Norton had dealt with. Seems the change must have been connected with that. IE is in the same font as Chrome. I suspect the Chrome resetting might be what I have to do. Chrome has been temperamental for the last few weeks - crashing once or twice a day when I try to open a web page. Suspect that is to do with an automatic update somewhere that has introduced clashes.

Dug up this old thread which I enjoyed the responses to a few years back. Would be interested to hear the responses of some of the newer posters in the classical threads, if they feel like adding.

'Come Back to Me' - I don't know the Janet Jackson record this is based on but this arrangement really wormed its way into my skull last night. Haven't played the record in many years but the moment it began it reminded me of how it had done the same thing way back when.

Thanks both. Tried both but neither did anything. All very odd.

Had a look at the Bridgewater Hall. Seems mainly what I'd expect with a couple of things standing out: I actually went to the premier of the Matthews 7th at the Bridgewater some years back (along with Mahler 7). Might go to that as it is during the Easter break. Now that's my kind of programme - something I know from record but would love to hear live, something totally new and then an old favourite that I've never heard live. Sadly, out of the question within a work week - Manchester is a 3 hour round trip if the traffic is working in your favour. But thanks for the reminder.

Of course there are. But it's interesting that the 'memorable tune' is the thing that contemporary composers are most guarded about, even when they have restored a lot of the other time-tested hooks. As for regional orchestras, if they do have the resources to do adventurous programming, they don't seem to do much about it. Birmingham used to be different - I'm not sure today. The remaining Sheffield season goes no further than Nielsen/Bartok/Prokofiev...apart from a short Boccherini piece arranged by Berio. As for Nottingham: Ginastera is about as daring as it gets, tucked in with more familiar exotica. I'm going to the Shosty (but wouldn't have even done that if it hadn't been half-term). What I'd say that all those pieces have in common is memorable tunes (and familiarity). Which makes the season economically viable. I understand London is different - it has such a huge population and a reputation as an international cultural centre to maintain. So it can get the audiences for more off-the-garden-path programming. I would suspect that the 'tunes' in Higdon are not memorable enough to make it into Sheffield City Hall or the Royal Concert Hall...except, perhaps, in one of those short pieces that sometimes appear at the start of a concert (Adams' Short Ride and Chairman Dances seem to have found a slot as the modernist piece on such programmes! Not sure if they count as tunes but they certainly whirl round my brain after I've heard them).