A Lark Ascending

Well, I understand about motivic development but would argue that the manipulation of motifs can generate big tunes - maybe memorable melodies would be a better term. Lots grow out of the seed in Beethoven 5. I know I enjoyed the symphony for a long time before I understood how far each movement owed to the generating motif. The opening tune of 6 and the finale; the Ode to Joy tune. I think most ordinary listeners would recognise them as tunes. Along with lots of others. I don't think the appeal of Mozart, Beethoven or Schubert to a wide enough audience to keep the regional orchestras in work is down to motivic development..though that might be something that those of us without a musical education might learn to enjoy once we've been drawn in by the tunes. And I doubt if they'd distinguish between the nature of the Ode to Joy or a Rachmaninov tune - whether one is or is not 'big' is an issue of musicological history. Interesting to the expert, but not central for the listener. I suspect we're back to that grammar/architecture thing. How far the grammar/architecture is the point rather than what it constructs.

Strikes me as an ideal destination for those keen on tax avoidance. Doubt if the inland revenue is keeping an eye on Mars.

Not sure what you are saying there, David. 'There are no big tunes in Beethoven' (If so, well I hear lots of them as does your average listener, I'd expect) or 'But Beethoven has big tunes'. (If so, I can't work how that relates to late-20th/early 21st century music).

Most neo-tonal composers (please treat that term as a huge generalisation) seem to also embrace the other possibilities; yet provide a general sense of tonality that will give the ordinary listener (who has probably been grounded in tonality by experience of music all their lives). In many respects Berg seems to be the model - uncertainty but with moments when safe landing grounds come briefly into view. What I do sense is a reluctance in many of these composers to write a 'big tune' - as if that would be a revisionist step too far. Not saying they should - but it tends to be what still moves a classical piece from a specialised audience up to a broader one (well, either that or a heavy dose of 'spirituality'). It's why regional orchestral programmes in the UK are dominated by the 19thC/early 20thC repertoire.

I'd say Higdon is worth listening to if you are interested in exploring contemporary 'classical' music but are a bit scared of it. She writes in a tonal language that won't appeal to the hard core avant-gardista but has lots of reference points for the ordinary listener. Interview here gives some idea where she's coming from: http://www.hometheaterhifi.com/volume_12_2/feature-interview-jennifer-higdon-6-2005.html

Thanks. Tried various things but to no effect. Getting used to it now,

I've enjoyed these three, alongside the violin concerto. The fact that she wrote the last one for me hasn't influenced me in the least.

Parents are going to see their childcare costs go through the roof if we do!

Fripp and Theo Travis played Penzance a few years back. You can also compensate with a lo-fi (but enjoyable) recording from just over the international frontier: I remember this MM front page from the middle of 1972 like it was yesterday: Really annoyed at the time as I idolised 'Close to the Edge' - but it all worked out for the best. And this was the one after which we persuaded our hip art teacher to minibus us to Oxford:

I painted the Larks Tongue sun on my dorm room wall. Spring of 1982. The only thing I've ever painted. Senior year U Lowell. I guess it was something I needed to do. I'd not have got away with that - we got shot for using blu-tak! One here from the autumn of '72 when Jamie Muir was with them: The Oxford concert spoiled me for rock music (my first concert)...I thought it would all be like this. Since then I've always preferred the concert where the band play you their next album rather than their most recent or greatest hits. No longer standard practice (except in some jazz).

Indeed. Up the top. I only clicked with the early 80s KC in the late 90s. At the time it sounded like Talking Heads to my ears (I was totally out of sympathy with rock by that stage). Think this is what I recall: Remember Claire Hamill being good...though I was 17 so any female on stage was good in a male dominated world!

Here's the one they used in Spring '73. I was at the Bristol performance. For some reason I thought they were using the 'sun' emblem that graced LTIA. Maybe that was for the Autumn tour. I had a big wall poster of it - don't think it came with the album as I recall it being uncreased. Must have bought it at one of these.

Thanks, Jeff. I've alluded to it on and off in various threads and will no doubt become thoroughly annoying about it as I get more excited. I'll miss the kids, the teaching, the camaraderie; not the marking or the endless need to react to educational policy by whim. Back to KC....

King Crimson finally make it back to the UK: Mon 31 August - Friars, Aylesbury Waterside Theatre Tue 1 September - Friars, Aylesbury Waterside Theatre Thur 3 September - St. David's Hall, Cardiff Fri 5th September - Dome Concert Hall, Brighton Mon 7th September - Hackney Empire, London Tue 8th September - Hackney Empire, London Fri 11th September - The Lowry, Manchester Mon 14th September - Symphony Hall, Birmingham Thurs 17th September - Usher Hall, Edinburgh Mon 22nd September - Olympia, Paris Tue 23rd September - Olympia, Paris Thurs 24th September - Tiolivrendenburg, Utrecht Fri 25th September - Tiolivrendenburg, Utrecht http://prog.teamrock.com/news/2015-02-03/king-crimson-announce-uk-and-european-tour-dates Got a ticket for Manchester. The end of my first week in retirement - ironic as the last time I saw them was in my first year as a university student following the path that led to my career. I do like them starting at Friars in Aylesbury - never been there but I recall it being a major gigging place for all the second division bands in the early 70s before they hit the big time.

Wonder if anyone can help me here. A few days back I returned to the computer to find that it seemed to have restarted. When I logged in everything returned super quick - but the fonts on Google Chrome had changed to something I can only describe as like a badly printed book (Everyman Classics MS perhaps!). I've tried fiddling in advanced settings with fonts, size etc but can't get it back. Any suggestions as to what might have changed? It gives me a headache looking at it.

Fine composer. Only heard of his illness a couple of weeks back when a new Naxos disc was reviewed on the BBC CD Review programme. RIP

Whereas with all of those I started picking up albums from around 1977 when they were already 'historic' - and with only the vaguest attention to chronology.

There's an interesting editorial in this month's FRoots with Ian Anderson at his most waspish, denigrating the 'fawning' reviews of the new Dylan album and giving Sinatra a good kicking. He declares himself an admirer of Dylan but points out how this was forged hearing the 60s albums emerge with the spaces in between (rather than buying the complete boxed set and becoming an instant aficionado (what I think of as Schnabel Syndrome). I'd suggest the same thing is going on here. Those who heard 50s to 70s Jazz in real time had a very different experience from those who caught up retrospectively and probably grabbed a bunch of the recordings in one batch.

All it takes is the ability to not confuse what you like with what is 'great'. Or not worry about what you like needing to be great. I wallow endlessly in nostalgia - music I learnt to love when I first got the bug for music, music that evokes a nostalgic world that never was (my early 20thC English classical fixation, the appeal of the Faux-rural in folk music). I'm interested in well researched and carefully weighed theories about what was significant in musical history and that has often guided my explorations. But it only overlaps in some places with what I like. I suspect our enjoyment of music is coloured by many things - times and places associated with where we heard it, the fact that we have been told something is marvellous so we are predisposed to like it. I wonder how reliable our memory is of those concerts we recall as crowning moments of listening - did we really hear it like that or were there longeurs we've excised from the authorised version we tell ourselves. Most of my lifetime's listening has been through recorded music with the occasional concert so recorded music is my reality. I imagine for others that would be reversed.

Wasn't he singing about Mick Jagger's chocolate bar, after the event? Sorry, that was most uncouth.

I suppose those performers were growing up when jazz was still quite close to the centre of popular culture. By the time I started listening to music it seemed like yesterday's music...apart from the jazz rock bands (I was aware of Miles Davis more by reputation than music) . Tony Coe has a wonderful passage on 'Solid Air'.

I think we should all club together and buy David Bowie a ticket so he can finally put to rest that question that has been bothering him for so long.

Although there are plenty of folk records and plenty of records with huge reputations, I'd say the folk audience is much more live music based. When I'm chatting to people at jazz concerts, anyone with a lengthy interest will soon start talking records. I come across lots of people at folk concerts who don't have big collections. Go to Sidmouth (or many town based festivals) and there are hundreds of amateurs who don't go near the paying concerts; they go to play in communal sessions (and to drink!). I think that was partly because the folk/jazz/blues genres were much closer then - lots of festivals of jazz folk & blues. All three had a marginal, Kerouac-y, alternative vibe to them. The interest in black culture (which often stemmed from a sense of alienation from established British culture) clearly brought many into contact with all three - blues, jazz and the folksier areas on things like the Harry Smith anthology. A lot of musicians in the blues boom of the early 60s came from one or more of those backgrounds and then fused in things like the Mayall bands. One of my early experiences of things jazzy were the early 70s John Martyn records with Danny Thompson; and I was aware of names like Mingus whose tunes popped up on Pentangle records. Folk and jazz largely parted company in the late 70s. You get a degree of resistance today in the folk world to jazz - it's often seen as a bit noodly. Plenty of enthusiasm for folk and punk cross-overs (possibly because they both have a DIY mythology at their base) but jazz only occasionally gets a look in. Saxophones in a folk context sound very different to jazz. mjazzg By chance, playing Pepper Street Interludes as I read the latest posts! RogerF 'Jazz Review' - that's the one.

I got thinking today about the different way that the UK folk music audience seems to respond to these issues. UK jazz and UK folk (well, English folk in the sense of the 'folk revival' and beyond) have a great deal in common: Both emerged in the 1950-70s period to form very distinctive and popular genres on the margins of popular music; Both grew from attempts to emulate American music - and in both cases some musicians felt an imperative to adapt to more native sources or approaches (and it's those I'm referring to rather than the (equally valid) musicians in both genres who continue to keep close to the original US model); Both were slanted towards or had pretensions towards left-of-centre/anti-Establishment politics. Both expanded their audience from the rock generation in the late 60s/early 70s. Both lost a lot of what mainstream support they had in the late 70s. Both now have a strong middle-aged and beyond (and middle class!) support base. [As earlier, I'm leaving the free/improv scene in jazz as something separate - despite overlap it seems to work by different rules with an emphasis on the now and a more internationalist viewpoint from its audience) But where the audience for UK jazz seems to raise the music/musicians of the 1960-70 onto a pedestal, rarely making the same fuss about contemporary musicians (and often neglecting the recent music of musicians who emerged in that era), the folk music audience seems to embrace both the emerging, younger players and the current recordings and performances of the veterans. In jazz it's as if things have moved closer to classical music with its veneration of maestros and defining recordings; where in folk music current music seems to be much more celebrated (and I've yet to come across any folkies into their fourth generation of Japanese 456 bit remasters of Topic or Transatlantic classics). I wonder if this might lie in the nature of the music. Jazz is largely a spectator sport where the entry level for performance requires a high skill set. Folk music, even though it has plenty of virtuosos of its own, has always made a great deal of being participatory - from the sing-around to the floor spot to the big social dancing events. You don't see many workshops at jazz festivals - folk festivals are alive with them. Folk audiences love their Carthy's and Tabors....but just seem as welcoming to the next generation, prepared to very quickly accept them on the same level as the 'masters' of old. All a bit odd when you think that jazz has always presented itself as 'the sound of surprise' yet seems focused on the glories of years gone by with UK jazz; whereas folk music is often perceived as old-fashioned yet seems to embrace the new. The expression 'evolving tradition' that was bandied about in the 90s very much sums up what the current UK folk world is like. [Edit: I know I'm guilty of generalising here. I've sat in audiences thrilling to Polar Bear; and I've sat in audiences grumbling about Lisa Knapp's use of electronics. Added to which there are a variety of 'audiences' for each genre. But, my overall impression still holds in my mind as a generalisation].

I know how he feels. I tried so hard to like "Shades of Blue" and "Dusk Fire" as much as their reputations suggested. Nice enough but I couldn't hear anything desperately original (cloth ears?) Dare I say the same about "Hum Dono" (ducks for cover) which again didn't really live up to its build up. Whereas I thought both Harriot's "Free Form" and "Abstract" surpassed their reputations on reissue I rather like 'Hum Dono'. Agree on the two Harriotts - they did live up to the promise. It wasn't JJI...can't recall the name of that rather studious Jazz mag Richard Cook used to edit.