Schoenberg and Slightly More Than 100 Years of Wilful Ignorance

Schoenberg; Table tennis because Wimbledon starts tomorrow (table tennis and tennis are basically the same right? What? You mean I have to look it up?)

I suppose the great man wouldn't be surprised, over 100 years on from his (partial) break with the tonal system and people still think he's 'difficult'. So much so that often they don't even bother to do basic research when passing comment about his work as is unfortunately the case with a recent article about John Williams Luther Adams in The Observer online.

According to Peter Conrad (a teacher of literature apparently which makes his gaffe somewhat more forgivable I suppose)...

As a young man, John Williams Luther Adams upset the sedate peace of American symphonic music. His scores pulsed as relentlessly as the bass in a rock band, his noisy riffs repeated themselves to the point of madness. He enjoyed being childish: in Harmonielehre, a 1984 symphony that alludes to a crabby atonal textbook by Schoenberg, he imagined his infant daughter, Quackie, riding on the shoulders of the German mystic Meister Eckhart.

As is commonly known amongst people who know, stuff, about 20th century music Schoenberg's Harmonielehre is certainly not an 'atonal textbook' and Conrad wouldn't know whether or not the tone of the work is 'crabby' as he obviously hasn't read it. Not exactly an honest or learned beginning to an article.

Disappointing for the Guardian/Observer, if Tom Service were dead he'd be turning in his grave.

I'll shoot Chiggi a message about it, perhaps they can change the article and give Conrad one of those slaps on the back of the head that makes a satisfying 'thwap' sound.

TinyURL for this post: http://tinyurl.com/39jwh22

Xenakis is Front Page News

Well sort of, on the front page of the Guardian website in the side bar (I was somewhat surprised to scroll down see the slightly amusing yearbook style photo of him above).

Here is the article (by Tom Service, unsurprisingly perhaps).

Stockhausen, Gruppen, Video, Rattle, Carewe, Harding, CBSO, Etc

Yes indeed, a video of Stockhausen's Gruppen performed by the CBSO conducted by Simon Rattle, John Carewe and Daniel Harding. I'm not sure what year this was but it was performed somewhere in Birmingham as part of the 'Towards The Millenium' project/concert/something (in the late 90s then presumably).

Not sure who owns the copyright to this or where the footage came from but it's there to be seen so get it while you can, Andrew Clements of the Guardian was disappointed back in 2001 that this performance 'never found it's way onto disc', well now it has, sort of.

Via the excellent Aulaelectroacustica blog

[if you own the copyright to this and are selling it somewhere etc then let me know and i'll remove the link, my apologies in advance]

Guardian, Ircam, Article

Yes, the Guardian have an article about Ircam coming to Glasgow.


The Western face of the IRCAM building, via Wiki.

Ross Does The Rounds

Seen all over the interweb New Yorker music critic and author Alex Ross discusses his book 'The Rest is Noise' in various places..

At Google, with Charlie Rose, with the Guardian, on BBC Radio3`s Music Matters programme and an AmazonWire podcast.

Whatever you think of his specific musical biases/tastes he is an effective propagandist for 20th century music (70,000 copies sold says so, I have not read any of them, might do when it comes out on paperback)

[Correction: it may already be out on paperback but it is out of stock on Amazon and cant find it on other sites]