The modest scoring for just seven instruments, with its remorselessly exposed passages, makes extraordinary demands on the players, while the composition is so venue specific (see Britten – music does not exist in a vacuum) that it only works in an acoustic very similar to that of the East Anglian church of Orford where it was first performed. The role of the Madwoman will always prompt comparison with the singer it was written for, the incomparable Peter Pears. Benjamin Britten's church parable Curlew River is an elusive work that is dauntingly difficult to pull off in a live performance. Last night was one of those very rare moments when the musical and theatrical planets aligned to transcend what Wilhelm Furtwängler described as 'the hoar frost of routine'. This non-linear path leads me to yet another musical destination. But I had never seen the blindingly obvious - On An Overgrown Path is a non-linear interlinked exploration of themes, just like Sostenuto's blog it is a musical mind map. Now I've used mind maps extensively in my day job, and in fact my current project started from just one mind map. Interestingly, although mind maps have been around since at least the 1970s their topography approximates closely to the navigation map of a website, and as the illustration here shows a mind map has striking similarities to the architecture of some contemporary music. For anyone that hasn't come across mind maps they are a form of non-linear radiant presentation that allows the fast exploration, and development, of an idea while simultaneouly maintaining clear focus on the central themes. I tried in one of my first ever posts, Serendipity and Collaborative Filtering, to articulate what On An Overgrown Path is about. That produced one of those blazing 'why didn't I think of that moments?' for me. I'm currently studying music performance with Mathias Tacke of the Vermeer Quartet along with compositional studies.' With those musical influences he'd probably qualify for a mention here anyway, but it was the name of Sostenuto's blog that caught my attention - A musical mind map. I consider my musical influences to be Bach, Messiaen, Monteverdi (early music in general,) Schoenberg, Hindemith, Stravinsky, Mozart, Glass and the like. Sostenuto describes himself as 'a violinist in his early stages as a composer. Whenever a thoughtful comment like that is added I click through to the poster's own blog. Posted by Sostenuto ( sic) to my article Music and politics. But what is built on sand gets pumelled by the storm of time. Well funded and world wide, rap is turning music, eltism, and influence, on its head. Today, rap a genre of primarily non-eltitist society, occupies a powerful vantantage point for influence. Even in ancient Greece, there was 'elitist' music. What a blog! A big hurdle to be overcome: music's use to further distinguish, even exalt, a given class distiction.
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