The Envy Of The World: Fifty Years Of The BBC Third Programme and Radio 3 (Humphrey Carpenter)

Not even in my most rabid classical music devouring years was Radio 3 a significant fixture in my life, but I like the idea of it being there... just in case. And if someone were to write a potted history of the Third Programme, well, who better than the guy who wrote the Mr Majeika books. (Yeah I know he used to work there, that's not the point.)
What a ludicrous century the 20th was. We will look back on it, if we don't already, in utter disbelief. And this is topical actually with the Jimmy Savile outrages becoming more horrific by the day- inevitably you ask yourself: how did this happen? How could this have been allowed to happen? How could our safe European lives have been so very different back then? And there are clues in here, in Carpenter's book.
And let's say straight off the bat that this is a joy of a book, capturing a tine of arrogance, snobbery and entitlement that we will never see again. And yes of course that's a bad thing, surely that goes without saying, and yet... And yet. You can see the allure of this world. The heyday of the Third Programme, as detailed in Carpenter's book, has the simultaneously humdrum and otherworldly appeal of those gentlemens clubs, all oak panelling and ironed copies of The Times- you were born in to this world or, rather more likely, you were not born into this world, and if you weren't then you were destined to forever be peering through the doors, trying to catch a peek of a class beyond your own. The history of Radio 3 is genuinely fascinating and worthy of this sort of study- there are some extraordinary characters and anecdotes in these pages. But what we are reading here is not really the story of those few English eccentrics, but an entire culture, a society of the elite. The Third Programme as microcosm of 20th century British society's ills.
You won't be finding many black faces in these pages. Try and introduce the idea of Race into what we're reading here and think how utterly laughable it would be to imagine black composers / musicians having their music played on Radio 3. Being introduced by black presenters. Of course that's true of Western classical music as a whole in the period covered by this book- jazz is mentioned now and again, rather begrudgingly, though only Gershwin (Gershwin!) gets a name-check. And, with the inevitability of one of society's majority-minorities following another, we can say the same of women. There are women, let's be upfront here, mentioned in these pages, but usually (not exclusively) because of their distinctive, silky voices. And silky of course= sex. At least women would have been allowed to listen to the Third Programe. Tolerated at least. As long as they fit certain educational criteria.
None of this is really mentioned by Carpenter. Hardly relevant to his story. And yet it should be- Radio 3 had the potential to be revolutionary. Instead it was cowardly and lazy. Is it nowadays? Probably not. I wouldn't know. But the moment has passed. The radio elite had the potential to change the world, and they didn't. Revolutions in music they sneered at and mocked, but ultimately had to go along with- not until Classic FM came along could 20th century music be comfortably done away with. But it wasn't only the economically elite running the Third Programme, but also the intellectually elite, and they did nothing- not a jot- to improve the world.
The history of the Third Programme is a history of vile, bullying men, unwilling to listen to any voice other than their own, and sensitive aesthetes steamrollered by their own culture. Still- an addictive book.
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As an aside, the story of 'Mobile', a hoax piece broadcast by Hans Keller and Susan Bradshaw (a woman! but oh a woman of terribly minor significance I'm afraid) in 1961 is fascinating.
'The idea struck us as we listened to the faintly melodious sounds provided by the moving of chairs after a concert- we used drums, xylophones, cymbals, glasses, ashtrays, and anything else handy. At one time we were whistling, using an echo effect...' Noting in passing that this is the kind of music I spend a considerable amount of my life listening to these days- do recordings of this exist? As a hoax of course this is pretty obvious, childish stuff, but the idea is magical.

Slight Return

Popping this down as a placeholder because I've missed blogging even if it does feel like whispering sweet nothings into the abyss. Things have changed a lot from a personal perspective since January, and while I don't particularly want to dwell on those changes, I am finding myself more and more frequently feeling I want to record 'stuff' somwhere other than a paper journal. It's hard though- I read back on some of those earlier entries and think: 'that doesn't sound like my voice' or, worse, 'that sounds like me trying to sound like someone else'. I can't imagine other people worry about this while tipping their ephemeral crap onto the page, so I'm going to try not to worry- hopefully in time I may even start to recognize myself in the stuff I write here. So- more to come, hopefully.

Silver Linings

Particularly noisy night last night, and the shock of sudden peace at half past one was almost overwhelming. Terribly, terribly hackneyed of course, but I became so aware of the little noises, the friendly noises, the ones that nourish rather than eat away at us. The wind, the old house's pipes, my wife's breathing- the familiar stuff made something to cherish again. And with moments of calm being as elusive as they are for me at the moment, part of me wanted to fight sleep and enjoy the sounds of the ordinary for a while. Of course another- far more sensible- part of me was well aware that I had to get up for work at seven and that I had just come off the back of another night with less than two hours sleep. Appreciating the aesthetics of the commonplace is all very well, but time and place, time and place.

Klaus Lang- Einfalt.Stille.

You'll have to forgive me, I'm dipping my toe into unfamiliar territory. This is a CD from four of five years ago, a very pretty CD that I've seen mentioned in despatches, and I've been playing it, and I've been enjoying it. Though there are, at a push, similarities to Feldman (and also Charlemagne Palestine's 'Karenina', though I may be hearing similarities just because I've played that through once or twice this year as well, in a smilar state of mind), it's hard to pin a label on, and to feel you've truly placed it.

A fifty minute piece for delicate instrumentes played softly and hesitantly- the trouble is, lovely though the music may be, and it truly is lovely, it becomes background music. Inexorably and inevitably background music. Background music of the highest order perhaps, but all the same I've played it through perhaps seven or eigh times now since the turn of the year, and I can't say it has engaged me from start to finish even once. Now that's no particular problem- if I'm going to play music while I'm reading, I want it to be something like this, but I'm not sure Klaus Lang set out to write a piece of rarefied ambient music, and damn I feel like I'm letting him down. But there you go.

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In a sense, the ongoing problems I'm having with our neighbours has eased, in that I'm starting to see a light at the end of the tunnel, albeit a light five or six months- at least- down the line. In another sense the problem has deteriorated. We live in a ground floor flat- a comfortable and spacious one, and one that we've turned into a decent family home, but there's no getting around the fact that we have people living above us, and people living above us whose standards and ideas of responibility don't tie in with our own. On one occasion this week they finally hit the sack at 4:15 AM, but there have been a couple of other occasions in the last few days perhaps more relevant in regards to music, and concepts of peace and silence.

We sleep, my wife and I, directly below a bedroom, and below, I'm afraid, a bedroom with no carpeting, just bare floorboards. Ocassional creakines then, only to be expected. Alas, we are being subjected to prolonged periods of walking about on bare floorboards, backwards, forwards, backwards, forwards, for two hours or more at a time. With occasional breaks of perhaps five or six seconds of rest. Odd behaviour, unfathomable behaviour, and a quite dreadful form of torture. But our problems, not yours, imaginary reader, I don't want us to have to dwell on it...

Over the months we've been living here I've tried to develop various strategies for dealing with this though, and one has been the judicious use of the ipod- 'Live in Seattle', black metal, Cecil Taylor at his most energetic. My night-time listening is perhaps not what I would necessrily opt for in an ideal world as I drift off to sleep but, again, there you go.

But 'Einfalt.Stille.'? No. This won't do at all. This music has uses, but it will not block out the noises of inconsiderate humans. A warning, just in case you find yourself in a similar situation.

Don Cherry- Eternal Rhythm

Since the turn of the year my listening activities- aside from the half hour commute to work- have centred around the very wonderful Admirable Restraint radio shows up at archive.org. There's a whole world of music going on here that has apparently passed me by completely, and I suspect I'm going to be spending a lot of time and money investigating it further over the coming months. Always nice to have a plan. When you start discovering subcultures within subcultures you can find yourself in some dizzying places, and they are the kind of places that suit me just fine.

I've also heard Don Cherry's 'Eternal Rhythm' a handful of times too, a scratchy old vinyl rip lifted from the dark side- Don Cherry has always been just a name to me, a name on a list or hidden away in a review: I had no idea he had made music quite like this. Admittedly, my relationship with jazz has always been a secretive, sordid thing- brief passionate half hours in the photocopying room and then we don't talk to each other for months. All sorts of wonderful thing have drifted beneath my radar I'm sure.

This starts like a sunrise- flutes, bells, all the sounds of waking. A crash and then in come the percussion, the piano, and all the while the flute bold and liquid. Cherry the multi-instrumentalist then- he seems to be playing everything he can get his hands on here, and with a graceful calm abandon that will bring light to any room you play this music in. Yeah, it's that kind of record- it invites bad poetry. This is such happy, invigorating, creative, joyous music, ful of themes that dance round your head and an inexpressible sense of well-being that you really have to savour- you find it so rarely.

Morton Feldman- Rothko Chapel / Why Patterns? (New Albion)

I realize now that though I've heard Rothko Chapel numerous times over the years I've never really listened, and this- this not listening- has to change. That's something I want this blog to do- encourage me to listen a little better. In a single concentrated listen yesterday evening, even with loud African female voices arguing in the flat above, I got it, absolutely nailed it.

Five brief movements and it's a brief piece- even at Feldman's leisurely pace there's a huge amount going on here, a vast amount of colours and instrumentation, and an assortment of moments that lock into the memory. This is beautiful music- nothing here to distract or disturb though the choir initially sound like they're performing a 40s B-movie theme, albeit filtered through Ligeti. This is charming rather than off-putting though, and the performance is very human and raw, subject to frailties but capable of transcendence.

Why Patterns? is less instantly engaging- though that's hardly a criticism with music like this- and in truth I like it considerably less. Flute, piano and glockenspiel, and all playing their sounds independently- four ears would be useful here, two is a compromise. You listen for the moments when the instruments engage and the sounds twist together. This music feels to me like a field of eggs cracking open one by one, a myriad of births. Small new creatures let loose on the earth. The chatterring hunger of the glockenspiel after ten minutes, nibbling away at the air: this is the most delicate of musics- the flute's return a minute or two later, with something like a declamation, is almost an intrusion. Ego arises.

Bitterly Passionate

Perched at the top of this year's gift pile is Ben Watson's 'Adorno for Revolutionaries' (Unkant)- if the test of a music writer is whether or not their words make you want to listen to the music they listen to, listen to the music they swear by, then there's no-one else in Watson's league. Much of his writing I find gloriously abrasive and impenetrable but over the years I've added more cds to my collection as a direct result of a fleeting mention by Watson in an essay on Adorno or Prynne than is, in all honesty, entirely healthy. Not since my years of tape-recording and annotating John Peel shows have I let one man have such a say in the music I consume. Less now, far less now, than a few years back, but even so. The influence is still there. His review of Coltrane's 'Live In Seattle'- 'the best recorded music that the twentieth century has to offer, no fooling'- I actually clipped out of a copy of The Wire during a clear-out that saw half a dozen year's worth of copies consigned to the bin.

The Adorno book isn't going to be a little light bedtime reading, but that isn't what I'm after. I'm tripping over piles and piles of little light bedtime reading when I'm at work. Passive can be awfully nice, but sometimes the awfully nice has to be rebelled against.