For as long as I recall classical music played a major part in my life from handed down records, broadcasts listened to an concerts attended that over the decades has lead to collection of favourites by various composers.
Parts of this have been mentioned on That Boarding School Girl over the years as I moved from buying performances on lp records and cassettes to now standard Compact Disc and High Definition download
Chunks of my collection are in one respect time periods where I picked what I could as my interests were piqued remaining without being reassessed in the light of newer recordings and improved mastering of older ones.
Aaron Copland is one of America's greatest composers, period, someone who had the art of getting a lot in without losing touch with American home spun idioms and relative simplicity.
It was around Nineteen-Ninety that got to hear across a weekday broadcasting slot the majority of his compositions in an excellent BBC Radio Three "This Mornings Composer" series of programs much of which served as my 'template' for collecting recordings of them around that era.
The mainstays in that era were Copland's own recordings for Columbia (now Sony Classical) records that in 1991 were compiled into three cd box sets.
I bought two at the time as they had the bulk of the works I wanted even if the early sixties sound left a little to be desired but that other set sounded poor so I never got it or its content
Following getting the Super Audio Player (see the middle/littles blog) I started this process of reassessment as its reproduction of regular cds exceeded my previous players looking replacing by better sounding and sometimes played versions of which last months Mozart entry was one example.
There precious few recordings of Copland's Clarinet concerto or of Dance Panels and I had formed the view for my purposes, the two Sony Classical boxes I bought in the early nineteen-nineties would benefit from being replaced and this would be a good start point adding two works and replacing my original of 1925's "Music for the Theatre"
Leonard Slatkin is one the best leading conductors and advocates of Copland's music and he recorded for RCA a series of works featuring the St. Louis Symphony Orchestra well compiled of which this adds the not often heard Organ Symphony with Simon Preston and two other symphonies in modern wide ranging digital sound.
Copland mastered the art of writing film music that both didn't get in the way of the screen action and equally wasn't just soundtrack fodder, capable of being appreciated in its own right.
This disc featured the Red Pony, Music for Movies a arrangement of film music in the forms of a suite, Our Town and seldom recorded Prairie Journal (Music for Radio)which was broadcast on the radio.
This disc featured his Third Symphony and Music for a Great City which benefits from a modern recording.
Naxos had an excellent series of discs covering American Composers and I own most of the Samuel Barber titles but this one appealed as these main two works were in the third box I never bought although I've always loved The Tender Land suite written around life on a Southern Farm during the nineteen-thirties, his Piano Concerto and two collections of American Songs originally intended for piano and voice but transcribed here for orchestra and chorus.
I just love singing along to "I Bought Me a Cat".
There's nothing quite so stereotypical British as national panics best talked over tea and a common one is around educational standards although it could be argued part of this reflects the debate around learning and retaining facts over looking things up and following a process.
My feelings are more that you do need a knowledge base so you know 8 x 8 is 64 and The Great Fire of London did take place in 1666 so you can both know off the bat if something is 'wrong' and work efficiently. It is hard to progress when you haven't mastered the basics as like a good number of dyslexic people I know only to well which was a reason I ended up resuming studying a while ago.
Much of this chart from a UK national newspaper is familiar in that what I was expected in my class when I was educated strongly aligned with that common during in the 1950's and following reforms, changed. My feeling is what happened has been less is required to be known and over a longer period which shows up when international comparisons are made.
It's hard to believe that in that time children are less capable of learning even if we are more enlightened around the things that can making learning more harder for some and prepared to assist more.
It may be how we teach that needs to be addressed apart from having the kind of classroom I had when the teacher just walked in with the texts needed, you got up to greet them and from that point on you were expected to sit still and pay attention rather than dealing with messing about with cellphones and the like.
It's really quite amazing how the things that featured in my past come back and one that has come back is Catalonia, which is something I knew of because of family connections, learning about the Spanish Civil War and reading many of the novels of George Orwell.
In North America as in Great Britain his two towering texts, Animal Farm a fable of a revolution gone wrong in the form of allegory of the Russian Revolution of 1917 and 1984 which is about totalitarian dictatorship, blind obedience to "The Party" and the attempt by defining out to prevent critical independent thought and betrayal
One book that had an influence on me was Homage To Catalonia which is his account as seen by him of being an independent fighter for the Spanish Republic against Franco that tells not just of the action but the bitter blood thirsty internal squabbles among the left-wing republican forces not least the sacrifice of non-communists by communist support and Russian Government and the blind refusal of many on the English political left to tell it as it is.
I hate to say it but there times where a disrespect for Truth and Humanity are ignored when it doesn't seem to fit a narrow political objective or imperative not just by suppression of criticism but the telling of deliberate untruths.
Part of that Civil War was about individual freedoms and the centralization of the State most telling after Franco's victory.
This is where today's concern for the people of Catalonia and of wider Spain come in because while previous regimes have tried to allow more local budget setting and decision making in the manner of the UK's evolving devolution and Quebec's unique status within Canada as a separate society, the current crisis happened on a backdrop of reduced autonomy.
It seems the current Government in Madrid feels a strong Spain in difficult economic and political times requires more control from the centre and this fed into a situation where the Catalan regional elections produced support for more independence minded parties.
This lead to the recent 'illegal' referendum where pro united Spain parties abstained and by default the only parties taking part supported independence.
It is only fair to point out under the Spanish Constitution only the State has the power to call, hold and act on such referendums and declare independence.
The referendum being called, the Government called in the National Police to disrupt the illegal action, seizing ballot boxes beating up voters and protesters.
To pull a old woman by the hair, to beat causing cuts and bruises those who protest and deny the right to express though voting an opinion for a good number of us brings back the images of the 1930's and indeed of fascism.
While the election was illegal, the state held the Trump Card in that it was well within its rights to not act upon the results and so having not prevented it, seeing polling itself had started tolerated it as a safety valve. No damage was being done.
Having done that then looking at how to square more support for greater local say on matters within being in Spain would of been a more sensible approach as would engaging in the debate during that campaign.
Instead, it only appears to have inflamed tensions more and the failure to adequately censure the Spanish Government for police conduct by the European Union and many of its leaders appalls me.
It was announced late Monday night UK time, that Tom Petty, one of America's greatest songwriters and singers had died on what had been a pretty dark day for the Las Vegas shooting with its 59+ dead and the violence in Catalonia by Spanish Police in response to an illegal poll.
This was the formal announcement as issued on the day:
On this blog we have reviewed some of his albums not least his final one, 2016's Mudcrutch2 that surprised and enthralled us as someone who was sixty-six years still had the vitality to pull off as much as 2014's Hypnotic Eye did with its social and political observations did two years before.
Tom goes way back to '76/7 with me with the release of "Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers" a 30 odd minute much needed straightahead roots rock that garnered attention in New Wave's spiritual home, Great Britain, which presented the opportunity to develop the live act and then 'sell back' to the States that bought You're Gonna Get it and its 45's I Need To Know and Listen To Her Heart.
If I was to pick just one of his albums outside of 1994's Greatest Hits, I'd pick Damn The Torpedos, his 1979 release which in so many ways encapsulated his simple but effective way of reducing down complex ideas to the most commercial while not losing the 'message'.
The best known examples from that album are "Refugee", "Don't Do Me Like That" and "Here Comes My Girl", all hit 45's.
Tom was a member of the Travelin' Wilbury's a 'super group' with former beatle George Harrison, Roy Orbison, Bob Dylan and Jeff Lynne of England's Electric Light Orchestra that blended the talents into a very much 'Americana' feel best exemplified by the mainly Canadian band, The Band but being contemporary too selling well beyond each members own audience.
It is hard to put across what Tom meant to us: At a human level he was very genuine, reflective, free from the ego grabbing me,me,me that the so many in the music business have.
Musically he straddled that gap between so-called 'Classic Rock' and 'Indie Alternative' in a way another of my music loves, Bruce Springsteen never quite pulled off even if he did do the long epic song.
'Refugee' was a song whose theme spoke to me as a disabled person battling not be defined by events, unable or unwilling to move on.
Writing this has been emotionally exhausting cos Tom meant so much almost on a par with David Bowie.
Rest In Peace, Tom.
