What's Occurring?

I've just posted a couple of CD reviews on the Reviews Page. These are of symphonies, one by Erno Dohnanyi, the 'last of the great romantic symphonists' and Ernest Bloch, whose music I now rate highly having heard and loved his E Flat major Symphony. Check them out.

    On a personal note, I've been enjoying learning about the benefits of music making for the elderly and particularly for those with dementia and other associated conditions. Our knowledge about the effect that music has on the brain by providing positive stimulation is increasing, particularly in the realm of recall and memory.  More than this, its effect on the whole integrity of brain function and self-awareness is remarkable and significant. I've been witnessing the results in a small way and want to pursue this path further with my own music making.

    I've also been preoccupied with my musical 'Ramblings' along Offa's Dyke. When I set off at the beginning of this project, I really wondered what on earth I was doing!  Now, having completed three of the fifteen walks, I know. The pleasure and stimulation that they have brought was quite unpredicted. To chat about music at some length while rambling through some of our most beautiful countryside is a combination that works superbly.

    On the most recent, the subject was 'harmony'. The walk was along a ridge running the length of the Black Mountains from Pandy to Hay-on-Wye. All the way we were accompanied by skylarks singing at full voice. I don't just mean the odd one or two here and there, but dozens of them all the way along an eleven-mile stretch. Sometimes we could hear three or four at a time, but always as we left the territory of one, another would take over and pour its glorious song down over our heads. If that wasn't a remarkable lesson in the art and practice of harmony and melody, I don't know what is.

Pics of the walks which will continue over the summer, info. about them and the musical topics are at 'Ramblings About Music'.

The Spirit of Music - A Day Course

Understanding the theory of music and how it has developed historically deepens a player's and a listener's appreciation. To this end I'm planning a day workshop when you can enjoy exploring some musical topics that will provide the tools to go further along your chosen musical path.

What I'm concocting is a day exploring music theory, which means explaining music's modes, keys and key changes, intervals, harmony and dissonance as well as the way the music is put together - its "form".

However, I don't want this to be an academic text-book type experience so I'll be putting all these elements into a context of the history of music from classical Greece and Pythagoras up to contemporary times and its music. The history of western music moves through particular phases, moving from music of single line melody to complex polyphony, made possible when music notation was developed and music could be written down.

Rambling Timelines

While gathering background for Ramblings About Music, I've begun to develop a couple of timelines to put everything in a context. One is from Pythagoras to the beginning of the 20th C, the other is from 1900 until today. If you would like to become an editor and add content of your own, contact me.  Each of the timeline's entries can include pictures and sound clips so should become quite a useful educational tool. Here is the first line (which can be viewed in 3D) which as you will see already contains some interesting material:

Ramblings on Mind, Body and Spirit

Early Greek philosophers were highly imaginative in describing what the universe was made of.  One said water, another fire, another, earth, etc. Their models had little to do with observation. Once the imaginative picture was formed, only then, it seems, did any rational thought kick in, to build up a detailed picure. Pythagoras was perhaps the first significant philosopher to combine his imagination with observation and rational thought to develop his mathematical, musical model of the universe. Plato shone the bright light of reasoned argument on this universe and the rest is history.

With regard to music, Pythagoras identified three types, described by the academics of the Middle Ages as musica mundana, the macrocosmic music of the spheres, musica humana, the microcosmic music contained by the human being and the lowest form of music, musica instrumentalis, the ordinary music made by musicians.

A distinction was commonly made between mere musical performers, cantores, and those considered to be the true artists, who theorised about music and its relationship with the cosmos, the musici.