Max news.

[Stephen Whitaker]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_nr_n_0?rh=n%3A229816%2Ck%3Amaxwell+davies+portrait&keywords=maxwell+davies+portrait&ie=UTF8&qid=1385465176&rnid=1642204031

The first collection is well worth the download price if not really good value on disc.

[Bryn]

http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=sr_nr_...nid=1642204031

The first collection is well worth the download price if not really good value on disc.

It was very good value on discs when I got it for £5.21 including p&p in 2007 (just checked my tax dodgers account history).

[Nick Armstrong]

The messager concerned was a certain neilmcgowan, 7 days ago, just to offer bearings.

I've come late to this thread, and have scrolled up and down the DTel page several times, but can see no sign of a contribution by the ineffable mcgowan. Perhaps he has been moderated into obscurity...?

[teamsaint]

I'm not much of a Max fan, but there are a few pieces which have made a lasting impression:
Ave maris stella - far and away my favourite piece of his
Symphonies 1 & 2 (admittedly I've only hear the later ones once or twice each, if that, but they seem less memorable to me)
some of the Fires of London-related theatre pieces - Eight Songs for a Mad King, Vesalii icones, Miss Donnithorne's Maggot...
the orchestral piece Worldes Blis
the chamber opera The Lighthouse
If I try to think of any more I feel like I'm getting close to scraping the barrel, but that should be a start.

Many thanks for this Richard (and Bryn) I'll certainly use this list as a jump off point .

[MrGongGong]

the ineffable mcgowan.

Surely that should be "effing bull" ?

[Bryn]

I've come late to this thread, and have scrolled up and down the DTel page several times, but can see no sign of a contribution by the ineffable mcgowan. Perhaps he has been moderated into obscurity...?

Scroll right down to the last message displayed on the page linked to in message 1 Click on "see more, then, when the full version of the message comes up, click on "Load more comments" button at the bottom of that message. The relevant comment should be found at the bottom of the page that brings up.

[Serial_Apologist]

looks a fascinating book, SW.
There are things that are well worth investigating around this subject. For instance, literacy rates, (and not just the ability to sign a marriage certificate) seem to have been pretty high in Britain and Germany around 1900.depends how you measure it, but examples such as the quality of writing from the trenches , and the huge popularity of Dickens and Conan Doyle, suggest that for some sections of the population, education in these areas may not have moved on all that much, or as much as we would like to think, by the early C21. I wonder if something similar can be said for music, where the influence of church music must have been very great.
I think what we have now is not successful education, but a successful education industry.
I am guessing that MrGG was probably thinking about education in classical music over perhaps the last 50 years. I'm not sure that my peers (at a very "good" school) in the 1970's were any better or more widely educated in music than kids in similar schools today.

You are asking all the "right questions" imo, TS, and coming up with interesting suggestions.

That book (The Intellectual Life of the Working Class") is a slap in the face for the utilitarian, job-centred approaches to education now advocated across the mainstream party spectrum in the UK. And why? A rounded education of the whole person probably didn't conflict at one time too much with ruling class-imposed values as long as it remained within safe ideological territory, guided by Christian virtues of self-sacrifice and a better hereafter. Come the 1950s the ruling class had suddenly discovered the Marcusian truth that dragooning working class people into consumerism fulfilled two roles, at least short-term: firstly, co-option of a larger sector of the population than the upper and middle classes into spending money on consumer (un)durables made for the home market sustained domestic manufacturing as long as that remained profitable (and only the most Machiavellian could or would think beyond that point); and secondly, deflecting communally-orientated solution-making, solidarity-based thinking into individualised satisfaction meeting was psychologically a means to providing thereby isolated individuals with a new sense of belonging which one would be "mad" to question.

[Serial_Apologist]

personally, I would rather our future leaders knew how to fight the banks, or how to stand up to American foreign policy than be able to recognise excerpts from Mahler, but I guess in this interconnected quantum universe, they are all part of the same thing, somehow.

You've recently had a heart attack as well then I assume!

[teamsaint]

You've recently had a heart attack as well then I assume!

well , I knew I was feeling a little below par....

However, I have also had a slight and unaccountable sensation of Sipping rather good Champagne on a private beach on on the South coast of France, so I guess it all evens up !!

(Was this your heart, S_A or one somewhere else in space/ time? !)

[Richard Barrett]

What, not the Missa super l'homme armé or Revalation and Fall?

Yes, add those as well.

[french frank]

I've come late to this thread, and have scrolled up and down the DTel page several times, but can see no sign of a contribution by the ineffable mcgowan. Perhaps he has been moderated into obscurity...?

Or set to 'Oldest First' and you don't need to scroll at all ...

On literacy and education, you have to remember that Dickens and Conan Doyle were contemporary writers when they were popular. I'm not sure quite what they would be compared with now and have still less of a clue as to how you would make comparisons.

But to get back to the musical point: The interesting thing is that if you would consider, say, Mozart 'popular' (whatever that might be construed as meaning) in his day what would be his 'equivalent' nowadays? Though that's only half the story ...

[muzzer]

It's a number of things, isn't it? We're living in an age of materialist philistinism where people are obsessed with achieving levels of "peer-respected" material security, and I think will be keen for their children to learn to play an instrument as part of this, where previously they may not have had the chance or encouragement. This could be good in the long-term if they go back to music in later life when material security palls. But in contrast I think the long-term effect of the dominance of popular music and entertainment generally has been to erode any sense of looking beyond the immediately available or immediately easy to appreciate, so that anyone of an even mildly enquiring cultural inclination is accused of being elitist. It's all very lowest common denominator, in my view. Such an enormous subject.

[Nick Armstrong]

Thanks Bryn and ff... Found it. Needn't have bothered.

He'd be more convincing if you couldn't practically hear the froth round the mouth accompanying the written words....

[Beef Oven!]

Thanks Bryn and ff... Found it. Needn't have bothered.

He'd be more convincing if you couldn't practically hear the froth round the mouth accompanying the written words....

Although, we might want to reflect on 'how others see us'. Just a thought.
Just a thought #2. Should I address my question to yourself, m'lud? You see it concerns the business as to what foam sounds like, practically of course. Or should I wait until MrGG or his friends undertake one of those bathroom 'installations' that we're fond of?

[Bryn]

Although, we might want to reflect on 'how others see us'. Just a thought.
Just a thought #2. Should I address my question to yourself, m'lud? You see it concerns the business as to what foam sounds like, practically of course. Or should I wait until MrGG or his friends undertake one of those bathroom 'installations' that we're fond of?

Face to face Neil comes across as charm personified, if a Pan-Am sort of charm: