Poet Ian McMillan explores the world of ceative music making in the music education of the 1960s as he uncovers the work of teachers and children who created avant garde music and wonders how this impacted on the participants.
At only 30 minutes long it's far too short for such a large and interesting topic but it is fascinating with contributions from both enthusiasts - Jonny Trunk - and experts - Stephanie Pitts.
The BBC link won't embed so listen after the jump...
(if that link goes dead Jon Savage has it has his site here)
If this sort of thing is as up your particular street as it is mine then this is a subject that we've featured before with reviews of two Trunk Records releases...
This
is a collection of 3 LPs dating from 1958 of musical teaching methods
devised by Carl (Carmina Burana) Orff and Gunild Keetman and here
restaged in English by Margaret Murray who makes excellent use of the
talent of the children of the Italia Conte School, The Children's
Percussion Ensemble and Chorus of the Children's Opera.
What
we get is a tangle of folk songs, nursery rhymes, speech exercises and
percussion pieces all designed (in ways I'm too lazy to discuss here) to
teach the kids the rudiments of music. Whether they would work or not I
have no clue but what I do know is that it's fantastic fun to hear.
Orff and Keetman
The
rhythmic pieces are melodious tangles of glockenspiels, metallophones,
drinking glasses, tambourines, cymbals and drums. Other instruments,
such as lute, recorders and double bass, make appearances throughout and
the whole has the air of some sort of mediaeval mummers play as
filtered through the stones of Avebury or via an incursion of 'Time' in
an episode of Sapphire & Steel.
Margaret Murray
It
is frankly glorious stuff, partly ecstatic and partly massively creepy -
a group of children chanting the name 'Deadly Nightshade' had me
giggling and reaching for the rewind to hear it again and again. Only
for it to then be eclipsed by the simultaneous chants of 'Mad as a
Hatter' and 'Let the piper call the tune' (tracks 17 and 18 respectively in the playlist below).
It's
magnificently odd, deliciously creepy and beyond all that it's
fantastic fun and I don't think I'll hear a better album this year.
The album is available to download from Trunk Records (for a massive 50p) as is volume 2. They had reissued it on LP and CD too but they seem to be sold out from the label.
or alternatively you can listen to the whole thing here.
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