Composer with Alzheimers completes string quartet

Composer with Alzheimers completes string quartet

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norman lebrecht

July 05, 2016

Heartwarming story on Musical Toronto.

The veteran R Murray Schafer has achieved a new score despite a diagnosis of Alzheimers.

Read here.

r murray schafer

Comments

  • John Borstlap says:

    His 12th quartet has beautiful passages but quite disheartening glissandi which invoke associations with overconsumption of alcohol:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lSzVS7Bg2PI

    • Gerhard says:

      What do you intend to tell us with this remark?

      • Steven Holloway says:

        Gerhard, that is the very question I had in mind myself.

      • John Borstlap says:

        Nothing more than that this is a very interesting composer with great gifts but with a puzzling taste for glissandi. Writing a new quartet while ill, is quite an achievement, hopefully without glissandi.

    • Jaypee says:

      Thank you, great Master of Good Taste!
      Thank you for consenting to lower yourself and tell us what to like and what not to like…

      I’ve always felt that third-rate Ravel imitator with a superiority complex were the best judges of other people’s music.

      • John Borstlap says:

        Tonight we were all fretting in the kitchen: why doesn’t he react to all this populist abuse? Why does he calmly continue working, while out there the peoples’ voice is rising? Two of the Syrians from the stables, who regularly join us at night when we inspect the wine cellar and try-out some good bordeaux year, suggested that maybe in Western music one has sunnis and shiites, and of course the shiites were all misled. But Mr Burnley, always happy to demonstrate his expertise as the eternal butler, insisted that ‘there were no such divisions in classical music since every true musician believes in one God’. When pressed on the matter, the bell saved him and he quickly went upstairs. We concluded the abusive comment must result from a disappointed brext voter, facing the prospect of ebb in foreign orchestras visiting Little Britain with great classical music. We all suffer greatly from these sort of comments on an otherwise sophisticated website…
        Sally

  • Igor says:

    “Disheartening glissandi”!!! That’s priceless! You keep doing you, John Bortslap

  • Mark Stratford says:

    Xenakis wrote his final compositions whilst having Alzheimers

    • John Borstlap says:

      Do they make much difference with his earlier oeuvre? His work, and his writing about it, suggests mental problems right from the beginning.

      • Jaypee says:

        À propos ‘mental problems’, how about someone who trolls on a blog known by everyone dealing with classical music?

        Do you seriously think that anyone in a leading position that could offer you anything -a commision for a new work, a book to write, a course to give- will ever be interested in dealing with an arrogant, full-of-himself, know-it-all, narrow-minded person named ‘John Borstlap’?

        How delusional can you get…

        • John Borstlap says:

          You see? another one! Fortunately it was a bordeaxu 1968 which helped us to get through this ordeal.
          Sally

    • Sue says:

      And, boy, doesn’t it show??!!! Some of his other work suggests an earlier onset.

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