David Jones, artist and poet (1895-1974) begins his PREFACE TO THE ANATHEMATA :

'I have made a heap of all that I could find.' (1) So wrote Nennius, or whoever composed the introductory matter to Historia Brittonum. He speaks of an 'inward wound' which was caused by the fear that certain things dear to him 'should be like smoke dissipated'. Further, he says, 'not trusting my own learning, which is none at all, but partly from writings and monuments of the ancient inhabitants of Britain, partly from the annals of the Romans and the chronicles of the sacred fathers, Isidore, Hieronymous, Prosper, Eusebius and from the histories of the Scots and Saxons although our enemies . . . I have lispingly put together this . . . about past transactions, that [this material] might not be trodden under foot'. (2)

(1) The actual words are coacervavi omne quod inveni, and occur in Prologue 2 to the Historia.
(2) Quoted from the translation of Prologue 1. See The Works of Gildas and Nennius, J.A.Giles, London 1841.


23 May 2012

Vale, Felix Werder : flo ______ own with (th)-e birds

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Today GOOGLE observes the 78th Birthday of Robert MOOG, inventor of the famous MOOG synthesizer.

A bLOGOS/HA HA staffer recalls attending a Melbourne CAE (Council of Adult Education) class in the early 1970s at which Felix Werder explained and demonstrated the then newly available Minimoog.

Felix Werder on the set of Music Workshop, 1966

A great contributor to Melbourne's rich musical matrix, Felix Werder died on 3 May. 

On 23 February he had celebrated his 90th birthday at a peer-packed tribute concert. On the bill that night, at the Iwaki Auditorium, Melbourne :
Dice (solo piano),  Felix Werder - World premiere
H Factor : string quartet,  Felix Werder - World premiere - performed by Silo String Quartet
Ill Tempered Clavier (solo piano),  Felix Werder - Australian premiere - performed by Michael Kieran Harvey
Quinny on the Roof : percussion,  Felix Werder
Recipe for disaster : percussion (2000),  Felix Werder - performed by Eugene Ughetti
The Tempest : electronics by Felix Werder

Friend and fellow composer Warren Burt wrote this obituary in The Age :
Champion of the new tweaked conservative noses

... He was an ardent champion of the new, and frequently delighted in tweaking the noses of his conservative, middle-class audience. Never one to suffer fools gladly, he brought a sense of forthright aesthetic debate into Australia. To his aesthetic opponents he could be a formidable adversary, but to those he worked with, both musically and educationally, he was unfailingly polite...
read full article here
Warren Burt
9 May 2012

Larry Sitsky on Werder (Post–1945 Modernism Arrives in Australia) :
Some years after writing Australian Piano Music of the Twentieth Century, I find myself in a quandary yet again, faced with the problem of writing about Felix Werder...
article here












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