Three Mantras [Enhanced]

Three Mantras [Enhanced]

Track Listings

1. Eastern Mantra

2. Western Mantra

Editorial Reviews
Product Description
Special reissue of 1980 album which has been out of print since 1995. This release features two long tracks of over 15 minutes each of found sounds (Jerusalem market, Voices etc...), guitar loops & all types of percussion. The artwork has been enhanced compared to the original LP & features photos of the band. Standard jewel case.

Three Mantras,Cabaret Voltaire,Old Mute,Dance,Dance Music,Pop,Rock,Rock/Pop

John Foulds: Three Mantras
Average customer rating:

Romantic Masterpieces

Awful racket

Ignore the other reviews

A Relatively Unknown British Composer: Some Thoughtful Insights

Have to concur.

John Foulds: Three Mantras

Manufacturer: Warner Classics
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Concertos | Forms & Genres | Classical | Styles | Music
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ASIN: B0002VE20G
Release Date: 2005-01-25

Tracks:

Mantra I (Of Action And Vision Of Terrestrial Avataras) - Impetuoso
Mantra II (Of Bliss And Vision Of Celestial Avataras) - Beatamente - City Of Birmingham Symphony Youth Chorus
Mantra III (Of Will And Vision Of Cosmic Avataras) - Inesorabile
I. Lento - Allegro Commodo - Susan Bickley
II. Largo - Quasi Allegretto Piacevole - Susan Bickley
I. Quasi Funebre - Daniel Hope
II. Poco Meno - Daniel Hope
III. Andante Lento - Daniel Hope
IV. Tempo Della Prima Stanza - Daniel Hope
I. Largo
II. Moderato
III. Lento Assai - Allegro Molto
IV. Presto
V. Lento Giusto - Adagio
VI. Moderato Trionfale

Customer Reviews:

Romantic Masterpieces.......2006-10-31

I got to know John Foulds music through the second CD that was recorded by the CBSO and Sakari Oramo, which led me to get the first. John Foulds was an accomplished and remarkable man whose music - it surprises me - has been unjustly forgotten. The earliest work on this disc, from 1909, is the fourth music-poem Apotheosis, an elegy for orchestra and violin dedicated to the memory of Joseph Joachim. Cast in a single movement, the music is divided into five stanzas and contains allusions to the violin concertos of Beethoven and Brahms. The music begins with a funeral march that is heard again later in the work.

The fifth Music-Poem Mirage was completed in 1910 and is scored for a large orchestra and has six sections which were given titles indicating the philosophical program of the music such as "Immutable Nature" and "Man's ever-ambition." Oddly, the music was rehearsed by the Halle Orchestra but never was played during Fold's lifetime. The music is passionately Romantic with illusions to Wagner and Richard Strauss. A work that aimed at a wider audience was the Lyra Celtica (Celtic Lyre) - a concerto for voice and orchestra. It is an unfinished work with two complete movements with a third partially completed. It is a beautiful and mysterious piece but will not be to everyone's taste as the wordless voice is a work of this length (16:11) can become monotonous.

The Three Mantras come from an abandoned Sandskrit opera called Avatara which was written during the 1920s. The Three Mantras are all of the music that survives from the opera and represents the preludes to each of the three acts and represent the action that will take place. The Mantras work well as concert works with Mantra I a highly energetic toccata representing the theme of activity followed by a movement representing bliss; a peaceful movement that includes a chorus of wordless women's voices. Mantra III, representing Will, returns to the shattering energy of the first movement. The movement contains Foulds' most complex and explosive music.

The music is beautifully recorded and performed. If you like the music of Richard Strauss and Gustav Mahler and do not know John Foulds you will probably be pleasantly surprised.

Awful racket.......2006-09-17

Couldn't bear listening to much on this disc, and I felt like stopping the CD near the beginning of Mantra #3 (which is track #3 out of 15 tracks), but forced myself to listen to the end. What I hear 90% of the time is tawdry and uninspired. A previous reviewer is, in my view, correct about the chanting (in Mantra #2): It seems to go on and on and completely fails to move this listener. The same can be said of the concerto for soprano and orchestra; one yearns for Gliere's greater mastery in his handling of this medium.

The music improves with the last two items. The Apotheosis, essentally a violin concerto, has some nice moments. And the Mirage, a symphonic poem, aims high, in the manner of Bantock or Bax, but ultimately fails to maintain any consistency of worthy musical ideas, or inspiration. Again, ultimately disappointing.

As mentioned by several previous reviewers, the appearance of experimental compositional techniques in several of these works is certainly admirable, but needs to be couched in music that inspires. Unfortunately, most of the time this doesn't. After this first hearing, it now doesn't surprise me here at least that Foulds' music has not taken hold with either public or performers. In my view, it doesn't stand comparison to British contemporaries such as Cyril Scott, York Bowen, Bax, Bantock, and even Sorabji, where the music at least moves the listener. I love discovering the music of composers unknown to me, but I'm sad to say that Foulds is not one I will be adding to my CD acquistion library.

I had read all of the previous reviews here, and was struck by the wide divergence of opinion, either hating it or loving it, no middle ground. I was hoping to be optimistic, wanting to add another neglected master composer to my already large CD library. But I have to say, I hated the Mantras and the concerto for voice, and found the last two items second rate musically but at least pleasant to listen to.

My advice: Don't waste your money on this CD.

Buy up all the Bax Chandos CDs instead, plus the Cyril Scott Dutton and Chandos CDs, and (when it comes out in 2007) the Bantock "Omar Khayyam" on Chandos together with the other Bantock CDs on the Hyperion, Chandos and Dutton labels.

Ignore the other reviews.......2006-09-07

Finding fault with this music because it fails to accurately incarnate the devices of an exotic musical culture completely misses the point. If this is musical kitsch, then so is The Dance of the Seven Veils and Mahler's employment of Chinese pentatonic scales in Das Lied Von Der Erde, not to mention such distant antecedents as the Alla Turca movement from the Mozart A Major variation sonata. In each case, the music should be judged for what it is and not as a failed attempt at ethnomusicological reconstruction.

Secondly, how could anyone compare this with contemporary New Age music when it obviously eschews the repetitive harmonic devices of trance music and demonstrates a modulatory dynamism typical of turn-of-the-century composers? And finally, if you're going to hold a Victorian composer responsible for 1980s soundtracks, then why not pillory Mahler for having given birth to Max Steiner?

I first heard Foulds' music 20 years ago on a Pearl recording of the Quartetto Intimo by the Endellion Quartet, and I was enthralled by the sheer technical finish of the music and the composer's investigation of such esoteric devices as quarter-tones in an enriched diatonic context. His is an original voice, although it is an eclectic originality that doesn't hit you over the head with the sheer invention of a Janacek or Stravinsky.

Nevertheless, anyone who enjoys British music of the 20's and 30's will probably find something to admire here. Foulds may not "sound" exotic in the Three Mantras but his use of microtones, Eastern scales, polyrhythms and even metrical modulation (in the first Mantra)is in fact quite forward-looking. Certainly there is nothing in Vaughan Williams, Walton or Bax that resembles it. The other pieces are just as beautifully scored, but not as inventive in their musical content. The Apotheosis comes right out of the world of the Dvorak romances. The Lyra Keltica (NOT the Keltic Lament) seems to invoke the vocalise passages in the VW Pastoral Symphony and ends in an absolutely rapt coda in which the vocalist stretches her wordless cantilena around whole tones, microtones and quarter-tones (Susan Bickley does it effortlessly). "Mirage" is the most derivatively Straussian, but certainly is beautifully scored and contains many inspired passages of woodwind writing.

Although there are passing references to Strauss and Scriabin, the cooler flames of Elgar, Bax, Bridge and Howells are much in evidence. I also hear Pingoud, Raitio and Merikanto in some of Foulds' orchestral textures, and it is probably no coincidence that a Finnish conductor, Sakari Oramo, has produced the best recordings to date of Foulds' music--with apologies to the old Barry Wordsworth LPO performances on Lyrita.

Demonstration-class sound and highly recommended.

A Relatively Unknown British Composer: Some Thoughtful Insights.......2006-05-27

John Foulds is not a name that leaps to the top of lists of even the more inquisitive surveyors of British music, but taking the time to listen carefully to his compositions as excerpted on this well-recorded CD gives notice of another influence on the now ubiquitous groups of composers devoted to the influence of Eastern music on Western compositions. Britten did it with his gamelan-inspired works (even including his final 'Death in Venice') while other composers still living (Arvo Part, Tan Dun, Unsuk Chin, Philip Glass, Andres Hillborg etc) continue to mine the sounds and techniques of reproduction on old instruments and melodies. Foulds, while not a great composer, did do is part in influencing the trend in his time.

Of the works here recorded the 'Three Mantras' from 'Avatara' (his abandoned Sanskrit opera) show a gift for orchestration that rivals Strauss. His 'Lyra Celtica, concerto for voice & orchestra is well performed Susan Bickley in an extended wordless vocalise. His 'Apotheosis (Elegy), for violin & orchestra is likewise performed with great dignity by the gifted violinist Daniel Hope. And the collection concludes with the huge 'music poem' Mirage, for orchestra. For a composer who died in 1939 his music is quite progressive and deserves more exposure.

Sakari Oramo conducts the Birmingham Symphony Orchestra in a committed fashion, obviously with deep respect for a composer who is all but unknown today. This is a far more interesting CD than is being credited, and for those who are eager to know more about 20th century composers who have been neglected, this is a fine selection to try. Grady Harp, May 06

Have to concur........2006-05-26

Hey, don't bring Madame Blavatsky into this! I got through the many hundred pages of Isis Unveiled easier than I sat through this CD.

Yes, this is music that only a certain brand of painfully unaware and matter-of-fact Brit could come up with ( the kind who, during philosophical arguments, refuse to concede that that rock they see in front of them is anything other than a good old solid rock to be kicked with the toe into your scrunched continental visage, sir! ) A lot of the music sounds like inchoate strivings toward what would eventually become the Superman theme. There's a vocalise piece here, wordless female ha-haaaahing, that makes me want to listen to something similar but in better taste, like ABBA's Voulez-Vous.

There's nothing wrong with Foulds having gone to India and striving to express Vedantic wisdom in his music. I will stand proudly next to my collection of Bantock albums and those are mostly a well-fed bourgeois' reveries of ancient Greece. The problem is that ( a ) There is nothing remotely exotic about any of Foulds music and ( b ) It sounds like Christmas music to be piped over tinny speakers at Harrod's while kiddies wait in line to have their satchels signed by a Dumbledorn lookalike.

Absolute nastiness and one of the worst CDs in the collection that threatens to shoulder me out of house and home. If it weren't for the absence of Andrea Bocelli on the cover, I'd think that this were a crossover attempt. My kudos to Foulds though for basically inventing 80's film music back in 1920.

Average customer rating:

Closing of one chapter and the beginning of another
Half of this is great ...

Three Mantras
Cabaret Voltaire
Manufacturer: Cabaret Voltaire
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B0000241NT
Release Date: 2006-07-08

Tracks:

Eastern Mantra
Western Mantra

Album Description

Special reissue of 1980 album which has been out of print since 1995. This release features two long tracks of over 15 minutes each of found sounds (Jerusalem market, Voices etc...), guitar loops & all types of percussion. The artwork has been enhanced compared to the original LP & features photos of the band. Standard jewel case.

Customer Reviews:

Closing of one chapter and the beginning of another.......2003-07-22

This is one of those dadaist jokes the band had pulled to an unsuspecting public back in 1980. What's noticeable is that there are only two tracks or " mantras " on the CD and to confuse things even more " Eastern Mantra " sounds very Western and vice versa. The art of confusion was never perfected better ( except perhaps for Throbbing Gristle who were always joking ). There's a cryptic warning for us as well with the most noticeable lyric in the whole album which is " Symptom of a signal soon to be exhausted. " Perhaps a subtle warning - but nothing more.....

As it stands this sounds like a closing off chapter for the Cabs. Their first 2 albums were typical of industrial at the time but the second track is an open embrace of something new. It's almost like a prototype for things to come. Without it there would be no Yashar....and perhaps there wouldn't be a Red Mecca....so in a way this is a band coming in at a crossroads beginning to venture onto new paths.

This CD is probably one for the die hard Cabs fan as it is one of their more experimental of releases. But for those who want to jump into their more experimental approaches....or indeed love experimental music should enjoy the CD.

Half of this is great ..........2001-10-03

I saw Cabaret Voltaire perform Western Mantra live in Hammersmith, around 1980. It was one of the most awe-inspiring musical events I've ever seen, and the version here is almost good enough to live up to that night. Unfortunately, Eastern Mantra is crap, but the album is worth buying anyway.

John Foulds: Le Cabaret; April-England; Pasquinade; Etc.

Average customer rating:

John Foulds: Le Cabaret; April-England; Pasquinade; Etc.

Manufacturer: Lyrita
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

General | Classical | Styles | Music

Amazon.com

The Lyrita label has an incredible backlist of well-known and not-so- well-known British composers. Foulds, though he lived from 1880 to 1939, essentially belongs, at least temperamentally, with Elgar's generation. His compositions--mostly classical in their structure, Romantic in their delivery-- retain a number of 19th-century mannerisms, although an original voice peeps through now and then. April-England (1932) is a tone poem close to those of Arnold Bax of the same era, but without Bax's sense of menace. Hellas, a Suite of Ancient Greece (1932) is a tone poem with some of Respighi's atmospherics. --Paul Cook

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Three Mantras
Cabaret Voltaire
Manufacturer: Restless Records
ProductGroup: Music
Binding: Audio CD

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ASIN: B000008DWT
Release Date: 1993-07-01

Tracks: