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The pictures were captured in Uppalapadu Bird Sanctuary. The Uppalapadu Bird Sanctuary is located in Uppalapadu, near Guntur City, AP, India. Painted storks, spot-billed pelicans and other birds that migrate from various countries such as Siberia and Australia use the village water tanks for nesting. I stayed there for two days in order to capture them in my camera. Some of the pictures area captured in Amaravati in and around the Buddhist monastery containing rich and intricate sculptures depicting various forms.
Dear Madam/ Sir,
I happy to share that today I published my autobiography titled With Folded Hands in English and கூப்பியகரங்களுடன் in Tamil. It is my long time desire to bring it out mainly to thank all those helped me survive and thrive. I am alive because of the good deeds of many souls who helped me without any expectations. Through this book I thank them all as I don't have any other ways to express my thanks to them though it is not enough.
The book was released at Aarvam IAS Academy,Anna Nagar, Chennai. The function was presided by Mr. Irulappan founder trustee of DVM Seva Palam , the book was released by Mr . Senthil Velavan IRS And was received by Ms. Tamilarasi IRS. Mr. Shibikumaran the founder director of Aarvam IAS Academy welcomed the gathering and Mr. Damodaran a retired banker, script writer and fiction writer wished me all success. 21- DECEMBER - 2025 TIMING -10AM – Instagram ID:- @nagendran_c4777
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With Folded Hands in English C.NAGENDRAN - 21- DECEMBER - 2025 TIMING -10AM :
Nagendran English : drive.google.com/file/d/1_AWQwdUW0m8wOyASsHqrCwEoHEDyvmFM...
and கூப்பியகரங்களுடன் in Tamil C.NAGENDRAN - 21- DECEMBER - 2025 TIMING -10AM :
Nagendran Tamil :
drive.google.com/file/d/1nHhiz_pLGiUEyVRI1Y7ap0ArikbTHOJ6...
YOUTUBE VIDEO LINK :
Titled With Folded Hands in English and கூப்பியகரங்களுடன் in Tamil | C.NAGENDRAN - 21-12-2025 @10AM : youtube.com/live/TZXvgzzcQac
Self-published hand-made book Did we ever meet? Winner of Rock your dummy Award 2013. Full info, edition, price - www.offonroad.com/books/did-we-ever-meet/
The Postcard
A postally unused postcard that was printed and published by J. Arthur Dixon. The photography was by Lionel Cherruault, and the card, which has a divided back, was printed in Great Britain.
The Wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer
The wedding of Prince Charles and Lady Diana Spencer took place on Wednesday 29th. July 1981 at St Paul's Cathedral in London. The groom was the heir to the British throne, and the bride was a member of the Spencer family.
The ceremony was a traditional Church of England wedding service. The Dean of St Paul's Cathedral Alan Webster presided at the service, and the Archbishop of Canterbury Robert Runcie conducted the marriage.
Notable figures in attendance included many members of other royal families, republican heads of state, and members of the bride's and groom's families. After the ceremony, the couple made the traditional appearance on the balcony of Buckingham Palace.
The United Kingdom had a national holiday on that day to mark the wedding. The ceremony featured many ceremonial aspects, including use of the state carriages and roles for the Foot Guards and Household Cavalry.
Their marriage was widely billed as a 'Fairytale Wedding' and the 'Wedding of the Century'. It was watched by an estimated global TV audience of 750 million people.
Events were held around the Commonwealth to mark the wedding. Many street parties were held throughout the United Kingdom to celebrate the occasion.
The couple separated in 1992, and divorced in 1996 after fifteen years of marriage.
The Tragic Death of Diana, Princess of Wales
Diana, Princess of Wales died after a high-speed car crash at the age of 36 on the 31st. August 1997 at the Pitié-Salpêtrière Hospital in Paris.
When Diana married Charles, she was a naïve yet hopeful young woman seeking true love. But by the time she died, Diana was jaded, bitter, and impossibly scarred by her disastrous marriage and being hounded by the media.
Twenty years after Princess Diana's funeral, people recall the iconic moments, from the sea of flowers and mementos left outside Kensington Palace to the heart-breaking image of Prince William and Prince Harry walking behind their mother's casket.
Diana’s younger brother Charles, the ninth Earl Spencer, held nothing back during his funeral oration. Funeral attendees may have been expecting a tearful remembrance of Diana’s life. Instead, they felt the full brunt of her brother’s fury at those he felt were responsible for her death.
In paying tribute to his sister, the 9th Earl Spencer reportedly angered the Queen and created a rift in the royal family that has only begun to heal in recent years with the births of Prince George and Princess Charlotte.
What Charles Spencer said in Westminster Abbey is as follows:
Charles Spencer's Funeral Speech
'I stand before you today, the representative of a family in grief in a country in mourning before a world in shock.
We are all united not only in our desire to pay our respects to Diana but rather in our need to do so.
For such was her extraordinary appeal that the tens of millions of people taking part in this service all over the world via television and radio who never actually met her, feel that they too lost someone close to them in the early hours of Sunday morning. It is a more remarkable tribute to Diana than I can ever hope to offer her today.
Diana was the very essence of compassion, of duty, of style, of beauty. All over the world she was a symbol of selfless humanity. All over the world, a standard bearer for the rights of the truly downtrodden, a very British girl who transcended nationality. Someone with a natural nobility who was classless and who proved in the last year that she needed no royal title to continue to generate her particular brand of magic.
Today is our chance to say thank you for the way you brightened our lives, even though God granted you but half a life. We will all feel cheated always that you were taken from us so young, and yet we must learn to be grateful that you came along at all. Only now that you are gone do we truly appreciate what we are now without, and we want you to know that life without you is very, very difficult.
We have all despaired at our loss over the past week and only the strength of the message you gave us through your years of giving has afforded us the strength to move forward.
There is a temptation to rush to canonise your memory, there is no need to do so. You stand tall enough as a human being of unique qualities not to need to be seen as a saint. Indeed to sanctify your memory would be to miss out on the very core of your being, your wonderfully mischievous sense of humour with a laugh that bent you double.
Your joy for life transmitted where ever you took your smile and the sparkle in those unforgettable eyes. Your boundless energy which you could barely contain.
But your greatest gift was your intuition, and it was a gift you used wisely. This is what underpinned all your other wonderful attributes and if we look to analyse what it was about you that had such a wide appeal, we find it in your instinctive feel for what was really important in all our lives.
Without your God-given sensitivity we would be immersed in greater ignorance at the anguish of AIDS and H.I.V. sufferers, the plight of the homeless, the isolation of lepers, the random destruction of landmines.
Diana explained to me once that it was her innermost feelings of suffering that made it possible for her to connect with her constituency of the rejected. And here we come to another truth about her. For all the status, the glamour, the applause, Diana remained throughout a very insecure person at heart, almost childlike in her desire to do good for others so she could release herself from deep feelings of unworthiness of which her eating disorders were merely a symptom.
The world sensed this part of her character and cherished her for her vulnerability whilst admiring her for her honesty.
The last time I saw Diana was on July the 1st., her birthday in London, when typically she was not taking time to celebrate her special day with friends but was guest of honour at a special charity fund-raising evening. She sparkled of course, but I would rather cherish the days I spent with her in March when she came to visit me and my children in our home in South Africa. I am proud of the fact apart from when she was on display meeting President Mandela we managed to contrive to stop the ever-present paparazzi from getting a single picture of her -- that meant a lot to her.
These were days I will always treasure. It was as if we had been transported back to our childhood when we spent such an enormous amount of time together -- the two youngest in the family.
Fundamentally she had not changed at all from the big sister who mothered me as a baby, fought with me at school and endured those long train journeys between our parents' homes with me at weekends.
It is a tribute to her level-headedness and strength that despite the most bizarre-like life imaginable after her childhood, she remained intact, true to herself.
There is no doubt that she was looking for a new direction in her life at this time. She talked endlessly of getting away from England, mainly because of the treatment that she received at the hands of the newspapers. I don't think she ever understood why her genuinely good intentions were sneered at by the media, why there appeared to be a permanent quest on their behalf to bring her down. It is baffling. My own and only explanation is that genuine goodness is threatening to those at the opposite end of the moral spectrum. It is a point to remember that of all the ironies about Diana, perhaps the greatest was this -- a girl given the name of the ancient goddess of hunting was, in the end, the most hunted person of the modern age.
She would want us today to pledge ourselves to protecting her beloved boys William and Harry from a similar fate and I do this here Diana on your behalf. We will not allow them to suffer the anguish that used regularly to drive you to tearful despair.
And beyond that, on behalf of your mother and sisters, I pledge that we, your blood family, will do all we can to continue the imaginative and loving way in which you were steering these two exceptional young men so that their souls are not simply immersed by duty and tradition, but can sing openly as you planned.
We fully respect the heritage into which they have both been born and will always respect and encourage them in their royal role. But we, like you, recognise the need for them to experience as many different aspects of life as possible to arm them spiritually and emotionally for the years ahead. I know you would have expected nothing less from us.
William and Harry, we all cared desperately for you today. We are all chewed up with the sadness at the loss of a woman who was not even our mother. How great your suffering is, we cannot even imagine.
I would like to end by thanking God for the small mercies he has shown us at this dreadful time. For taking Diana at her most beautiful and radiant and when she had joy in her private life. Above all we give thanks for the life of a woman I am so proud to be able to call my sister, the unique, the complex, the extraordinary and irreplaceable Diana whose beauty, both internal and external, will never be extinguished from our minds'.
Publish Janu,15/01/ 2017 BD LIVE HITS is a YouTube Chanel that presents all Hit Model, , Videos, News, , Live Performance, Juicy jokes etc ! ** Lisa Hayden married 3 months pregnant!** Love was long. However, there is no rush to get married actress Lisa Hayden never showed. 016 before the end of gulluke boyfriend had secretly married Lisa. Gullura the jamkajamakahinabhabe married in October with 016-Sareen the heroine! Lisa's Instagram shared wedding photos. The rules were conceived after the share Instagram pictures. After bikini, by the sea's "baby bump" She showed. He wrote, start another period of happiness! . Subscribe our channel : goo.gl/FD2h1b Share the video : youtu.be/OB4ivbc0IGk Facebook fun page : ift.tt/2gF3THr Twitter : twitter.com/anis01713734673 *****KEYWORD****** ** Lisa Hayden married 3 months pregnant **
Hey, don't get huffy-- I asked and got permission to take the photo. (Then I got yelled at while taking the photo. (Then I got backed up from another yell from the other side of the restaurant saying that I'd asked and it was OKAY.))
Published at onlytheblogknowsbrooklyn.typepad.com/only_the_blog_knows_... and at http://www.absurdintellectual.com/2009/03/04/a-restaurant-that-i-would-love-to-emulate/
My first published shots. The Formula Una babes are a little incentive by Red Bull Racing (the F1 team), to get more women to the different Grand Prix. These are "our" (Belgian) Formula Una's. Note: In the middle is the lovely "Zorha" (a 'famious' Belgium beaty). I could link to the article, if I could just find out how that works in Flickr. Without a doubt my favorite personal shot with my Canon 400D. I wanted it to be overexposed and it worked out. It's hardly edited actually.
Published to accompany the debut UK Steak Mtn. / Christopher Norris solo show – “Get Ready, Jungle Heat” at BEACH Gallery
Available from www.landfilleditions.com
Canon EOS 5D and Nikkor 50mm f/1.2 AI
I was really thrilled to have one of my photos published in the 2008 Time Magazine "Person of the Year" issue. It's kind of random, but exciting anyway.
Thanks everyone for your support through this year. It has been a lot of fun posting my photos here and enjoying photography with people all over the world.!
BRINGING IN THE FEED
The crew at EC Farms loads bales in the Rural Municipality of Lorne in southern Manitoba.
I submitted 4 images to 7x7 magazine (a local monthly magazine about San Francisco) for a feature they were doing about NOPA, the neighborhood that i live in, and they chose to run 3 of them!! Very excited!
Published by W O Saul, Southbourne-on-Sea; printed in Germany.
Postally unused. I have two more: one postally unused and the other postmarked Westbourne, 1906.
I bought my new camera ! Another Olympus ! Thanks so much to everyone for all the advice and tips you've given me! Thanks so much to my flickr friend Paul (Acierman) for all the links, resources & bringing this camera to my attention ! I'm Just starting to figure it out ! :)
J'ai acheté mon nouvel appareil photo ! Un autre Olympus! Merci beaucoup à tous pour tous les conseils et astuces que vous m'avez donné! Merci beaucoup à mon ami de Flickr, Paul ( Acierman) pour tous les liens, les ressources et d'avoir apporter cette caméra à mon attention! Je commence à peine à la comprendre! :)
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Attention !
Please don't use this image on websites, blogs or other media without my explicit permission. © 2011
S.V.P ne pas utiliser cette photo sur un site, blog ou tout autre média sans ma permission explicite. © 2011
© ALL RIGHT RESERVED ©
All material in my gallery MAY NOT be reproduced, copied, edited, published, transmitted or uploaded in any way without my permission
© TOUT DROIT RESERVEE ©
Tout le matériel dans ma gallerie n'est pas reproduit, ni copié, ni édité, ni publié, ni transmis ou téléchargé de n'importe quelle façon sans ma permission.
© TUTTI I DIRITTI RISERVATI ©
Tutto il materiale nella mia galleria NON PUO' essere riprodotto, copiato, modificato, pubblicato, trasmesso e inserito da nessuna parte senza la mia autorizzazione scritta
I am delighted to announce that my anthology of poetry is now published by Indigo Dreams Publishing. Entitled "On the other side" it contains over 60 pages of poetry with 20 black and white illustrations, both of paintings and photographs. I would love to send all my friends a complimentary copy but unfortunately I would be seriously out of pocket!
It may be obtained directly from me (please send me an email at tina_manthorpe@sky.com if you would like a copy) . It is priced at £7.99 + £1.10 2nd class post in UK. A cheque + your address for posting will be needed! If you are not in UK I would have to find out the postage rates first.
Or you can buy it from IDP, 132 Hinckley Road, Stoney Stanton, Leicestershire, LE9 4LN. The web site is at www.indigodreams.co.uk
The ISBN is 978-1-907401-92-3.
It will eventually be obtainable through a well-known on-line book supplier but I understand they demand 60% of the proceeds, which is quite dreadful....
My brothers / sisters, saw the tragedy of Muslims in Gaza because of the war of the Jews to them through a photo exhibition file Gaza through the site of Islam:
www.islamway.com/gaza/gallery/
Please publish in the forums and sites to see what the West overshadowed by its media
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إخواني / أخواتي ، شاهدوا مأساة المسلمين في غزة بسبب حرب اليهود عليهم من خلال معرض صور ملف غزة بموقع طريق الإسلام :
www.islamway.com/gaza/gallery/
يرجى نشره في المنتديات والمواقع الغربية لمشاهدة ما تحجبه عنهم وسائلهم الإعلامية
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Mes frères et soeurs, a vu la tragédie des musulmans dans la bande de Gaza en raison de la guerre des Juifs à travers une exposition de photos dossier de Gaza par l'intermédiaire du site de l'Islam:
www.islamway.com/gaza/gallery/
S'il vous plaît publier dans les forums et les sites à voir ce que l'Occident éclipsé par ses médias
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Meine Geschwister, sah die Tragödie der Muslime in Gaza wegen des Krieges der Juden, die ihnen durch eine Foto-Ausstellung Gaza-Datei über die Webseite des Islam: www.islamway.com/gaza/gallery/
Sie veröffentlichen in den Foren und Websites zu sehen, was der Westen überschattet durch die Medien
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मेरे भाई / बहनों, उन्हें एक फोटो प्रदर्शनी के माध्यम से इस्लाम की साइट के माध्यम से गाजा फ़ाइल यहूदियों का युद्ध की वजह से गाजा में मुसलमानों की त्रासदी को देखा: www.islamway.com/gaza/gallery/
कृपया मंचों और साइटों में क्या पश्चिम इसकी मीडिया द्वारा overshadowed देखने के लिए प्रकाशित
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Мои братья / сестры, увидел трагедию мусульман в Газе из-за войны евреев к ним через фотовыставка файл Газа через сайт Ислам: www.islamway.com/gaza/gallery/
Просьба публиковать в форумах и сайтах, чтобы узнать, что Запад в тени ее средства массовой информации
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Mis hermanos, vio la tragedia de los musulmanes en Gaza a causa de la guerra de los Judios a ellos a través de una exposición de fotografías de archivo de Gaza a través del sitio del Islam: www.islamway.com/gaza/gallery/
Por favor, publicar en los foros y sitios para ver lo que Occidente eclipsado por sus medios de comunicación
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Anh em của tôi / sisters, thấy thảm kịch của người Hồi giáo ở Gaza vì lý do chiến tranh của các Jews cho họ thông qua một triển lãm ảnh Gaza tập tin thông qua các trang web của Hồi giáo: www.islamway.com/gaza/gallery/
Xin vui lòng xuất bản trong các diễn đàn và các trang web để xem những gì phương Tây overshadowed của các phương tiện truyền thông
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אזור האחים / אחיות, ראו את הטרגדיה של המוסלמים בעזה בגלל המלחמה של היהודים אליהם באמצעות קובץ תמונה התערוכה עזה באמצעות האתר של האיסלאם: www.islamway.com/gaza/gallery/
אנא פרסם בפורום ואתרים לראות מה הגדה overshadowed התקשורת שלה
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Mina bröder / systrar, såg tragedin muslimer i Gaza på grund av kriget av judar till dem genom en fotoutställning fil Gaza genom webbplatsen för islam: www.islamway.com/gaza/gallery
Vänligen publicera i forum och platser för att se vad Västbanken i skuggan av sin media
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Moja braća / sestre, vidio tragedija muslimana u Gazi zbog rata od Židova da ih kroz foto izložba slika Gaze kroz site islama: www.islamway.com/gaza/gallery
Molimo vas da objavite na forume i web stranice da vidite što je Zapad zasjenjen svojim medijima
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Veljeni / sisaret näkivät tragedia muslimien Gazassa, koska sodan juutalaiset niiden kautta valokuvanäyttely tiedosto Gazan sivuston kautta islamin: www.islamway.com/gaza/gallery
Ole hyvä ja julkaisee foorumeissa ja paikkojen nähdä mitä West varjoon joukkoviestimistä
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Saya brothers / sisters, melihat dari tragedi umat Islam di Gaza karena perang orang-orang Yahudi kepada mereka melalui pameran foto file Gaza melalui situs Islam: www.islamway.com/gaza/gallery
Harap publikasikan di forum dan situs untuk melihat apa yang Barat overshadowed oleh media
Note: this photo was published in an Mar 21, 2012 issue of Everyblock NYC zipcodes blog titled "10025."
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This is the continuation of a photo-project that I began in the summer of 2008 (which you can see in this Flickr set), and continued throughout 2009, 2010, and 2011 (as shown in this Flickr set, this Flickr set, and this Flickr set): a random collection of "interesting" people in a broad stretch of the Upper West Side of Manhattan -- between 72nd Street and 104th Street, especially along Broadway and Amsterdam Avenue. These are the people in my neighborhood, aka "peeps in the 'hood."
As I indicated when I first started this project nearly four years ago, I don't like to intrude on people's privacy, so I normally use a zoom telephoto lens in order to photograph them while they're still 50-100 feet away from me; but that means I have to continue focusing my attention on the people and activities half a block away, rather than on what's right in front of me. Sometimes I find an empty bench on a busy street corner, and just sit quietly for an hour, watching people hustling past on the other side of the street; they're almost always so busy listening to their iPod, or talking on their cellphone, or daydreaming about something, that they never look up and see me aiming my camera in their direction.
I've also learned that, in many cases, the opportunities for an interesting picture are very fleeting -- literally a matter of a couple of seconds, before the person(s) in question move on, turn away, or stop doing whatever was interesting. So I've learned to keep my camera switched on, and not worry so much about zooming in for a perfectly-framed picture ... after all, once the digital image is uploaded to my computer, it's pretty trivial to crop out the parts unrelated to the main subject. Indeed, some of my most interesting photos have been so-called "hip shots," where I don't even bother to raise the camera up to my eye; I just keep the zoom lens set to the maximum wide-angle aperture, point in the general direction of the subject, and take several shots. As long as I can keep the shutter speed fairly high (which sometimes requires a fairly high ISO setting), I can usually get some fairly crisp shots -- even if the subject is walking in one direction, and I'm walking in the other direction, while I'm snapping the photos.
With only a few exceptions, I've generally avoided photographing bums, drunks, crazies, and homeless people. There are plenty of them around, and they would certainly create some dramatic pictures; but they generally don't want to be photographed, and I don't want to feel like I'm taking advantage of them. There have been a few opportunities to take some "sympathetic" pictures of such people, which might inspire others to reach out and help them. This is one example, and here is another example.
The other thing I've noticed, while carrying on this project for the past four years, is that while there are lots of interesting people to photograph, there are far, far, far more people who are not so interesting. They're probably fine people, and they might even be more interesting than the ones I've photographed ... unfortunately, there was just nothing memorable about them. They're all part of this big, crowded city; but for better or worse, there are an awful lot that you won't see in these Flickr sets of mine...
This is a look into a brochure that introduces a collection of 130 CDs, called "Musik in Deutschland 1950-2000", published by the "Deutscher Musikrat" two decades ago.
But who, may you well ask, is the "Deutscher Musikrat"? The name sounds uncannily Orwellian, as if it were a secretive government agency that dictates what kind of music should be made and heard in Germany. The reality is not quite that sinister. "Rat" doesn’t mean "rat". It is an NGO, they have a website and they have even answered my e-mail. But they do have the mysterious smell of a secret society. After 20 years I still don’t really know who they are and what they are up to.
I know only one thing: The CDs promoted here constitute a monument to German post-war music and I am proud to own the whole set. No other country has done that. It would take almost a week to listen to the 1750 pieces of music - 6 days and 17 hours non-stop. If these were vinyl records the set would comprise of more than 200 LPs. Every CD comes with a booklet of up to 32 pages with informative text, scores of scores, photos and almost all the lyrics. The booklets alone would be a valuable document for everybody interested in modernist culture. Reading them I learnt a lot not only about music, but also about poetry, literature, dance, theatre, film and other forms of art.
The curators of the collection were careful to present composers from both German states without bias and prejudice. Thanks to this you can hear many gems that would otherwise be forgotten and impossible to find, even in the age of the mouse click. Where else can you hear "Socialist Realism"? I knew examples of Socialist Realism in painting, sculpture and architecture but never heard Socialist Realism music before – but, hey, now I can listen to recitals of Stalinist propaganda as well as speeches of Lenin and Honnecker put into grandiose song arrangements.
Where else can you hear music from an electronic opera, written by the Chinese-born composer Boris Blacher in 1966? And where else can you enjoy a live recording of a hilarious Wolf Vostell performance of 1969?
This is all good news. Now for the snags.
It is always easy to complain about the selection on a music compilation. It goes without saying that not all 1750 pieces are good and there a hundreds that I don’t care much about, but let’s not dwell on this, because there are less forgivable problems:
Every booklet starts with an introduction that says that the curators had to do a "strict selection", but it does not disclose what their selection criteria were (secret society again!). May there be a clue in the title of the collection "Musik in Deutschland 1950-2000" perhaps? No! All criteria in that name are violated. Many of the featured musicians and composers are not German, some recordings were made in other countries and some works were created long before 1950. The most recent work is "Fälschung" by Orm Finnendahl - written in 2003 (but a great piece, so it’s fine with me)! Some tracks are not even music. At one point Oskar Pastior is reading his poems, one of the aesthetic nadirs of the set, if you ask me.
Could it be that the selection focuses on what was widely heard by the people of Germany after the 2nd World War? Wrong again! I am sure that 99% of Germans have never listened to any of the music in this collection. This is because it has a strong focus on what most people would call "classical music" (I personally would prefer to call it "music by modernist composers" or "art music" because much of it is not "classical" at all) which is enjoyed by only a small minority of music lovers. True, there is one box with jazz and one with pop music, but the jazz is mostly of the "artsy" kind (often not very different from the “classical” music of the same period) and the pop box is only an afterthought and not really part of the set (it is, for example, not mentioned in the brochure shown above). I have no problem with this, but I still don’t know what the selection criteria were.
The worst mistake in any music compilation would be to include a song more than once, particularly when strict selection criteria are claimed. But even this mistake has been made - twice: The "Fünf Neapolitanische Lieder" by Hans Werner Henze are presented twice, and so are 2 "Hölderin Fragments" by Wolfgang Rihm, although on different CDs and performed by different singers.
Even worse are the editing problems. The booklets are informative and well written, but look cheap. A terrible sans-serif typeface is used throughout and typos are not unheard of. Formatting is awful. The captions are printed onto the photos with disregard of the background and often impossible to decipher. It is obvious that the authors are experts, but no professional editor was involved. The beautiful line "it was evening all afternoon" by Wallace Stevens is clumsily translated as "Es war den Nachmittag über Abend" instead of the more accurate and elegant "Am ganzen Nachmittag war Abend", to give just one example of the many mistranslations.
The whole set is organised in a complex multi-layered system, which is explained at the back of each CD. It says that there are 19 boxes of CDs, structured in 6 categories and 26 sub-categories. That sounds simple. But the actual CDs are difficult to align with this system. At the same time there is another underlying structure: Every category (or sub-category?) is sub-divided into „Serie“ and „Portraits“. Don’t waste your precious time trying to understand the difference, because whatever the rationale behind this is, it brakes down with the box "Angewandte Musik", if not earlier. It is obvious that the concept of this project has changed several times during its short lifetime and there were multiple attempts to categorise the music - all failed. The names of the categories and the discs must have changed several times as well, and some CDs were announced but have never materialised (e.g. "Musizieren im Alltag") whereas others do exist but seem to never have been part of the plan (e.g. "Free Jazz" - appropriately, because free jazz abhors planning). The names of some CDs even change between the cover and the disc inside. A CD called "Solo & Klavier" contains a few songs with guitar (instead of piano).
It seems that the publishers were overwhelmed by their own complex system and the multiple layers of categories they tried to establish.
However, by far the worst problem with this collection is the marketing - how it was sold. When it all started at the beginning of the millennium the discs were sold one by one. I first bought one, to see if it is any good and then more and more. When I had a few dozen CDs they stopped selling them individually and you could only buy whole boxes, containing 5 to 10 discs each. At that time I had decided to collect the whole set, which meant that I had to start buying boxes with CDs that I already owned. That was annoying - but it got worse. In 2010 they stopped selling the boxes and you could only buy the whole set. I had already bought 14 of the 19 boxes at that stage.
So, with a heavy heart and after long hesitation, I bought the whole set in 2011 although at that time only a third of the CDs were still missing in my shelf. Shortly after that, the whole series was taken off the market and became unavailable in any form. I don’t regret the purchase, it’s a great thing to have, even in a time when CDs have become an obsolete format. Today some of the CDs are sold on the second hand market for more money than I paid for the entire set of 130 items, even if you include the money I wasted on the single discs and boxes.
Any reference to this comprehensive compilation has been deleted from the Musikrat’s website although this must have been one of the most impressive and interesting projects they have ever done. I cannot imagine how many hours of hard work went into this, but in the end it must have been a huge financial disaster for everybody involved. I’m sure they had a grandiose vision when it all started, with ideas aplenty, but the implementation lacked continuity, leadership and there was no demand. Although they finally managed to publish all 130 CDs it is, in hindsight, an excellent case study of an over-ambitious and failed endeavour. We can learn from this, not only about business and project management, but about human nature.
Some statistical analysis: The most extensively featured composer is Hans Werner Henze with 57 works, adding up to more than 5 hours playing time. Paul Dessau comes second with 50 pieces in the set, but they are mostly short (3½ minutes on average) so he comes only 7th when considering playing time (a bit less than 3 hours). Friedrich Schenker is second in terms of time (3½ hours of his music can be heard in the collection) and the Argentinian Mauricio Kagel comes third with 3 hours and 17 minutes. He and Wolfgang Rihm both have 36 pieces of music in the compilation.
Mr. Karlheinz Stockhausen, the most famous German post-war composer, is an also-run with only 10 works in the set. They add up to 2 hours, which is not much, if you compare him to less-known composers like Georg Katzer (2½ hours) and Friedrich Goldmann (3 hours). I can think of 2 reasons. One is probably the restrictive copyright protection of the Stockhausen œuvre (the same reason why Kraftwerk is conspicuously absent in the pop box). But I believe another one to be the determination of the curators to represent both German states equally, which led to an over-representation of the East-German music scene, simply because there was less of it. Just as Wartburg would be more dominant than Borgward in a book about the German post-war car industry that tries to represent both German states in a balanced way.
Having listened to the whole set several times, I am now able to draw wide-reaching, sweeping and judgemental conclusions about German post-war culture. Here are examples:
(1)
At first the differences between the cultures of capitalist West Germany and the East German one-party-state seem obvious. A superficial listening suggests that the East was being restricted by political diktat and a closed society, while the West was open for experimentation and inspiration from everywhere and everything. But after a while you realise that the reality was more complicated and on this compilation you find surprisingly daring works from the East as well as a fair share of conservative dullness from the West. Overall, I found it more interesting to note what the two states had in common. For example:
(2)
The old prejudice that German culture is heavy and humourless is, all in all, confirmed. It is difficult to find any light-hearted melody in this set. Admittedly, there is some humour, some of it by composers of non-Germanic provenance (Ligeti and Kagel), but this is clownish stuff that hasn’t stood the test of time and wasn't really funny in the first place.
(3)
More than in any other epoch, in post-war Germany composers felt the need to put their works into a political and sociocritical context – on both sides of the fence. Even creators of completely abstract instrumental compositions tried to express sophisticated views with their music, which is, most of the time, not obvious to the listener until he reads the booklet.
(4)
In the West as well as in the East two types of artists dominate: Leftist intellectuals and confessing Christians. And surprisingly it’s the Christians who are often more daring in their musical experiments. Even more surprisingly, Marxist views are as dominant among western composers as they are in the East. An opera about free trade, entrepreneurship and representative democracy would have been as taboo in 1960s Western Germany as it would have been in the East. I know why, but I stop now. I talk too much...
I'm so excited I just had to share one of my photos has been published on the coupons for the 17th Annual Carolina Renaissance Festival in Huntersville, NC.
My photo is the lower left one of Serendipity (lady in Red blowing bubbles) and the little girl trying to catch them. Serendipity is from clan Tynker
You can see my original photo here www.flickr.com/photos/grantbrummett/3363299133/
Thanks so much Ron for letting me know these hit the streets, you can see Ron's wonderful work at www.flickr.com/photos/45019444@N07/
My image taken originally taken with a Canon EOS 5D Mark II camera and Canon EF 85mm F/1.2L II USM Lens.