For music only became autonomous when it stopped being useful; and this did not happen until conditions allowed such a thing to happen. — Richard Taruskin, The Oxford History of Western Music, Vol. I Now that’s a provocative statement, and just one of many I’ve run into while dipping into the first and second volumes [...]
Christmas is time to celebrate arranger’s art
Adoration of the Shepherds (1485), by Domenico Ghirlandaio. (Apologia: This has been by far the longest time I’ve gone without posting. It’s been an exceptionally busy past four weeks, and not in a particularly good way.) Now that the Christmas music season is upon us, I wanted to say something, as occasionally I do, about [...]
100 years later, Schoenberg’s ‘Pieces’ still leave audiences grumpy
The four-hand piano reduction of part of the first of the Five Pieces for Orchestra, by Arnold Schoenberg. This year marks another centenary besides that of Vagn Holmboe: the writing of the Five Pieces for Orchestra, Op. 16, of Arnold Schoenberg. Saturday night I went to a concert by the local Lynn Philharmonia, the music [...]
Vine’s first sonata, and the future of piano writing
Earlier this month I attended a piano recital by Christopher Atzinger, at which the American pianist played for his encore the first movement of the Piano Sonata No. 1 of the Australian composer Carl Vine (at right). I wasn’t familiar with Vine’s music, though there were some music lovers at the recital who were, and [...]
Neglected pages, overlooked composers
An aria from Stephen Storace’s The Siege of Belgrade (1791). I could probably write about neglected composers almost every day, which isn’t such a bad idea, as long as a lot of good music gets uncovered. I heard two things back to back the other day that reminded me again how much nifty music is [...]
Arts journalism summit slighted still-potent power of print
Last weekend, the good folks at the Annenberg School on the campus of the University of Southern California hosted the first-ever National Arts Journalism Summit. I entered Palm Beach ArtsPaper in the summit contest (hey, we could use the money), but didn’t win; still, we hosted the live stream from the summit on our Website [...]
Gilbert’s debut at NY Phil bold, promising
Again, apologies for being so long absent on this blog, but everything else is eating up all my time. This seems to be what’s happening to most of the formerly employed journalists I know. We’re all trying to cobble something together from a whole lot of little bits, and too many of these things get [...]
In ritual, the sound, strength of religion
Pope Marcellus II (r.1555). About a month from now, the Miami concert choir Seraphic Fire will give a concert of the great Missa Papae Marcelli of Palestrina, and for those of us who love Renaissance polyphony, this will be a concert we will anticipate with great pleasure. For me it’s almost impossible to listen to [...]
‘Abbey Road’ medley may be secret model for classical writers
We have all been frequently reminded from all the Boomers working at the major media outlets that this month marks the 40th anniversary of the release of Abbey Road, the final album on which the Beatles all actually worked together. It suddenly occurred to me the other day as I heard yet another reminder, this [...]
‘Cellini’ film shows wisdom of over-the-top approach
Maija Kovalevska in Benvenuto Cellini. Today I took a break from a lot of editing tests, reporting and writing to take in a showing, via Emerging Pictures, of the 2007 Salzburg Festival production of Berlioz’ Benvenuto Cellini (here’s the trailer). This production, in which all the singing, particularly that of the Latvian soprano Maija Kovalevska [...]
-
100 years later, Schoenberg’s ‘Pieces’ still leave audiences grumpy
- Leo Arnaud’s Olympics brand
-
Thoughts on Michael Jackson
-
Contests should be for all composers, not just ‘young’ ones
-
Site offers people’s classical concert hall
