Last love of a piano legend

Last love of a piano legend

The New Line Between Now and Then

Where does “old” music end and “new” music begin?

The New Line Between Now and Then

und am achten Tag

On December 5, H. Wiley Hitchcock, Karlheinz Stockhausen, and Andrew Imbrie all gave up their mortal forms, but they left us with their minds— signified by their corpuses of works, each of which was extensive.

und am achten Tag

The Newest Philistinism: History-Phobic Composers

How could any student enrolled in a reputable conservatory need to be persuaded to be interested in the great legacy of past composers?

The Newest Philistinism: History-Phobic Composers

Stockhausen Spotlight Page

There has been an outpouring of reactions to the recent passing of avant-garde German composer Karlheinz Stockhausen. La Scena Musicale has created a Stockhausen Spotlight at scena.org to cover the tributes and reactions. Our February 2008 issue will discuss why Stockhausen was a major composer. We welcome your comments, some of which will be published in the article.

Stockhausen Spotlight Page

His Second Act

His Second Act

The Audience is Not the Only Arbiter

What is the purpose of the “gift” if the composer doesn’t follow his muse?

The Audience is Not the Only Arbiter

Art, humanity and the ‘fourth hunger’

Half-awakened, humans are constantly engaged in a battle to make sense of the world and our experiences within it. And a great work of art, especially music, helps us to do just that.

Art, humanity and the ‘fourth hunger’

Lesser, Gergiev’s Ring

Threepenny: Lesser, Gergiev’s Ring

Looking back at Orpheus: Music has power, says Jardine

Looking back at Orpheus: Music has power, says Jardine

Setting Dante’s journey to eternity to song

Dante’s “The Divine Comedy” has been set to music by Monsignor Marco Frisina. The show, titled “The Divine Comedy, The Opera: Man’s quest for love,” opened in Rome last week and runs to the end of January.

Setting Dante’s journey to eternity to song

The Most Beautiful in All Christendom . . .

It’s probably the best music in New York. OK, I’m not in New York, I’m in Tennessee. And, even if I were in New York, I wouldn’t be able to hear all the music in the city to say which was the best—but I bet I’m right anyway. And I’m not talking about the Metropolitan [...]

The Most Beautiful in All Christendom . . .

The Continuing Cult of Glenn Gould, Deserved or Not

In a business hungry for the larger than life, this extraordinary pianist, space-cadet musicologist, fluent philosopher, prized eccentric and subtle self-promoter remains catnip of considerable potency.

The Continuing Cult of Glenn Gould, Deserved or Not

Roots, Pop, World, or Art Music? How Ireland’s <I>Ceol</I> Cuts the Edge for the Planet

From a country that produced such world-class writers as Joyce, Yeats, and Beckett and that is so intensely musical in its folk culture, why has there never been a “great” Irish classical composer?

Roots, Pop, World, or Art Music? How Ireland’s Ceol Cuts the Edge for the Planet

The Segmented Society

People have been writing about the fragmentation of American music for decades. But year after year, the segmentation builds.

The Segmented Society

Has he uncovered hidden music in Da Vinci’s masterpiece?

It’s a new Da Vinci code, but this time it could be for real.

Has he uncovered hidden music in Da Vinci’s masterpiece?

The power of music

Dan Ellsey, 33, was sitting in his wheelchair in a soulless room at Tewksbury Hospital, his virtually useless arms and weak torso strapped to the chair for safety.

The power of music

The Music of the Gears

In a piece called “Requiem for Fossil Fuels” by composers Bruce Odland and Sam Auinger, who go professionally by the name O+A, the bell tolls for the sounds generated by oil-fueled transportation.

The Music of the Gears

Tuned to the 20th century

Tuned to the 20th century – Los Angeles Times

Tuned to the 20th century

Tuned to the 20th century – Los Angeles Times

The Perils of Being a Child Prodigy

Why a child prodigy never lived up to his potential.

The Perils of Being a Child Prodigy

Thank you for the music

Michael Bywater reviews Musicophilia: Tales of Music and the Brain by Oliver Sacks and This is Your Brain on Music: The Science of a Human Obsession by Daniel Livitin

Thank you for the music

West Side Story at 50: Why is it Still Heirless?

Clearly Bernstein still matters, but does West Side Story, in today’s musical theater world?

West Side Story at 50: Why is it Still Heirless?

The Musical Mystique

Defending classical music against its devotees.

The Musical Mystique

The day the music didn’t die

Elvis lives! The King is one of several stars – among them Miles Davis and Dean Martin – who have been resurrected to perform posthumous duets.

The day the music didn’t die

The Best Listener in America

The Best Listener in America | The New York Observer

A New Song from the Old World

Imagine a book on Renaissance art without any pictures. And I don’t mean without illustrations, I mean without any pictures. No frescos by Michelangelo, Madonnas by Raphael, springtime scenes by Botticelli, or even woodcuts by Dürer. We might have a few fragments of a bit of a panel by Ghirlandaio and a corner from a [...]

A New Song from the Old World

The Tenor

Pavarotti’s True Significance

The Tenor

Respect at Last for Grieg?

The centenary of the death of Edvard Grieg, a fiercely proud Norwegian composer, is being acknowledged with several programs in New York.

Respect at Last for Grieg?

91-year-old uses arts program to transform struggling students

91-year-old uses arts program to transform struggling students

Abbott Without Costello

Even if you don’t like the text in a musical composition, ignoring it is irresponsible.

Abbott Without Costello

Sympathy for the white devil

The Vinyl Word: Joe Queenan on Brown Sugar, surely the catchiest song ever written about slave owners having their way with their human chattel.

Sympathy for the white devil

The Paradoxes of Pavarotti

In England, where his international singing career began in the less politically correct 1960s, the press called him “Fat Lucy” and even “Lucky Luciano.” In his homeland Italy, headlines referred in Italian to “Big Luciano,” in homage to his fame in the English-speaking world. Yet the lyric tenor Luciano Pavarotti, who died of pancreatic cancer this week at age 71 in Modena, Italy, was a complex entity, impossible to sum up in a nickname or a headline. First among the paradoxes of Pavarotti was

The Paradoxes of Pavarotti

Fantasia for Piano

In the summer of 1989, in Royston, England, a man named William Barrington-Coupe cheerfully received a visitor from Germany: Ernst Lumpe, a high-school teacher, fervent music lover, and record collector. For a couple of years, the two men had sustained a correspondence that consisted mainly of Barrington-Coupe . . .

Fantasia for Piano

The origin of Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina

The Vinyl Word: Recorded by both Tom Jones and Sinead O’Connor and banned from British airwaves during a war.

The origin of Don’t Cry For Me, Argentina

Luciano Pavarotti, 71; tenor transcended opera world

There were many great tenors in the second half of the 20th century, but for millions of people Luciano Pavarotti was the main man, the only one. His singing gave more pleasure to more people for a longer period of time than any other classical singer in history.

Luciano Pavarotti, 71; tenor transcended opera world

For the cello, an amplified role in the avant-garde

Around the world, cellists are pulling up a seat next to indie rockers, pop bands, and DJs. No wonder readers of a classical-music magazine voted the cello the ‘sexiest instrument.’

For the cello, an amplified role in the avant-garde

Mann and his musical demons

Thomas Mann was enchanted by German classical music but was also wary of its seductive powers. In his novels, he anticipates its instrumentalisation by the Nazis, who used it as the gateway to bourgeois German hearts and minds. By Wolfgang Schneider

Mann and his musical demons

The Sensation of Figaro

By Eric Kelsey, Unte.com Some opera watchers say there’s an obvious reason why opera is thriving in America but floundering in Europe: capitalism.

The Sensation of Figaro

Drummer Max Roach dies: Last of the bebop pioneers

Drummer Max Roach dies: Last of the bebop pioneers

What if Elvis Presley had never been born?

Thirty years ago today the King died, but his legacy persists. And Elvis Presley’s impact on our world went well beyond the music, argues Ray Connolly.

What if Elvis Presley had never been born?

A Greek Hero With Many Faces

It is little wonder that composers and librettists have been drawn to Orpheus. The Greek hero, who could charm the wild beasts with his playing on the lyre and whose spirited strumming saved Jason and the Argonauts from the toxic songs of the Sirens, is the mythical master of both poetry and music. Besides, the story of his pursuit of his dead wife Eurydice across the Styx to bring her back to life is packed with a suitably operatic mix of romance and drama. Just how differently Orpheus has

A Greek Hero With Many Faces

An Appraisal: A Musical Pioneer Who Never Stopped Searching

Max Roach was in on the ground floor of aesthetic change for much of his working life.

An Appraisal: A Musical Pioneer Who Never Stopped Searching

The Colonization of Silence

Reflection, discernment, a sustainable sense of tranquility, of knowing where and how to find oneself—these are only the most obvious casualties of marauding noise’s march to the sea. Much more insidious has been the loss of music itself.

The Colonization of Silence

Max Roach, Master of Modern Jazz, Dies at 83

Max Roach was a founder of modern jazz who rewrote the rules of drumming in the 1940s and spent the rest of his career breaking musical barriers.

Max Roach, Master of Modern Jazz, Dies at 83

Elvis’s Cinema Legacy Endures

Though he was still selling records and packing arenas when he died 30 years ago next week at age 42, at the time of his death, counterculture tastemakers routinely mocked Elvis Presley’s bloated body and could not abide the unabashed sentiment of much of his latterday recordings, nor his apparently hypocritical alliance with Richard Nixon in the war on drugs. To most middlebrow pundits, by the late 1970s the middle-age King of Rock ‘n’ Roll reigned only over an invisible legion of blue-haired

Elvis’s Cinema Legacy Endures

Scaling the heights

Venezuela’s pioneering classical music programme for children has produced world-class artists such as the young conductor Gustavo Dudamel. It has also quietly transformed the social fabric of the country.

Scaling the heights

Robin Denselow on Ethiopian music

World: War cries and traditional music fused with US funk, R&B and jazz to fuel a 1960s golden age in Ethiopian music. Robin Denselow reports on a riotous revival.

Robin Denselow on Ethiopian music

Conductor Andrew Litton on Edvard Grieg’s orchestra

Classical: How does it feel to step into the shoes of a national treasure? Conductor Andrew Litton, who is bringing Edvard Grieg’s orchestra to the Proms, explains.

Conductor Andrew Litton on Edvard Grieg’s orchestra

The Abduction of Opera

Can the Met stand firm against the trashy productions of trendy nihilists?

The Abduction of Opera

Scaling the heights

Venezuela’s pioneering classical music programme for children has produced world-class artists such as the young conductor Gustavo Dudamel. It has also quietly transformed the social fabric of the country.

Scaling the heights

Just Don’t Call It Minimalism

The 70th-birthday year of Philip Glass, which is being widely observed, seems as good a time as any to take stock of the Minimalist achievement by way of recordings.

Just Don’t Call It Minimalism

What is it about Wagner?

What is it about Wagner? – Times Online

Music: Elgar, Beyond Pomp and Circumstance

In an anniversary year, putting an eminent composer in a much wider context.

Music: Elgar, Beyond Pomp and Circumstance

Off the record

Cover story: ‘Off the record’ by Robert Sandall | Prospect Magazine August 2007 issue 137

How the Nazis took flight from Valkyries and Rhinemaidens

How the Nazis took flight from Valkyries and Rhinemaidens | News | Guardian Unlimited Music

The music of Richard Buckner

The music of Richard Buckner

Cue the Violin

Was Hitchcock a master in his use of music?

Cue the Violin

Boos greet Wagner production staged by great-granddaughter

A new production of a Richard Wagner opera created by his great-granddaughter got booed at its premiere in Bayreuth, Germany.

Boos greet Wagner production staged by great-granddaughter

The first musicians of Auschwitz

The first musicians of Auschwitz

A Plucky Gathering of Guitarists

A Plucky Gathering of Guitarists – washingtonpost.com

Music: Let’s Play Two: Singular Piano

A two-keyboard piano from the late 1920’s allows a pianist to provide a visual and aural experience for Bach’s “Goldberg” Variations.

Music: Let’s Play Two: Singular Piano

Rescuing Sibelius from Silence

A Critic at Large: Apparition in the Woods: Reporting & Essays: The New Yorker

How Billie Jean changed the world

The Vinyl Word: Today, Joe Queenan’s newish feature on the origins of classic songs tackles one of Michael Jackson’s biggest hits. Get ready for a moonwalk down memory lane.

How Billie Jean changed the world

It takes more than a good voice to be an opera singer

Philip Hensher: It takes more than a good voice to be an opera singer – Independent Online Edition > Philip Hensher

The Great Schnabel

Commentary Online Article – The Great Schnabel

The Math Behind Beauty

From the land of breast implants and Botox, a plastic surgeon uses Pythagoras’ theories to try to geometrically design the perfect face. The golden rectangle may well figure in, but the math isn’t quite there yet.

The Math Behind Beauty

Cry freedom

Beethoven’s Fidelio is a hymn to liberty, but it was adopted enthusiastically by Marxists and Nazis alike

Link to Cry freedom

Keeping treasured violins forever young

A violin, it turns out, needs to be played, just as a car needs to be driven and a human body shooed off the couch.

Link to Keeping treasured violins forever young

Putting Tchaikowsky on the couch

Putting Tchaikowsky on the couch

Why So Few Sibelius Anniversary Celebrations?

Bloomberg.com: Muse

The New Record Labels

Hollywood Report – WSJ.com

Elgar’s magic formula

As the composer’s 150th birthday celebrations begin, his biographer Michael Kennedy applauds a musical master.

Link to Elgar’s magic formula

Beethoven, is that you?

The world’s most famous string quartet leaves the concert stage after forty years. An encounter with the Alban Berg Quartet. By Volker Hagedorn

Link to Beethoven, is that you?

African-American Band Music and Recordings

African-American Band Music and Recordings (The Library of Congress Presents: Music, Theater and Dance)

Three on a Match

The string trio—violin, viola, and cello—was the Marlon Brando of the Classical era: it coulda been a contender. But Joseph Haydn’s invention of the string quartet proved to be an irresistible force; composers rapidly exploited the expanded tonal radiance and richness of texture that the addition of a . . .

Link to Three on a Match

Paul McCartney’s second-rate classical music

When Classic FM was recently named Sony’s UK radio Station of the Year, I was delighted. I’m a big fan. But last night’s Classical Brits Album of the Year award highlights everything that’s wrong with their way of bringing ‘classical’ music to the masses. The highly-publicised award went to Sir Paul McCartney, for his secular oratorio Ecce Cor Meum. Though substantially re-written since its coolly-received premier in 2001 (the official story is that the revision was shelved for the duration of Sir Paul’s second marriage), this is still not an award-winning piece of music. In any regard. [...more]

Link to Paul McCartney’s second-rate classical music

Dear Virtuoso, I Wrote This One Just for You

Mstislav Rostropovich’s artistry inspired the classical repertory we live with today.

Link to Dear Virtuoso, I Wrote This One Just for You

Handel’s ‘Hallelujah’ chorus: A malice toward Judiasm?

A panel at the American Handel Festival 2007 certainly had an explosive issue: Michael Marissen’s thesis that “Messiah” and more specifically the “Hallelujah” chorus exhibits anti-Judaic tendencies.

Link to Handel’s ‘Hallelujah’ chorus: A malice toward Judiasm?

Stradivarius sound from any violin

April 26: According to researchers, anyone can now produce the sound of a Stradivarius.

Link to Stradivarius sound from any violin

John Cage’s music for a psalm

On May 5, the tone of John Cage’s organ composition “As Slow as Possible” changed in the St. Burchardi church in Halberstadt. A major moment in a piece that will last 639 years. By Thomas Gerlach

Link to John Cage’s music for a psalm

How video killed the (classical) radio star

MODERN stars such as Charlotte Church, Myleene Klass, Il Divo and G4 have killed the classical music industry, according to a controversial new book by a leading author and broadcaster.

Link to How video killed the (classical) radio star

Western classical music, made and loved in China

Using the same energy, drive and sheer human capital that have made it an economic power, China has become a considerable force in Western classical music.

Link to Western classical music, made and loved in China

Saved from scraps, music of the camps

Saved from scraps, music of the camps | International News | News | Telegraph

Crazy idealism

Philip Glass believes that music is an agent of change. He is expecting too much of himself

Link to Crazy idealism

The Dawn of Bob Dylan

Read the full story now.

Link to The Dawn of Bob Dylan

Shoot the Piano Player

Shoot the Piano Player – New York Times

Connections: Is It Live … or Yamaha? Channeling Glenn Gould

Glenn Gould is pulled back into the realm of public performance with a “reperformance” of his “Goldbergs” on a specially prepared Yamaha Disklavier.

Link to Connections: Is It Live … or Yamaha? Channeling Glenn Gould

Ghostly Grand Piano: Technical Marvel Plays Like an Old Pro

Ghostly Grand Piano: Technical Marvel Plays Like an Old Pro – washingtonpost.com

In Favor of Something Big, Loud and Often Ignored

A Juilliard School chairman looks to lure new converts to the organ with vibrant, emotive performances and by stressing the importance of education.

Link to In Favor of Something Big, Loud and Often Ignored

The perfect form

The perfect form | Review | Guardian Unlimited Books

Wagner - public genius with a private passion for bustles, bows and bodices

Wagner – public genius with a private passion for bustles, bows and bodices | Classical and opera | Guardian Unlimited Music

How Gorecki makes his music – an exclusive interview

How Gorecki makes his music – an exclusive interview Norman Lebrecht

Recording technology aided piano scandal, and detected it

Recording technology aided piano scandal, and detected it | Chicago Tribune

All That Jazz

Commentary Online Article – All That Jazz

Other Lives :: M.F. Burnyeat: The Truth about Pythagoras

It is hard to let go of Pythagoras. He has meant so much to so many for so long. I can with confidence say to readers of this essay: most of what you believe, or think you know, about Pythagoras is fiction, much of it deliberately contrived. Did he discover the geometrical theorem that bears his name? No. Did he ponder the harmony of the spheres? Certainly not: celestial spheres were first excogitated decades or more after Pythagoras’ death. Does he even deserve credit for his most famous accomplishment, analysing the mathematical ratios that structure musical concordances? Possibly, but there is little reason to believe the stories about his being the first to discover them, and compelling reason not to believe the oft-told story about how he did it. Allegedly, as he was passing a smithy, he heard that the sounds made by the hammers exemplified the intervals of fourth, fifth and octave, so he measured their weights and found their ratios to be respectively 4:3, 3:2, 2:1. Unfortunately for this anecdote, recently rehashed in the article on Pythagoras in Grove Music Online, the sounds made by a blow do not vary proportionately with the weight of the instrument used.

Link to Other Lives :: M.F. Burnyeat: The Truth about Pythagoras

Opera expert says Puccini’s Butterfly is ‘racist’

Opera expert says Puccini’s Butterfly is ‘racist’ | Uk News | News | Telegraph

Heartbreak of a lover’s last songs

Shortly before she died of cancer, Lorraine Hunt Lieberson recorded a poignant final album composed by her husband. Peter Culshaw reports.

Link to Heartbreak of a lover’s last songs

As Sting ages, his music ages faster

As Sting ages, his music ages faster

Keeping the music alive

CHICAGO SUN-TIMES :: Music :: Keeping the music alive

Link to Keeping the music alive