Author: Douglas McLennan

Historic Music Archive Sold

London’s Royal Philharmonic Society music archive has been sold – and it’ll stay in the UK after an emergency public appeal for funds. The library includes the score for Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony (commissioned by the Society) “as well as original scores by Elgar and Vaughan Williams, it holds correspondence from Tchaikovsky, Stravinsky, Mendelssohn, Wagner, Berlioz, and Liszt, and, perhaps most poignantly, a letter from Beethoven announcing his intention to write a 10th Symphony to honour the society – eight days before his death in 1827.”

Opera’s Newly Broad Appeal

“Opera as a subject for film peaked during the silent era, when movies were accustomed to non-stop music and a kind of melodramatic posturing that’s still taken as normal on many opera stages. But there’s no current shortage of film directors willing to do opera in its usual habitat, or even to write and stage new works.” And we’re not talking about filmed versions of La Boheme, either, but new operas written by real composers in collaboration with the directors. Maybe there’s hope for the mass appeal of the high arts yet.

Music’s Betamax Making A Comeback?

“For much of its two-decade long life, the CD single has existed as the music industry’s latter-day version of the Betamax tape — technologically advanced, high quality — and a commercial flop… The industry is looking to change all that. As of last week, HMV stores around the country started heavily promoting singles in their stores, encouraged, no doubt, by an industry suddenly willing to supply a product it had once been hesitant about… So why the singles pitch? The short answer is crisis, says Brian Robertson, president of CRIA, which has been studying a marked downturn in music sales. File-sharing, music downloading and home CD-burning is bleeding revenue away from the music industry at an alarming rate, he said.”

Orange In The Red

Throwing a major festival of new and unusual arts and music is always a dicey proposition – throwing one in an upper-crust suburban county is beyond daring. But for the last four years, the Philharmonic Society of Orange County (California) has done just that, staging Eclectic Orange, a multi-disciplinary festival of music and theater. Unfortunately, the fest lost $434,000 on the latest festival after spending millions to bring in a French equestrian troupe, and will likely have to scale back such plans for future seasons.

The Anonymous Postcard Scramble

“A host of artists, designers and musicians have put brush to paper to create potential masterpieces for the annual Secret Postcard exhibition at the Royal College of Art… But buyers bid for the postcards without knowing who the artist is because all works are displayed anonymously and are only revealed once sold. The exhibition creates a great deal of interest from the public who have the opportunity to buy cheap art which could one day net them a fortune.”

Nashville’s New Concert Hall

Staid, traditional American symphony orchestras from sea to shining sea have been going all modern with the architectural designs of their new concert halls. So wouldn’t you just know that Nashville, America’s home of country music and gaudy glitz, would spend its $120 million on an old-fashioned neoclassical concert hall for its symphony orchestra. The orchestra hopes to open the hall in 2006, and has raised more than half of the money required to build it.

Bellesiles Stands Fast

Michael Bellesiles, the historian who resigned his professorship last month after a panel of his peers concluded that he had made up much of the information and many of the sources for his controversial book on the history of guns in America, remains defiant about his scholarship, insisting that his facts are good, and that he was not motivated by anti-gun political leanings. He denies that Emory University paid him off to go quietly, and continues to carry on a vigorous e-mail debate with some of his sharpest critics.