The story of Mozart’s starling might have died with the composer had it not been for one page in his pocket notebook. Directly beneath an entry recording the amount paid for Star are scribbled two lines of music. The first is a theme from Mozart’s Piano Concerto in G major; the second is a near variation on it — different in only two minor details. This second was the song the composer overheard the bird singing in a shop. The similarity wouldn’t be remarkable, except for the fact that the concerto wasn’t officially premiered until some time later.
Author: Douglas McLennan
Edgar Allan Poe, The Prototypical Broke Freelancer
What most people don’t know is that, for his entire oeuvre—all his fiction, poetry, criticism, lectures—Poe earned only about $6,200 in his lifetime, or approximately $191,087 adjusted for inflation. Maybe $191,087 seems like a lot of money. And sure, as book advances go, that’d be a generous one, the kind that fellow writers would whisper about. But what if $191,087 was all you got for 20 years of work and the stuff you wrote happened to be among the most enduring literature ever produced by anyone anywhere?
Amateur Archaeologists Find Ancient Roman Mosaic
The exquisitely detailed strip was found during a dig in a field near the village of Boxford in Berkshire. Experts have already described it as the most exciting mosaic discovery in Britain for the last 50-years.
Can A City Engineer A Great Music Scene Through Public Policy?
The arts often lose when budgets tighten, but even a little coordination by—and representation in—city government can help. “Offices of arts and culture are really about curating relationships and opportunities, and seeing all of the ways a municipality can partner. In order for that to happen, you have to have folks in the room who are specifically thinking about that as an issue area.”
Americorps For The Arts – A Philly Program Goes National
The grant is a first for AmeriCorps. “This is the first time there’s been a program that allows artists to dedicate a year of service to their country,” said AmeriCorps spokeswoman Samantha Jo Warfield, citing the innovative model as one criterion for the award.
A Reaction To Beauty And Symmetry – Celebrating Ugly
“The digital age has made everyone want to get their hands into things and get dirty and messy and make things out of clay. With that comes the voice of the hand, which is inherently imperfect.”
Florida Museums Assess Damages – Perez Museum Unscathed
One historic site, the Vizcaya Museum and Gardens in Coconut Grove, did sustain some serious flooding to its basement, café and stores, although the main building and its collections remained safe. A truck arrived on Tuesday to begin pumping out the water from the lower levels. “The good news is there are no art collections stored [there].”
German Researchers: We Can Now Compose Music Using Only The Brain
“Twenty years ago, the idea of composing a piece of music using the power of the mind was unimaginable,” said Gernot Müller-Putz of the Graz University of Technology, a co-author of the study. “Now, we can do it.”
Peter Hall, A Director Who Animated Language
“Directors can’t simply let a play speak on its own, but they must put their ear to the ground. Meaning for Hall always returned to an intimate confrontation with the line. He didn’t believe that Shakespeare could be properly done without respecting the forms in which he wrote his plays. Verse, diction, rhetorical patterns — attention to these matters is what allowed a play to live again.”
The Creative Force That Was Peter Hall
Michael Billington: “What I most admired about Hall at the National was his tenacity in withstanding industrial action, persistent attacks from disappointed members of the Olivier regime and media abuse.”