Orchestras, equity and disruption
Thinking about orchestras and equity, two things have helped me frame a perspective: Angus Maguire’s reboot … read more
AJBlog: SongWorking Published 2016-12-19
Chen Yi and Stylistic Synthesis
Every year, we have our composition students do focused study of the works of a living composer, then Skype with that composer to discuss the music. This year, one of the composers we focused on … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2016-12-19
Five titles each from Zachary Woolfe, Anthony Tommasini, David Allen and James R. Oestreich. (Where’s Corinna?)
“Reading Epictetus, I realized that most of the pain in my life came not from any actual privations or insults but, rather, from the shame of thinking that they could have been avoided.” Elif Batuman writes about how the teachings of a first-century ex-slave kept her sane.
“On Friday, the state education watchdog Rosobrnadzor forced the European University in St. Petersburg, a private post-graduate school for the social sciences and humanities, to halt all education activities. The order came after a St. Petersburg district court ruled that the university had violated several legal regulations.”
“For more than two thousand years, the world’s great minds have argued about the essence of time. Is it finite or infinite? Does it flow like a river or is it granular, proceeding in small bits, like sand trickling through an hourglass? And what is the present? Is now an indivisible instant, a line of vapor between the past and the future? Or is it an instant that can be measured – and, if so, how long is it? And what lies between the instants?” Adam Burdick argues that the first thinker we know of who got it right was St. Augustine.
The old English Christmastime tradition never got as fancypants elaborate on The Rock as it did in Philadelphia. But it still included rowdy carousing by partyers in disguise – and, inevitably, some drunken mayhem and violence; as a result, for decades mummering was outlawed entirely there. But, beginning in 2009, the tradition was revived.
Last month, a conservative college group launched the Professor Watchlist, which purports to name and shame academics who “advance leftist propaganda in the classroom.” Last week, 200-odd professors at Notre Dame demanded to be included on the list alongside two of their colleagues who had already been singled out. (“This is the sort of company we wish to keep,” they said.) Now there’s a website called Free Academics where professors can join the petition to be added to the Watchlist, and more than 1,500 have signed on so far.
Pamela Paul, editor of the Sunday Times‘s literary supplement, did a Reddit “Ask Me Anything” this week, and Emily Temple has dug out from it ten things that most people probably don’t know about the Book Review – not least, its differences with the daily paper’s book reviews by staff critics.
“Cornelius Gurlitt, son of one of Hitler’s art dealers, was of sound mind when he bequeathed his extensive art collection to Bern Museum of Fine Arts in 2014, a Munich court has ruled. A cousin had launched an inheritance counter-claim. Bern can now take possession of the collection.”
“William B. Jordan, the art historian, said that he took his painting” – a portrait of Philip III of Spain – “to the Prado’s art experts last year to have it authenticated after acquiring it in an auction in 1988.”
