“After beginning his career as a specialist in Renaissance music, Mr. Hamm became frustrated with the condescension of his fellow musicologists toward the popular music of their own time. He began to write and lecture on the subject … [and] helped establish the field of American popular music history with two books that have become standard texts.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
London’s West End Headed For Another £500M Year
“London’s Theatreland looks set to break the £500 million mark for the third year in a row, with revenues during the summer up 5.6% on the same period in 2010.”
Great Box Office At Sadler’s Wells, Plus Anxiety About Programming
“Sadler’s Wells, the London dance theatre, has reported a strong year of ticket sales, but warns that financial pressures make it unlikely that some of the more experimental dance pieces for which it is famous will continue to be staged.”
When Philosophers Get Too Fond Of Baseball
“Some view umpires as, in essence, instruments, somewhat outdated, for measuring baseball facts. … Others, however, think of umpires as, in effect, a special class of player in the game. … These two distinct ideas about umpiring correspond to what are really very distinct philosophies of the game” – External Realism and Internal Anti-Realism.
English Rockers Discover What Classical Fans Knew: Churches Can Make Good Concert Venues
“Brit Award-winning singer Laura Marling and the band Elbow are the latest performers to shun the bawdy, beer-stained venues of the conventional gig circuit to perform in sacred surroundings. Marling is currently on a 16-date tour of English cathedrals.” (Just like The Sixteen does.)
Ron Rosenbaum Goes Postal On The Shakespeare Birthers
“I should be happy that Anonymous turned out to be such a laughably incoherent botch of a film. One that should make the purveyors of the pernicious Shakespeare ‘authorship’ conspiracy theory hide their heads in shame. But, alas, they won’t. They have no shame. … What’s next, a birther epic about a black president who wasn’t really born in Hawaii?”
Ben Brantley Speaks The Truth: It Doesn’t Matter Who Wrote Shakespeare’s Plays
“If someone were to come up with conclusive proof that his plays were the product of an underground cell of Carmelite nuns, I would be, for a moment at least, open-mouthed, awestruck and titillated. But nothing could change the way I already feel about my Will.”
Is Catch-22 Still Relevant To Today’s Soldiers?
Absolutely, says a British Army officer working in Afghanistan. A retired US Air Force man disagrees: “Our current military is much more disciplined and respectful than the characters portrayed by Heller.” Yet a former US Marines supply officer declares, “Bless Joseph Heller for a guidebook for the past 50 years.”
Denmark Tries Turning Electric Poles Into Public Art
As the Danes move from traditional power sources to wind and water power, the country’s electrical grid needs to be updated. To deal with the inevitable NIMBY problems, “the Danes hit on the idea about a decade ago of having industrial architects, if not artists, design new, pleasingly sculptured pylons, those huge steel towers that support the power lines.”
Best Abstract Of An Academic Paper Ever?
“The paper ‘Can Apparent Superluminal Neutrino Speeds Be Explained as a Quantum Weak Measurement?,’ published by arXiv, is getting some notice on Twitter. Not because of its analytical argument, which, for all we know, may well be elegant, and artfully defended, but for its abstract.”