“Unpublished scores by Brazilian composer Heitor Villa-Lobos (1887-1959) were found at the Rio de Janeiro School of Music library, according to the school’s director. … [T]he handwritten scores were dated 1921.”
Author: Matthew Westphal
In Britain’s Burgeoning Muslim Community, Where’s The Good Islamic Architecture?
While there are a few showplace mosques, many houses of worship for British Muslims are drab little storefronts or repurposed churches with a dome or minaret tacked on. Sometimes, immigrants from simple South Asian villages are recreating the modest spaces they knew at home; other times, grander plans for mosques encounter fierce local opposition. Might the neighbors be won over by genuinely beautiful architecture?
Cultural Critic And Publisher Richard Poirier Dies At 83
He was “a prolific and populist cultural critic who founded a literary journal, Raritan: A Quarterly Review, and … a founder of Library of America, the nonprofit publisher of American classics.”
The Book Doctors Can’t Put Down
“It was a raunchy, troubling and hilarious novel that turned into a cult phenomenon devoured by a legion of medical students, interns, residents and doctors. It introduced characters like ‘Fat Man’ – the all-knowing but crude senior resident – and medical slang like Gomer, for Get Out of My Emergency Room.”
Where The Marble Has Bewitched Sculptors For Centuries (And Still Does)
None other than “Michelangelo built a road up to the mountain [near Pietrasanta], which he named Altissima (the highest). His reward was a marble of unsurpassed whiteness, ideal for sculpture. Artists – from Giambologna and Vasari to Joan Miró, Henry Moore and more recently Damien Hirst and Marc Quinn – have been flocking to Pietrasanta ever since.”
‘How To Fake Science, History And Religion’
A look at “pseudo-histories” such as the Lost Continent of Atlantis, “preColumbian exploration and colonization of the Americas; the role of false history among such racist religious groups as Christian Identity and the Nation of Islam; [and] ‘histories’ of cosmic catastrophes and interplanetary visitations.”
Can The Arts Help Revive England’s Old Seaside Towns?
“Margate and Hastings breathlessly await swanky new galleries, Folkestone has set up a ‘creative quarter’, and Bexhill is sprucing up its prom. For many of Britain’s faded resorts, art and architecture are now seen as the path to renewed prosperity, while others are trying a humbler, homegrown solution.”
Unauthorized Sequels To The Great Books: Legitimate Re-imaginings Or Litigation Bait?
“It’s easy to imagine, though, that [Jane Austen] might not be amused by Seth Grahame-Smith’s Pride and Prejudice and Zombies … Were she alive and litigious, like the even more private and reclusive J. D. Salinger, Austen might go to court seeking to stop publication of Mr. Grahame-Smith’s best-selling book, or at least to get a piece of the royalties.” As Salinger did recently when he put a stop to Fredrik Colting’s 60 Years Later: Coming Through the Rye. Should that sort of sequel be protected? “Where do you draw the line between critique or parody and outright exploitation?”
The Streep Effect (Economists And Marketers Love It)
Meryl Streep is now “not merely one of Hollywood’s favourite names, but one with a Midas touch. Her latest film, Julie & Julia, in which she plays the kitchen guru Julia Child, … has sent Child’s 1961 book Mastering the Art of French Cooking back to the top of bestseller lists, as well as triggering a boom in interest in French cuisine classes in the US.” After Streep’s performance in the ABBA musical Mamma Mia, “not only did the Swedish group’s Gold collection top the album charts, there was also a surge in demand from couples who wanted to marry on the Greek island of Skopelos, as in the film.”
Oregon Shakespeare Festival Goes Multicultural
Since becoming artistic director of the OSF in 2007, Bill Rauch “has made significant changes, increasing the number of non-Western plays, bringing in new directors, expanding the use of nontraditional casting and pursuing a connection between Shakespeare and contemporary theatrical forms, including hip-hop and spoken-word poetry.”