“If you look at film and popular music… there is almost no correlation between what critics say and what the public buys.” But when it comes to video games, critical opinion and public consumption mirror each other to a shocking degree. So “are gamers actually more discerning than consumers of other media? Or is it just that game critics have more in common with game players than film and music reviewers do with the unwashed masses? And is this good or bad for the creative health of video games?”
Author: sbergman
Exiled Pakistani PM: Rushdie Attacker Should Be Out
Former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto has called for the firing of the government minister who started the ongoing row over Salman Rushdie’s knighthood. Bhutto, who is in exile, “said Mohammad Ejaz ul-Haq had damaged Islam and Pakistan with his remarks in the Pakistan parliament.”
V&A At 150
London’s Victoria & Albert Museum is 150 years old this week. Antony Gormley says that it remains a shining example of what a museum should be: “a great and varied building with internal and external spaces, full of extraordinary objects that talk to us and each other, contextualised within the wider institutions of science and art, both university and museum, in a way that encourages curiosity, scholarship – and the creativity in all of us.”
The Sad Truth: Tolkien’s Just Not That Great
It cost a record £12.5m to bring Lord of the Rings to the London stage. Was it worth it? Susannah Clapp thinks not, and she’s not just blaming the people in charge of the production. “Take away the narrative drive, and Tolkien’s limitations become glaring. There’s the faux archaic language… There’s the sentimental ruralism and the worship of hierarchy: lots of little people with comical names being awed by silvery-tongued great ones. There’s the unadulterated blokesiness of it all… And alongside the macho swagger, there are all those elves. Tolkien really knew how to put the twee into tweedy.”
Redefining Chamber Music
Chamber music has always been the ultimate “insider” experience for classical music aficionados. But the form’s always limited audiences have been declining in recent years, leading some to rethink the way small-scale concert music is prepared and presented. “A small group of musicians playing in an intimate setting is, after all, one of the most popular forms of music making today. You can find ‘chamber music,’ by this definition, in bars and clubs across the country on any given night. But those invested in maintaining traditions — including some presenters and commendably passionate audiences — want a more conservative definition that keeps out the innovation.”
Keeping The Symphony Alive
The 20th century was supposed to spell the end of the symphony, a 19th-century musical construct that many said had outlived its usefulness in an age when orchestras were no longer the playthings of emperors and kings. “But it took root elsewhere, acquiring a nationalist character in Finland (Sibelius), Denmark (Nielsen), Mexico (Chavez), Brazil (Villa Lobos), Britain (notably Vaughn Williams) and America… Many composers today simply write orchestral pieces and give them fanciful names. Only in Russia and the onetime Soviet satellites has the symphony thrived in a direct line between the 19th and 21st centuries.”
Musicians At Risk (This Means You!)
“As many as 50 percent of music professionals suffer at least some hearing loss. [Worse,] recent Northwestern University study found that almost all incoming freshman music majors already have a playing-related physical ailment.” The problem is exacerbated by the fact that most musicians don’t even consider the risks they are taking until a problem that can’t be ignored manifests itself.
Dancing Around The Domestic
Workplace romances are always complicated affairs, but when your workplace is the stage, and your profession involves constant physical contact that would get you arrested in any other office, things get even more complex. “A demanding schedule makes it difficult for men and women in the marrying years to find a match outside the studio. There are currently eight confirmed couples at [Canada’s] National Ballet… Most ballet couples are not seen together onstage. And a lot of married or cohabiting pairs had a professional relationship long before they ever went on a date.”
A New Approach To Concert Hall Acoustics
An Australian acoustics firm has beat out worldwide competition to score a dream gig consulting on the design of Paris’s major new concert hall. “The team designed a double chamber space where the seats are set closer in and wrapped around the orchestra stage, so the audience sits within the sound, minimising any absorption.”
The People’s Bourgeois
“A major retrospective is to be held at Tate Modern of the work of 95-year-old Louise Bourgeois… Bourgeois was present during the birth pangs of modern art (she knew Marcel Duchamp personally) and has seen every avant-garde movement of the 20th century unfold. Her works can be seen as a reaction to movements such as surrealism, minimalism and abstract expressionism.”