“The fact remains that a great majority of the intellectuals in this world are totally oblivious to the existence of music. Some of them enjoy the sounds they hear at concerts or when they listen to records at home. But it’s not part of their intellectual worldview. This is a worldwide sickness. And I have to say the problem is more acute in America.”
Blog
Was Picasso Really That Great?
“By general agreement, he was the best artist of the twentieth century. How good was that? His sheer significance, as the god of modernity in painting, has always beggared ultimate judgment. Now the issue is being forced, at the Prado and the Reina Sofía, by direct comparisons of his work with that of the Old Masters who, from time to time, were important to him, either as models or as goads—notably Velázquez and Goya.”
Inside The Psychology Of Portraiture
“The painted portrait tried to give the answer before the advent of photography (though each medium provides a different answer), but it was always constrained by the demands of the times in which it was being painted. The painter was not necessarily trying to achieve an exact likeness – the face, for centuries, was the least important part of the portrait. What mattered was giving an impression of status – it was the clothes, the jewels, the background that spoke loudest. Nevertheless, there is still something to be learned from standing and staring.”
Controlling James Joyce
“Stephen Joyce is James Joyce’s only living descendant, and since the mid-nineteen-eighties he has effectively controlled the Joyce estate. Scholars must ask his permission to quote sizable passages or to reproduce manuscript pages from those works of Joyce’s that remain under copyright—including “Ulysses” and “Finnegans Wake”—as well as from more than three thousand letters and several dozen unpublished manuscript fragments… His audacity and his pique have amused some Joyceans, and at times the Joyceans have provoked him.”
An Inconvenient Dedication
“Literary dedications began with scribblers in the 18th-century sucking up to rich patrons. It was only in the past 100 years that they became vehicles for private missives and Valentines.
Decoding them is fun – with luck you can catch an illuminating flash as the authorial skirts are momentarily lifted. But, when love turns sour, loving dedications can have a horrible, inexpungable irony. Novels have an unfortunate habit of surviving marriages.”
Baltimore Symphony Works To Smooth The Road
The Baltimore Symphony has had a bumpy ride in the past year, hiring a new music director and seeing its management leaders depart. “The orchestra has been further roiled by continuing budget deficits and sparse attendance at many concerts – problems that have led similar orchestras to fold in recent years. Now, though, with a former corporate executive shepherding the orchestra and a beefed-up role for musicians in major decisions, the BSO says it’s in the midst of a crescendo.”
Canadian Art Collector, Patron Ken Thompson, 82
“The media mogul had been the lead donor to the Art Gallery of Ontario’s current expansion campaign, having helped launch the project in 2002 by donating his much-lauded $300-million private art collection to the AGO as well as $50 million towards the renovation campaign and $20 million towards the gallery’s endowment fund.”
Lebrecht: Why Warner Cut Classical Music
“The tragic fact of the matter is that giant media players are pulling out of minority art, a myopic strategy that gives them no chance of tapping the next quirk in public taste or contributing to cultural evolution. Warner bought its way into classics just ahead of the Three Tenors 1990 boom and scored an eight-million follow-up CD at the Los Angeles World Cup. It gobbled up one independent after another – Erato in France, Teldec in Germany, Finlandia, Deutsche Harmonia Mundi – and went into overproduction along with all the others in the 1990s until the roof fell in and the outlet was slimmed down to a single stream of mainstream classics. That, too, ha now been deemed surplus to requirements.”
Steinbeck Heirs Get Rights To Author’s Books
A US judge has ruled that the rights to ten works by John Steinbeck belong to his relatives. “The rights properly belong to the author’s son, Thomas Steinbeck, and granddaughter Blake Smyle. The ruling came after the two canceled rights previously held by various individuals and organizations, including publishing house Penguin Group (USA) Inc. and the heirs of John Steinbeck’s widow, Elaine, who died in April 2003.”
Any Music, Any Time, Anywhere
“Pundits have been yammering away for years about a ‘celestial jukebox’ that will give everyone the ability to access all content ever created, from anywhere, at any time. This long-discussed concept is finally becoming a reality, at least as far as music goes.”