A Beethoven manuscript missing for 115 years has resurfaced. “It was a working manuscript score for a piano version of Beethoven’s “Grosse Fuge,” a monument of classical music. And it was in the composer’s own hand, according to Sotheby’s auction house. The 80-page manuscript in mainly brown ink – a furious scattering of notes across the page, with many changes and cross-outs, some so deep that the paper is punctured – dates from the final months of Beethoven’s life.”
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Bennett: Boycott Book Chains
Author Alan Bennett is urging readers to boycott major chain bookstores and buy at independent book shops. “I’m not trying to do Waterstone’s down, but all the big chains heavily discount the book, the worst being Amazon. This will drive independent booksellers out of business. In my local bookshop in Camden Town, that happened about three weeks ago. It makes the whole street much duller. So if you can afford it, go to an independent bookseller.”
Harold Pinter Wins Nobel
“The Nobel academy said Pinter’s work ‘uncovers the precipice under everyday prattle and forces entry into oppression’s closed rooms’. The playwright is known for speaking out on issues like the war on Iraq. He is the first British winner since VS Naipaul in 2001.”
Barnes Reattributes Old Masters
One hundred and twenty Old Master paintings in the Barnes Collection have been reattributed. “Some 22 works formerly attributed to Bosch, Giorgione, Titian, Veronese, Tintoretto, El Greco, Watteau and others have been reattributed by scholars taking part in the Collection Assessment Project, which has been examining the foundation’s roughly 9,000 objects and works of art over the past four years.”
When The CIA Was In The Culture Business
“The target audience for cultural propaganda in the Cold War was foreign élites—in particular, left-wing intellectuals and avant-garde writers and artists who might still have some attachment, sincere, sentimental, or opportunistic, to Communism and the Soviet Union. The essence of the courtship was: it’s possible to be left-wing, avant-garde, and anti-Communist. Look at these American artists and intellectuals, happily criticizing bourgeois capitalism and shocking mainstream tastes, all safely protected by the laws of a free society.”
TV Shows For Your iPod
Apple’s new video iPod will show downloads of TV shows the day after they air. “The newest member of the popular iPod line will feature a 2-1/2 inch wide color screen and the capacity to store up to 150 hours of video in addition to music and photos. The rollout of the product will coincide with the expansion of Apple’s iTunes online store, which is selling 2,000 music videos, television shows and other short films that can be watched on the iPod or a personal computer.”
Overall, States Increase Arts Funding
“Of the 50 states, the analysis found, 33 increased their state arts appropriations, 10 made cuts, and seven remained the same in comparison to the 2005 fiscal year. According to the report, this translates into a $21.9 million overall increase, or about 8%.”
What Pavarotti Was (And Isn’t)
At the age of 70, Luciano Pavarotti is retiring. “Genius is a big word, which should be used carefully. Connoisseurs will never rate Pavarotti as the most elegant or subtle interpreter among tenors – they look to Carlo Bergonzi for that. Nor did he have a voice as romantically beautiful as the young José Carreras. Marvellous as his technique of vocal production was, I wonder whether he ever commanded quite the flexibility of the phenomenal Juan Diego Flórez. And for sheer versatility, musicianship, consistent excellence and shining nobility of soul, he can’t hold a candle to his great rival Plácido Domingo, who at 64 is still a force to be reckoned with. But Pavarotti had charm, and therein lay his genius.”
Experts Gather To Discuss Rebuilding Gulf Coast
More than 200 architects and city planners gather to talk about rebuilding the Gulf Coast. “On Wednesday, the opening day, many participants suggested that while they intended to respect the local character, they did not hope to replicate what existed before the hurricane. ‘People know that this took a wrong turn somewhere. People know this has become honky-tonk, and this is the chance to get it right. This place has lost its neighborhood structure over the last 50 years. This is a chance to rezone it in a much finer grain, so people can walk to the corner store, kids can walk to school’.”
The New deYoung Soars
“The new de Young Museum, designed by Jacques Herzog and Pierre de Meuron, is proof that despite these naysayers, a museum can be both gorgeous to look at and a cozy place to view art. Clad in its elegant copper skin, this building suggests that art and architecture can make good bed partners, after all, and that a dialogue between the two can be creatively fruitful.”