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Taruskin And His Thematic Music History

Richard Taruskin’s new 3,800-page, 1.25-million-word history of classical music is a thematic telling of the story. “This notion – that even the most “transcendent” music is at the same time part of the complex political and social currents of its time – is Taruskin’s great theme. All that stuff we grew up with about composers being autonomous, divinely inspired geniuses is one of many shopworn intellectual heirlooms from German romanticism that Taruskin turfs out. In his book, composers take their place as “collaborative participants, along with patrons, performers, scribes, editors, publishers, critics, audiences and many others, in what the sociologist Howard Becker calls an ‘art world.’”

La Traviata As Dance?

With stage plays being adapted from movies, dance is being adapted from… opera. Ismene Brown isn’t impressed with Northern Ballet’s latest effort. “This is the way the art of ballet will end, with a sentimental whimper, an easy tear in its eye, and not a squeak of true life as theatrical dance. If the novelisation of successful movies is thought a pretty bogus form of literature, how much worse is a balletisation of an opera masterpiece such as Verdi’s La traviata.”

Machover’s Music Game

Composer Tod Machover has invented a new toy to teach children how to make music. “Working with the Fisher-Price toy company, Machover has come up with Symphony Painter, musical composition software that allows children ages four and above to draw music and have it played through a hand-held device. Selecting from a palette of 24 musical patterns and 24 instruments and zany sounds, the child draws his composition on a small screen called a Color Pixter. The device is fun but not mindless, and encourages the youngster to listen carefully while constructing a coherent piece.”

Houston’s MFA Gets $450 Million

Oil heiress Caroline Wiess Law has left Houston’s Museum of Fine Arts the bulk of her estate. “When all of Law’s assets are sold and the legal proceedings conclude, possibly by the end of this year, the museum could net between $400 million and $450 million. In recent history, this would be one of the biggest, if not the biggest cash gifts to an art museum. This money will help make Houston one of the most important museums in terms of programming and serving the public.”

Colorizing On The Nile

A website is offering images of colored ancient statues. The experiments in color are part of “a growing trend that has resulted in a recent Vatican Museum exhibit on colored statues, as well as actual restoration of the world’s best-preserved painted sculpture. Before these projects, most all Egyptian, Mesopotamian, Greek, Roman and other early sculptures only were seen in the monotone colors of the sculpture’s primary material, such as clay or marble, even though many of the objects originally were covered with gilt and bright paints.”

Cuno: Chinese Art Embargo A Bad Thing

China has recently requested an embargo on art coming out of China. But this is bad policy, writes James Cuno. “China’s request to the US Cultural Property Advisory Committee for an embargo on exports of archaeological material and cultural property is injurious to the discovery and dissemination of knowledge about the art and culture of the many peoples who have lived and worked in, and traded through, China for millennia.”