Should the music critic look at a score or listen to a recording before attending a performance of a new work? Tim Mangan says yes: “Virtually any piece of serious classical music that a listener is not familiar with is ‘just an overwhelming event’ the first time he hears it. There’s so much going on that our ears can’t comprehend it in one gulp. And who knows whether, that first time we hear a piece, be it Brahms’ Third Symphony or Adams’ ‘Transmigration,’ it’s a good performance or bad?”
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Considering Jack Valenti
Motion Picatura Association of America president Jack Valenti — the “5-foot, 7-inch titan who invented movie ratings, reigned as Washington’s highest-paid lobbyist and earned the unlikely nickname Boom-Boom from Robin Williams on one Oscar telecast — has finally announced his decision to step down from the job he has held for 38 years. ‘I think there won’t ever be another like him because one of the reasons why he is so credible in his advocacy for the entertainment industry is because he is so personally theatrical’.”
Depicting Scotland Through Some Miserable Books
The books chosen for Scotland’s premiere tourist attraction are a scandal. “As a literary representation of Scotland, it is woeful, made worse by the far more imaginative range of books offered in the children’s section. On the evidence of Historic Scotland’s collection, Scots spend most of their time drinking and eating.”
A Body Story…One Word At A Time
Shelley Jackson is writing a story by tattooing one word at a time on a person. The story is a “sequence of words tattooed on the bodies of some 2,093 volunteers, several of whom are reported to have teamed up to form whole sentences. Jackson’s ‘story’, by the way, is called Skin. Who said the avant-garde was dead? At 2,093 words, her ‘story’ might possibly persuade the subeditors among us to institute a search for cuts. It certainly does invite us to ask another basic question, viz: how short can a story be, and still be considered a story?”
Daniel Barenboim On Why He’s Leaving The Chicago Symphony:
“It’s impossible for me in America. It’s very difficult to be a musician in America because the system has become one where people expect you to do all sorts of other things that take a tremendous amount of time. When they talked to me about renewing my contract, they said `We would like more time from you not necessarily to conduct, but to do community activities.’ They basically expect you to go and spend half your time explaining to people why it is important to have culture, to have music. Here in Berlin when you fight, you fight in order to have enough for projects you want to do.”
Beethoven’s Ninth In 24 Hours
There are many recorded versions of Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. But a radical new interpretation by the Norwegian conceptual artist Leif Inge, which he calls “9 Beet Stretch,” “digitally elongates a recording of the symphony to make it last 24 hours. The piece slows symphonic time so that movement is barely perceptible. What you hear in normal time as a happy Viennese melody lasting 5 or 10 seconds becomes minutes of slowly cascading overtones; a drumroll becomes a nightmarish avalanche. Yet the symphony remains somehow recognizable in spirit if not in form, its frozen strings fraught with tense, frowning Beethoven-ness.”
See Broadcasters Roll Over…(What About The First Amendment?)
Where is the media protest about the government crackdown on “indecency? “That’s the most depressing and tragic aspect to this. The media, rather than standing up for the First Amendment, are giving into the people who want to trample all over it.”
“Wife” – In For A Pulitzer Bounce?
Doug Wright’s “I Am My Own Wife” won the Pulitzer for drama last week, and the question is how much the award will have an impact on its commercial prospects. “In the last decade only two plays have won the Pulitzer while running on Broadway, and both eventually made back their investments. But this evidence is by no means conclusive. The 2002 winner, “Topdog/Underdog,” opened the same week it won the award, so it is difficult to discern the effect the prize had on sales. And in 2001 “Proof” received only a slight bump.”
Judge Says There’s Evidence Clear Channel “Abused Its Clout”
“A federal judge in Denver has ruled that there is evidence that Clear Channel, the nation’s biggest radio broadcaster and concert promoter, abused its clout by threatening to keep artists off the air unless they performed at its shows.”
China To Privitize Publishers
China has more than 500 state-owned publishing houses. As part of the country’s economic reforms, many of those publishers will be cut loose to operate as private businesses, which should revolutionize publishing in the world’s most-populated country.