“Rock music, to adopt Nietzsche’s famous distinction, is perceived as alluringly Dionysian – a surrender to instinct and emotion, an invitation to the orgiastic. Classical music, on the other hand, has become purely Apollonian: it represents restraint, structure, order and discipline.” But, writes Rupert Christiansen, the way to incite the passions about classical music isn’t to hip it up. Rather, play to the strengths…
Blog
NY Nannies Get Tossed By Publisher
“Last week that Random House canceled the second novel by Emma McLaughlin and Nicola Kraus, the authors of the phenomenally best-selling The Nanny Diaries. As news began filtering out that the newly reconfigured little Random had canceled the reported-to-be $3 million contract, phones all over town started to ring. ‘Random House wants its money back,’ people said. ‘The book is a disaster!’ It may come as a shock to those who work in more normal businesses, but this kind of thing doesn’t happen every day.”
Bragging Rights For Hockey
The Art Gallery of Nova Scotia will unveil Thursday a 137-year-old painting it claims is visual proof that Canada’s national past-time was first played in Nova Scotia. ‘There is quite a debate. There are tonnes of written records of hockey and hurley and all these others claims, but … to our knowledge there’s no one else who has an earlier visual record of hockey being played’.”
Manhattan Theatre Club’s Terrible Season
This was supposed to be a great year for the Manhattan Theatre Club. “The respected off-Broadway company was planning to have a year of celebration as it opened a second front, on Broadway. It had purchased and was restoring the long-abandoned Biltmore Theater. That project turned out brilliantly – the reopened theater is a small gem: intimate, comfortable, and a pleasure to behold. But everywhere else, the season has seemed to fall apart, as one actor after another left MTC productions.”
Beyond Ratings (Or Something Else)
A senior BBC official says that traditional ratings measures are inadequate, and different means should be found to determine the success of shows. “This new measure should have the ambition to get closer to our audiences, understanding what really has impact for them – what they think, feel and care about. I know it’s a huge task, but Ofcom should design something to meaningfully challenge the tyranny of overnights.”
Law – Helping Out The Young Vic
Actor Jude Law lends his support for a £12.5 million makeover of London’s Young Vic Theatre. “I remember being thrilled by the proximity of the actors and the versatility of the space. It was an important part of the dream I had to become an actor.”
Leaving LA (Entertainment Jobs)
A new report details a five year decline in jobs in the entertainment industry in Los Angeles. The report predicts 2,500 more jobs will disappear in 2004. “A loss of 2,500 jobs would leave the region’s motion picture and sound employment at 111,100. While that could further fall to 109,600 in 2005, employment for independent artists, writer and performers continues to increase. It should rise 11% to 12,200 in 2004 and to 13,600 the following year, the report said.”
Of New York And Intellectuals
Will the tradition of the New York intellectual survive? “The failure of the New York Intellectuals, finally – after a life in the American public as critics and theorists, pundits and intellectuals-was the failure to pass on a tradition. They became but a historical quirk when they failed to bequeath the tradition onto another generation and another age.”
Why Blockbuster Is An Orphan
So Viacom is trying to unload Blockbuster Video after failing to find a buyer. “It’s an ignominious unilateral divorce for a company that served Viacom so well—and has become one of America’s most-recognized brand names. But things have quickly soured for Blockbuster. With remarkable speed, renting videotapes has become passé.”
From Where Do We Get Technology?
Since World War II, the notion that “science is the engine that drives technology” has been dominant. “Before technology could advance, “scientific capital” had to be built up through research. Such a view implied that technology ultimately depended on knowledge of the natural world: Technology was nothing more than applied science. Yet increasingly, the scientists who do the sort of pure research explain natural phenomena by invoking such man-made artifacts as the computer.”