Manuela Hoelterhoff writes that the value of broadcasting opera every week throughout America is hard to calculate. “All I know is that I am not unique, and countless children must have listened to those opera broadcasts and gone on to become mathematicians, Supreme Court justices, stock brokers, teachers and captains of industry (if not, I guess, at ChevronTexaco).”
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Inside Pierre Boulez
Just how do you learn to play a Pierre Boulez score? “The leaps are awkward. The spacings of the chords are often large and dense, and there are many, many notes on every single page. As with lots of contemporary music, the patterns, the pitches are nothing like what we grew up practicing. The scores are the kind of music that someone who doesn’t really read music would say [are just] full of black dots and circles. The page is covered with specks.”
Literary Fest Debates Anti-Americanism
Discussions at this year’s Hay literary festival in the UK seem to have a common theme as it becomes “embroiled in heated slanging matches about anti-Americanism.
England Scores A Goose Egg (Oh, The Shame!)
In this weekend’s Eurovision Song Contest, Britain’s entry scored no points. None. Nada. Zip. “An estimated 150 million viewers across the length and breadth of the continent witnessed this national humiliation. They not only watched it; they conspired to bring it about through telephone voting. One German newspaper was quick to grasp the true significance of what had occurred: ‘England, motherland of pop, in last place!’ This is what is known in English as schadenfreude.”
Understanding Dia
Dia:Beacon, which opened last week in an old Nabisco factory about an hour north of Manhattan, may be the largest contemporary art museum in the world, with its 300,000 square feet of space. “To understand the ethos of the Dia Center, and how it came to convert such a cathedral-like space as Dia:Beacon, you have to go back to Dia’s inception.”
Arm Or Armpit? That Is The Question
Has the British Museum mislabeled a marble fragment from the Acropolis Marbles? The museum says it is a left arm. An expert maintains it is a right arm from another part of the pediment altogether. “That is not an armpit. They have mistaken the little depression between the tendons behind the arm for the armpit itself. It is a right arm. It won’t fit the figure of Iris because it doesn’t come from that figure.”
Colleges Become Music Police
Colleges are cracking down on students who download music. At Colorado State University, “four or five times a day, college computing administrators receive a message from recording-industry download police giving the specific computer, song and time of a rogue copy made by a student in campus housing. They must pass the message on to a dorm rules enforcer, who in turn must unplug the computer in question and scold the owner that trading in copyrighted songs over the Internet is against the law. Strike two means a formal meeting with a disciplinary officer. Strike three at CSU means the student is denied access to the Internet as long as the wrongdoer remains in campus housing, for the rest of the student’s college career.”
Jerry Springer Is America?
” ‘Jerry Springer – The Opera’ couldn’t be a bigger London success if you dipped it in chocolate and threw it to the lesbians, as one of its few reprintable lyrics suggests. What happened, exactly? This: The world now believes America is Jerry Springer, and Americans are Jerry’s guests. The world believed it long before there was a ‘Jerry Springer Show,’ in fact; the show merely solidified that belief, giving justifiable anti-Americanism a name and a face – that of Springer’s mild, jaded, half-smile of effrontery.”
Libeskind On The WTC – Now The Tough Part
In a classic case of aesthetic symbols confronting political and financial reality, [architect Daniel Libeskind] is fighting to preserve the form – and, with it, the meaning – of his proposal for the 16-acre former site of the World Trade Center. Libeskind also has been forced to confront accusations from a New York City architect that he fibbed when he claimed that, every Sept. 11, on the anniversary of the terrorist attacks that brought down the Trade Center’s twin towers, the sun would shine without shadow on an outdoor plaza he calls ‘the Wedge of Light’. While Libeskind seems to have weathered the plaza controversy, it remains unclear if he will be able to retain control over his design — or whether developer Larry Silverstein, who holds the lease to the former World Trade Center site, will twist it beyond recognition.”
Upscale Melbourne, Downside For Music
Melbourne has a lively music scene. “But it’s a scene that is in danger of dying, according to some venue owners around town. The pub proprietors say that as house and apartment prices in the inner city have soared, home owners’ expectations have changed. The new, more affluent residents have important jobs, peaceful lifestyles to live. They don’t want to be kept awake at night by guitars and drums. Their complaints about noise to councils and liquor-licensing bodies are increasingly being taken seriously.”