“Beethoven’s audience is so all-encompassing as to include those whose familiarity with his work is limited at best. Indeed, he is the only classical composer whose name is generally known to people who do not listen to classical music. It is as revealing that the cartoonist Charles Schulz chose Beethoven as the favorite composer of one of the characters in Peanuts as it is that Lorin Maazel chose the Ninth Symphony to perform last fall at his inaugural concerts as music director of the New York Philharmonic. What is striking about this mass popularity, though, is that it has not diminished in the slightest the respect in which Beethoven is held by musicians.”
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Something About Puccini
In America the business of opera is built on Puccini, and on a mere handful of his works, at that. “Puccini, of course, isn’t responsible for the lack of artistic diversity in American opera houses, but a mere trio of his works are so fundamental to the financial stability of American opera that they have had a stultifying effect.” Yet in the history of music, Puccini has not been accorded the respect that his popularity suggests. New books re-evaluate…
Protesting The Protesting Poets
Roger Kimball was looking forward to going to the White House next week for lunch with Laura Bush and a symposium on “Poetry and the American Voice.” Then he heard the event had been cancelled after Copper Canyon Press founder Sam Hamill had organized an anti-war protest around the event. “What about the many distinguished poets who believe Sam Hamill is a publicity-craving nonentity who spoiled their chance to celebrate American poetry at the White House? They, of course, have not been mentioned much. ‘Poets for Responsible U.S. Foreign Policy’ is not news.”
In Zimbabwe – A Crackdown On Artists
“The arts in Zimbabwe are struggling for air in an even more repressive atmosphere than anything experienced in South Africa. ‘It’s well past censorship. It’s rule of fear. It’s total control’.”
Bush Delivers Arts Budget Proposals
President George Bush delivers his funding requests for the arts to Congress. “The president followed through on his support for improving Americans’ knowledge of the country’s history by proposing $25 million for a humanities endowment initiative called “We the People.” The president is concerned about our lack of understanding ourselves, our historical amnesia. By contrast, funds for the Corporation for Public Broadcasting that would help television and radio stations make the transition to digital transmission, supported in the past by President Bush, were eliminated in the new budget request.”
A Mechanical Duck That Pooped
Inventors have been trying since forever to create mechanical devices that move or act like live beings. “The eighteenth century was ‘the golden age of the philosophical toy,’ and its most celebrated engineer was Jacques de Vaucanson. For Vaucanson, recreating life meant imitating its processes and movements — most famously, its bowel movements. While he entertained audiences with automata that played the flute and the organ, his most celebrated invention was a copper duck that realistically ‘gulped’ food through a flexible neck and then excreted it on a silver platter. First displayed in 1739, the duck caused a sensation.”
Bloomsbury? What Did They Ever Do For Us?
“Bloomsbury, the fragile but oddly resilient cargo of intellectuals, art theorists, novelists and wife-swappers who between them exerted such a sinewy grasp on early to mid-century English culture, represents perhaps the most desperate example yet of the reading public’s tendency to admire literary people for non-literary reasons, for personality and peculiarity rather than what exists on the page. Look at what Bloomsbury achieved, in terms of books written and ideas entertained, and with a few marked exceptions (Woolf’s The Common Reader, Strachey’s Queen Victoria) the trophy cabinet is conspicuously bare.”
Fogel To Become American Symphony Orchestra Leagure CEO
Henry Fogel will take over as CEO of the American Symphony Orchestra League when he retires as manager of the Chicago Symphony later this year. As manager of the Chicago orchestra since 1985, Fogel became one of the most influential arts administrators in the United States.
Phillips Auction House Sold – Will Downsize
Phillips’ forray into the high-end art auction business has come to an end. French billionaire Phillipe Arnault has sold his stake in the company, and it is laying off workers and downsizing. Arnault bought Phillips in 1999 and “spent tens of millions of pounds on guaranteeing money to vendors, regardless of how their works of art performed in the saleroom, in an attempt to raise the company’s profile and win market share from rivals.”
The Downfall Of Phillips – So Unnecessary
Phillips was founded in 1796, and did fine until four years ago when the push to compete with Sotheby’s and Christie’s turned serious. “Phillips, which was supposed to become a major force in the art market, is left with just half a dozen departments and some 85 employees. This journey to disaster started out sensibly enough. Arnault’s LVMH group has made a fortune from marketing scent, champagne and suitcases and Arnault believed that selling art would be no different…”