Blog

Now In The Public Domain: These Works Came Out Of Copyright This Week

“These works include George Gershwin’s Rhapsody in Blue, silent films by Buster Keaton and Harold Lloyd, and books such as Thomas Mann’s The Magic Mountain, E. M. Forster’s A Passage to India, and A. A. Milne’s When We Were Very Young. These works were supposed to go into the public domain in 2000, after being copyrighted for 75 years. But before this could happen, Congress hit a 20-year pause button and extended their copyright term to 95 years.” – Public Domain Day

Following Sexual Harassment Suit, Co-Founder Of Minnesota Multicultural Dance Company Resigns

Uri Sands, who founded the St. Paul-based TU Dance in 2004 with his spouse, Toni Pierce-Sands (both are former Ailey dancers), after “a lawsuit was served on a member of the company’s board in October, alleging sexual misconduct by Sands involving a female employee between 2015 and 2017. The lawsuit also alleged negligent supervision of Sands by the company.” – The Star Tribune (Minneapolis)

Musicological Mythbuster Linda Shaver-Gleason: The Exit Interview

William Robin: “Linda tackled subjects from the purported ugliness of contemporary music to the contested idea of the ‘masterpiece’ to myths around Beethoven’s deafness to whether music is actually a universal language (spoiler alert: it’s not). … A little over two weeks ago, however, she posted a new entry: ‘I didn’t finish the book, and I’m not resuming the blog. Instead, I’m dying.’ … We spoke on the phone on Sunday. Here is an edited transcript of our conversation: an exit interview with one of my favorite public musicologists.” – National Sawdust Log

The Snopes Of Musicology? No, Linda Shaver-Gleason Has Been Much More Than That

“Since 2016, California musicologist Linda Shaver-Gleason has been using [her] site” — called Not Another Music History Cliché! — “to compile a clear-eyed and level-headed accounting of the ways in which the conventional wisdom about classical music (like conventional wisdom in all walks of life) consistently leads us astray.” Alas, as Joshua Kosman writes, she’s leaving all too much unfinished. – San Francisco Chronicle

Progress In Hollywood: Number Of Female Directors Hits All-Time High, But Women Remain Rare In Other Behind-The-Scenes Jobs

“Examining the 1,300 top films from 2007 through to 2019, the Annenberg researchers found that on average just 4.8 percent of directors were women, yet that spiked to 10.6 percent in 2019 … [and] 15 percent of the directors of all films released by major companies last year were women, another record. … [But] the latest Celluloid Ceiling report … found that women in key behind-the-scenes jobs were outnumbered four to one by men. That figure remained unchanged from 2018.” – The New York Times

Rome’s Mayor Orders Relocation Of All Souvenir Stalls Near Major Attractions

“Seventeen stalls will be moved from sites including the Trevi fountain, Spanish Steps, the Pantheon and Piazza Navona. However, eight of the 17 will still be able to trade on streets away from the monuments, Rome’s authorities said in a notice. [Mayor Virginia] Raggi, who has long pledged to banish the stalls, said the move was intended to protect Rome’s heritage while ensuring safety at its most-visited sites. She said last year that the stalls were sullying the city’s image.” – The Guardian

Governors Of St. Mark’s In Venice Want 6½-Foot Flood Wall In Square

A month after the disastrous flood of November 12, the president of the historic church’s governing body said that the building cannot withstand repeated exposure to salt water it has faced the past two years. He and his colleagues want “to surround the basilica on the side of the square with a two-metre-high Perspex wall and sheet piles sunk four metres deep into the ground.” – The Art Newspaper

In Brazil, Artists And Musicians Are Leading The Resistance To Bolsonaro

“‘We can’t become anaesthetised and think, ‘Oh, he won [the election]. There’s nothing we can do,” said [Edu] Krieger, who has written songs for some of Brazil’s most celebrated female voices. ‘At least through our music we can pester them a bit and make some noise. This is the most efficient kind of resistance we can mount right now … We can’t just passively accept the kind of situation they are trying to impose.'” – The Guardian