Category: music

In the course of looking to adapt some of Bach’s music for other instruments to his own (as any 18th-century virtuoso might do), Baroque oboist Gonzalo Ruiz seems to have hit upon the original version of Bach’s famous Orchestral Suite No. 2, which has come down to us as a work for flute and strings.

“Singing together appears to inspire spontaneous cooperative and helpful behavior among 4-year-olds. That’s the conclusion of new research that provides support for an intriguing theory regarding the evolutionary origins of music.”

“We’re more used to consuming culture in complete cycles and series today than ever before (we’ve all sat down to watch one episode of 24 and ended up slumped on the sofa hours later having got through a whole day with Jack…). But is Beethoven really ripe for the Jack Bauer treatment? Will the result be blazing Beethovenian insight or mere musical overload?”

A labor grievance “accuses the Honolulu Symphony Society, the entity that runs the business operations of the orchestra, of bargaining in bad faith,” but a board member said the symphony, which is trying to emerge from bankruptcy, is willing “to continue talks if [the musicians’ union] had a counterproposal that was ‘financially realistic and sustainable.'”

“If any recent president’s life is the stuff of operas, it’s Bill Clinton’s. There’s been comedy, drama, back-stabbing, shouting, crying, death, and many miraculous comebacks. But that’s real life. Now art will be imitating life in a project coming together in Little Rock….”

“The critic, Donald Rosenberg, filed the suit after he was removed in September from reviewing the [Cleveland Orchestra]. He said orchestra management pressed the newspaper into sidelining him because it objected to a string of negative reviews he gave to the orchestra’s music director, Franz Welser-Most.”

“Ninety percent of available tickets went for the entire six-week season. Twenty-two percent of the audience was new this season, continuing a trend from last year. OTSL had its highest ticket revenue ever, even without increasing ticket prices and while offering special prices on tickets for children and teens to come to ‘Ticket’.”

David Cope had “long held the belief that all music was essentially inspired plagiarism. The great composers absorbed the music that had gone before them and their brains “recombined” melodies and phrases in distinctive, sometimes traceable, ways. We all have an internal database of musical reference; composers were those with the ability to manipulate it in new patterns. With the aid of an early computer, he realised he could put this to the test.”

“A year ago, that statement seemed nearly impossible. When the Baltimore Opera filed for bankruptcy in the middle of the 2008-09 season, ending a 58-year tradition, the city seemed destined for a nearly opera-less future. It’s true that there were a couple of small local companies, but nobody imagined that a mere 18 months later Baltimore would have at least seven opera companies, maybe more.”

KFUO-99.1 FM, “Classic99,” went off the air last week. “When the Lutheran Church-Missouri Synod sold the station to Gateway Creative Broadcasting’s “Joy FM,” which switched the format to “Christian contemporary” pop music, 14 longtime LCMS employees were laid off.”