Category: music

“The experimental performances, to be staged at venues across the country, will feature no lyrics, narrative or plot. Instead, classically trained singers will create baby-friendly noises, such as Wellington boots splashing in puddles, buzzing bees, quacking ducks and the fluttering of feathers.”

“There’s a residual idea in classical music — actually, in many artistic fields — that we’re supposed to seek perfection: do something as well as it possibly can be done.” But what about the notion “that music is a daily need, and that making music and having it around and getting it out to people is more important than making it perfectly”?

The Association of British Orchestras has launched a “five-year vision” that calls upon the government to “value orchestras, fund us wisely, legislate supportively and make a real commitment to maintaining music education in schools”.

“The royalties that UK songwriters, composers and music publishers get from online sales are growing faster than the decline from CDs and DVDs. This is the first time that the annual growth in online revenues has been higher than the fall in revenues from CD or DVD sales.”

“The impulse to pit one orchestra against another is as regrettable as it is irresistible. In the space of thirty-one days, from the end of January to the beginning of March, Carnegie Hall held an unofficial orchestral Olympics, presenting thirteen concerts by symphonic ensembles from six states and three foreign countries.”

“In addition to saving dollars on elaborate built sets, this approach had the effect of outfitting what some might call an overly familiar opera with a new look, one immediately engaging to a young audience brought up on the irreverent styles of popular culture – not a bad strategy to counter opera’s admittedly unfair geriatric image.”

“Certainly, perception of Barber’s music has changed since his death in 1981, when he was considered borderline irrelevant. He’s now one of “the three Bs” of the 20th century (with Britten and Bernstein).”

“While young orchestras have been around forever, marketing them as billboard attractions is something new. A parallel fixation on young conductors may be part of the same trend, though they are nothing new either. Even if conductors only come into their own past 60, as is often said, plenty break out much earlier.”

“I’m perfectly willing to concede that tonal music, with its reliance on conventionalized expectation-forming patterns derived, in not very direct ways, from the harmonic series lends itself more naturally to human apprehension than post-common-practice music. But that’s beside the point of music’s importance as a human endeavor, isn’t it? “

“With Michigan’s newly revealed recording tax incentives, music lovers can only be intrigued by the prospect of restoring real enterprise — and dollars — to Detroit’s legacy as one of the world’s great music cities.”