Category: music

The New Infinity Of Classical Music

“For a century or so, the life of a home listener was simple: you had your disks, whether in the form of cylinders, 78s, LPs, or CDs, and, no matter how many of them piled up, there was a clear demarcation between the music that you had and the music that you didn’t. The Internet has removed that distinction. Near-infinity awaits on the other side of the magic rectangle.”

The Mozart Effect Revisited

“Researchers from the University of London have tested a thesis that may explain why studies of this phenomenon have produced such inconsistent results. In a study just published in the journal Psychology of Music, they conclude that listening to Mozart can indeed spark a certain type of intelligence, but the effect is limited to non-musicians. The reason, it appears, has to do with the different ways musicians and non-musicians process music in the brain.”

Musicians Want To Be Paid For Radio Play

“Hundreds of millions of dollars each year could be at play, so the debate over details of the bill has been fierce. But those battles pale in comparison to the PR methods used to fight for or against it. Adding a sense of urgency to the war is the fact that the two combatants — diskeries and radio stations — are megabucks operations suffering from plummeting returns. The bill has long been a dream of singers, musicians and record labels, but long opposed by broadcasters.”

The Origins Of Music

“It has often been suggested that music emerged as a by-product of linguistic capacities. But musical rhythm, with its regular pulse, is very unlike the irregular stressed syllables of speech. We will probably never know the answer here, but whether parts of the brain evolved specifically to process music, or music happened to make use of neural pathways that arose for other reasons, it is clear that music has been central to the human enterprise for 40,000 years or more.”

Baltimore Symphony Players Accept Pay Cut

“Musicians of the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra have agreed to take a 12.5 percent reduction in salary as part of contract concessions … Thursday’s announcement of another $900,000 in wage cuts and furloughs follows an agreement in April for the musicians to give back $1 million in raises and other benefits scheduled under their contract for next season.”

Ireland’s Three Opera Companies May Be Combined Into One

“Wexford Festival Opera, Opera Ireland, and Opera Theatre Company are all facing possible extinction. The Arts Council is working on a proposal that would see all three companies … cease to exist.” Instead, a single company, based in Wexford’s new €33 million opera house, “would be set up to mount productions in Dublin, run the Wexford festival, and provide small-scale productions to tour around the country.”