Category: music

“Women have attained prominence in almost every other area of classical music. Accomplished female instrumentalists are everywhere in American orchestras. Most conservatories and college music departments report that roughly half of composition students these days are women. Yet where are female conductors at important orchestras and opera companies?”

Workers at Milan’s famous opera house La Scala have gone on strike, leading to a performance of Verdi’s Requiem to be cancelled.

“Researchers played 30-second snippets from 150 compositions and asked listeners to rate the appeal of each excerpt. They found, to no one’s surprise, that bright, melodic music rated highest and passages that were dissonant, schmaltzy or not strictly “classical” got the lowest marks.”

“It is tempting to see a connection between the breakdown of old styles in music and the visual arts from the mid-to-late 19th century onwards. Were the impressionistic works of Monet and Debussy both expressions of the same spirit?”

“These walkouts by technical workers — which have not as yet been joined by the Opéra’s performers and artistic staff — are but one part of the ongoing strikes throughout France over President Nicolas Sarkozy’s plan to reform the various national union pension schemes.”

An article blasting the Oregon Symphony has generated plenty of response in the Pacific Northwest. The author is standing by his commentary, and says that the orchestra needs to change the way it thinks about programming, book better conductors and soloists, and build a more diverse audience.

“Germany’s cultural power-brokers yesterday piled the pressure on the 88-year-old grandson of Richard Wagner in the hope of persuading him to step down from the helm of the Bayreuth Festival.”

“No matter how many people the RIAA sues, no matter how many times music executives point to the growth of digital music, we believe an increasing majority of worldwide consumers simply view recorded music as free.”

Who knows? “Money’s role in making composing possible is the most scandalously undercovered topic in all of musicology.”

Performance injury among musicians is an issue of no small matter. A recent study identified that as much as 65 percent of the music student population suffer from a performance injury.