Category: music

“Rock band Fightstar is releasing its next single on a disc that is vinyl on one side and a CD on the other. Its record company Gut admits the vinyl-disc is a gimmick but hopes it will capture fans’ imagination.”

“Describing a performance does little to explain what really happens when certain sounds — vibrations in the air — hit our ears and are transmitted to the brain. As visceral as music can be, its ethereal effects on the mind remain largely a mystery, even to neurologists. That’s certainly the overriding impression reading Oliver Sacks’ new collection of vignettes, ‘Musicophilia’.”

“Between 1980 and 2000, classical music more or less disappeared from American network television, magazines, and other mainstream media, its products deemed too élitist, effete, or esoteric for the world of pop.” But “the anonymity of Internet browsing has made classical music more accessible to non-fanatics; first-time listeners can read reviews, compare audio samples, and decide on, for example, a Beethoven recording by Wilhelm Furtwängler, all without risking the humiliation of mispronouncing the conductor’s name under the sour gaze of a record clerk.”

The band was a holdout, not releasing its songs for downloading. “Led Zeppelin’s decision to sell its music online coincides with the end of a fierce bidding war over the rights to administer the band’s catalog of songs.”

“For at least a century, the music has been captive to a cult of mediocre élitism that tries to manufacture self-esteem by clutching at empty formulas of intellectual superiority. Consider some of the rival names in circulation: “art” music, “serious” music, “great” music, “good” music. Yes, the music can be great and serious; but greatness and seriousness are not its defining characteristics. It can also be stupid, vulgar, and insane. Music is too personal a medium to support an absolute hierarchy of values. The best music is music that persuades us that there is no other music in the world.”

“Among all segments of the audience major misconceptions persist about the 12-tone technique of composition devised by Arnold Schoenberg in the 1920s. Schoenberg’s use of systematized sets of all 12 pitches of the chromatic scale — all the keys on the piano from, say, A to G sharp — was a radical departure from tonality, the familiar musical language of major and minor keys.”

“It seems as if every commercial these days has a rock band in it. What was once the mark of utter uncoolness, a veritable byword of selling out, has become the norm. More than a decade ago we became inured to the most unlikely parings.”

“Innovative groups such as Cleveland’s Red (an orchestra) and New York’s Wordless Music– which pairs rock and classical performers together onstage — are using flexible ensembles and uninhibited approaches to both music and performance. They’re throwing out staid conventions and dated repertoire — even the term “classical” itself — and reinventing the classical concert from the ground up.”

Riccardo Muti and the Chicago Symphony have been playing footsie for years now, and despite multiple denials from both sides, it’s clear that the CSO would like to at least consider the fiery maestro as a candidate for music director. Now, following a successful European tour together, Muti is sounding less reticent. “There must be a reason that this great orchestra and I have come together at this moment in our histories. And I am really thinking hard about what this should mean.”

John von Rhein says that now is the time for the Chicago Symphony to stop dithering and offer its podium to Riccardo Muti. “The CSO had best move quickly if it hopes to sign Muti, who’s got musical irons in the fire seemingly everywhere. There is no question in my mind, or in the minds of CSO players I spoke with following the tour, that he is the orchestra’s best and brightest hope.”