Category: music

“We have been told variously that classical music is an indispensable dinner-party accessory (Classic FM), an IQ boost for the newborn (LSO), a deterrent to vandals (London Underground), an MTV substitute (New York Philharmonic), a mating call for gay men (BMG), a readers’ companion (Penguin Books), a come-on for tourists (Republic of Austria) and a cure for the common cold (lab results awaited). What any of this has to do with sampling and enjoying a 300-year heritage of lyric narrative and emotion gets lost in the fever of the sales pitch.”

“A University of Pittsburgh music professor is disseminating a new approach to teaching history, English, social studies and other humanities by including music to be studied like any primary text. The results have been stunning for those teachers who have implemented his program in their curriculums. ‘If music is one of the primary ways teenagers identify with each other, why not use it in the classes’?”

Benjamin Franklin was the inventor of many things. Now a Pennsylvania professor of music says the founding father was also a composer…

Charlotte Higgins recently took some time off from attending live classical concerts, and upon returning to the concert hall, she was struck by how absurd orchestra musicians look in their white ties and tails. “For the musicians, these heavy clothes can barely be comfortable on searingly hot nights; in any case, it is interesting to note that more and more conductors (who, unlike the rank and file orchestral players, have the power to dress as they please) abandon dinner jacket or tails whenever possible… Formality and dignity do not have to go hand in hand with antediluvian dressing. You would have thought that someone would have asked Paul Smith to design their orchestra’s kit by now. Or Prada (what a delicious thought).”

“A community museum in British Columbia has discovered a violin in its collection that may be a rare instrument created by 17th-century maestro Antonio Stradivari. The violin has been held at the New Westminster Museum and Archives since the 1980s.” But the violin has yet to be authenticated, and the museum admits that it may well turn out to be a copy. “An authenticated Stradivarius violin typically fetches between $2 million and $3 million.”

Two London orchestra executives are taking great umbrage with a Guardian critic who recently painted the classical music industry as out of touch with the public and obsessed with money and marketing gimmicks. “Money is important – it keeps orchestras in business – but it is wrong to say that the extra commitment is not there… Little in life remains unaffected by the market economy – including English symphony orchestras. To succeed, we have to attract sponsors and be able to fund our activities. Diversifying and trying new ventures, such as producing DVDs aimed at six-month-olds, allows us to reach out to new audiences and become self-financing.”

The Edinburgh Festival is a huge event and a potentially overwhelming experience, and anyone could use a hand in selecting which concert might be their best bet, and which one they should avoid like the plague. The ever-helpful Michael Tumelty is on hand to point out that this year’s fest features a performance by a Hungarian orchestra of what nearly everyone agrees is the worst concert piece ever written by Richard Strauss. It’s just mind-numbingly awful, simplistic, and clearly tossed off by the composer while he waited for something better to do. So which concert would Tumelty recommend you not miss? Yeah, um, that one.

Among the unusual amenities available to patrons of Minneapolis’s new Cesar Pelli-designed public library are two refurbished grand pianos that anyone can sign up to practice on. “But unexpected problems with soundproofing, acclimating and tuning in the new building have caused delays,” and the pianos will stay silent for the forseeable future, until the library comes up with a plan to fix the problems and the money to pay for it.

Following a two-year search, the Houston Symphony has appointed violinist Angela Fuller as its new concertmaster. Fuller, who has been a member of the Minnesota Orchestra since 1999, will join an extremely select group of women leading major American orchestras. At 29, she will also be one of the youngest concertmasters among major orchestras.

The technology required to reproduce music through a set of speakers has come a long way in the past 80 years, and in recent years it has shrunk down to the point that you can get very decent sound out of a music player the size of a credit card. However, there’s one aspect of audible sound that has never been able to adapt to the needs of the portable generation of music players: bass sound. The subwoofer has always been a big unwieldy thing, and it has always been essential to truly high-quality sound reproduction. But a new breakthrough promises to change all that, offering true bass resonance in a tiny tube.