Category: music

Ticket prices for symphony orchestra concerts have gone up much faster than the rate of inflation in recent decades. “What if what we’re talking about here is not a crisis in interest in classical music, but a crisis in what the public is willing to pay for that interest, orchestras nationally need to change the dialogue. Our ticket buyers are affluent, orchestras say. Some are, some aren’t. But the relevant question today is not what people are able to pay, but what they’re willing to pay. The answer isn’t more popular programming (though that’s a worthy subject on its own) or punchier adjectives in brochures. It just might be that cheaper tickets would do more to fill houses than an award-winning advertising campaign.”

Police are investigating an alleged embezzlement of $1.25 million in royalties from the Songwriters Guild of America. “The SGA represents about 5,000 songwriter members and their estates. Members may elect to have the guild collect royalties for them from publishers, collecting societies and others. The SGA collects nearly $16 million in royalties annually and holds about 2 percent of that amount, when it cannot find current addresses for writers.”

What kind of conductor will replace Leonard Slatkin as music director of the National Symphony? Tim Page writes that it’s instructive to look at the orchestra’s history. “It is too early to speculate with much authority on who will become the sixth music director of the National Symphony Orchestra. Slatkin’s contract runs for another three seasons (although he is thought to be actively pursuing other jobs, especially Daniel Barenboim’s soon-to-be-vacated position with the Chicago Symphony Orchestra), and the search process is still in its beginning stages.”

EMI is making the last great studio opera recording – Tristan und Isolde with Placido Domingo. It was recorded in 15 sessions spread over eight weeks and cost about $1 million to make. Another Tristan is also being released of a stage performance by the Royal Swedish Opera on the budget-priced Naxos label. “This was made in six days; the orchestra, conductor, and all but one member of the cast were performing the work in the opera house during the same period, thereby cutting down on the need for session time. The performance is professional, satisfying, and in many respects competitive with EMI’s, even though Naxos’s Wolfgang Millgram is not a match for Domingo. Amazon.com sells the Naxos version for $22.98.”

“First Act’s secret weapon is a line of small guitars in cardboard boxes with see-through plastic fronts. They’re sold in the toy departments at Target and Wal-Mart. And they’re revolutionizing the market for musical instruments. In the past decade First Act has essentially created the musical instrument niche at the country’s mass merchant retailers. In 2004 First Act grossed over $100 million and accounted for more than 90 percent of the market share in instrument sales at such stores.”

A plea from the AFM: “As we all know the musicians of the Louisiana Philharmonic Orchestra are currently, and likely will be unemployed from their orchestra for some time, due to the devastation of Hurricane Katrina. In an effort to assist these musicians, it would be extremely helpful if those orchestras who have a need for substitute, extra or other casual musicians could make such need known to the LPO musicians who may desire such employment.”

“As rock has got older, musicians and audiences have inevitably aged with it, but questions remain about what happens to the creative process over the years.”

The boom in iPod sales is fueling a surge in subscriptions to rock magazines…

Mozart owed a lot of his success to his wife. “Constanze and her sisters were brought up in Mannheim, a centre of musical excellence. And, in addition to the sophistication she absorbed from this artistic milieu, she was intelligent – speaking excellent Italian and French as well as her native German. In many ways, she was an ideal wife for a composer. Mozart himself was firmly of that opinion.”

Richard Wagner’s personal shortcomings are well known. A new book lays it out in unstinting detail. “It’s all here: how often Wagner sponged off others, how many women succumbed to his psoriatic charms, what creditors he swindled, where he fled and why, what he said about Jews, how he used everybody, what friends and supporters (from the great Liszt to the sad Ludwig II) he bad-mouthed and in one way or another betrayed. Of course, how he could attract so many absolutely impassioned admirers is far less easy to understand than how he came to quarrel with most of them. But if charisma is puzzling when one doesn’t feel it oneself even in the case of contemporaries, how much more puzzling for this long-dead, repulsive little man, Wagner.”