Category: music

Researchers have determined that noise levels in the typical orchestra pit are not dangerous to players’ hearing. “The researchers found that the noise exposure of players of all of the instrument groups fell below acceptable 85 dBA (noise exposure level measured in decibels – dB, corrected to the frequency response of the human ear – A) for an eight-hour day recommended by institutions such as the U.S. National Institute of Safety and Health, the International Standard Organization (ISO) and also included in the Canadian Standards Association.”

Australia’s state governments are recating angrily to proposed cuts in federal support for the countrey’s orchestras. “The cuts would be made at the Tasmanian, South Australian and Queensland orchestras and the redundancies would cost $3 million. Governments in those states say they are appalled by the plan. They say the Federal Government will use the report’s findings to centralise the nation’s arts resources in Sydney and Melbourne.”

A new Australian government report recommends reducing the number of musicians in the country’s major orchestras. The author of the report “doesn’t like to call them ‘player cuts’. He refers to ‘a reduction in the permanent establishment’ of the Queensland Orchestra (from 89 to 74 musicians), Adelaide Symphony Orchestra (from 74 to 56) and Tasmanian Symphony Orchestra (from 47 to 38, or a large chamber orchestra). ‘Any suggestion there be less players [will be] met with some emotion. But we’ve tried to be realistic and look at long-term viability’.”

“Sydney is the only city in Australia that can justify two orchestras, and it’s unrealistic for the others to expect world-class standards from even one, a new report says.”

The City of Chicago and its musicians have been on uneasy terms for several years. But “a multifaceted dialogue involving city officials, club owners, record-company and studio owners and music-industry veterans has created the Chicago Music Commission, which aims to raise Chicago’s profile internationally, turn its musical variety into a major tourist attraction and bring millions of additional dollars into city coffers and businesses. One city official called it the Chicago cultural equivalent of the Czech Republic’s “velvet revolution,” in which the communist regime quietly gave way to the coun-try’s first free elections in 40 years.”

David Patrick Stearns doesn’t think much of attempts to marry orchestra music with images. “My newest theory on the subject is this: Sight and sound are a perpetually uneasy marriage and always will be. So how about an annulment, or at least separate bedrooms – allowing cohabitation rights without the responsibility of mutual support? Even when video and music are successfully manipulated to work toward one goal, they just might compete for the same part of your brain and cancel each other out. Maybe sight and sound can happen simultaneously without everyone working so strenuously to achieve some unified statement. Maybe greater dividends arise from an un-unified statement.”

Why does music sometimes get stuck in your head? “A team from Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, played music to volunteers while using a technique called functional magnetic resonance imagery to scan their brains. As the music was played, parts of the tune were cut. Researchers found volunteers mentally filled in the blanks if a familiar song was missing snippets, although the same effect was not seen with unfamiliar tunes. The brain activity was picked up by the scan and found to be centred in the auditory cortex.”

Riccardo Muti has refused to conduct the La Scala orchestra, saying that the company is in crisis. “I believe that, at the moment, there are not the conditions for us to play music together.” His announcement forced the theatre to scrap a concert by La Scala Philharmonic that was to have been performed on Friday, the latest in a string of cancellations pitching the house into financial crisis.

When did classical music fall off the American cultural radar? Moreover, how did it get on the radar in the first place? Joseph Horowitz’s newest tome tackles the full scope and history of classical music in the U.S., and comes to some fairly dark conclusions. “Horowitz partly blames the early 20th century ‘Toscanini Cult,’ devout worshipers of an imported Italian conductor, as one of the main catalysts for the demise. This was the Waterloo, the point at which, in the eyes of Americans, classical music went strictly European… It was also the point at which we became overzealously fascinated not with the music being played, but with the performers who played it, a shift the author views as an unhealthy offshoot of a market-driven culture.”

In the two years since the Utah Symphony & Opera merged to become one organization, ticket sales have declined and the ensemble has become alarmingly reliant on special contributions to stay afloat financially. The merger was supposed to cut overhead costs, but spending has actually increased instead, leading to accusations of mismanagement from the US&O’s musicians. Lots of U.S. orchestras are struggling, of course, but the US&O’s 2002-03 operating deficit was fully 10% of its total budget, an alarming figure that is causing some observers to question whether the merged organization can survive.