Category: music

Making arrangements of composers’ music was a flourishing business up until the early 20th Century. But more recently the arrangement “is widely regarded as second-class music. At best it is tolerated, at worst disdained.” What happened? “For the last 80 years, musicology has been increasingly successful in pressing the case for the urtext: an authentic performing edition in which, purportedly, the composer’s original thought is perfectly preserved, every note is sacrosanct and the ‘sonic surface’ of the music is reproduced exactly as the composer envisaged it. A musical performance, by this view, should amount to the re-creation of a bit of history.”

With American orchestras struggling to stay open and solve their finances, even big orchestras such as the Chicago Symphony are having to re-evaluate their positions. “Our moment of fiscal truth is fast approaching. There is a new labor contract to be negotiated next year, and many are expecting a dogfight. Whoever succeeds Henry Fogel as president and CEO of the CSO Association must satisfy the board’s mandate to trim costs while satisfying musicians that he or she is maintaining the CSO’s competitive edge among the Big Five U.S. orchestras. All this will place an unusually heavy burden on the CSO’s next top administrator.”

The Boys Choir of Harlem is an American success story. “The journey from church-basement dream to established institution with a $3.8 million annual budget is an astonishing achievement.Today there are 622 students, male and female (the Girls Choir of Harlem was founded in 1993). Each year, about 2,000 young people audition for about 150 places. All of the students take classes in music history, theory, voice, and an instrument, in addition to the full New York state-mandated curriculum; classes continue during tours – some teachers come along, some students keep up through the Internet. Ninety-eight percent of the graduates attend college. The academy has inspired similar schools in Chicago and Detroit.”

The Rochester Philharmonic is projecting a $550,000 deficit this season. But in the short term, finances are even worse. “An estimated cash shortage of up to $900,000 this fiscal year could jeopardize the RPO’s ability to pay its musicians and vendors as soon as next month. The RPO faced a similar budget squeeze last year, but $350,000 in administrative cuts paved the way for a modest surplus. This year, however, the ensemble has little left to cut.”

Between ringing cell phones, program rustling and yahoos screaming bravo before the last notes have a chance to die out, concert manners seem to be at an all time low. Peter Dobrin offers a code of conduct he wishes could be adopted by audience members. “It’s obviously time to find some pleasant way of reminding visitors how to act. This is not one of those disapproving tsk-tsk reprimands. I’m not in favor of tradition for tradition’s sake. I’m not trying to make anyone feel bad. On the contrary, I’m trying to make everyone at the concert feel good.”

This year’s SXSW conference in Austin Texas found “many of the acts that generated the most buzz during the five-day lineup of 1,000-plus bands came from outside the country.” This year’s dominant music: “Garage bands were definitely the rage this year, a trend that felt like overkill by the end of the week. Many of the groups came up through the same Detroit scene that spawned the Stripes, which led to a quip by the singer of the black-clad Motor City band the Electric Six: ‘If this were the Olympics, [Detroit] would be like Russia’.”

Forty years ago Bob Moog invented the first synthesizer. It defined electronic music in the 1960s. Now Moog is back with what he calls the greatest synthesizer ever made. It’s his first instrument in decades. Only one problem: “British trademark law means that the 70-year-old creative genius cannot sell his synth under the internationally recognised brands of Moog Music or Minimoog, because they have been appropriated by an entrepreneur in Wales.”

A reissue of Sarah Vaughan’s recordings give insight into what made her one of the great singers of the 20th Century. Yet she was also careless about protecting her musical gifts. “Essentially, she was correct in her belief that miracles, like her voice itself, not only happen but, like diamonds, are forever. Or, at least, they should come with a lifetime guarantee. Her voice, which ripened with age into plummier, darker depths, really was a like a precious gift from heaven that just kept on giving. It kept on giving, in fact, right up until the lifelong, two-pack-a-day smoker died from lung cancer at 66 in 1990.”

Showing a little skin to try to sell recordings is one thing, but a new series of “classical” (and we use the term advisedly) recordings is right over the top. “Shacking Up To Chopin, Making Out To Mozart and Bedroom Bliss With Beethoven are the three albums in the Love Notes series. Each claims to be “the perfect addition to intimate moments” and boasts a selection of “teasing, tantalising and suggestive melodies with rapturous crescendos”. They also promise to provoke “uninhibited passion”, “loss of control” and “sleepless nights of the best kind”.

The San Antonio Symphony, which announced two weeks ago that it didn’t have enough money to make its payroll or pay more than $400,000 in past-due bills, says it has raised $200,000 since then, enough to pay musicians for the delayed payroll and cover some of the payroll due today. The musicians agreed to continue playing, and most staffers remained on the job. “The symphony has collected about $200,000 in individual gifts and proceeds from benefits hastily organized by other organizations concerned for the orchestra’s survival.”