Category: music

How to explain the century-long currents of music atonalism and serialism? Bernard Holland thinks he’s figured it out. “Fascism starts with a charismatic leader and moves on to megalomania, fanaticism, factionalism and a new order aimed at sweeping all detritus from its path. Fascism attracts people looking for one answer to a lot of complex problems; it doesn’t have that answer, but the one it throws out is persuasive. Arnold Schoenberg waved the 12 commandments at a generation of composers bewildered by the tower of Babel they had been forced to live in. They were looking for an answer, and many were quick to follow.” – New York Times

Judge rules big against illegal distribution of music over the internet with judgment against MP3. – Salon

Napster and piracy issues aside, on-line music companies are trying to doll themselves up to make themselves attractive to music fans. – Wired

The recording industry wins a suit against MP3.COM for compiling a database of music that can be downloaded. But the company says that compared to Napster, it’s one of the good guys. – Wired

The New York Philharmonic has decided it wants Riccardo Muti as its next music director. But even though the Philharmonic’s wishes have become public, it isn’t at all certain yet that the Italian maestro is sure he really wants, or needs, the podium that Kurt Masur plans to vacate in 2002. “Although orchestra officials deny that terms have even been discussed, rumors abound that Muti is holding out for a salary of $2 million and an annual residency of six weeks. “What [Muti] is doing, like the clever negotiator he is, is playing hardball,” says a highly placed executive in the music business who knows all parties in the negotiations.” – Chicago Tribune

The Berlin Philharmonic has been counting on Simon Rattle, its new music director, to infuse new life into the orchestra. But the conductor’s recipe for doing that has some a little nervous. “Rattle has made it clear that the Berliners will be lucky to get Brahms once a year, and should be thinking more in terms of Adès and Turnage. He told a German publication that the orchestra plays beautifully ‘but also very loudly’; that it will have to start justifying its annual subsidy; that it should stop turning its nose up at crossover music; that it should spend more time in Germany, instead of trying to be the touring orchestra with the best Tchaikovsky Fifth; that it can no longer expect people to roll up at its doors in time-honoured fashion.” – Financial Times

China has seized 200,000 pirated DVD’s and CD’s in a raid in Guangzhou, its largest haul yet of stolen music and movies. – Variety

A newly-discovered piece by Johann Sebastian Bach has been published for the first time. It’s a motet, found in a trove of manuscripts in the Ukraine. – BBC

Some might call it that, but those little buzzy tunes and blurbles and bleeps emanating from our tools are becoming more and more intrusive. “Dangerous as it is to make predictions, electronic games, computers and the latest mobile phones all suggest that various unforeseen combinations of sound and image will come to dominate our work and leisure in the near future.” – The Age (Melbourne)

Jazz was once a freeform of innovation. But the “back to basics” movement led by Wynton Marsalis has pulled jazz back to its roots, and the Lincoln Center jazz program has helped institutionalize it. Though many are happy about the turn away from cacophonous directions, some critics complain that jazz has become entombed in a museum. Statistics from the Recording Industry Association of America indicate that jazz claims less than two percent of the overall music market. – Miami New Times