Category: music

Composer Frederick Stocken is no fan of Pierre Boulez. Stocken acknowledges that Boulez was a revolutionary in his younger days, fighting to throw off the repression of tonality. But as the 20th Century progressed, “it was the old story of the revolutionaries becoming as repressive as the masters they had sought to overthrow. In the musical world, the Young Turks became a powerful, “anti-establishment” establishment in which all that was subversive was acceptable and anything deemed traditional was banned. Far from fulfilling its emancipatory promise, atonality became just another dogma, an “official” art. If the parallels between communism and modernism have any truth, how is it that the Marx-influenced aesthetic of Boulez did not collapse with the downfall of communism?” – New Statesman

Is that Julie Andrews you hear singing in the streets of Leicester? Yes! Along with scores of Londoners singing along to the 1965 film as it’s being displayed on a huge outdoor screen with accompanying karaoke-style lyrics. Also available at the event are sing-along kits, which include “a foam nun (to wave during the opening nun sequence), a fake edelweiss flower (for Christopher Plummer’s solo number) and Ricola mints for the ensuing sore throat.” – Singapore Straits Times (USA Today)

The Ontario government has withdrawn from a deal with the Canadian Opera Company to sell a prime site for construction of a new opera house. – CBC

• City and federal government help pave way for Canadian Opera Company’s new home. – CBC 03/14/00

“My music collection, in principle, remains on my shelves, but increasingly it lives in my computer.” Part of the pleasure of collecting something is establishing a physical relationship with objects. What happens when the object of a collecting mania disappears into the ether? – Feed

In the wake of protests over what music gets to be listed on Britain’s classical music sales charts, some are wondering: so what is classical music anyway? Who cares? – The Guardian

Like that concert you just heard? Want to take it home with you? Now London’s South Bank Center will make it happen. If you want a CD of that performance, South Bank will deliver it to you within an hour of the end of the concert. Appreciating music, after all, is about being able to hear repeat performances. – London Times

If it’s okay for rock bands and sports teams, why not for symphony orchestras? Beginning next month the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra will project itself on an enormous screen above its stage (no instant replays or super-slo-mo for now, though). – New Zealand Herald

Franz Welser-Most, director designate of the venerable Cleveland Orchestra, on the difference between American and European orchestras: “American orchestras come prepared, which European orchestras mostly don’t. You must be a really great instrumentalist to play in an American orchestra. In Europe, there is a different angle: good musicianship first, and then the technical side hopefully will be there as well. This is one reason why a lot of marriages between American orchestras and European music directors have been very happy and successful.” – Los Angeles Times

In the 1970’s a group of musicians in Chile set the revolution to music by forming the New Song movement – a mix of folk music, contemporary protest song, popular poetry and added Andean pan pipes, flutes and the charango, a tiny mandolin-style guitar. The Pinochet regime quickly banned all instruments associated with the movement, and one singer was murdered.  Pinochet’s return to Chile has brought fear of oppression, causing musicians to raise their instruments again in protest. – The Scotsman

London’s Hampstead and Highgate Festival will present a recently rediscovered opera, “The Philosopher’s Stone” which Mozart was a collaborator on. The production, scheduled for May, will be the first time the opera has been heard in Europe since 1814. – BBC Music Magazine