“His players often sound as terrified as they must have been: it is worth going to YouTube and listening to a few of the maestro’s rehearsals, which still horrify in their sound and fury, the range of his imprecations, the breaking of his batons and hurling of his score. As Lotte Lehmann said, ‘If we weren’t good, this certainly wasn’t going to make us any better.’”
Category: music
Chopin, With Catlike Tread, Changed Pianists’ Relationship To The Pedal
Jeremy Denk: “His whole achievement depended on a catlike understanding of which notes hold on and which let go; on delicate traceries between chords, suspending dangerously on a single note or pair of notes, and then, once a foothold is established, leaping to a new harmony as if it were nothing.”
Battle Over Cleaning Up Music Databases Erupts In A Full-Out Industry War
Three weeks ago, Congress proposed a global, centralized music database to ensure that artists get paid on every streaming platform. Then, performance rights organizations (PROs) ASCAP and BMI announced that they had started work on a joint authoritative music database one year ago. Now, the RIAA and the NMPA have started discussions on a possible shared music rights database.
This Machine Is Why Music Sounds So Generic Right Now
“A lot of this aural blandness has to do with technology. It begins with the producer who relies on a computer rather than live instrumentalists and ends with the devices we use to consume our music, which cut out the dynamics captured in the recording studio.”
The Average Hit Pop Song Now Has Four Writers And Six Publishers
“In the 1960s, an average hit song on the Billboard Top 10 had an average of 1.87 writers and 1.68 publishers each year. Songwriting duos were common, and creativity a simpler endeavor. Now, popular mainstream songs have (on average) at least four writers and six publishers each. And that, ladies and gentlemen, underscores the challenge that the music industry faces in licensing and rights administration.”
Anne Midgette: The Best 35 Women Composers, A List
“In the wake of much discussion about the chronic underrepresentation of female composers on American concert programs, I came up with my own best-of list. Since I was responding to a list of recordings, I confined myself to artists active in the recorded music era, the 20th and 21st centuries”
At What Point Does Sacred Music Become Too Sensuous? Christianity Is Not The Only Religion To Struggle With The Question
Arguments about whether and when music in church was uplifting or distracting go back to at least St. Augustine and St. Jerome – but, as Alexander Lee finds out, various Jewish, Muslim, and Buddhist sages and authorities have hashed out similar disputes and come up with widely varying answers. (Do we take it Hindus and Confucians saw no such dilemmas?)
Seattle Opera Faces ‘Yellowface’ Issues Around ‘Madama Butterfly’ Head-On
“In reality, Cio-Cio San is a sex-trafficked 15-year-old Japanese teenager,” says Seattle Opera’s (Japanese-American) media-relations manager. “Why are we so comfortable with that, to the point of romanticizing it and telling the story over and over?” The company is, and has been, examining that question; Jason Victor Serinus reports on how.
Tyshawn Sorey: In The Cracks Of Improvisation And Between Genres
What isn’t immediately clear is where Mr. Sorey’s written music ends, and where improvisations begin. “The idea of what is composed and what is improvised is pointless,” Mr. Sorey said.
What Defines Hip In Classical Music
“Classical hipsters don’t try to be hip. They just are. Attempted hipsterism is often geared towards reaching the younger audience member. There have been some notable successes, but not in the numbers we hoped to achieve. Audiences young and “old” recognize a strong, committed performance of the music we create on stage. Let’s always start there.”