Category: music

“The nature of the crime suggests that the thieves knew what they were after, which is a downer on one hand and encouraging on the other. If they know what they have, they’re less likely to damage it. But if they know what they have, they might be more likely to have a buyer lined up, and the violin could be on its way out of the country on a private jet.”

“Why is that? Possibly because it’s so lucrative, and so there is no pressure on it to change; I don’t know, possibly because it is easy and pleasurable and so its followers aren’t the kind of people to demand challenges. They are happy with one fixed form for all music, called the song.”

“There is a creepy bloodlust to the doom-mongering of classical music, as though an autopsy were being conducted on a still-breathing body. … What supports these jeremiads is the implicit idea that classical music is an aberration in the United States, something to be regarded with suspicion.”

“Scientists have come up with a way to reveal the pecking order within a string quartet. A team from the Royal Academy of Music and the University of Birmingham found that analysing how individual musicians vary their timing to follow the rest of the group can indicate a hierarchy.”

Over the past six years he has composed and digitally released over 14,000 songs. In a single day, he says, he records between five and 100 tracks, though he averages 20.

“Last February, Met officials announced a reversal of the price increase, acknowledging that their foray into dynamic pricing had had unintended consequences. The financial disclosure, filed as part of the requirements of a $100 million bond offering in 2013, shows average attendance fell to 79% of the opera house’s capacity—even lower than officials projected last February.”

“A 300-year-old Stradivarius violin on loan to Milwaukee Symphony Orchestra concertmaster Frank Almond was stolen during an armed robbery after a performance by Almond at Wisconsin Lutheran College.”

Donations are up, as is income from the HD broadcasts, but attendance reached only 79% in 2012-13.

With a concert last Friday at Paris’s Cité de la Musique, the Quatuor Ysaÿe made its adieux. Said violist Miguel da Silva, “This discipline requires such sacrifices that it’s legitimate to say, after 30 years, that’s enough.” (in French)

“That would be a slight increase over last year’s 28.4 million viewers and the second-biggest Grammy audience since 1993.”