Nicholas Kenyon argues that far from dying, classical music is thriving. “The real problem for classical music is that no one expects it to change, because it is steeped in tradition and is too often associated exclusively with the past. Yet it changes continually, both in character and in content. New music, so often thought of as esoteric and unappealing, has never been more varied in style and substance than now.”
Tag: 05.01.06
A New Idea In Collaborative Writing (Or Book By Committee)
A Scottish technician is auctioning off the writing of pages of a book on eBay. “So far, eight pages of the unique book, Novel Twists, have been written by eight different people from Scotland, Canada, Ireland, the US, and England. Nobody knows who is going to write the ninth page, never mind the following 241. Each author has to contribute between 250 and 450 words, making for a book of 62,000 to 112,000 words. As for the plot, it’s anybody’s guess.”
Acocella: The Troubled Graham Legacy
The troubled Martha Graham Company season was down to one performance – a gala – this year. And there’s plenty that’s not working right, writes Joan Acocella. “So certain things didn’t work. And for a portion of the Graham audience, I suspect, [artistic director Janet] Eilber’s whole effort to renovate this repertory is not going to work. No artist ever had a greater reputation for high-mindedness than Graham. That was part of her mystique, and so, for some of her old fans, a program like this is going to look like a cheap sales job.”
Scottish Arts Get Funding Boost
“They will share the £2.1 million funding increase in 2007-8 – a rise of almost 14 per cent – bringing Executive spending on them up to a total of more than £22 million. The extra cash will be shared between Scottish Ballet, Scottish Opera, the Royal National Scottish Orchestra, the Scottish Chamber Orchestra and the National Theatre for Scotland.”
How Do Arts Organizations Get The Word Out?
A conference in LA discusses what works. “Newspapers are still the dominant source of information about arts events, but e-mail is becoming increasingly important. About $30 billion was spent online in the 2005 holiday season, an increase of 30% over 2004. The average age of online users is 49, but all age groups are users. Sixty-five percent of users are women, and of them, 47% have postgraduate degrees. Household incomes of those using the Internet average $75,000.”
Philip Roth Wins PEN Lifetime Award
Philip Roth, whose many novels include “Portnoy’s Complaint” and “The Plot Against America,” has received the PEN/Nabokov Award for lifetime achievement, a prize worth $20,000.
Handel Makes A Comeback
“It’s a bit of a mystery why Handel has become so crucial for early-twenty-first-century listeners. The prior century made a cult of Bach, whose music takes the form of an endless contrapuntal quest. Perhaps, in an age of information overload and ambient fear, we have more need for Handel’s gentler, steadier art. At the same time, though, this composer appeals to the permanent hunger for high-class melodrama and psychological theatre.”
Davis: Voigt’s Voice Is Different After Weight Loss
Peter G. Davis detects a change in Deborah Voigt’s voice since she lost weight. “A change has also come over Voigt’s voice lately, though it’s hard to tell if it’s from weight loss or normal aging—controversy still rages over whether Maria Callas’s drastic diets contributed to her rapid vocal decline.”
An “Anti-Meier Committee Forms In Rome
To his admirers, architect Richard Meier has “the most consistent portfolio of any architect alive; to his detractors, the most repetitive. You can identify one of his buildings in an instant, yet they tend to go with everything. Currently, Meier finds himself at the centre of an almighty controversy. His new Ara Pacis Museum is the first significant structure to go up in Rome’s historic centre since Mussolini’s time, and as such it has attracted a great deal of attention, mostly negative.”
No Room For Movie Critics? Au Contraire
“Everyone has always had an opinion, but now those opinions find ample display space on the Web. As for movie marketing, the dynamics haven’t just changed, they’ve been transformed — by the Web and TV, as well as the pervasive and pernicious use of focus groups (thank you for that, marketing consultants), and by stupendous marketing budgets, justified by the global economy, that pound every head in the cosmos with news of the latest studio release. What these writers neglect to mention, however, is the awkward issue of quality.”