The “serious” classical music world seems to be finally acknowledging more popular influences. “In an era of unprecedented domination by market forces it was only a matter of time before the most prestigious musical institutions will take the favorable verdict of the commercial marketplace not as a cause for suspicion, but as an indication of legitimacy. That many composers were disappointed should not be understood as a wholesale rejection of populist sympathies on their part.”
Tag: 08.04
Can The President Be Copyrighted?
The extent to which copyright law plays a role in the increasingly divisive debate over politics and the media which reports on politics is exemplified by a new documentary focusing on the Iraq invasion. Filmmaker Robert Greenwald wanted to use a clip of President Bush ham-handedly defending the invasion on NBC’s Meet the Press, but his request was denied by NBC, which owns the content that goes out over its affiliate stations. But if networks can truly withhold such content from public use, the public persona of a president who chooses to hold very few public press conferences, and who speaks mainly in controlled (and copyrighted) settings is in serious danger of manipulation by the handful of companies that control Big Media.
Imprint Of Memorization
Students don’t memorize texts anymore. “Aren’t exercises in memorizing and reciting poetry and passages of prose an archaic curiosity, without educative value? That too-common view is sadly wrong. Kids need both the poetry and the memorization. As educators have known for centuries, these exercises deliver unique cognitive benefits, benefits that are of special importance for kids who come from homes where books are scarce and the level of literacy low. In addition, such exercises etch the ideals of their civilization on children’s minds and hearts.”
Uk Lit… Where To Look?
“in the past half century, Anglo-Saxon literary attitudes have shifted decisively away from Europe, westwards (and southwards) to the US, Latin America and the Commonwealth. With the shift in British literary outlook away from European modernism and the successors of Sartre and Camus, our last continental icons, and towards the American postwar realists – Updike and Roth, Mailer, Bellow and Morrison – what is our position now towards continental Europe? What ought it to be, as political union expands? How to talk about it?”