Category: today’s top story

“When taxis began to arrive from the railway station bearing a small flock of art dealers from London, the small country auction rooms suspected something was up. A few hours later, a little painting on copper of a laughing young man, valued at up to £1,500 as in the style of Rembrandt, had been snapped up by an agent for an unidentified bidder for £2.2m.” The buyer believes it’s a genuine Rembrandt. The experts say no way.

Montreal Symphony music director Kent Nagano has laid an ultimatum at the feet of the local amateur choir that sings frequently with the orchestra: get better, or else. “The January performances of Wagner’s opera Tannhäuser are a test the choir must pass. “What the choir had to achieve to satisfy him, and what the consequences were, were not clear.”

England’s Royal Northern College of Music is trying to change the traditional conservatory model, under which students are drilled in the technical and musical demands of the profession, but left largely unprepared for a music world in which the supply of quality musicians far outstrips the demand. “Each and every student learns about the business end of music as part of the standard BMus degree programme. The course includes a strand known as supporting professional studies, which aims to impart business knowledge, communication skills, and a spirit of entrepreneurialism: all the aspects demanded of 21st-century professional musicians.”

An investigation has revealed that fully 1/6 of the Library of Congress’s collection of books and periodicals cannot be located at the present time. “Officials at the library say they believe most of the missing materials are misplaced, not stolen or lost.” Still, the revelation is being called “deeply troubling” by those in charge of the nation’s primary print archive.

The New York Phil may or may not be headed to North Korea next year, but in a surprise move, Pyongyang has given permission for North Korea’s state orchestra to mount a tour of the UK in early 2008. The orchestra’s connection to Britain is the opera singer Suzannah Clarke, who has performed in North Korea to great acclaim.

So much is written about the Turner Prize when the shortlist is unveiled every year, but how often do you get a serious examination of the actual art being celebrated? It may not be as juicy as all the ideological debate, but Adrian Searle has a complete analysis of the 2007 Turner finalists, currently on show in Liverpool.

“The original part of memory is the memory of actions and procedures and sequences, starting with crawling and walking. This part of memory also includes musical and textual sequences.” It seems to be involved in the way some tunes replay themselves in our minds even after we’re tired of them. It may also account for the way that musical and textual memory tends to work best with long units of information – on whole phrases in sequence, rather than on individual notes and words.”

Was Vivaldi a preening sexpot who used his rock star-like fame to feed his voracious appetite for virginal teenage girls? Well… um, no, probably not, actually. But that first sentence grabbed your attention, didn’t it? So it’s no surprise that several recent books and an upcoming Hollywood “biopic” are using that same exaggeration as their main come-on.

“Step aside maestro. Would-be conductors now have a system that allows them to change the tempo and dynamics of a virtual orchestra with the wave of a hand… Instead of a baton, [a scientist] equips the would-be conductor with an eWatch, a computer the size and shape of a large wristwatch that contains accelerometers and tilt sensors.”

“The strange emotional power of swearing–as well as the presence of linguistic taboos in all cultures– suggests that taboo words tap into deep and ancient parts of the brain. In general, words have not just a denotation but a connotation: an emotional coloring distinct from what the word literally refers to, as in principled versus stubborn and slender versus scrawny.”