Tag: 01.09.19

Provocation: Was Modernism Intended To Exclude The Masses?

“If more and more working people were reading the classics, if they were closing the cultural gap between themselves and the middle classes, how could intellectuals preserve their elite status as arbiters of taste and custodians of rare knowledge? They had to create a new body of modernist literature which was deliberately made so difficult and obscure that the average reader did not understand it.” – JSTOR Daily

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie Was Asked, ‘Are You An African Writer?’ Here’s Her Answer.

“I have no objection at all to being African, in fact it is all I know how to be and so I cannot possibly be anything else. And so my answer to the question “Are you an African Writer?” was no, and not because I am not proudly African. … I said no because I have increasingly been troubled by the subtle and not-so-subtle constraints that the question implies.” — New Statesman

Mark Wigglesworth: Why Singing Opera In English Is A Good Idea

“The idea that opera can only work in its original form is a dangerously small step from saying that Italian or German opera can only be done well by Italians or Germans. Operas are enriched by the breadth of styles that perform them and a variety of approaches is beneficial overall. There’s no one way to enjoy opera, and we should celebrate this inherent diversity. Now is not the time to make it narrower. That’s not accessibility, that’s elitism.” – BachTrack

A String Bass That Actually Fits In A Manageable Travel Case

“The TravelBass breaks down into separate components for transport in a custom case, and is assembled for play when double bassists reach their destination. Its makers – out of Parma, Italy – reckon that roving musicians should be able to take it on aircraft as carry on luggage in a custom hard case … designed to survive life in the cargo hold.” — New Atlas

Internet Protocol Mappers Led Police Back, And Back, And Back To This Random Couple’s House

So you think your phone, or tablet, or computer, was stolen and then landed at an address in South Africa? Er, no. This was all a big mistake. “John and Ann’s house must have just missed MaxMind’s cut-off for remediation. Theirs was the 104th most popular location in the database, with over a million IP addresses mapped to it.” – Gizmodo

The Silent Film Era Produced 10,000 Movies. The Vast Majority Have Been Lost Or Destroyed

Because early motion pictures were released on nitrate film, which is dangerously flammable and susceptible to decay—only to become even more flammable as it deteriorates—the majority of these films are no longer with us today. While the exact number of lost films is unknown, a study commissioned by the Library of Congress ballparks the surviving number at a scant 14 percent. – Smithsonian

How Verdi Took Care Of His Friends: A Retirement Home For Opera Singers

Using his own fortune, Verdi built the retirement home for opera singers and musicians, a neo-Gothic structure that opened in 1899. The composer died less than two years later, but he made sure the profits from his music copyrights kept the home running until the early 1960s, when they expired. Today guests pay a portion of their monthly pension to cover basic costs – food and lodging — while the rest comes from donations. – NPR