Liszt Didn’t Just Invent Modern Concert Life, He Invented Modern Music

Stephen Hough: “The influences that shape new musical trends are diffuse, complex, and impossible to codify, but if one person can be credited as being the fountainhead of modern music it is Franz Liszt … in three, totally different stylistic directions. Whether we like his own compositions or not, we cannot avoid contact with Liszt if we have contact with music from the late-19th or 20th centuries.”

Will Corruption Charges Kill Golden Globes?

“Though accusations of entrenched corruption have dogged the HFPA for decades, it has always been tacitly overlooked in the industry. The 11th-hour lawsuit launched late Thursday by former HFPA publicist Michael Russell brought it all out into the open, with allegations of bribery, graft and payola routinely accepted and encouraged by members of the dubious association.”

How Neuroscience Is Changing Our Understanding Of Ourselves

“We are living in the middle of a revolution in consciousness. Over the past few decades, geneticists, neuroscientists, psychologists, sociologists, economists, and others have made great strides in understanding the inner working of the human mind. Far from being dryly materialistic, their work illuminates the rich underwater world where character is formed and wisdom grows.”