“These memoirs hold out the promise that you, too, will be able to cope once the eye of Sauron falls on you. Even if the tips are not practical in nature, often the mere lyricism people are able to bring to their tragic situations serves as its own kind of succor. When it comes your turn, you too may be able to make sense of it all by elegant resort to, say, the French existentialists.”
Tag: 01.20.16
Research: Children Bond Through Music (And Avoid Those Who Don’t Know Their Music)
“Young children have a remarkably selective sensitivity to shared cultural knowledge. Children both prefer others who know songs they themselves know, and avoid others who know songs they do not know.”
Hollywood’s Turn Against Digital Effects
“We’ve reached a point where directors and audiences no longer derive authenticity from what looks ‘real’ but from what looked real in seventies, eighties, and nineties blockbusters. And real is an awfully flexible word. … It’s as if directors – especially the reboot generation – have finally become self-conscious about C.G.I.”
How To Fix The Oscars’ Diversity Problem
It’s no secret that the Academy is not diverse. A 2014 study found that its membership was 94 percent white, 76 percent male, and an average of 63 years old—so the most prestigious awards are governed by the tastes of very old white men. The Academy not only needs to diversify its leadership, but should also institute a cut-off age of 65 for members whose tastes no longer reflect the current zeitgeist.
George Weidenfeld, Dean Of British Publishers, Dead At 96
After fleeing to the UK from Vienna in 1938, “he founded his publishing house with Nigel Nicolson in 1949 … He published big-name authors from Charles de Gaulle to Pope John Paul II and Henry Kissinger … In 1959, Weidenfeld & Nicolson risked obscenity laws to publish Lolita.”
ISIS Has Razed The Oldest Christian Monastery In Iraq
“Located just four miles south of Mosul,” Dair Mar Elia (St. Elijah’s Monastery) “was built in the 6th century by Assyrian Catholic monks … [Satellite] imagery analyst Stephen Wood described the stone walls as ‘literally pulverized … into this field of gray-white dust.'”
Lorin Maazel’s Castleton Festival Called Off For 2016
The summer event, “which conductor Lorin Maazel founded on his private estate in Virginia in 2009 and nurtured until his death in 2014, … [will] take a year-long hiatus. … ‘I have no finances anymore,’ said Dietlinde Maazel, the actress and widow of the conductor, who took over the festival after her husband’s death.”
What Makes One Thing A Language And Another A Dialect?
A language is indeed a dialect with an army and a navy; or, more to the point, a language is a dialect that got put up in the shop window. Yes, people can sit down in a room and decide upon a standardized version of a dialect so that large numbers of people can communicate with maximal efficiency—no more clau, clav, and ciav. But standardization doesn’t make something “better.”
What Fairy Tales Tell Us About Our History
“Folktales are often disregarded as lesser forms of literature, but they’re valuable sources of information on cultural history. Despite being fictitious, they work as simulations of reality.”
Top Posts From AJBlogs 01.20.16
Playing For The Screens – Is Our Obsession With Video Changing The Live Arts Experience?
One weekend last November, the biggest box-office at movie theatres throughout the UK wasn’t for the latest Hollywood blockbuster (the latest Hunger Games movie opened that Friday). It was for a live broadcast of Kenneth Branagh’s production of The Winter’s Tale which was streamed live to 520 theatres in the UK … read more
AJBlog: Diacritical Published 2016-01-20
Repeating some lessons
As we head into 2016, we — meaning we in classical music — have to focus more than ever on the future. We have to! Because here are some truths, truths that can’t be said strongly enough. … read more
AJBlog: Sandow Published 2016-01-20
How Cage Makes Us Philosophize
One name that musicians may run across often in the literature on John Cage and not recognize is Richard Fleming. He’s a philosophy professor at Bucknell University, a friend of mine for twenty-five years, and … read more
AJBlog: PostClassic Published 2016-01-20
For Fun: Shorty Rogers
When the music labeled West Coast Jazz was still in its heyday, before rock achieved more or less total dominance in popular music, Shorty Rogers maintained his popularity. One of his most successful pieces was … read more
AJBlog: RiffTides Published 2016-01-20
slow it down
The sixth movement of Olivier Messiaen’s Turangalîla-Symphonie presents an interesting lesson in melody, harmony and scoring, if we can step beyond the usual comments on birdsong, modes of limited transposition and the Ondes Martenot … read more
AJBlog: Infinite Curves Published 2016-01-20
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