Musicologist and conductor David Skinner writes about how the discovery of fragments of music manuscript behind some plasterwork at an Oxford College led him to a text written by Queen Katherine Parr for the nation to, as it were, pray the king into battle.
Tag: 03.13.17
Designing A Surreal, Sugar-Fueled Fantasy Ballet
Whipped Cream, a Richard Strauss ballet from 1924, really is a sugar-fueled fantasy: the story is about a boy who runs amok in a pasrty shop and starts hallucinating about an enormous dancing mass of whipped cream (and more) after a few sweets too many. (He’s saved by Princess Praline and Prince Coffee.) Alexei Ratmansky is reviving Whipped Cream for ABT, and pop-surrealist painter Mark Ryden is creating the sets and costumes. Angelica Frey has a look at what Ryden is cooking up.
Do Corporate Sponsors Have A Corrosive Effect On Art?
“Since the times of the Renaissance, when the clergy and rich merchants started to support artists who could immortalise their legacy and whose art could provide atonement for their sins, artists have been feeling uneasy about the relationship between artistic talent and commerce.”
Are Misperceptions Standing In The Way Of Advocacy For The NEA?
“Public awareness of the role of the arts is undermined by deeply entrenched perceptions. Yes, people like the arts, some quite a lot, but that’s not enough. Because the way they think about the arts is shaped by a number of common default patterns of thinking that obscure a sense of public responsibility or value.”
As It Was Hemorrhaging Money, Met Museum Paid Big Bonuses To Senior Execs
“The Metropolitan Museum of Art doled out hefty pay raises and six-figure bonuses to top executives despite a looming deficit that threatened to reach $40 million, records show.”
The Guardian Axes Its Theatre Blog
Why The Guardian’s Killing Of Lyn Gardner’s Theatre Blog Is A Disaster
Mark Shenton, even as he laments the disappearance of arts critics from news outlets all over, writes that “it’s not just that Gardner is one of the best, most vital theatrical commentators there is, constantly drawing attention to things away from the mainstream; she also has a keen appreciation of a wide theatrical landscape. She gets to more theatres around the UK than any other critic I know.”
Dance Or Die: He Faced Down Death Threats From ISIS And His Father Rather Than Give Up Ballet
Ahmad Joudeh grew up in a Palestinian refugee camp in Damascus, where his father beat him and ultimately threw him out of the house for continuing to dance ballet. He supported his mother by giving dance lessons, but fled when the Syrian army tried to draft him into the civil war. Renate van der Zee recounts how Joudeh made the semifinals of Beirut’s version of So You Think You Can Dance and ended up with the Dutch National Ballet.
The Eugene Symphony’s Amazing Track Record Choosing Music Directors (And How They Do It)
“The intensive, exhaustive process used to choose them all, largely created by local lawyer and arts supporter Roger Saydack, has become a national model — “he literally wrote the book” on picking a music director, says ESO executive director Scott Freck, noting that Saydack wrote the League of American Orchestras’ manual on orchestra MD searches. So who becomes the next ESO artistic leader matters — not just here, but nationally.”
The Lexicography Wars – Why It’s So Difficult To Define Short Words
Generally speaking, the smaller and more commonly used the word is, the more difficult it is to define. Words like “but,” “as,” and “for” have plenty of uses that are syntactically similar but not identical. Verbs like “go” and “do” and “make” (and, yes, “take”) don’t just have semantically oozy uses that require careful definition but semantically drippy uses as well. “Let’s do dinner” and “let’s do laundry” are identical syntactically but feature very different semantic meanings of “do.” And how do you describe what the word “how” is doing in this sentence?