Want to explore contemporary music, but don’t have the opportunity to catch it in a concert? The American Music Center has a service called NewMusicJukebox, and “this month it’s featuring an unusually intriguing webcast from Juilliard’s Focus 2003 Festival titled ‘Beyond the Rockies: A Tribute to Lou Harrison at 85’.”
Tag: 05.30.03
Berio – Lyric Dissonance
Josh Kosman reflects on composer Luciano Berio: “The great Italian composer, who died Tuesday in Rome at 77, could be every bit as dissonant, structural and fiercely analytical as his comrades, including Pierre Boulez, Karlheinz Stockhausen, Gyorgy Ligeti and Bruno Maderna. But Berio’s music was also infused with a robust vein of lyricism and beauty that drew directly on the Italian vocal tradition. And just about everything he wrote was shaped in part by a deep love for the masterpieces of the previous four centuries.”
Turner: Proposed Media Consolidation Rules Will Harm Diversity
CNN’s Ted Turner argues against media consolidation, as proposed by the FCC. “It’s hard to compete when your suppliers are owned by your competitors. We bought MGM, and we later sold Turner Broadcasting to Time Warner, because we had little choice. The big were getting bigger. The small were disappearing. We had to gain access to programming to survive. Many other independent media companies were swallowed up for the same reason – because they didn’t have everything they needed under their own roof, and their competitors did. The climate after Monday’s expected FCC decision will encourage even more consolidation and be even more inhospitable to smaller businesses.”
Pop Goes The Weasel
“The British music industry is in the midst of yet another crisis. As ever, the wounds are mostly self-inflicted. Against a backdrop of falling sales, the industry has undermined the singles chart to the point where few know or care what the current Number One is. The short-termism that led to the explosion of manufactured pop acts is coming home to roost.”
Thai Film Without History
“Though the last few seasons have witnessed unprecedented international circulation and acclaim for Thai cinema, Thai films have not traditionally been stamped for export. Indeed, though film production in Thailand reached an all-time high of more than 200 features a year in the mid-70s, most of them were made with a kind of haplessly self-engendered expiration date: shot without synchronised sound on 16mm colour reversal stock, there was never an original negative to hold on to, let alone archive. Thai Film Archive director Dome Sukwong today suggests that 75% of all Thai films ever made are already lost; no wonder a comprehensive history of Thai cinema – in Thai or any other language – has yet to be written.”
Berio – A Composer Who Will Be Remembered
“Although of a completely different sensibility, Luciano Berio was like a musical David Hockney in at least this respect: he was fascinated both by tradition and the old masters as well as by new technology and ideas, and was for ever working both into his own music. If it were not for this curiosity and a profoundly human and lyrical vein, Berio might have become trapped by the dogmas and overtly cerebral ideas that put paid to many less enlightened talents in the 1950s. Instead, Berio marched joyously in his own direction, absorbing a knowledge and love for electronic music but always marrying it to a powerfully emotional message.”
Examining The Turner Prize Shortlist
“All this year’s artists are extremely well-known, and in their 30s or early 40s. Sir Nicholas Serota, Tate director and chairman of the judges, conceded: ‘This is not a Turner Prize devoted to the newest of the new or the youngest of the young’. The artists were chosen from 150 names, nominated by members of the public and the jury, of which 25 were seriously debated. Sir Nicholas described it as ‘a wonderful, strong, diverse shortlist’.”
The Singing Pianists
What’s with all these pianists who can’t seem to play without humming along? Vocalising obviously helps with articulation – and is part of the profound relationship between piano-playing and singing, part of the alchemy whereby a series of hammer-blows on steel strings can be made to sound like bel canto. But humming can be even more than that. ‘When I play, I am making love to the audience,’ said Arthur Rubinstein; well into his 80s the Polish virtuoso maintained an aristocratic composure at the keyboard that excluded any audible manifestation of pleasure. But if pianists, especially more mature ones, start to hum, and if there is an amorous quality to that humming, should we be embarrassed?”
Thinking About Berio
Richard Dyer remembers composer Luciano Berio, who died this week at the age of 77: “While Berio was fond of generic titles – ‘Chorus,’ ‘Symphony,’ ‘Opera’ – his work was anything but generic as he reinvented and revitalized old forms. His music appealed to traditionalists because it carried the past within it; it appealed to the young because of its theatricality and its political conviction; it appealed to the avant-garde because of its tough, original thinking – which always emerged with an Italianate glow.”
Taking The “Public” Out Of Public Universities
“Today colleges and universities are seen principally as providing tickets to financial security and economic status. Few people worry about higher-education institutions leading young people astray. If anything, the lament is that they have, in their pursuit of market advantage, become dispensers of degrees and certificates rather than vibrant communities of educators who originate, debate, and promulgate important ideas. What happened? In part, colleges and universities are what they are today because the 1970s began so badly. The result is likely to be equally clear: a set of colleges and universities that have come to believe their futures are best served by satisfying the interests of their customers, even if that ultimately means becoming increasingly self-interested and detached from broader public goals.”