A collaboration by choreographer Trisha Brown and baritone Simon Keenleyside reinterprets Schubert’s classic “Die Winterriese” song cycle. “The real revelation of the Winterreise experiment is the effect it has on Schubert’s music, which is flung into unusual and arresting contexts. Brown had feared that it might enrage musicologists: ‘I worried that it might be irreverent to Schubert. In the rehearsal room, when we first made it, I said to the dancers that I’m thinking of Simon, who is going to lie down now. He’s delusional and dreaming and you put your knees up and your hands up and catch him to stop him from falling off. On one level, it couldn’t be simpler. But on another level it’s so totally absurd and surreal and radical. In fact, the new setting, and the vocal effect it creates, paradoxically manages to serve the score in a way that a conventional performance never could.”
Tag: 08.23.03
Orchestra Musicians In Danger Of Hearing Loss
Orchestra musicians are said to be at risk of hearing damage. “The legal limit of sound exposure is 90 decibels in the UK but the sound of a symphony orchestra playing a big classical piece at treble forte has been measured at 98dB. Orchestras are now preparing for an EU directive which will reduce the maximum sound level to 85dB, a drop of 20%. A report from the Association of British Orchestras showed that as well as deafness, players could suffer from damaged frequency discrimination, tinnitus or diplacusis (in which the pitch of a single tone is heard as two different pitches by the two ears).”
Leonardo Online
For the first time, readers around the world can explore Leonardo da Vinci’s notebooks and drawings, including plans for a town he designed but which was never built. “The new 3D Turning the Pages website version is unique in enabling readers to unscramble Leonardo’s text. Not only was his language medieval Italian; his handwriting ran from right to left, since this came easiest to him as a lefthander. The software, developed by library staff, allows viewers to reverse the script and read a translation of the text. Clive Izard, project manager, said the technology would allow a full translation to be added.”
Modern Architecture – A Cautionary Tale
Thirty years after it was built (in 1972), Smith College’s fine arts center was “uninhabitable.” Why did this relatively new building fail to hold up while Smith’s other buildings are doing fine after a century? “Before the era of the modern movement, buildings were built in predictable and conventional ways. Builders knew how to build in that manner. Architects didn’t ask them to do anything else. But with the arrival of modernism, architects began to invent new kinds of construction. They experimented. A gap opened between the traditional builder and the modernist architect. No longer could the builder correct the architect’s mistakes. What happened to Andrews’s building is only too typical.”
Australian Court Fines Big Music Companies
Music giants Warner and Universal have been fined $2 million in Australia for trying to coerce retailers into not selling budget CD’s. “The commission originally launched legal action after the companies first threatened then refused to supply four Australian retailers that stocked so-called parallel-imported CDs.”
Don’t Dump On Disco
“Disco helped transform the DJ into a creative personality, and seeded the recombinant mentality that runs riot through hip-hop. It shifted hit-making power away from radio, and participated in the advent of technologies that have since invaded almost all forms of popular music, such as drum machines and audio loops. History is written by the victors, and the popular image of disco has been shaped by those who hated everything it stood for.”
How To Grow Opera Addicts
In Canada there are several self-taught opera gurus who specialize in igniting a passion for the grand art in their audiences. “What these men have in common, besides an encyclopedic knowledge of opera, is a seemingly insatiable urge to communicate their passion to others. They all talk as persuasively as the proverbial refrigerator salesman in the High Arctic. It hardly seems necessary, since there appears to be no shortage of applicants for their courses and guided tours.”