Henry Fogel To Step Down As President Of American Symphony Orchestra League

“In his five years as the ASOL’s chief executive, Fogel stabilized the organization’s finances, raised its profile in the wider classical music community, launched a $25 million capital campaign, and oversaw the development of a strategic plan, finalized earlier this year, to revamp the way the League serves its member orchestras.”

Lebrecht Book On Music Withdrawn By Publisher

The publisher of music critic Norman Lebrecht’s latest book has agreed to withdraw the book in the UK over a few pages discussing Naxos Records and its founder, Klaus Heymann. “The book, ‘Maestros, Masterpieces & Madness: The Secret Life and Shameful Death of the Classical Record Industry,’ was released in Britain in July. Mr. Heymann sued the publisher, Penguin Books, in the High Court of Justice, saying the book wrongly accused him of ‘serious business malpractices’ based on false statements. He cited at least 15 statements he called inaccurate.”

The New Art History

“Since 1950, the world has drastically altered in shape. Television, migration and the internet have brought separate continents into far greater proximity. Cultural references ranging from Jamaica to Japan are instantly available anywhere, while the search for the historical roots behind each seems to head down a hundred different wormholes. How do you tell a story of art that addresses these new conditions? You don’t. That has been the emerging consensus. You produce compendious historical surveys.”

Life A “Warm Puppy”? Humbug!

Biographer David Michaelis, author of Schulz and Peanuts, says that cartoonist Charles Schulz was “a man who could neither forget nor forgive any slight or lonely moment. Not for a minute did he believe that ‘Happiness was a warm puppy’ – and he may not have believed in happiness at all. He thought it was impossible to draw a happy comic strip and actually he was fond of saying that ‘Happiness is a sad song’.”

How Music Works In The Brain?

“The original part of memory is the memory of actions and procedures and sequences, starting with crawling and walking. This part of memory also includes musical and textual sequences.” It seems to be involved in the way some tunes replay themselves in our minds even after we’re tired of them. It may also account for the way that musical and textual memory tends to work best with long units of information – on whole phrases in sequence, rather than on individual notes and words.”