The Berlioz bicentennial has hardly made a dent in the standing of France’s greatest composer. “The diplomatic contagion of French ambivalence has encouraged the rest of the musical world to treat Berlioz as an objet trouve, an acquired taste instead of an established one. Two centuries after his birth, Berlioz is not espoused by concertgoers with the confidence they attach to Brahms, whose revelations were minor by comparison. The bicentennial year is ending without a perceptible improvement in Berlioz appreciation. The innate pettiness of France has condemned its greatest composer to perpetual disavowal, his bones to a peripheral tomb.”
Tag: 12.10.03
“Y” Me?
Every generation has those writers who somehow help define it. But “Generation Y, the teens and early twenty–somethings who are said to represent the biggest chunk of pop culture marketing power, have no one who has encapsulated their generation in their writing so far. Sure, there are some authors their age but they haven’t produced a work meant to encapsulate the generation. Nor has one of them been called upon to become the chief essayist, chronicler or spokesperson for their peers. So where are they? ‘This isn’t a literary generation. It’s the MTV/high–speed Internet generation’.”
Cold Weather Equals Good Violins
The wood used by the old master Italian violin makers was special – the product of a mini ice age in Europe. “Trees grow slower in colder weather, producing denser wood for that season. So, narrower tree rings grow in cold weather than rings grown in warmer seasons. Narrow tree rings would not only strengthen the violin but would increase the wood’s density, the researchers said. The change in climate therefore made a difference to the violins’ tone and brilliance, they said.”
Hollywood’s Got Game(s)
Hollywood’s top movie producers are teaming up with computer gamer producers to collaborate on projects. Why? “Nothing grabs Hollywood’s attention more than money. And with video-game sales topping Hollywood box office receipts for the second year in a row (games raked in $30 billion in global sales versus the movie industry’s $20.4 billion in 2002), Hollywood agencies have gone virtual.”
“Angels” – Missing Out
“Angels in America” is such a creature of the theatre, that no matter how skilled the screen translation, it loses something on the TV. “For all its gorgeous writing, “Angels” doesn’t prove suited to film the way “A Streetcar Named Desire” and “Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?” did. Mr. Kushner’s plays are strict creatures of the theater in ways that many of his predecessors’ and most of his contemporaries’ are not. He is our foremost playwright of the imagination. I mean this partly in the sense that he can send characters darting off to Heaven or Antarctica without seeming foolish, but mostly in the sense that, on the stage, his plays demand that we engage our own imaginations.”
Pittsburgh Opera Cutting Back
The Pittsburgh Opera, which has been looking for ways to trim its budget, is announcing that it will cut back the number of productions it mounts next season from five to four, and will replace the fifth opera with something called a “special production.” The company says that the cutback will give it much-needed financial breathing room, and stresses that it isn’t in anything approaching dire fiscal straits.
Maclean’s Staffers To Vote On Going Union
“About 20 part-time employees in the editorial division of Maclean’s magazine vote tomorrow on joining Canada’s largest media union in what is yet another sign of the troubled circumstances of Canada’s weekly newsmagazine. It’s anticipated the part-timers will vote overwhelmingly in favour of joining the Communications, Energy and Paperworkers Union, which already represents the magazine’s estimated 27 full-time editorial employees.”
Is A Revolution Coming In Detroit?
With the Detroit Symphony having just announced a nearly $2 million deficit, the orchestra’s president and its new chairman seem to be throwing down the gauntlet at the feet of the city’s philanthropic community, as well as at the feet of their own musicians. President Emil Kang suggests that the current model for American orchestras may simply no longer be viable, and that solutions will not come easily. To the musicians of the DSO, who have already been asked to reopen their contract early, these may be fighting words. To the city’s corporate leaders, it will either be seen as a call to action or a desperate attempt to shame them into giving to an organization in trouble.
Iraqi National Photo-Op Comes To D.C.
Tim Page was looking forward to the Washington debut of the Iraqi National Symphony. He’s still looking forward to it. According to Page, last night’s performance, which was callously manipulated by politicians and press alike, and in which the INS was mixed in with members of the D.C.-based National Symphony Orchestra, wasn’t a concert so much as a cynical photo-op for the Bush administration. “The State Department flew 60 musicians the 6,200 miles from Baghdad to Washington to play for less than an hour in tandem with members of the National Symphony Orchestra. As Winston Churchill might have put it, rarely have so many traveled so far to do so little.”
More Than Propaganda
Tim Smith admits that there was “a certain air of propaganda” about the Iraqi National Symphony’s Washington debut, but he says that the music-making won out in the end. “The considerable variance in technical ability among the Iraqi players, who range in age from 23 to 72, was unmistakable, but so was the commitment and energy behind the notes… As the music gently unfolded, it was impossible not to think of all those, Iraqi and American, who have died – and will continue to die – in this conflict. But the evening was most about the future, the promise of what a reinvigorated cultural life could bring to a country that has seen so much pain.”