Look on the right. Along with my new "Resources" section, I've revamped "Things I Like." "Resources" gives you source material for some of the things I've talked about in this blog, starting with the age of the audience. "Things I Like" (which once in a while might be "Things I Don't Like") will give you snapshots of what I'm paying attention to -- books, movies, music, ideas. First up: some music from Carmen McRae, sharp, vivid, and original.Coming soon on "Resources": a bibliography (with some excerpts) of books and scholarly papers on what … [Read more...]

Sunday I gave the commencement address at the Eastman School of Music. Very happy moment for me, because I've been teaching there for three years, and each year I've warmly bonded with my students. Eastman generally is a very warm place -- I could see that in the way faculty and students hugged as the commencement proceeded. My speech seemed wonderfully well received, and I'll post a summary here of what I said.And on the blog -- note a new section on the side, called "Resources." I'm going to post things there that might help anyone interested … [Read more...]

In a takehome exam that ends my "Classical Music in an Age of Pop" course, I asked my Juilliard students to tell me what the place of the standard classical repertoire should be, in a world where people under 40 (and plenty of people older than that) don't make any distinction between high art and the rest of culture. I'd assigned the students reading that describes how this works, from John Seabrook's book Nobrow.Some people, of course, will be shocked. "He's saying that Shostakovich is now the same as Mariah Carey!"No. We can still make … [Read more...]

Due to over-hasty cutting and pasting, I messed up some links in my responses to some comments. I'm fixing them. And right now I'll restate two of them correctly:. My wife Anne Midgette's review of the spectacular National Symphony's concert,featuring Hilary Hahn in Paganini, and David Del Tredici's Final Alice is here. Christopher Small's evocation of the secret life of a concert hall is here. … [Read more...]

J'ai longtemps habité sous de vastes portiques......dont l'unique soin était d'approfondirLe secret douloureux qui me faisait languir.(For a long time I lived under vast porticos......whose only purpose was to bury, so deeply,The unhappy secret that made me suffer.)    -- Baudelaire, "La vie antérieure"I went to a vocal recital. Doesn't matter where, or who sang. I'll just say that she's an older soprano, a star in both opera and lieder, nearing the end of her career. The setting and audience were genteel. When the singer and her … [Read more...]

In a comment on my last post, Steve (he doesn't give any last name) writes: Maybe you'd like to riff on this a bit:[D]o we really return to experience the music we value in the hope an expectation of hearing something new each time?  On the contrary, I believe we return because we hear nearly the same thing each time.?(Scott Burnham, Beethoven Hero, 1995, p.164) I hadn't known the Burnham book, and I'm grateful to Steve for telling me about it. Thanks to Google Books, I was able to look up the context of this passage, and I'll … [Read more...]

A conductor  Gary Panetta, arts critic of the Peoria newspaper, made a comment on my previous post, about orchestras as museums. He put himself in the role of a conductor, about to embark on Beethoven's Fifth. I replied, and both the comment and reply seem worth promoting to a full post of their own. Here's the conductor's Gary's comment (and thanks to Lisa Hirsch for telling me that I'd misunderstood Gary's comment, and for telling me who he is): The comments here all sound intriguing, but I'm confused about one thing. Suppose I'm … [Read more...]

At a retreat of the Orchestra Forum program of the Mellon Foundation -- at which I learned a lot  -- I got into two discussions about how orchestras might function as museums. Or, to be more honest, i made, in private conversation, a few provocative remarks, one of which I think is true beyond any chance of contradiction -- that none of the culturally central musical developments of the past 50 years happened in the orchestra world, or have even been reflected there.   But that's not the point! said passionate and honest people I … [Read more...]

[Digressions away from music, But there's a musical payoff at the end.]I had a meeting in Boston. When it ended, I had some time before my train back to NY. The ride is dead time -- restful if I want to rest, but dead if I need to work. So much of my work takes me online (this blog, for instance). I can hack away at my computer, at writing I can do offline, but that takes concentration, and my normal rhythm keeps my online all the time while I work.And now for the geek paragraph. I'd decided to get a broadband modem for my laptop, so I could go … [Read more...]

The Metropolitan Opera premiered this season's run of "Daughter of the Regiment" two nights ago, featuring many high C's from Juan Diego Florez. And to go along with the review -- which appeared today -- the New York Times features live audio of Florez singing the C's, followed by an ovation and his tradition-smashing encore. (Well, obviously encores are an opera tradition, but the Met long banned them, so this smashes a Met tradition, while returning to an older and better one.)I think this is wonderful. And even more so, because the Times … [Read more...]

In my last post, I didn't t mean to imply that old music -- Beethoven, Verdi,  you name the composer -- won't be part of the new classical music world I'm dreaming of, when Steve Reich, Bang on a Can, and eighth blackbird are at the heart of the musical mainstream. Anyone who wants to play old music -- aka the masterworks of western musical history (and I mean that very seriously) with conviction will surely do it, and no doubt find an audience. But we probably don't know exactly how that will work, and exactly what place those masterworks … [Read more...]

As I've thought more about my last post, and as I've absorbed the very interesting comments, something else occurred to me. This is very radical, I admit, but I think it follows from everything I've said. Suppose classical concerts were -- as a general rule -- more or less like this eighth blackbird event? Then I think there'd be no gap between classical music and the rest of our culture, and no worries about classical music's future. Though of course that opens further questions. How large could the audience for a concert like this be? Could … [Read more...]

Thursday night I heard a wonderful concert by eighth blackbird, in Zankel Hall. There was a new Steve Reich piece, Double Sextet, and then an extravaganza -- music plus exuberant staging --  from the three Bang on a Can composers, David Lang, Julia Wolfe, and Michael Gordon. Among much else, this was a real New York event, highlighting music by two generations of composers whose sound just about screams "New York." Steve Reich was New York in the 1970s and early 1980s, and Bang on a Can -- not that they don't have other influences -- come … [Read more...]

Some of the links in my Flanagan post didn't work. Apologies. They're now fixed. And Flanagan himself has offered some clarifications of things I summarized in his work, which I'll put up here shortly. Remember that I'm in the same position as people I criticized in my post. I'm not a social scientist, and I might well get things wrong when I venture into the kind of territory that's usually patrolled by experts. Which leads to my most important clarification. A social scientist friend told me that I'm wrong to say Baumol's theorizing hasn't … [Read more...]

From Rob Teehan in Canada comes the following, posted as a comment to another post, but worth attention on its own. Thanks for this, Rob: Hello, Up here in Canada there have been a lot of developments at the CBC, our flagship public broadcaster, that I'm sure you'd be interested in, if you're not already aware of them. First off, the CBC announced recently that it would be scaling back its classical programming on CBC Radio 2 in favour of other genres. http://www.cbc.ca/arts/media/story/2008/03/04/radio-two.html Second, the CBC recently … [Read more...]