Music

“As a shift begins, they pass into the cloakroom to put on their uniforms — tuxedos with burgundy lapels, worn shiny from use. Forty-two work any given performance, each at once a rule keeper, hand holder, problem solver, diplomat.”

Combining the results of all the tests, “musicians with extensive experience scored significantly higher than non-musicians and less-trained musicians,” the researchers write in the journal Psychology of Music. Specifically, they did better on four of the five cognitive skills that the tests measured.

The better we get to know Debussy, the stronger the contrast between the richness of his musical world and the sordidness of his personal life—and yet, in both music and life, he liked things to be beautiful, rich, and sensually pleasing, and he wanted these things without having to work too hard or too regularly. (Debussy admits that he suffered from a “sickness of delay…and this curious need to never finish” his pieces.)

He visited twice, and though he shaped New York opera, he was also shaped by the city. “Puccini’s New York visits were filled with incident and intrigue, success and frustration. They are reminders that golden ages may not always sparkle as brightly to those who live through them.”

Disney is never going to let him go. (He wrote the score for the new theme park. Did you know theme parks had scores? Well, they do.)

The RTÉ’s first violinist: “In music you’re striving to be the best you can be, so you expect everyone around, the system, to be striving for that as well. That’s been letting us down. … Hopefully going forward there’ll be a bit more positivity.”

Reena Esmail culled texts from seven major religions of India to create her work “This Love Between Us.”Whatever you believe, somewhere in your religious canonical text it says that you should be good to one another. … If you are not doing that, it is not your religion that is mandating it. It is you making a choice to go against your own religion.”

Peter Shannon has been artistic director and conductor of the orchestra for all of its ten years; he departs at the end of this season.

Lenny Henry: “Over the past few months I have been enthralled and captivated by the story of a man from Croydon in south London who died more than 100 years ago and who wrote one of the biggest musical hits of the [early] 20th century. He was a total genius – a bit like Prince, but for late 19th-century London rather than 1980s California – and his name was Samuel Coleridge-Taylor.”

Timothy Sexton, the former artistic director and CEO of the State Opera of South Australia in Adelaide, was indicted on four charges for incidents alleged to have occurred between 1988 and ’91. He had worked in various capacities with SOSA for 20 years when he took the company’s helm in 2011; he resigned last year for unspecified personal reasons.

Tim Smith, who has been at the paper for 18 years, is retiring. It’s unclear whether the paper will replace him. Smith says he’s leaving in part because the nature of the job has changed.

Here’s how archaeo-acousticians went about modeling, and then reproducing, the sound in the prayer hall/nave at four different points in the building’s history: when it was new in the 780s (you could hear a prayer clearly throughout the room), after subsequent enlargements (more echoes and “acoustical shadows”), and a renovation and expansion in the 1000s (a prayer “echoes as though it was recited deep inside a cave”).

The mayor of the Austrian city of Linz, which is heavily in debt, has declared that the city will no longer pay its €14 million subsidy to the Landestheater (provincial theater) and the Brucknerorchester Linz, in residence there. The governor of the province of Upper Austria, which owns the theater and controls the orchestra, is fighting back hard. (in German; Google Translate version here)

“The background music industry – also known as music design, music consultancy or something offered as part of a broader package of ‘experiential design’ or ‘sensory marketing’ – is constantly deciding what we hear as we go about our everyday business. The biggest player in the industry, Mood Media, was founded in 2004 and now supplies music to 560,000 locations across the world, from Sainsbury’s to KFC.”

“Classical music loves anniversaries — because, more than any other branch of the arts, it’s focused on looking at an increasingly distant past. Classical music comes into its own at times of commemoration and mourning: Even the mass audience tends to embrace classical music at a funeral. … Today, when classical music is eager to reassert its relevance to the world at large, this kind of historical presentation appeals to presenters. The question is whether these Armistice observances actually prove classical music’s relevance or simply serve to wrap history in a PBS soundtrack of nostalgia.”

The 41-year-old maestro — and yes, he is Kurt Masur’s son — is currently the Boston Symphony’s associate conductor and principal guest conductor of the Munich Philharmonic. He’ll take over full-time for the 2019-2020 season, and the following September, he’ll help open the Milwaukee Symphony’s new concert hall.

Two months ago, the principal oboist sued the orchestra over what she alleged was persistent harassment by Jonathan Carney; earlier this month, a musician from another group got a restraining order against Carney. Following the latter incident, Baltimore Symphony management has suspended Carney without pay.

Whew, not easy. After all, Fluxus is humorous but serious, and how does an anti-opera opera play out on Stage 23 at Sony Pictures Studio, anyway? (A lot of people walk out, of course.)

Tower, who turned 80 this year and whose 2004 Made in America has been performed by major orchestras in all 50 states, says there’s still a lot to learn: “The bass, the piccolo, I’m still working on, and the horn. Those are weak areas for me. I’m going to get there with those instruments at some point.”

The orchestra formed in 1999, and it’s touring the States right now. “The brainchild of Barenboim and literary scholar Edward Said, the orchestra began as an experiment in Weimar, Germany. It was meant to be a musical bridge across one of the most pressing cultural and political divides in contemporary life that only two unlikely collaborators could devise.”

Even today, where all you need is a social media account to be able to reach a potentially large audience, music competitions offer way more than just visibility. It’s like opening a window to let fresh air circulate: you need talent to travel, to become aware of what’s out there and to meet fellow musicians to work with. Plus, many competitions offer inexperienced players the chance to attend masterclasses led by world-class artists, and this is something not even a million Instagram likes can give you.

What, then, to make of this enormous reissue package, The Beatles (White Album) Super Deluxe? Seven discs—demos, sessions, a remastering—and a great big book. Doesn’t it just magnify the sprawl, increase the luggage, barnacle with further add-ons and special features this already ungainly rattle bag of a record? Answer: Yes but no, or yes but who cares, because this is The Beatles, and we want it all.

A district judge handed down a peace order (as it’s called in Maryland) against Jonathan Carney after he allegedly verbally attacked and threatened an employee of the Eastern Shore-based Mid-Atlantic Symphony Orchestra on Oct. 31. “The peace order came less than two months after BSO principal oboist Katherine Needleman filed a sexual harassment complaintwith the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission against the BSO related to Carney.

A beloved music teacher to generations of children in suburban Abington, Jane Kesson also spent decades as a volunteer for the orchestra. So when she passed away last year, it was anticipated that she had included the Philadelphians in her will. But no one anticipated a gift this big.