Archives for 2009

Besides Rebirth, my book on the future of classical music, of course. (Go here and here for that) I've been -- and I'm honored by this -- appointed Artist-in-Residence in the College of Arts and Humanities of the University of Maryland, for this academic year and 2010-11. I'll be working with students and faculty of the School of Music, and with the staff of the Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center, to find new ways of giving classical concerts. I'm especially interested in finding ways for students to reach an audience their own age. Of … [Read more...]

..."Technology or culture" entry, which I posted yesterday. As I didn't quite get around to saying,  it's that technological changes, these days, are also changes in our culture. Which means that classical music institutions can't just use new technologies as if they were just more tools for doing the same old things. I've also thought of a much shorter way to make my point about Magnus Lindberg. But I'd better catch up with the comments first. There's a lot of book stuff happening behind the scenes, and of course it's eating at my time. … [Read more...]

Fascinating New York Times piece on college student blogs -- and how colleges and universities are flaunting these blogs on their websites (with MIT in the lead), even if the students don't always say favorable things about the schools.Why is this happening? Because high school students trust these blogs. They want to know what various colleges are really like. That's how they decide where they want to go. And who better to tell them, than students already there?Some schools resist this, though. They want to control their message. They want … [Read more...]

I got beat up by some of my valued readers when I said -- in an earlier post -- that Magnus Lindberg's music "plunged me back into the Second Vienna School." Or, more broadly, that Lindberg composes "in a style that, broadly speaking (and whatever may have been added to it since) was new around 1910." Nor did I help myself by mistakenly saying he's Swedish. Finnish, rather. And OK, I did admit I was exaggerating. But when I said that the Philharmonic -- where Lindberg is now composer in residence -- is thirty years behind in its approach to new … [Read more...]

(What follows will be explored in my book, in chapter VII, as the outline currently stands.)Yesterday I impulsively -- after a thoughtful e-mail from a friend -- raised a big question on Twitter: Key question for the future of classical music. Is the music itself a problem, or only the way we present it?Plus a followup: Two problems with the music. Too much of it comes from the past. And our performance style is more constricted than it used to be.So here we see the virtues and limitations of Twitter. I'd "mindcasted" a thought that a lot of … [Read more...]

Jeez.I blogged about my book on the future of classical music. And tweeted about it. And put an update on Facebook. And in all of that, I forgot to mention the title! It's Rebirth. Meaning -- of course -- that classical music won't die, but instead will be reborn. Or, more formally, the title might be Rebirth: The Future of Classical Music. From the mine of thoughts that will go into the book (this one goes in the very first chapter): I know the rebirth may be painful for people who like classical music in its traditional form. And I know that … [Read more...]

(On my book outline, what follows would come in chapter three, Falling Behind: The Problem of Funding. Why money for classical music will be harder to raise.)I've been hearing from many people about trouble ahead on the financial side of classical music. In the background of this -- at least in my view; I'm not going to say that everyone I talk to shares it -- are some long-range troubles, as I'll explain in the funding chapter of my book. If the classical audience is shrinking, then money should be harder to raise, because the first people any … [Read more...]

The mountain -- the one where my book on the future of classical music has been hiding -- has cracked itself open. And out of the crack comes...a skeleton. A skeletal outline of what's going to be in the new, final version of the book. Previously, as many readers know, I improvised drafts of the book, in a kind of online performance. They're here. But this is the real deal. A real book. I'll be unfolding it in stages, in future months. Details to come. The new skeletal outline gives you some idea of the whole book -- what it's going to … [Read more...]

Last week I went to my first concerts this season, all from the part of the music world I've been calling alternative classical. David Lang, one of the Bang on a Can composers (and Pulitzer prizewinner), with a program of films set to his compositions, at the Museum of Modern Art (all this in New York)...Nico Muhly, Doveman, and Sam Amidon at the Miller Theater...and Glenn Branca at Le Poisson Rouge.David's pieces were very severe, some of them, and the films equally so. Elevated was the longest. Relentless music, like bells tolling doom, that … [Read more...]

(Lots of scanning involved in this post. Too much work! But a labor of love.)As I said in my last post, I went on an E.M. Forster binge this summer -- all the novels I hadn't read, plus his essays and short stories, and his terrific, quirky, completely honest book about the novel as an art form. And among other things -- the quiet way he turns a phrase, to say exactly what he means -- I found him wonderful on music. I've already talked about the famous passage from Howard's End about Beethoven's Fifth, in which people (all but one of them quite … [Read more...]

Two summers ago was the summer of hedgehogs. Cute, messy, dumb little things, busy eating slugs and worms, with babies getting sick near our house in the Yorkshire Dales. And then nursed back to health, no charge, by the local vet. Full reminiscence here. But now we had the summer of renegade cows. Three of them, always the same three, would break out of their field, and come up our driveway. Here are two of them, peering into a French door that leads from our dining room to a small enclosed garden:They'd walk around, trample the grass and some … [Read more...]

Well, many people might have known, but I didn't. If I don't make a blog post for a month, my blog seems to vanish, replaced by a link to its archives, which is what some of you may have seen, if you've been to the blog recently. You might have thought my blog was defunct.But it isn't. I've only been on vacation. I've redated the last post I wrote before I left, to create some activity here. And in a couple of days, I'll be back home, and posting again, full of vacation tales about renegade cows -- and news about my long-delayed book. Some of … [Read more...]

Eva Hoffman, Appassionata. It seemed at first like a quiet novel, but lovely and honest, about a concert pianist beginning a tour. All the music she plays is old music (the standard piano repertoire), and all the feelings she has about it seem inward-turning, emotions not strongly connected to the world outside. Of course that's one of the things I don't like about classical music now, but still I was drawn to the book, because, as I said, it's so honest. And the honesty is both emotional and musical. This is one of the few novels I've read … [Read more...]

I know I let a large number of comments build up, unanswered. That's because of the press of other work, and also -- no small thing -- because of my quest to live a more balanced life, one in which I'm not at the computer every minute, typing, typing, typing. But now I've gone back over the comments from the past couple of weeks, and responded to a number of them, especially to the very gracious response from the man who conducted the Chorus America study. I can't say I agree with many of the points he made, but I'm grateful for his attention … [Read more...]

This post makes me just a little sad to write. Chorus America, a while ago, published the results of a study, which they say shows that people who sing in choruses are exceptionally good citizens. They then say that choruses should bring this information to the media, "to help establish an awareness of the personal and communal benefits of choral singing." Here's their press release about the study, and here's the study itself. (The quote comes from the end of the study.) So why am I sad to talk about this? Because the study suffers from an … [Read more...]