Miscellanea

Just a few links for you this morning. From Alex Ross, this bit about the German new music festival in Donaueschingen:

http://www.therestisnoise.com/2012/10/lust-auf-kultur.html

I like the second photo where it says "Music is for all! Social equality is the key..." Would anyone care to deconstruct that? Music may be for all, but only if they have ears to hear or the discipline to learn. I'm not sure exactly what is meant by social equality, but probably nothing good.

This video is really terrifying:

This is the kind of music my mother used to play. I wonder what she would think of this 'packaging'? What happens when you take a simple genre of folk music and do this to it: big production (stage, lighting, choreography, costume) and over the top performance (note the compulsive smiling and winking at the audience)?

From Norman Lebrecht comes this story:

http://www.artsjournal.com/slippeddisc/2012/10/just-in-berlin-to-subsidise-rock-and-pop-music.html

I liked this comment on the article:

Hey, it’s all just a matter of personal taste, right? Beethoven, Black Sabbath, Brahms, Beach Boys, Brittney, Berlioz… Who is to say that Eroica is intrinsically better than “Baby One More Time?” Besides, the rock industry is being stretched financially, as growth in the cost of cocaine is outpacing growth in sales and concert revenues.

It's stuff like this that should finally pull aside the veil and help everyone to realize that governments do not subsidize the arts out of much of a sense of duty to civilization, but out of a desire to curry favor for themselves.

After that we really need some music. In this song by Leonard Cohen, even the instrumental introduction is sardonic:

You were expecting Bach, maybe?