Friday Miscellanea

Bob Dylan's song "Like a Rolling Stone" turned 50 years old this week and the Globe and Mail has a remarkably dull, rambling discussion of it. But hey, we can at least listen to the tune. Unfortunately you can't find the original on YouTube, but there is this version from a live performance:

You should really get out there and buy the CD. It also has Desolation Row on it, so, a bargain. The album, "Highway 61 Revisited" is only $6.99 on Amazon.

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And for something completely different, here is a wonderful essay by Hilary Hahn (who is a surprisingly good writer) about the two most important teachers in her life. A sample:

The great value of what these days is called classical music is its span and reach. Over four centuries of influential composers, writing, details, concepts, and teaching have melded together into this winding, inventive, enlightening, divergent, derivative, and rebellious art form.

The only thing I would add is that the span of classical music is at least a 1000 years old, dating back to the first two important composers in Europe: Léonin and Perotin of the Cathedral of Notre Dame. Mind you, they didn't write anything for violin!

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Your go-to place for celebrity gossip is the Daily Mail, who have this article about the shallow narcissism of popular DJs complaining about everything from their limos to their deluxe hotel accommodation to line-ups for food. Remember a DJ is someone who, according to Wikipedia:

mixes recorded music for an audience

Or, as it seems a lot of the time, someone who plays pre-recorded drum tracks for an audience while waving his arms in the air:

These are the people who get paid big bucks while classical musicians scratch out a meager living. Not all the horrors of the future were predicted by George Orwell!

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For more of a high-brow discussion, we find this article on the vocabulary of popular musicians. Astonishingly Eminem comes in first place followed by Jay-Z, Tupac Shakur, Kanye West and Bob Dylan. The Beatles are way down in 76th place. I'm wondering if they were counting all the different ways of spelling bitch and m**********r? Now if they were counting harmonic and melodic vocabulary, then the results would have been different, don't you think?

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I've always thought that Stockhausen's Helicopter Quartet was at the very limits of absurdity and this recent performance seems to bear that out. Courtesy of Slipped Disc.

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Yet another chapter in the never-ending story of the assault by government agencies on musicians who travel.

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I can't think of any way of linking a good piece of music to today's miscellanea, so here goes anyway. As our envoi today, the Symphony No. 5 by Jean Sibelius. Thomas Søndergård conducts the BBC National Orchestra of Wales at last years Proms:

I just love the crispness and transparency of Sibelius' orchestration.