Friday Miscellanea

 This week will be as crazy as ever and we kick off with this: As critics slam UChicago for black studies-only commitment, campus spokesman defends it.

The University of Chicago has come under heavy criticism for its recent announcement that it will only accept graduate student applicants to its English Department who are interested in Black Studies for the 2020-21 school year.

I can just see Juilliard announcing that they will only accept candidates who not only pass the rigorous audition, but commit to playing at least 50% Black composers on their recitals. No? Let's not be too sure. A few years ago the above policy would have seemed absurd to the extreme. And at the University of Chicago? Where I thought a modicum of sanity prevailed?

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Here is some Mongolian mountain music for you:

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Here is a bit more on that vocal technique:

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Notre Dame Cathedral in Paris holds a special place in musicians' hearts because it was there that the notated polyphonic tradition of Western music was born, or mostly so. When it burned down this past February I wrote a piece in response. Well, the damage was not as bad as was feared early on and efforts to rebuild are successfully going forward: Notre Dame cathedral update: Carpenters wow public with medieval techniques. Follow the link for a photo.

With precision and boundless energy, a team of carpenters used medieval techniques to raise up — by hand — a three-ton oak truss Saturday in front of Notre Dame Cathedral, a replica of the wooden structures that were consumed in the landmark's devastating April 2019 fire that also toppled its spire.

The demonstration to mark European Heritage Days gave the hundreds of people a first-hand look at the rustic methods used 800 years ago to build the triangular frames in the nave of Notre Dame de Paris.

Wouldn't you know it that the French would have a few Medieval carpenters on hand.

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Musical life continues to revive in Europe with free foyer concerts at the Barbican in London.

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Also from Slipped Disc the unwelcome news that the Metropolitan Opera in New York will be closed for the coming season.

After being furloughed without pay for six months, we are concerned for our members and their families as they navigate what will now be over a year without economic support from the Met. Furthermore, we are devastated that the Met has not found ways to engage the Metropolitan Opera Orchestra during this closure – especially when the Met Stars series shows that there is a possibility for collaboration.

I think it is safe to say that any member of the orchestra who has the possibility of work elsewhere will simply leave. Does the Met still exist? Just the building...

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WQXR radio has an editorial on how music schools are adapting to the challenges of the pandemic:

 The music world has been devastated by the effects of the global pandemic. But for all of the challenges facing professional musicians during this time, an equally herculean obstacle has been facing another part of the music industry: our conservatories. When the pandemic reached the United States just over six months ago, students were in the middle of their spring semesters. Many of these schools had to suddenly pivot as they reluctantly embraced a fully online format. Voice lessons had to happen over Zoom with inconsistent audio and shoddy microphones; students without personal access to instruments like pianos, harps, and organs were left without anything to play; and international students who had returned home were up at 2 am for classes with their peers back in the United States. Conservatories were doing all they could to provide the highest level of education, but the change had come so swiftly that most were knocked off their feet, stumbling to regain their balance. 

In New York City, three conservatories — the Manhattan School of Music, The Juilliard School, and The College of Performing Arts at The New School — decided upon three distinct plans. For The New School’s College of Performing Arts, which includes the Mannes School of Music, the School of Jazz and Contemporary Music, and the School of Drama, the decision was made in the spring: all instruction would be fully remote. But the Manhattan School of Music and Juilliard opted instead for hybrid models, including remote academic instruction and a degree of in-person performance work. As Richard Kessler, Dean of Mannes, told me in a Zoom interview, “We had some level of anxiety over the number of schools and universities that were stating they were going to be hybrid or in-person. And we received a lot of criticism from students about that over the summer.”

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The New York Post tells us that Canceling Beethoven is the latest woke madness for the classical-music world.

If there’s anything we should have learned from months of “mostly peaceful” Black Lives Matter street protests, statue toppling and online mobs seeking to silence anyone who dissents against leftist narratives about “racism,” it’s that no one, living or dead, is safe from the attentions of woke fascists. Even Ludwig van Beethoven.

Remember years ago when there was all this talk about how playing Mozart for your unborn child or your infant was the sure way to start them off right, smarter, happier and alerter (more alert?)? My response was always, "Why Mozart, why not Bach?" This was because I recognized that "Mozart" was not really Mozart, but merely a placeholder for "some famous composer you have heard of." Similarly, all this critical theory aimed at Beethoven isn't really aimed at Beethoven, but "Beethoven," i.e. "some famous composer highly revered by Western Civilization and therefore now a target." I think it is time we drew a line in the sand, don't you? Let's start striking back at all the bogus intellectual horseshit that underlies this Maoist critical theory. You know who we mean.

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Time for some truculent envois, wouldn't you say? Something worth cancelling! Here is Daniel Barenboim conducting the Sixth Symphony by Beethoven at the 2012 Proms:

And here is Grigory Sokolov playing the Piano Sonata no. 9 by Beethoven:

And here are the Alban Berg Quartet playing the String Quartet no. 14, op. 131 by Beethoven.

You can cancel Beethoven over my dead body.