Friday Miscellanea

I think this counts as weird item of the week: DNA From Beethoven’s Hair Unlocks Family Secret

They used eight locks attributed to Beethoven for the study. DNA testing combined with detailed records of how and when the locks were obtained led the group of biologists, geneticists, genealogists and immunologists to conclude that five locks were authentic, said Mr. Begg, the paper’s lead author. The other three locks lacked sufficient DNA for testing or yielded DNA results that led the researchers to conclude they couldn’t have been from Beethoven. 

The Hiller lock, the most famous of the bunch, was determined to be the hair of a woman, the scientists reported.

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Here's something that might kick off some discussion: Met Opera Ordered to Pay Anna Netrebko $200,000 for Canceled Performances

The Metropolitan Opera has been ordered by an arbitrator to pay the Russian soprano Anna Netrebko more than $200,000 for performances it canceled last year after she declined to denounce President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia following the invasion of Ukraine.

The arbitrator, in a decision issued last month that has not been previously reported, ruled that the Met should compensate Netrebko for 13 canceled performances — including appearances in “Don Carlo” this season and “La Forza del Destino” and “Andrea Chénier” next season — because of a contractual agreement known as “pay or play,” which requires institutions to pay performers even if they later decide not to engage them.

The Met had argued that Netrebko, one of opera’s biggest stars, was not entitled to payment because of her refusal to comply with the company’s demand after the invasion of Ukraine that she denounce Putin, which it said had violated the company’s conduct clause. Netrebko had endorsed Putin for president in 2012 and had spoken glowingly of him before the invasion.

The arbitrator, Howard C. Edelman, found that “there is no doubt she was a Putin supporter, as she had a right to be.” But he added that aligning with Putin was “certainly not moral turpitude or worthy, in and of itself, of actionable misconduct.”

I think that gives us the basic facts, though you can follow the link for more detail. Do you think this is a fair arbitration? Or do you side with the Met on this? What are the basic principles involved? And how widely do these principles apply?

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And here is a somewhat related article: As the Met reclassifies Russian art as Ukrainian, not everyone is convinced

Questions of attribution are constantly under review by art scholars, but rarely are they so topical or heated as institutional efforts under way in the US and in Europe to reclassify art once described as Russian as Ukrainian.

In New York, the Metropolitan Museum of Art has quietly changed the name of an 1899 painting by the French impressionist Edgar Degas from Russian Dancer to Dancer in Ukrainian Dress.

The Met also holds works by Arkhyp Kuindzhi and Ilya Repin, a 19th-century painter who was born in what is now Ukraine. The artists were previously listed as Russian and are now categorized as Ukrainian.

This could get really complicated, not only with painters, but even more so with writers. Consider the case of Joseph Conrad, born in the Ukraine (then part of the Russian Empire), grew up speaking Polish and became famous as a novelist writing in English. Nikolai Gogol, also born in that part of the Russian empire now the country of Ukraine, grew up speaking Ukrainian and Russian but wrote novels in Russian. And musicians, of course, perform wherever they are booked...

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If I can possibly find any, I like to put up some cheerful and positive items about classical music and this week there is something from Ted Gioia: Six Recent Studies Show an Unexpected Increase in Classical Music Listening.

The RPO shared more demographic data in its annual report, published a few days ago—including the fact that “more people are listening to orchestral music today as part of their daily lives than was the case before the pandemic (59% up from 55% pre-pandemic)” and the trend is “strongest among younger people.” A previous post-pandemic research project by the same organization indicated that “78% of under 25s were interested in experiencing an orchestral concert this year.” 

And according to the BBC, still another survey reveals that “under 35-year-olds are more likely to listen to orchestral music than their parents.” The article also notes that the hashtag #classictok on TikTok has generated 53.8 million views.

Could something similar happen in opera?

Maybe it’s already starting. The Met has more than its share of problems, but paid ticket sales are up and the audience is surprisingly young. “Single ticket buyers represent 75% of our sales and the average age of a single ticket buyer is now 45 years old, which is remarkably younger than it was,” Peter Gelb remarked a few days ago.

When I attend concerts in Europe I notice that there are lots of young people in the audience. Follow the link for some amazing charts. And frankly, why wouldn't lots of people like to listen to classical music?

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Over at the BBC they seem to have a different view: What does the BBC have against classical music?

Another week, another hammer blow for British classical music. Following the devastating, much criticised funding cuts announced by Arts Council England in the autumn, the BBC has now declared that it is to scrap the BBC Singers and cut salaried posts in the BBC Symphony, Concert and Philharmonic Orchestras by 20 per cent.

It is tempting to rail at the government, and many have. But the government is not stipulating precisely how savings must be made. Someone in W1A is deciding where to wield the axe and has evidently decided that classical music (always an easy target as a supposed “minority interest”) is expendable. We are always being told that the excessive salaries paid to BBC “stars”, whether radio DJs, chat-show hosts or newsreaders (never mind sports presenters), are essential because these people are indispensable. But the UK’s only full-time professional chamber choir, with almost a century of history can, it would appear, simply be casually thrown away.

That's the situation. Here is part of the critique:

What the early BBC was doing, then, was providing “access”, though it would never have expressed it in those terms. Now we hear the word all the time, but it becomes hollow and meaningless when opportunities for listeners to encounter the arts are simultaneously being removed. Some may now baulk at the Reithian BBC’s paternalistic attitude, but what was actually wrong with taking the so-called “high arts” and making them freely available to everyone? Oh, to return to a world where arts organisations, broadcasters and educational institutions weren’t hamstrung by constantly having to fret about “elitism” or “relatability”.

Read the whole thing.

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Shostakovich makes a splash down under: The ‘perverse love letter to Melbourne’ that’s blowing the cobwebs off opera

Moscow, Cheryomushki, the only operetta written by Russian composer Dmitri Shostakovich, explored housing problems in the Soviet Union through a group of friends living in a residential complex. Sydney-based director Constantine Costi sensed an opportunity to bring it into the modern day, where similar issues are not only still playing out, but worsening.

“What could be more pressing than an operetta about the housing crisis? This is something that everybody in Australia is grappling with at the moment,” he says. “What was funny in adapting it from corrupt Soviet bureaucrats to greedy Melbourne landlords was that it was hilariously, disturbingly easy … The subject matter is aggressively contemporary.”

We just don't think of Shostakovich in terms of musical comedy, but perhaps we should!

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Here's something that you may not have heard before: atypical Portuguese Music:

And something else unusual: ancient Chinese music:

Ted mentions in his piece that:

With just a quick search, I found many young classical musicians with 100,000 or more followers on Instagram.

Consider the case of French violinist Esther Abrami—who boasts 275,000 YouTube subscribers, 255,000 Instagram followers, and 380,000 fans on TikTok. Her video performance of Libertango has gotten more than one million views. Okay, maybe that won’t put Taylor Swift out of business, but it proves that Astor Piazzolla’s music can speak to a mass audience.

So let's have a listen: