“Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
―
And on a brighter note, apparently the collapse of civilization does not have to be final: HMV's flagship Oxford Street store to reopen.
The century-old music shop chain shut its flagship store in 2019 after going into administration. It was then taken over by Sunrise Records.
It said the return to 363 Oxford Street was due to a "dramatic turnaround", with HMV returning to profit in 2022.
The store will have different branding and a new layout.
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An Imperfect Cassandra is a piece about Blair Tindall’s “Mozart in the Jungle”. I tried to watch the Prime series but gave up after fifteen minutes.
For those who had read Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs, and Classical Music, these events also confirmed a version of Tindall that many contemporary critics pointed to in their reviews of the divisive memoir. In the New York Times, Anne Midgette noted that “the book’s biggest weakness is that it smacks of sour grapes. By writing it as an autobiography, Ms. Tindall seems to be saying that everything that went wrong in her life is the fault of the classical music world.” An unattributed review for the New Yorker conceded that the book’s critique of the American classical music industry—one that was unable to support the number of musicians it trains—“is difficult to refute,” but added that the facts and statistics Tindall weaves into her narrative are overshadowed by her stories of “sleep[ing] her way to the bottom.”
Which is possibly better than what a lot of people do: sleep their way to the middle.
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Norman Lebrecht: three cheers for Apple Classical: The apple of my ear
If you happen to need the whole of classical music on tap, this is practically it. Apple delivers 115,000 works by 20,000 composers in any number of interpretations. Search for a performer and a result pops up within a second. If the name is missing, come back next week. The database is being constantly enlarged.
By my estimation, Apple’s app has over 80 per cent of all music ever recorded for public release. It seems to contain all significant sources, from elusive Russian Melodiya to cut-price Naxos, the Primark of classical music. The only absentees are a scattering of lone-owner labels that kept their output offline in the hope the internet would go away.
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After a report that a woman had a "full-body orgasm" during an LA Philharmonic concert, Slipped Disc steps forward with a list of suggested repertoire: TEN CONCERTOS FOR ORGASM AND ORCHESTRA
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Really slim pickings this week in the news. I guess we have to start our envois with the Tchaikovsky Symphony No. 5, the original "orgasm symphony"
Now for something completely different, L'Arpeggiata with Dido and Aeneas by Purcell.
Here is something unusual: a modern Italian musician and composer who writes in a baroque, sort-of, style: Federico Maria Sardelli
I wouldn’t expect a reopened HMV to have many recordings for sale, let alone the sort of rich classical-music inventory that was a feature of some megastores before the turn of the millennium. In Europe today, bookshops have severely cut their stock of actual books, instead selling stationery or hip knickknacks – if you actually want a book to read, you’re supposed to order it from an online shop. So, I would expect a revived HMV to focus more on music memorabilia than recordings, if not the very same unrelated items that bookshops rely on to make money.
ReplyDeleteHm, yes, quite likely. How sad those days of stuffed record shops are gone. When they existed I never had much money.
ReplyDeleteI'll make a point of following up on that Lebrecht link.
ReplyDeleteI did read the Van article a week or so back.
I decided to goof around with songwriting again for the first time in a while and this Mississippi John Hurt homage (one of several I've done) was the result.
https://youtu.be/iet7g_MFIHg
It's a deliberate study in how bad lyrics in a love song can get, and the chorus makes it plain talking about mixing metaphors like cookie dough.
If it's a light misc I can add something to make it maybe even a little lighter.
Wenatchee, I suspect you of writing "metapop" music!
ReplyDeletesome of what I do is metapop. Thinking through ways of writing and performing that demonstrate the permeability of the boundaries between pop and classical is one of my pet projects.
ReplyDeleteIn case you hadn't spotted this, Don Baton has reviewed Ewell's new book.
https://www.city-journal.org/article/ewelldammerung
Thanks, Wenatchee. No, I hadn't seen that review yet. And it is going in next Friday's miscellanea for sure.
ReplyDeleteI had a few thoughts about this weekend
ReplyDeletehttps://wenatcheethehatchet.blogspot.com/2023/05/don-baton-reviewed-phil-ewells-book-and.html
Re record stores: I'm old enough (sigh) to remember ones with glass-walled rooms where you could sample music before purchasing--you know, like the one in "Strangers on a Train."
ReplyDelete