Archive: Jun 2014
The Klinghoffer Controversy
by Charles T. Downey The Metropolitan Opera and its General Manager, Peter Gelb, took a considerable risk by planning to mount John Adams’s The Death of Klinghoffer this coming fall. The furor generated by the work’s U.S. premiere in 1991 convinced its librettist, Alice Goodman, that it was… Read More
Singing Jeremiah
by Robert Kendrick NOTE: Singing Jeremiah: Music and Meaning in Holy Week (Indiana UP) appeared in April 2014. Here is an excerpt. In the ritual year of early modern Catholics, the days before Easter represented the longest single commemoration,… Read More
Jeremy Denk responds:
NOTE: The librettist of The Classical Style—an Opera of Sorts here responds to Kristi Brown-Montesano’s post just below, adding “I felt it was necessary to respond, even if only to allay the sense that I was attacking musicology as a discipline—seeing as I count a good number of musicologists as… Read More
The Classical Style, of sorts
by Kristi Brown-Montesano One year, during the opening Dean’s Welcome at the conservatory where I teach, the head of the violin studio addressed the students, faculty, and staff, extolling the school’s focus on performance training. Pointing offstage, he announced dramatically, “So, if you want to be a musicologist, there’s the… Read More
The Washington Post
Today is the 125th anniversary of The Washington Post march, premiered June 15, 1889, at the award ceremony for the Post‘s essay competition that year.John Kelly retells the story in… Read More
Seeing a 17th-Century Motet
by Robert L. Kendrick NOTE: Kendrick’s Franke Forum at the University of Chicago occurred on October 13, 2013. The free lectures of the Chicago Humanities Forum seek to allow a larger audience exposure to the work of that university’s leading scholars. Read more about the Franke Institute for the Humanities… Read More
There is Hope for Europe
The Grand Finale of the Eurovision Song Contest By Philip V. Bohlman NOTE: This article originally appeared on the OUP blog on 13 May 2014 and is reposted here by kind permission. 4–10 May 2014. The annual Eurovision week offers Europeans a chance to put aside their differences and… Read More
That Mozart Autograph . . .
… fetched almost $1 million (£578,500 = $972,285, hammer price plus buyer premiums) at the Sotheby’s sale in London on 20 May 2014. In the same sale, the autograph of Rimsky-Korsakov’s Second Symphony sold for over $2 million (£1,202,500 = $2,021,042). Read More
Die goldene kale in New York
by Michael Ochs NOTE: Di goldene kale (The Golden Bride), a 1923 Yiddish-American operetta by Joseph Rumshinsky (1881–1956), was presented in a concert version with piano by the National Yiddish Theater–Folksbiene on 27 May 2014 at the Baruch Performing Arts Center on Lexington Avenue in Manhattan. The performance, in Yiddish… Read More