Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Carnival of Music #10

Alright, it's my turn to host the Carnival of Music this week. A million thanks to Scott Spiegelberg for hosting a marvellous Carnival last week. Think I'll divide the posts into various genres so readers will find it easier to browse through their beloved topics.

Traditional Classical Music
In the news, we have some problem with iPods playing classical music. I swear this is one of the sickening problems whenever I listen to classical music on the bus and trains, especially symphonies and concertos where there're huge and sudden dynamics changes.
Oh, be sure to take a look at the professional violinist, Midori's blog on her concert tour in Asia. She sure has some interesting insights in this two-week blog.
Also, we have Talvi's experiences with the halls used for the Mostly Mozart Festival.
And not forgetting Greg Sandow's refutation of someone's keyntoe speech about classical music. He even mentioned some excellent ideas on how to attract younger audiences into the classical music scene, though I've some doubts that it'd be productive.

Modernism or Anti-Modernism
This week, Kyle Gann has given some lovely reviews on Aaron Copland's opera The Tender Land and Marc Blitzstein's opera Regina. Alright, the latter wasn't that lovely, from the way he wrote the review, but if his reviews certainly got me interested in getting recordings of such modern opera to listen.
Tim Rutherford-Johnson gave his comments on the a particular music of 1975 - Rzewski: The People United Will Never Be Defeated, in his series of Music since 1960. He sure took lots of effort in looking for 36 links to match the 36 variations in that piece by Rzewski. But I'm sure for lovers of modern music, it'll be worth the time and effort browsing through the list.
Now for anti-modernism, take a look at harpist Helen Radice's opinions on electronic music. Guess she's one of them who's anti-modernism but substantiates her stand very well.

Jazz
Arh, for this genre, Mwanji Ezana has been kind enough to compile a list of links to jazz blogs around the blogosphere. I'm thankful for the help as I know nuts about jazz.

Others
For this section, I'll have posts which consist of a mixture of the previous few genres above. Rob Witt's review of a musicircus book, The Time of Our Singing by Richard Powers, sure got my attention. That's going to one book I'll be looking out for when I visit the library or bookstore.

Would like to thank JohnL for letting me host the Carnival this week and Lynn S for volunteering to host the Carnival next week. Anyone who would like to volunteer to host the Carnival of Music in the next few weeks please feel free to email JohnL at music.carnival@gmail.com. =)

(This is a similar entry of the previous post on the Carnival of Music #10 in order to have the Carnival at the top of my blog for this week.)

2 comments:

Hucbald said...

Hey Jeff, excellent blog! I was wondering who had been visiting my site from .sg, and now I guess I know. ;^) Thanks for the compliment of putting me in your links. Consider yourself bookmarked.

I'm not a Schoenberg fan (Except for his tonal theory books), but I too wish Segovia had let him compose a piece for the guitar. It would have made that style accessable to us guitarists, who are often ignored by "serious" composers.

I have a new custom eleven-string electric nylon string guitar on the way (It has five two-string courses and a single low E string), so I'll be doing some guitar blogging when I get it next month.

Cheers!

solitudex said...

Hi Hucbald!
At least Schoenberg did include guitar parts in his chamber music (Opus 24) and stage works (Moses und Aron Opera), even though there may not be any solo guitar works by him. Seems quite possible that he really respected the guitar. =

And do update me on how that guitar sounds. You're sure rich to be able to have a custom-made eleven-string guitar. But electric? Hmm...