The first time classical music humor on the internet was funny can be dated to approximately September 22, 2016, the launch of the page Classical Music Memes for Contemporary Teens. Once ruled by “Bach to the Future” and “You Can’t Handel It” type jokes, classical music humor now referenced Ferneyhough and conservatory anxiety and caused […]
Tag: Weird & Wonderful
Posted inProfile
Composites
Saturday night in one of Europe’s big cities, and concertgoers pour out of underground stations and cabs, tickets and programs in hand, dressed to the nines—a star-spangled cavalcade of cultural exchange and high-brow entertainment. Some will trace what they hear with prepared anticipation, some might not know what will be played at all, but all […]
Posted inInterview
File Number One
In 2006, a New England Conservatory student named Edward Guo founded the online portal IMSLP, or International Music Score Library, a kind of Wikipedia for musicians. Now the site contains some 350,000 scores and 40,000 recordings from 14,000 composers. The works of composers who have been dead for less than 70 years are not in […]
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Rage and Cringe
In our time, a unique jargon has developed for talking about internet memes. This jargon correlates with certain pop cultural tendencies; it expresses emotions people have felt before, but have never been able to convey as concisely as they can now with a new set of colloquialisms. Probably the most affective and distinctive emotion is […]
Posted inInterview
The Berliozians
Behind the fabulous website hberlioz.com, turning 20 this year, is not a team of French musicologists, but rather a pair of retired academics in Edinburgh, Scotland. Monir Tayeb and Michel Austin live in a quite street which traces its origins back to the 18th century. In the living room, above two large computers, hangs a […]
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Matchups
The melody from the hymn Dies Irae breaks the creamy quiet of a restaurant in upmarket Taipei, and the patrons raise their eyes from their waffles and cake and Vienna coffee. The disrupter of the mid-Thursday morning hush is Chung Yiu-kwong, Taiwan’s most noted classical composer, giving an enthusiastic rendition of the Day of Judgement’s […]
Posted inHistory
Drama Queens and Fever Dreams
By the time we get to Munich, the cold sopping spring has turned to a sultry summer—in like a lion, out like a lamb shank, meat falling right off the bone. Sunbathers in the Englischer Garten lie sanguine and naked in the grass. But instead of joining them in Edenic glory, my boyfriend Nick and […]
Posted inEssay
A Brief Guide to Mozart x Salieri Slash
Salieri has developed a habit of stealing Mozart’s scores. He looks at them in private, then puts them back the next day. One night Salieri attends an underground party and watches as Mozart ties up a woman. He feels a deep charge of erotic energy; he can’t sleep. Mozart confronts Salieri about the score-stealing, teasing. […]
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In Ink
On November 29th, the auction house Sotheby’s will be offering the complete manuscript of Gustav Mahler’s Second Symphony (the “Resurrection”) at auction from their London saleroom. Sotheby’s predict it will sell in excess of £3.5 million, the highest ever estimation for a musical manuscript offered at auction. Late in August, I met Simon Maguire, Sotheby’s […]
Posted inRankings & Roundups
Maestro Matching
Who’s Your Conductor Soul Mate? Concept Arno Lücker · Adapted by VAN U.S. TEAM · Programming Steffen Görg · Date 09/22/2016