““An emerging body of research allows us to take what had been anecdotes and place music on an equal footing with prescription drugs, surgeries, medical procedures, psychotherapy, and various forms of treatment that are mainstream and evidence-based,” writes Levitin, recently summing up the current science of music for Wired.”
“One simple idea: give young people who’ve faced displacement a space to share their stories. These workshops aren’t just about learning theatre techniques. They’re about giving a voice to those who have lived through loss, migration, and unimaginable challenges.”
“Art is not policy. It does not, at least as normally constituted, feed the hungry, shelter the unhoused, or clothe the indigent. To complain, as some do, that because art doesn’t fulfill these necessary social obligations it’s little more than a disposable frivolity, is to completely miss the point: art is not meant to do […]
“Before introducing a category specific to the medium in 2023, the Grammy Awards rarely acknowledged video games. Christopher Tin’s “Baba Yetu” from Civilization 4 was the first piece of video game music to take home a Grammy in 2011, for Best Instrumental Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s), followed two years later by Austin Wintory’s brilliant work on […]
“Thanks to the lateral placement of our two eyes in our head, we see the world in something like Cinemascope. Our horizontal field of vision spans about 180 degrees, while our vertical field is limited to about 130 degrees. The horizontal bias makes sense in evolutionary terms… Now imagine being forced to wear blinders and […]
“Gérôme’s edges are crisp, where Monet’s are all hazy. His brushwork is invisible, where Monet’s is active and advertised. This was what artistic talent was supposed to be in 1874. Drama. Polish. Technique. Not some little sketch of a sunrise over a fisherman’s wharf.”
“A 12-minute piece of music composed by Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart has been discovered in a library in Germany. Researchers think the composer wrote the previously unknown piece—called Serenade in C—when he was a young teenager.”
“When the screening ended, after midnight, Questlove was shaken. Since he was 7 years old, he said, he had modeled himself on Prince — his fashion, his overflowing creativity, his musical rule-breaking. So “it was a heavy pill to swallow when someone that you put on a pedestal is normal.” That was the bottom line […]
“Music baffled Charles Darwin. Mankind’s ability to produce and enjoy melodies, he wrote in 1874, “must be ranked amongst the most mysterious with which he is endowed.””
“Ludwig van Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony was first performed exactly 200 years ago Tuesday and has since become probably the work most likely to be embraced for political purposes. It was played at the 1936 Olympic Games in Berlin; it was performed in that city again on Christmas 1989 after the fall of the Berlin Wall, […]
“The pandemic brought live events and big gatherings to a halt, silencing orchestras, shutting museums and movie theaters and leaving sports teams playing to empty stadiums dotted with cardboard cutouts. Now, four years later, audiences are coming back, but the recovery has been uneven. Here is a snapshot of where things stand now:”
“More than the economics, the key factor can only be what happened to us at the start of this century: first, the plunge through our screens into an infinity of information; soon after, our submission to algorithmic recommendation engines and the surveillance that powers them. The digital tools we embraced were heralded as catalysts of […]
“I’m told that the top search term at Spotify among teens is “sad.” And it’s more than music. Sadness is so widespread among youngsters (especially teen girls) that the Centers for Disease Control is now tracking it. So we shouldn’t be surprised that music and cultural indicators reflect the same reality… So what songs do […]
“Well before being appointed to the Supreme Court, Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson participated in theater and improv as an undergraduate at Harvard, and was once paired with Matt Damon — then a student, now a Hollywood actor — in a drama class.”
“The great virtue of John Mauceri’s “The War on Music: Reclaiming the Twentieth Century” is that it acknowledges what many writers on the subject know but can’t say: that something went badly wrong in music in the 20th century, and especially after 1945. The time has come, Mr. Mauceri writes, “to ask why so much […]