So Long To Good Times

No more Guitar Hero? What will Kiri Miller study now?

Football Fight

Superbowl + Classical Music
(or: Let's all just get along.)


Previous Super Bowl Ads That Feature Symphonic Music

Can Music Predict the Super Bowl Winner?

Jay-Z and the Rutgers Symphony 2010

And then there's my favorite: The Super Bowl Classical Collection
Who even why what?



Bonus: basketball gets in on the action.

The System Is Down, Yo

The Cairo Opera House is closed until further notice: WQXR reports.

Problems / Problems / Problems All Day Long

Retrospective diagnoses: epilepsy, depression, cystic fibrosis.
CHOPIN'S HALLUCINATIONS

It's brand-new research/speculation, so you can't find it in a book.


(moburns gets all the credit for that last link)

Yeah Darling / You Wear It So Well

The Vienna Philharmonic is instituting a new uniform for its women musicians in the name of a more "homogenous, yet modern" look.
Translation: lady tuxes (picture).

A fun fact left out of the yahoo and jezebel articles? Turns out the women have reservations.

Sick Muse

I don't know if you're aware of this, but the British Medical Journal publishes a special Christmas issue every year. It's true! Relevant, too, because this year's issue includes "Mozart’s 140 causes of death and 27 mental disorders" by Lucien R. Karhausen. "The plethora of proposed causes of death and mental disorders suggested for Mozart," Karhausen writes, "stems from some obscure need to cut great artists down to size." Read all about it.

[Plus, I do believe paragraph five (detailing the major theories for cause of death) would make a wonderful Gilbert and Sullivan style patter. Ahem ahem:

It could be typhus, typhoid, measles, mycotoxin or staphylococcal /
Tuberculosis, trichinosis, or infection meningococcal /
Endocarditis, scarlatina, septicaemias, (not optimal) /
But let's just pause a tick lest we forget the streptococcal.


RIGHT?]

Dance Dance / We're Falling Apart To Half Time

Published paper o' the week.

Dance and Technology: A Pas de Deux for Post-Humans
by: Kent de Spain
Dance Research Journal, Vol. 32, No. 1 (Summer, 2000), pp. 2-17



Let it be known that I'm going to start calling all computers "post-humans."

Shadow Journal

And today I stumbled across this one:

"King Tubby Meets the Upsetter at the Grass Roots of Dub: Some Thoughts on the Early History and Influence of Dub Reggae"

By: Partridge, Christopher. Source: Popular music history, 2(3) p309. Published in: United Kingdom. Publication Date: Dec, 2007.

No You Don't Know What Happened / And You Never Will

"When The Saints Go Marching In" turns deadly.


(via omniscientmussel)

I Can't See Nobody

"Opera Seen Through the Ears" at The Australian.













Figure: Not like this.

(via The Omniscient Mussel)

Creature Feature

I'm starting a new semi-regular blog feature. Like a radio-feature, not like a Huron-feature. Maybe I'll call it a Feature.

TITLES
Of journal articles mostly, but I'm not ruling out book or chapter titles either. For those of you not in the university-loop: it's getting near final-paper-topic-choosing week and I've been spending some quality time with JSTOR. Sometimes it's fascinating, sometimes it's frustrating, sometimes I feel compelled to read my findings out loud to my unsuspecting roommates. I haven't necessarily read these articles, I don't necessarily know what they're about - but they fill a niche in musicological research, and so we salute them. And also sometimes laugh?

Today's offering:
Brechtian Hip-Hop: Didactics and Self-Production in Post-Gangsta Political Mixtapes
Author: George Ciccariello Maher
Source: Journal of Black Studies, Vol. 36, No. 1 (Sep., 2005), pp. 129-160


(From now on: I'll just give you title and bibliography.)
(And: aren't you kind of curious about this article?)

My Baby Loves A Bunch Of Authors

Excellent article of the day: Famous Rappers and their 20th Century Literary Counterparts.

The comments (hilarious, by the way) seem to indicate some people are scandalized, but I say: WHY NOT.

(via flavorwire)

The World

From Saeed Kamali Dehghan's Aug. 2, 2010 Guardian article:

"In some of the most extreme comments by a senior regime figure since the 1979 revolution, [Ayatollah Ali] Khamenei said: 'Although music is halal, promoting and teaching it is not compatible with the highest values of the sacred regime of the Islamic Republic.'
Khamenei's comments came in response to a request for a ruling by a 21-year-old follower of his, who was thinking of starting music lessons, but wanted to know if they were acceptable according to Islam, the semi-official Fars news agency reported. 'It's better that our dear youth spend their valuable time in learning science and essential and useful skills and fill their time with sport and healthy recreations instead of music,' he said."

(Guardian)

There's No Point To This Profession / Without The Occaional Obsession

Here I am on a Saturday morning: sitting on my couch, drinking Lady Grey tea with heavy cream (because I'm out of milk, but not heavy cream. Turns out that's not so unusual.), and giggling like a five year old girl. WHY?

John Moe's Pop Song Correspondences

Featuring:
A Retort to Carly Simon Regarding Her Charges of Vanity ("First of all, that party took place on a yacht. So the way I walked in was perfectly appropriate.")
A Letter to Elvis Presley From His Hound Dog ("I admit it: I do cry all the time. I think a doctor would call it severe clinical depression, if you ever took me to a doctor, like a responsible owner would.")
Marvin Gaye Explains What He Heard Through the Grapevine ("It all started about six months ago when I bought a sack of grapes from an old man on La Cienega.")

The complete series is comprised of twenty episodes.



(I also giggle when people fall down in movies.)

Do It Alone, Leo

Jason Robert Brown and a US teenager have an e-mail exchange about trading sheet music and copyright laws. Sure it sounds a little dull, but in the end: FASCINATING.

Relax / Don't Do It / When You Want To Go To It

The Associated Press would like you to know that a new study "found playing classic music with specific ambiance sound such as dog barking, human conversation and crow's crow inserted over the music is the most effective combination to relax dogs."

Crows over Beethoven? I mean, okay.

(via io9) (thanks to dad!)

Do You Wanna Go Big?

Markneukirchen, Germany is about to claim distinction as the home of the world's largest violin. Measurements? 4.28 meters tall, 1.45 meters wide, and over 100 kilograms.

That violin is (not surprisingly) too big for me; (more surprisingly), it is too big for you too!

(Article: here)
(thanks to tschmid!)

I Don't Care Too Much For Money / Money Can't Buy Me Love

PUBLIC SERVICE ANNOUNCEMENT:

Yahoo HotJobs has an article detailing the Top (bottom?) Ten Worst-Paying Jobs. Music comes in at a solid #4. HEY!

(via collabpiano)

Tonight / Not Again

SUPPLEMENTARY PROGRAM NOTES FOR HUSBANDS FORCED TO ATTEND THIS EVENING'S PERFORMANCE OF HAYDN'S MISSA CELLENSIS by Howard Zaharoff

("Whom would you prefer singing solo in this mass, Beverly Sills or Renée Fleming? Is either Flemish? Would that affect their singing? Suppose they came to blows over who had the better voice: Would Renée's youth and smarts best Beverly's age and sagacity? Or would Beverly win, because it's creepy to fight dead people? " I laughed out loud.)

(thanks, maureen!)

Collect Call

Collecting musical autographs and manuscripts. That sounds like a nice (/expensive) hobby.
Stefan Zweig owned a collection of almost 4,000 - most of which are now held by and displayed at the British Library. Read all about it. And he wasn't even a musician.

(via AMS in the news)