Free Republic

In the summer of 1968, a friend and I went to see the blockbuster movie of the year—2001: A Space Odyssey. We settled into our seats and the theater went dark. The film began. And then we heard the most astounding music. It grabbed me like no movie music ever had. There was more magnificent music in 2001, some of which I recognized, such as “The Blue Danube,” but it was the opening that stuck in my mind. What was that music and where did it come from? Many others were wondering the same thing. A year or two later,...

Convenience store chain 7-Eleven has discovered that homeless people don’t like opera and classical music blaring in their ears as they beg for money, do drugs, or harass the locals. The practice launched in Canada and then San Francisco and several beach locales in Florida followed suit. Now, it’s a mainstream solution for business owners struggling to cope in certain neighborhoods. The immediate problem is that a whole lot of customers who buy Twinkies, lottery tickets, and slushies don’t much like that style of music either. Therein lies the rub. “Studies have shown that the classical music is annoying. Opera...

Until August 2020, Dona Vaughn had been the longtime artistic director of opera at the Manhattan School of Music. Her experience included singing, acting, and directing on and off Broadway and on opera stages. The Manhattan School of Music’s 2019 production of Saverio Mercadante’s little-known opera buffa I Due Figaro showed her influence in some stunningly charismatic and witty student performances. Vaughn was committed to championing minority musicians—so much so that she endowed a scholarship for them at her alma mater, Brevard College in North Carolina. “In all my years of teaching,” she said at the time, “I often have...

Perhaps worse than trite politicization of classic tunes is failing to pass on the wealth of a child's musical heritage. Here are some ways to start offering that audible feast to your child.Just as what you feed your baby (and eat while pregnant) trains her palate toward good food or junk food for life, what your baby sees and hears does the same for her artistic tastes. Kids raised on mental junk food have a harder time developing an understanding of and affinity for more complex, subtle, and nourishing brain foods later in life.Many parents nowadays pay immense attention to...

“Woke” academics have taken to attacking almost everything that’s traditional in our culture. Math and science are denounced for their “whiteness,” and Shakespeare has to be replaced by writers from “marginalized groups.” Now, it’s music that is on the chopping block. As reported in The Post Millennial, “woke” professors at Oxford University are advocating a ban on the use of sheet music as well as an end to the curricular focus on classical European composers—lest the institution continue to be complicit in “white supremacy.” In response to international Black Lives Matter demonstrations, a faculty board aims to overcome “white supremacy,”...

The Richard Tucker Music Foundation, which grants prestigious awards to young singers, removed David N. Tucker from its board of directors on Monday evening. Mr. Tucker, a son of the distinguished tenor for whom the foundation is named, was removed after an uproar over racially charged comments that he made on a Black singer’s Facebook page. “The Richard Tucker Music Foundation condemns the hurtful and offensive comments made by one of our board members, David Tucker,” Jeffrey Manocherian, the foundation’s chairman, and Barry Tucker, its president and another of Richard Tucker’s sons, said in a statement. On Saturday, Julia Bullock,...

When Lyric Opera was forced to cancel all its performances for the rest of the year due to the pandemic, it seemingly lost one of its greatest outreach opportunities: The annual free concert at Millennium Park, which reaches thousands of listeners. Rather than take the loss, Lyric general manager, president and CEO Anthony Freud and Ryan Opera Center music director Craig Terry came up with an alternative – one distinctly in tune with our turbulent times. At 6 p.m. July 26, the Ryan Opera Center will present “Lawrence Brownlee and Friends: The Next Chapter,” a free virtual concert spotlighting Black...

Twitter users are debating whether or not Beethoven was black after a blog post about the subject resurfaced online. ... In the post on The Concordian, the author said: "I am no Beethoven expert, but bringing up this topic is important. While getting to the bottom of the truth about Beethoven's race will change nothing about the supreme quality of his music, it will open up dialogue about the massive effects of European colonialism that promote racism still today. .. However, there is no evidence of Beethoven's race aside from portraits that suggest that he was white, and the blog...

Click for lovely music! Happy Orthodox Easter! Christ is Risen. He is Risen Indeed!

Today is the 210th anniversary of the greatest concert of all time. Beethoven concert of 22 December 1808 "The Beethoven concert of 22 December 1808 was a benefit concert held for Ludwig van Beethoven at the Theater an der Wien in Vienna that featured the public premieres of Beethoven's Fifth and Sixth Symphonies, the Fourth Piano Concerto and the Choral Fantasy." H/T to my friend Matthew B. Tepper for calling attention to this.

The Nazi years lie like a bolt over the memory of a good Germany, of the composers, poets and philosophers who gave the world so much beauty and enlightenment in the 18th and 19th centuries: Kant, Hegel, Goethe, Schiller, Beethoven, Wagner and the Romantics. Nevertheless...in only a few years, a nation of culture was turned into one of modern barbarians. Could the philosophical abstraction, artistic elation and yearning for collective salvation that drove the country also have contributed to its ultimate derailing into the kind of mania that defined the years of National Socialism? After all, it wasn't just the...

For those who like Rock-n-Roll versions of classical pieces.

Top Spanish conductor Jesus Lopez Cobos, who wielded the baton at a clutch of top ensembles including the Spanish National Orchestra and the Cincinnati Symphony Orchestra (CSO), has died of cancer aged 78, his entourage said Friday in Madrid.

Recognizing that Classical Music has implied White Supremacy for centuries is hard for those that study the art form. In fact, that correlating The Met’s continued programming of dead white men to the rise of White Supremacist tendencies in America is not a far stretch is starting to become apparent to those that follow and review the company’s season announcements. Of course Italian Opera traditions are rich and are the backbone for many composers, but when an American institution, founded on the grounds

Over the week, there have been waves of backlash at The Metropolitan Opera’s newest season announcement. A recent Washington Post made the rounds, taking to task the institution’s insistence on an entirely white and male composer list, as well as a completely male roster of conductors taking the podium. As a white man, there have been and continue to be countless times in which I have needed to recognize that privilege, white supremacy, homophobia, toxic masculinity, and gender normativity are layered issues. It’s easy to call a Nazi a racist because they are so obviously a racist. Not all racists...

This is Jacob Collier, a astounding musician from the UK

"Alexa, play Fritz Kreisler." I say that command several times a week (sometimes twice a day) to my Echo Dot. Why? Because after discovering the violin music of Fritz Kreisler, I have become hooked. His style is incredibly soothing and makes me relax. He also plays in quite a haunting manner as you can hear in his LIEBESLIED. I first discovered Kreisler several months ago after watching the movie, "Music of the Heart" about a violin teacher. It featured a cameo by Isaac Stern. As is often the case I did a bit of research on Stern and found out...

Jenny Wong is the Associate Conductor of the LA Master Chorale. Wong says she’s excited to conduct the six motets by J.S. Bach for many reasons, not the least of which is the incredible depth of the music. “All of us, undoubtedly, who we study Bach’s music, you’re always going to leave it feeling like you can’t study it enough. There’s just so much more to get to know about it. Because Bach’s music there’s such an order to it. And yet, it’s never just because it’s academic. It’s useless to talk about Bach without talking about the reason for...

The Latvian conductor Mariss Jansons, of the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra has quickly retracted a remark made to a Telegraph interviewer in which he said that women conductors ‘are not my cup of tea’. In a statement on Friday he said: ‘I come from a generation in which the conducting profession was almost exclusively reserved to men. Even today, many more men than women pursue conducting professionally. ‘But it was undiplomatic, unnecessary and counterproductive for me to point out that I’m not yet accustomed to seeing women on the conducting platform. ‘Every one of my female colleagues and every young...