Ain’t misbehavin’ and other songs
Here’s a nice site: extraordinarily detailed and well-presented details about jazz standards such as Ain’t misbehavin’. There’s a list of the 1,000 most recorded jazz standards, and very detailed records…
‘Melanie has labor pains, I want twenty cellists!’
…is a priceless line from a conversation between the composer of the music for Gone with the Wind, Max Steiner and film producer David Selznick. Describing the scene where Melanie…
Johann Strauss the African
Andre Rieu’s album of Strauss Waltzes and other bon-bons, Forever Vienna, is number 1 in the classical album charts this year, and beat Susan Boyle’s album in the top ten…
The fiction of a ‘music industry’
It’s always bugged me that you see the term ‘music industry’ referred to in the press (usually by a representative of it) as if it were a single phenomenon. If…
Taruskin on ballet music
One of the excitements of this year is being able to afford a volume of The Oxford History of Western Music. I snapped it up in Blackwells the other day,…
Musicology, music & terror
Really wonderful article on musicology and music-as-torture, by Suzanne Cusick. Musicology, Torture, Repair in Radical Musicology.