Music
Wagnerism: Art and politics in the shadow of music by Alex Ross
The Oxford Companion to Australian Music edited by Warren Bebbington
Those of us who work in classical music will be familiar with the accusation that our chosen art form lacks contemporary social relevance. It is one with a long pedigree. ‘Sonata, what do you want of me?’ asked an exasperated Fontenelle in 1751, according to Rousseau. But you will find no widespread or heightened disdain for worldly affairs among classical musicians on the whole. Rather, any apparent reticence they may have describing how their art connects with the world at large stems from the fact that it is notoriously difficult to do. As the well-known quip goes, ‘Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.’ This is not a love that dare not speak its name so much as one that struggles to be put into words at all.
... (read more)Paul Kelly: The man, the music and the life in-between by Stuart Coupe
Summertime: George Gershwin’s life in music by Richard Crawford
The Song Remains the Same: 800 years of love songs, laments and lullabies by Andrew Ford and Anni Heino
British Music Criticism and Intellectual Thought 1850–1950 edited by Jeremy Dibble and Julian Horton
The Silent Musician: Why Conducting Matters by Mark Wigglesworth
Now in its twenty-ninth year, the Wangaratta Festival of Jazz and Blues continues to deliver programming that is innovative, ambitious, and far-reaching. That a long-running Festival of this scale and significance takes place annually in a regional Victorian city says much about the tenacity and dedication of the Festival’s artistic team ...
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