Left of the Dial

John Cage, one of the most celebrated, ridiculed, and altogether uncomprising composers of our lifetime, has been in the news a bit lately.

Two Sundays ago, we learned of the death at age 90 of Merce Cunningham. Cunningham garnered much more respect as a choreographer (even receiving the National Medal of Arts at the White House in 1990) than Cage ever did as a composer, but until Cage's 1992 death, the two were inseparable. Cunningham was a loyal accomplice to his own end: his last public appearance of note was a wheelchair-bound performance in 2007 of a "dance" he had conceived to accompany Cage's infamous 1952 work "4'33," in which the performers make no intentional sounds for four minutes, thirty-three seconds.

And this weekend saw a rare performance of a Cage work in England: 1951's Imaginary Landscape No. 4. (Read more about it in the Guardian, here: http://www.guardian.co.uk/music/2009/aug/06/john-cage-symphony-for-radios.)
The score comprises no predetermined melody or harmony: it requires performers to be placed in front of 12 portable radios, moving among stations, adjusting volume.

Cage believed we should accept as a premise that the single most important thing in art was the frame -- the thing that formally separates an artistic expression from everyday life -- and that any subsequent judgments of value belonged solely to the individual. He was insistent upon removing all imposition from composition, upon erasing ego from the equation. Many times, beginning in the '40s, he made a buzz, and still occasionally does. But did he make important music? What do you think?

At-Work Listening

MusicWorks recently surveyed 2,000 people in white- and blue-collar workplaces about how music affects their professional lives. Do people prefer music at work? 71 percent said yes. 77 percent said it makes them more productive. 84 percent said it improves morale.

You can see how people in various professional work environments responded here.

In KBIA's office, there's music on somewhere all the time. How about your office? Are you allowed to have music on? Does it vary from one workstation to another, or does each person choose? Is it in the foreground or background? And if it could be any kind of music, what would it be and why? We're curious ... let us know.

Live Classical Music: Bigger Than Life?

The acclaimed Ravinia Festival in Chicago has taken a page from the amphitheatre- and arena-rock playbook: this summer's performances are now augmented by a pair of Jumbotrons mounted at the sides of the stage. Concertgoers now experience not just world-class performance, but also a 300-square-foot view of conductor James Conlon, say, or pianist Yefim Bronfman.

One Chicago columnist has expressed clear distaste for this development. You can read his views, and those of a few folks who vehemently disagree with him, here.

Is it nice to have Jumbotrons at a classical event of this size and caliber of prestige? Is it, in an era in which general appreciation of classical music is said to be waning, close to a necessity? Or is it neither? What do you think?

Word painting

Every now and then you hear phrases that really help set a mental image or concept...as a former music teacher and lifelong music student I try to "collect" these phrases as they apply to music so that I might better explain a concept or image...this morning I added one to my mental collection.

This morning on NPR's Morning Edition...was a tribute to Indian Sarod player Ali Akbar Khan, wonderfully put together by Sandip Roy, editor with New America Media and host of New America Now on KALW in San Francisco.

Roy, included in his piece a quote from Ali Akbar Khan to students..."don't sing like a typewriter...sing like handwriting"...at that very moment I could picture the beautiful loops and turns of eastern handwriting as a contrast to the harsh tapping sounds of a typewriter.

I also thought that the phrase if used on younger students might need a little updating, I know my children have seen a typewriter but I don't think they've ever used one...my updated version might replace the typewriter with "noisy keyboard"...not quite the same ring but it might get the point across.

For the complete story on Ali Akbar Khan and his roll in bringing Indian Classical music to the US go to http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=105798864

Do you have a phrase that helped you with a musical concept? Please share

Subscribing to the Music

If you've been following trends in downloading music over the last decade, then you know that Napster -- once the haven for free peer-to-peer sharing -- now is a subsidiary of Best Buy, and has developed a business model initially dependent on users' paying 15 dollars a month to listen to as much music as they'd like (with a la carte mp3 purchases available as well). In the last month, Napster has slashed its price to five dollars per month, with five free mp3s thrown in the bargain ... another sign of trouble in the long-suffering world of online music-by-subscription.

Is anyone offering music via that method and doing well? Yes, says this article in Tuesday's Los Angeles Times: it's Naxos, the independent classical label. The Naxos Music Library, available at about $20 per month, is targeting America's colleges, universities, and public-school systems, and has been tapped by hundreds of thousands of music students, educators, and musicians.

It seems to be a glimmer of hope not just for the preservation of the online-music-subscription business model, but also for the longevity of classical music in the American consciousness. What do you think?

More on the Cliburn

NPR Music has posted audio links to performances by the pianists who shared the gold-medal prize at the 2009 Van Cliburn International Piano Competition in Fort Worth: Haochen Zhang, 19, from China, and a young man from Japan, Nobuyuki Tsujii, 20, who was blind at birth.

To hear Zhang performing Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20, and Tsujii performing the Chopin Piano Concerto No. 1, from the final round, with James Conlon and the Dallas Symphony -- and to hear 13 other semifinal- and final-round performances, click here.

And you can visit the Cliburn site for video of the performances.

Lost in America?

Interesting story published this week in the Star-Telegram of Fort Worth, Texas, home turf of Van Cliburn and the annual Cliburn Piano Competition.

Only two Americans have won the Cliburn, possibly the most prestigious piano competition in the world, in the last 20 years. And for the third year running, no Americans have made the semifinals. Evidence of the decline of classical music in the American cultural and educational landscape? Some people think so.

Check out this article -- http://www.star-telegram.com/news/story/1408170.html -- and let us know what you think.