Alex Ross's Blog, page 80

Wagner 1989

Regrettably, there is no evidence to back up the claim that Wagner slept with Ludwig II.

Gardiner's Monteverdi

Orpheus Resounding. The New Yorker, Nov. 13, 2017.

Sanity break

The SAKURA Cello Quintet plays Debussy.

Siegfried by Lynd Ward

From Georgetown University Library.

Ashley Fure

Tremors. The New Yorker, Oct. 30, 2017.

Above, a video overview of Fure's The Force of Things.

Miscellany

This weekend the ever-innovative Community MusicWorks organization, in Providence RI, is celebrating the music of André Cormier, a Canadian composer affiliated with the Wandelweiser collective. It's a wonderful departure from the norm for an education-oriented initiative to emphasize experimental music.... LA's Southland Ensemble has announced a meaty 2017-18 season: Jürg Frey and Manfred Werder (Oct. 29), Fluxus (Dec. 9), Wadada Leo Smith (Jan. 26), Ruth Crawford Seeger (April 7), and Laura Steenburge (June 2).... The Open Source Music Festival, in NYC, will present ten hours of new music on Nov. 18: works of Julia Wolfe, Evan Ziporyn, Anthony Cheung, TIGUE, and many others.... On Oct. 29, the ONE gay and lesbian archive at USC will pay tribute to Pauline Oliveros with a program entitled Beethoven Was a Lesbian.... Tyshawn Sorey will make several appearances at Jazzfest Berlin from Oct. 31 to Nov. 5.... On Nov. 17, the Rainy Days Festival in Luxembourg will feature Chaya Czernowin's Guardian, a new concerto for cello and orchestra, alongside Feldman's Neither. The work will have had its in Donaueschingen on Oct. 22... The theme of the new Chicago Sinfonietta season is Women Rule.... Note a worthy campaign to save Bizet's house.... The no less worthy fundraiser to record Gregory Spears's Paul's Case is entering its final days.

Els Segadors

Via Roger Evans.

Romeo Foxtrot

Chapter 14 of Wagnerism, addressing Wagner on film, is nearly done. We give thanks for John Milius and Francis Ford Coppola. One more remains: Chapter 15, The Wound.

The Rest Is Noise was published ten years ago today. Deepest thanks to all those who read the book and responded to it.

A Pascale Criton moment

Via Scott Worthington.

Bookshelf

New publications of interest.

Bethany Beardslee and Minna Proctor, I Sang the Unsingable: My Life in Twentieth-Century Music (Boydell and Brewer)

Celia Applegate, The Necessity of Music: Variations on a German Theme (University of Toronto Press)

Ijoma Mangold, Das deutsche Krokodil: Meine Geschichte (Rowohlt)

Music & Literature No. 8: Éric Chevillard, Unsuk Chin, Mark Turner

Oxford Keynotes: Annegret Fauser on Appalachian Spring, Tim Carter on Carousel, Kevin Karnes on Tubula Rasa, Alexander Rehding on Beethoven's Ninth, Walter Frisch on "Over the Rainbow"