The entertainment biz story of 2011 has to be comedian Louis C.K.’s self-released video special, whose success so clearly demonstrates the validity of a radically open and direct approach to the distribution of artistic content. The simple fact is that the major label-driven profiteering which has contorted and demeaned the culture industry for decades is increasingly being forced to make room for approaches like this, and Louis’ efforts prove nothing could be better for artists and audiences.
'Remix culture is the new Prohibition, with massive media companies as the lone voices calling for temperance. You can criminalize commonplace activities from law-abiding people, but eventually, something has to give.'
Andy Baio conjures a frightening spectre for the major media conglomerates, at least considering how the original Prohibition turned out. But today’s consumers – drinkers, if you will, of ideas and aesthetics – are tapping into streams of discovery and creation whose breadth and depth were unimaginable just a century ago.
[via Daring Fireball]
Substitute ‘major labels’ and ‘digital media’ for ‘Catholicism’ and ‘pamphlet’ and it’s clear that we have an old-fashioned Reformation on our hands in the music business today. Obviously I’m with the Protestants.
[via kottke.org]
'Mozart devoured all he could of the music of Handel and Bach and earlier composers towards the end of his life … [He] knew Handel’s Messiah inside out, having made a new orchestration of the oratorio, and if you listen to the dotted rhythms in the strings of the Requiem’s first movement, the Introitus, and the first fugue theme of the Kyrie, and compare them to consecutive movements from the Messiah [Surely, He Hath Borne Our Griefs, then And With His Stripes], the similarity would have today’s copyright lawyers rubbing their hands in glee.'
Tom Service makes a critical point about aesthetic influence and borrowing in his recent Guardian piece on Mozart’s Requiem.
So allow me to play devil’s – not to mention artists’ – advocate for a radical deconstruction of ‘today’s copyright’: Would we have benefited as a society from lawers getting involved in Mozart’s reuse of Handel’s original content?
I was going to suggest that conductors might benefit from something like this, but perhaps we’re already good enough at generating our own BS?
[via @timoandres]
A thorough new index by composer Colin Eatock.
[via @alexrossmusic]
'Technical perfection is a ridiculous and unfortunate expectation, one created by a century of increasingly polished [and manipulated] recorded music. To an extent, I do expect ‘perfect’ performances out of the Chicago Symphony, Berlin Phil, or New York Phil – I’ve heard them do it before, and I’m confident they can do it again. But from soloists or chamber groups, I want to hear something new, something interesting, something daring, rather than something technically flawless.'
Will Robin is right on. As recorded musical media sheds the inflated monetary value it accrued during the twentieth century we’ll continue to see fresh performance practices – informed by the daring, interesting approaches Will seeks – develop in the twenty-first.
[via my colleague Hunter Capoccioni]
