As medici.tv’s Chief Content Officer I spend a lot of time thinking about classical music—and a lot of time on the internet. Here’s my selection of the top five news items you need to see this week if you want to stay in the know.
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A brand-new Purcell song unearthed in local archive (The Guardian)
A pair of “highly significant” and “almost unheard of” discoveries about leading seventeenth-century English composer Henry Purcell have come out of local archives in Worcestershire and Norfolk this week. First, a previously unknown song: “As soon as day began to peep,” and second, a set of keyboard works hand-written by the composer himself—the first Purcell autograph discovered in over 30 years. The discoveries will feature in an episode of the BBC Radio 3 program “The Song Detectorists” later this month.
What exactly is “modern music” today? (NYT)
Joshua Barone has written a fascinating op-ed on the nebulous area of “contemporary music”—in particular on the legacy of the avant-garde movement, led by composers like Pierre Boulez, that emerged post World War II. Barone argues that today’s composers write in a wide variety of styles, many of which have stylistically more in common with Romantic, jazz, or pop masterworks than with pieces from the Boulez generation, yet when you ask people to describe “modern music” they think of Schoenberg’s serialism more handily than Missy Mazzoli’s electronic-influenced minimalism…
Yo-Yo Ma’s new podcast: Our Common Nature
The first episode of the brand-new WNYC podcast Our Common Nature dropped this week: over seven episodes, beloved cellist Yo-Yo Ma and host Ana González travel across America to explore the relationship between culture and nature, a topic inspired by Ma’s experience reconnecting with the outdoors during the pandemic. In the first episode, Ma talks about Bach, of course! The pair were also interviewed on NPR this week as well.
After listening to the episode, watch Ma perform the full set of Bach’s Cello Suites on a glorious outdoor stage just steps from Greece’s Parthenon—truly one of the crown-jewel performances in the medici.tv catalogue!
Gautier Capuçon and his cello take on Mont Blanc (France TV)
Speaking of music and nature, cellist Gautier Capuçon wowed French TV audiences this week with images from a particularly daring solo performance done while ascending Mont Blanc, the highest peak in Europe. Capuçon and his cello spent 3 hours hanging from a ski cable 4,000 meters above the ground…
Misty Copeland’s final curtain call at the American Ballet Theatre (Ebony, Wall Street Journal)
One of the greatest dancers of our time is preparing for her final bow: Misty Copeland, the first Black female principal dancer with the American Ballet Theatre, will officially retire from the stage later this month and many press outlets like Ebony magazine and the Wall Street Journal are beginning to pay tribute to her remarkable, trailblazing career. Copeland will now focus on her new creative endeavours (she has already launched the Life in Motion Production company, and her second book is set to come out soon), mentoring young dancers, and continuing her work to diversify ballet.
