In Brief: Presidents Day Edition

More LOLcats

Here is your regular Sunday selection of links to good things in Blogville and Beyond.

• Via Classical in Seattle, as we already know, bloggers are powerful. A force to contend with. Really, it's scientifically proven: albums mentioned on blogs sell more copies. [Hollywood Reporter]


• The occasional and whimsical posts from an interesting blogging voice are apparently no more, as of January 27. [In the Wings]


• Will I listen to a recording of Allen Ginsberg reading his poems, including Howl, at Reed College in 1956? For free? Yes, I will. [Dial "M" for Musicology]


• Roberto Díaz and Alan Gilbert are using Beethoven's op. 95 string quartet as a way to teach the students at the Curtis Institute about All of Music. It's an intense piece, last heard here from the Leipzig Quartet on Beethoven's birthday. [New York Times]


• If all goes as planned, we are finally going to get to hear tenor Giuseppe Filianoti in Washington next season. His longtime champion, Marion Lignana Rosenberg, has his responses to the Proust questionnaire. [Vilaine Fille]


• "We composers need musicology, for an objective view of our field from the outside that can create a narrative that will make our activities make sense to the outside world and to ourselves. But for all the good that gender studies, reception histories, ethnomusicology, and histories of vernacular music do, the near blackout of attention to contemporary composing creates a public illusion that the new creation of classical music has come to an end. One reads a lot of dire warnings these days about the death of classical music, and if anything in the world could finally kill classical music, it is this illusion." The words come from Kyle Gann's Rey Longyear lecture at the University of Kentucky, a must-read. Musicology ♥ Kyle Gann and modern composers, too! [PostClassic]