In Brief: O Oriens

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

• A funny take on all those Year in Review things you see this time of year -- Our Annual Year, 2008 A.D.: A Look Back on All the Things that Happened. [The Onion]


• What is slang and how can lexicographers possibly keep track of it all? "Although humans coin words as prolifically as bees make honey, dictionaries of standard English only include lexemes that have become a stable currency among strangers. Slang is not confined by this useful limit." [Languagehat]


• Andrew Clark on the duplicity of the Elliott Carter birthday celebrations: "But look through the programmes of most musical organisations and his name is conspicuous by its absence – above all in his native US, where the tide of culture has flowed away from art that requires patience, concentration and sustained intellectual engagement, as Carter’s does. Carter himself says the world is living through 'a period of confusion. We’re constantly overwhelmed with confused problems, and sometimes the expression of confusion is an important thing. When this period wears itself out, people will become more sensitive [to complexity] than they are now, and then they will like my music'." [Financial Times]


• Addio, Alfred Brendel. You leave much more than a hole in people's lives. [The Guardian]


• Jens liked one of Gilbert Kaplan's recordings of Mahler 2 just fine. A trombone player in the New York Philharmonic was not impressed. Big deal, except that he published his thoughts. On a blog. [New York Times]


• Norman Lebrecht comes to Kaplan's defense. [Slipped Disc]


• The late Richard Hickox's last interview before his death. [Jessica Duchen]

Thanks to Lolcats for the image