In Brief: Welcome Be Ye, Candlemas Edition

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

• Anne Schwanewilms rocks the Strauss. [YouTube]


• These crazy Leonardo obsessions have to stop: now some scholars want to exhume the Renaissance artist's (presumed) grave in an attempt to reconstruct his face from his skull. Why? To test the batshit theory that the Mona Lisa is a self-portrait of Leonardo as a woman. We already know that Leonardo was homosexual and made at least one androgynous image of an erotic nature, the Angelo incarnato: leave the bones of the dead in peace. [The Times]


• Joyce DiDonato speaks to Adam Sweeting. [The Telegraph]


• Forget zealously defending the full length of the Christmas season through the feast of the Baptism of the Lord. If you really want to be traditional, the Christmas season should extend until the fifth Sunday after Epiphany, which puts the last feast of the period at Candlemas, the feast of the Purification on February 2. This medieval understanding of the Christmas season is found in English medieval carols, for example, which often end with references to Candlemas. As my contribution to the traditional side in the War on Candlemas, then, you are urged to attend the special service at St. Paul’s K Street this coming Tuesday (February 2, 6:30 pm). It irks me, as a Catholic and student of the Middle Ages, that the Episcopalians are more faithful to so many of these medieval traditions, but having spent part of a snowy afternoon yesterday listening to the choir and orchestra (!) rehearsing Bruckner’s E Minor Mass (no. 2, the one for 8-part chorus and winds) for this service, I can tell you it will be worth it. [St. Paul’s K Street]


• Matthew Guerrieri points out that the latest Mel Gibson turd movie, Edge of Darkness, originally had a score composed by John Corigliano -- they actually recorded it and everything, with Leonard Slatkin conducting the London Metropolitan Orchestra. It was then dumped, however, and replaced with the latest rehash of the same musical ideas by Howard Shore. As Corigliano put it, " If I had been asked to score a Mel Gibson action film, I would have refused it." Exactly. [The Faster Times]


• Anne Midgette analyzes the numbers -- the real numbers -- for sales of classical music recordings. Prepare to be depressed if you still think that the classical Grammys mean anything. [Washington Post]