In Brief: Assumption Edition

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

• In addition to the video embedded here -- Jordi Savall's astounding performance of Marc-Antoine Charpentier's Missa Assumpta est Maria with Le Concert des Nations (here, the Kyrie, but follow the links for the rest) -- the other part of today's recommended soundtrack, for the feast of the Assumption of Mary, is Palestrina's motet, performed here by The Sixteen. [YouTube]


• Marie-Aude Roux has a nice profile of French countertenor Philippe Jaroussky. At this point he is lucky enough to have a completely full calendar of singing, both concerts and recordings: "For us artists, vacations are something relative, because we are lucky to live by our passion. Our relationship to work is both a necessity and a drug." He plans to keep up the crazy pace until 2013, when he will take an eight-month vacation from singing projects. [Le Monde]


• Martin Bernheimer offers some excellent thoughts on the failure of Donald Rosenberg's law suit against the Cleveland Plain Dealer, including an account of his own eerily similar run-in with Zubin Mehta, then music director of the Los Angeles Philharmonic. [Financial Times]


• With hat tip to the always interesting Boing Boing, a new online glossary and translation tool to combat the scourge of business jargon buzzwords. Having spent some time freelancing as an editor of proposals, I think this could be invaluable: "incentivize," a "word" I have always loathed, is translated as "motivate" or "persuade." Some more that make me happy: "eCommerce" is "online sales," "end to end" is "complete," and "best of breed" is simply "best." [Unsuck It]


• With hat tip to Chant Café, the facsimiles of chant manuscripts originally published in the collection Paléographie musicale have been made available for researchers online, beginning with the first twelve volumes. [Internet Archive]


• Leni Riefenstahl's propaganda films, especially Triumph of the Will and Olympia, are terrifying in terms of their power to persuade, even after the history of the Nazi regime is known. Add to that group Stukas, a 1941 Nazi propaganda film pointed out by Alex Ross. In it a depressed pilot is restored for combat by going to hear Götterdämmerung at Bayreuth. Music has many powers. [The Rest Is Noise]


• Classical music is dying. Or it isn't. [Adaptistration]


• People still seem to like to listen to classical music in the summer. [Denver Post]


• Next season at the Opéra de Paris will feature the premiere of a new opera, Akhmatova (March 2011), the second opera by French composer Bruno Mantovani. He will turn 36 in October, and it was just announced that he will succeed Marc-Olivier Dupin as director of the Conservatoire national supérieur de musique et de danse de Paris. [Le Monde]