John Cage
When atonal music was original and exciting
Alexander Goehr, the sole survivor of the radical Manchester School of Music in the 1960s, describes turning pre-war European tradition into British cutting edge
Drunk singers, Ravel on film and prime Viennese operetta: the addictive joys of classical YouTube
The full addictive potential of classical YouTube needs to be experienced to be understood. And let’s be honest, there are…
Full of wonders: Takis at Tate Modern reviewed
Steel flowers bend in a ‘breeze’ generated by magnetic pendulums. This is the first thing you see as you enter…
The bias against digital music is more emotional than scientific
It’s an increasingly common lament that computers have ruined everything, and a longing for the days before Google and Twitter,…
Merce Cunningham’s work was magical, intangible, Einsteinian – revival is futile
On Tuesday, thousands of miles apart, in three great cities, London, New York and Los Angeles, 75 dancers will dance…
Intelligent, poetic and profound: Tacita Dean at the National and National Portrait galleries
Andy Warhol would probably have been surprised to learn that his 1964 film ‘Empire’ had given rise to an entire…
Could a change of body language make a difference to American policing?
One of the most shocking items of recent news has been the bald statistic that the number of people shot…
Was Bach really a ‘tasteless and chaotic composer’?
It’s just not what you expect to hear on Radio 3 but I happened upon Music Matters on Saturday morning…
Why plotting a sound map of London is impossible
It’s easy to tag the city’s terrain by writer. But what, wonders Philip Clark, might a map of its music look like?
