(no subject)

Quoted from Karen Armstrong's The Bible: The Biography...

It was said that one day a pagan had approached Hillel and promised to convert to Judaism if he could summarize the entire Torah while he stood on one leg. Standing on one leg, Hillel replied: 'What is hateful to yourself, do not to your fellow man. That is the whole of the Torah and the remainder is but commentary. Go study it.'

Not a message that's unique to Judaism or Hillel, of course. But one that's worth quoting now and again. If only for the "on one leg" bit. 

So, classical music...

...new classical music. Opinions?

I skimmed an interesting piece in the latest Gramophone magazine, which commented that there's no 'hook' that can be used to get new work into the mainstream - I think they namechecked the Turner Prize as an equivalent hook for modern art, but I don't have the relevant piece to hand.

There's a bit of my brain that thinks the sort of people who appreciated, say, Tarmvred (to pick a not-so random interesting experimental electronic act) at Infest, are also vaguely likely to appreciate a modern classical composer like Tüür... but I'm not sure that's actually true. Hmm.

May need to think on this a little more, but comments are welcome...

Edit: Well, ok, John Adams is on MySpace. That was a pleasant surprise.

Edit2: ...and so are the Kronos Quartet, among others (...and I hadn't realised they'd been busy remixing NIN. I guess that's a decent hook, hmm? :)