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Classical station has new business model: support of donors Boston is following a trend in radio that’s taking place in other cities across the nation: Its only 24-hour classical music station now depends on listeners - not advertisers - to keep it afloat. Last week’s Federal Communications Commission approval of WGBH’s $14 million purchase of WCRB-FM (99.5) means the classical musical station is now a public broadcaster, with a business model that draws revenue from donations and corporate sponsorship instead of relying on advertising. Because classical music fans tend to be older, and advertisers typically want to court a younger...

MONDAY, Aug. 17 (HealthDay News) -- It's one of the enduring mysteries of classical music: What -- or who -- killed Mozart at the age of 35 when he was at the height of his creative powers? Now, there's a new theory: He died of complications of strep throat. The latest hypothesis lacks the inherent drama of murder by a rival or suicide, which have both been suggested as causes of Mozart's death. But Andrew Steptoe, co-author of a historical diagnosis published Aug. 18 in the Annals of Internal Medicine, said an infection makes the most sense, considering medical records...

Joseph Haydn was born on March 31st, 1732 in the village of Rohrau in Lower Austria, a province of the Habsburg empire. This was arguably the most multinational, multicultural, multilingual and generally diverse great power that Europe had ever seen. Its then ruler, Charles VI, held sway over a great conglomeration of territories stretching from Ostend to Belgrade and from Prague to Palermo. It included all or part of the following present-day countries: Belgium, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Germany, Austria, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Romania, Hungary, Serbia, Croatia, Slovenia and Italy. As Sir Harold Temperley observed, the Habsburg monarchy was not...

 Here are some links to go to if you would like to download some wonderful music for Easter: Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music - The Musical Offering in MP3The download links at the page above look like this: Introitus: Resurrexi (Graduale Romanum)Hover your mouse cursor over the underlined / italicized text and right-click, then select 'save target as' from the right-click menu and choose your preferred download location. Hymns for the Celebrations of the Liturgical Year, Pontifical Musical Chorus of the Sistine ChapelThe download links at this page are different, they look like this: IO SONO RISORTO  For these...

      Here are two links at the Vatican's website that you can go to for downloading free music for Christmas as well as other occasions.  Hymns for the Celebrations of the Liturgical Year, Pontifical Musical Chorus of the Sistine ChapelOn this page, the links to the MP3 files look like this    It will probably be easiest to hover your mouse cursor over the note picture, right-click your mouse and select "save target as" to define where you want the file saved.When the file is finished downloading it will be available to be played on your computer's MP3 player. ...

It is Sunday and I am in the mood to probe the interest at FR for one of America's all time greatest artists and more specifically, classical composers: Charles Ives. I learned about him via composer, lyricist, and Brian Wilson collaborator Van Dyke Parks (also a true American original). And my love has, since it began in 1990 or thereabouts, never diminished). I have all of his recorded works and would not want to single out one masterpiece, they're all great, with the possible exception of the First Symphony (mainly because there's still too much Schumann and Brahms in there,...

The "Musicians Who Turn 50", "Musicians Who Turn 60", "Favorite Drummer" and "Favorite Guitarist" were such hit threads on FR, I've decided to do this one. Who is your favorite SONGWRITING DUO? We all know that Lennon-McCartney were amazing together and possibly the best songwriting duo ever. They might be mentioned several times on this thread. If you choose John & Paul, be specific about which song and lyric(s).

An exceptional essay well worth reading. A few excerpts are: "...What the university offered, then, became no different from the fare of a television station, a local movie theater, rap concert, or a government bureaucracy: the more the campus devolved into popular life, the less it had to offer anything of rarity or singular beauty—confirming Plato’s pessimism that the radical egalitarian appeal to mass appetites must lead to arts of a lesser and more accessible quality. If half-educated strippers and sex entertainers are deemed street artists or populist philosophers, then they can now be welcomed to campus, exempt from both...

Alex Ross’s The Rest is Noise tells the story of what happened to Western classical music in the twentieth century. We all know that the invention of recorded sound around 1900 made possible an extraordinary dissemination of the riches of the classical repertoire – largely composed for the rich and powerful – to the mass of ordinary people. On the gramophone, the radio, television and, subliminally and hence more powerfully, through the movies, the classical sound in all its variants (even the supposedly rebarbative confections of the Second Viennese School) has insinuated itself into the culture at large. Never before...

William Wolcott's violin studio is about the size of a large broom closet, yet it's often the site of amazing master classes. Virtuoso Itzhak Perlman has held court there. Pinchas Zukerman, Sarah Chang and other fabulous fiddlers also have squeezed into the room. They all fit because of a miraculous little invention: the Internet. "There's an incredible amount of classical music now on the Internet, and it's really helping me teach my students," said Wolcott, an instructor at the Omaha Conservatory of Music. "We can sign on to YouTube right here in my studio and watch the world's greatest violinists...

I received a 30% off coupon for Borders that can be used today or tomorrow, and I've decided to get a CD of Chopin's polonaises, since I currently don't have anything with those pieces on it.

Summer issue of Sacred Music By CMAA on May 21, 2007 at 3:34 pm Here is the contents of the Summer 2007 issue of Sacred Music. You can join the CMAA and receive this issue and three more for $30. EDITORIALS Et Erit In Pace Memoria Ejus † Richard J. Schuler | Robert Skeris On the Apostolic Exhortation | William Mahrt ARTICLES The Life and Meaning of the Sequence | By Lázló Dobszay Ornamented Chant in Spain | Lorenzo CandelariaREPERTORY The Alternatim Alternative | Susan Treacy Psallat Ecclesia | Sequence for the Dedication of a Church ARCHIVE The Young...

Ipod generation boosts classical music radio station by 500,000 listenersby PAUL REVOIR - More by this author » Last updated at 22:13pm on 10th May 2007  Generation iPod: Young listeners have boosted the audience of classical radio station Classic FM by 500,000 Britain's iPod generation is becoming hooked on classical music with new figures revealing a huge surge in youngsters listening to radio station Classic FM. Driven by the success of film scores for blockbuster movies like Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter and determined efforts to sex-up the classical music industry, a section of Britain's youth appears...

Easter 2006 Easter 2005 Easter 2004 Easter 2003 Easter 2002     Easter 2001 Easter 2000          Easter Music    Holy Week 2006 Holy Week 2005 Holy Week 2004 Holy Week 2003 Holy Week 2002  EASTER MUSIC: Pontifical Musical Chorus of the Sistine Chapel Pontifical Institute of Sacred Music

Pope wants comeback for Gregorian chants By Philip PullellaVATICAN CITY (Reuters) - Pope Benedict, who last week told the world he does not care much for Bob Dylan, said on Tuesday he would like Gregorian chant to make a comeback. The 79-year-old German Pope said the Catholic faithful should learn more of the chanting traditionally sung in Latin by choirs of monks since the Middle Ages."The better-known prayers of the Church's tradition should be recited in Latin and, if possible, selections of Gregorian chant should be sung," he said in part of a 140-page booklet on the Mass.He lamented...

Great move by Saul Levine as KMZT becomes KKGO-FM (Go Country 105) on Monday. This is one of the best decisions in a long time for the marketplace. Good for him and best of success. Classical will still be served on 91.5, 1260, and KMZT HD.

Washington radio station WGMS dropped the music of Mozart and Tchaikovsky yesterday after nearly six decades and replaced its classical format with tunes by Cheap Trick, Elton John and the Bee Gees in a two-part shake-up. Last night, WETA dropped its news and talk programming and became a classical station again in a coordinated move with Bonneville International Corp., which owns WGMS (103.9 and 104.1 FM). WETA (90.9 FM) was a classical station for 35 years until dropping the format in February 2005. snip But Bonneville is entering a highly competitive segment of the radio market. Its new station replacing...

In recent years, Hamilton College has done little that would have pleased its namesake. It's hard to imagine that any of the founding generation's leaders—perhaps excepting Paine—could find much to their liking in the college's fawning treatment of radical icons or its fervent multiculturalism. It was Hamilton that sought to bring former weather underground member and convicted terrorist, Susan Rosenberg, to campus as an instructor and "artist-in-residence", as it was Hamilton that launched Ward Churchill into world class notoriety by inviting him to speak. But it's good to discover that Hamilton is capable of learning something from its repeated embarrassments....

Station likely to get new home on the dial If all goes as planned, local classical music fans will be able to keep listening to their favorite radio programming on WCRB-FM. But instead of tuning into 102.5 as they now do, they'll turn to another frequency on the FM dial, 99.5. The current WCRB-FM is being sold to Greater Media, which owns 19 radio stations, including five in Boston. Much speculation has surrounded the station's fate -- and its classical format. But it appears the format will live on, if on a station that's more difficult to hear in the...

EVERYONE has heard the requiems sung for classical music or at least the reports of its failing health: that its audience is graying, record sales have shriveled and the cost of live performance is rising as ticket sales decline. Music education has virtually disappeared from public schools. Classical programming has (all but) disappeared from television and radio. And 17 orchestras have closed in the last 20 years. All this has of late become the subject of countless blogs, news reports, books and symposiums, with classical music partisans furrowing their brows and debating what went wrong, what can still go wrong...