The classic video of William Wordsworth's "I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud," as rendered by rapper mc nuts, has disappeared from its original home, the Lake District tourism Web site. Happily, it can still be found on YouTube, where, one hopes, it will reign forever and ever:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VXbrSALG684
Researchers at Oxford University find that socioeconomic status is not a predictor of cultural interests. "Billy Elliott – the fictional working-class boy from a northern mining village with a passion for ballet – is not the social freak he might seem to be. Equally, someone with an impressive ancestry and blue blood coursing through his veins is not necessarily any more cultured than the rest of us," Andy McSmith reports in The Independent:
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/this_britain/article3266586.ece
A Zogby International survey, conducted in June for the Norman Lear Center of the University of Southern California's Annenberg School, found that its sample of 3,939 American adults expressed roughly equal preferences for classical music and rock:
http://www.learcenter.org/html/projects/?cm=zogby
(via Alex Ross, via Jody Rosen)
This research, signaling the collapse of the old highbrow/lowbrow divide, complements my contention that notions of "mainstream" and "niche" musical interests are obsolete. "Each listener's preferences differ, at least incrementally, from everyone else's. Each of us is a subatomic particle, darting between dissimilar and often distant points in an expanding universe of musical ideas," I wrote in a February essay for NewMusicBox:
http://www.newmusicbox.org/article.nmbx?id=4962
Give good gifts one to another,
Peace, joy, and comfort gladly bestow;
Harbor no ill ’gainst sister or brother,
Smooth life’s journey as you onward go.
Broad as the sunshine, free as the showers,
So shed an influence blessing to prove;
Give for the noblest of efforts your pow’rs;
Blest and be blest is the law of love.
– Mount Lebanon Hymnal (1893)
"An American Christmas"
Boston Camerata/Joel Cohen (Erato 92874)
"Carols from King’s"
King’s College Choir, Cambridge/Stephen Cleobury (BBC/Opus Arte 822, DVD)
"Christmas Vespers: Music of Michael Praetorius"
Apollo’s Fire/Jeanette Sorrell (Koch 7673)
"Noël"
Joan Baez, Peter Schickele (Vanguard B000000EJ5)
"Bright Day Star"
Baltimore Consort (Dorian 90198)
"Christmas Carols"
Taverner Consort, Choir & Players/Andrew Parrott (Virgin Classics 503680)
"A New Joy"
Estonian Philharmonic Chamber Choir/Paul Hillier (Harmonia Mundi 907410)
"On Yoolis Night"
Anonymous 4 (Harmonia Mundi 907099)
Britten: "A Ceremony of Carols"
Poulenc: "Motets pour le temps de Noël"
Respighi: "Lauda per la Natività del Signore"
Philadelphia Singers, Concerto Soloists of Philadelphia/Michael Korn (RCA Victor 7787) [Archiv CD reissue, from www.arkivmusic.com]
Vaughan Williams: "Hodie," "Fantasia on Christmas Carols"
Bach Choir, Westminster Abbey Choristers, London Symphony/David Willcocks (EMI Classics 67427)
Handel: "Messiah"
Academy of St. Martin in the Fields & Choir/Neville Marriner (London/Decca 444824)
James Wilson & friends
Dec. 13, Wilton House Museum, Richmond
One of Richmond’s most appealing holiday musical events is the evening of baroque music staged by cellist James Wilson as a benefit for his springtime Richmond Festival of Music. This season Wilson plays a mostly supportive role, joining violinists Claire Jolivet and Theresa Salomon, flutist Mary Boodell and harpsichordist Carsten Schmidt in chamber works that might have been played in musicales in the homes of colonial and early national America.
The ensemble performs on period-style instruments in such a home, Wilton, an 18th-century mansion-turned-museum overlooking the James River in Richmond’s West End.
At least one work on the program, Corelli’s "Sonata da Camera a tre," Op. 2, No. 4, is known to have been heard in 18th-century Virginia; Thomas Jefferson acquired the score in France and played it at Monticello. Other pieces by Bach, Handel and Telemann were familiar to some early Americans. The String Trio No. 2 in D minor by John Antes circulated in Moravian communities from his native Bethelehem, PA, south to Salem (now Winston-Salem), NC. And the English-born Raynor Taylor would have aired his Cello Sonata in G major after he settled in Maryland in the 1760s.
Authenticity has its limits: Musicians visiting Wilton 200 years ago would not have played to 60 guests packed into the house’s "upper passage," or second-story hallway, as they were in the first of two concerts. A repeat of the program will be staged in the more spacious reception room of Wilton's Dependency Building.
On a damp and (for December) balmy night, early fiddles were intonationally finnicky; and making tonally complementary voices of two baroque violins proved to be as difficult as matching the tones of two operatic sopranos.
Jolivet fared better through most of the program, producing especially fine affectus, or stylized expressive effect, in the adagio of Bach’s Sonata in C minor, BWV 1017, and, with Boodell’s baroque flute, in the grave movement of Telemann’s Concerto in A major.
Wilson, who spent most of the program playing continuo with Schmidt, exploited his cameo in Taylor’s baroque-cum-classical sonata. Introducing the work, Wilson noted that Taylor, as a boy chorister singing at Handel’s funeral, dropped his hat into the composer’s grave; and that a musicale in colonial Maryland was called an "olio," an antique synonym for "hodgepodge." The work didn’t quite live up to such an introduction – but what music would?
"Baroque by Candlelight" repeats at 7:30 p.m. Dec. 14 at Wilton House Museum, 215 S. Wilton Road. Tickets: $25. Details: (804) 519-2098, www.richmondfestivalofmusic.org
The New York Philharmonic, after much backing and forthing, has accepted the invitation of the North Korean Ministry of Culture to perform in the country’s capital, Pyongyang. Its 
Four of the last five concert performances I’ve heard of the "New World" Symphony were ceremonial or quasi-official in timing or circumstance. The combined Richmond and Virginia symphonies played the piece on the inaugural weekend of the Jamestown 400th anniversary celebration last spring. The Berlin Philharmonic and Vienna Philharmonic played it on tour dates in Washington, where appearances by foreign orchestras tend to be diplomatic as well as cultural events. The National Symphony of Washington played it on the weekend after the 9/11 attacks. (The "unofficial" performance was by the Richmond Symphony in February 2003.)
The NY Phil’s "New World" in North Korea is a throwback to the days when this symphony was almost obligatory for American orchestras’ foreign tours. As was something by Gershwin – and what do you know, the Pyongyang gig also features "An American in Paris."
Some music historians have made the case that Dvořák conceived of his Ninth Symphony as a template for an American school of composition built on the country’s folk and vernacular music. (As it turned out, Charles Ives provided more durable models of this kind.)
But the “New World” as the default musical representation of the U.S.A.? Would Dvořák be flattered or bewildered?
eighth blackbird, the new-music sextet in residence at the University of Richmond, has snagged a Grammy Award nomination in the best chamber music performance category for its Cedille album "strange imaginary animals."
One piece on the disc, Jennifer Higdon's "Zaka," is a best classical contemporary composition nominee. The possibly prohibitive favorite in the category is Peter Lieberson's "Neruda Songs," recorded by Lorraine Hunt Lieberson, the composer's late wife, with the Boston Symphony for Nonesuch. "Neruda Songs" also was nominated for best classical vocal performance and best classical album. The composer recently won the University of Louisville's prestigious and lucrative ($200,000) Grawemeyer Award for the song cycle.
