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Mozart’s own violin, in the U.S. for the first time ever, being played at the Boston Early Music Festival.

kqedscience:

Stanford X-Rays Bring a 200-Year-Old Opera Back to Life

“When, 216 years ago, someone mysteriously blacked out pages from the French opera Médée with charcoal, the music was lost to history. Now, scientists at Stanford University’s National Accelerator Laboratory have brought those long-lost notes back to life.”

Read more at KQED Science.

(this post was reblogged from kqedscience)
Played 68 times

If crooks are in charge, should we let them pick our pockets?
If we don’t want trouble, should we not try to stop it?
We could just sink into the quicksand slavery we’re born in
But fighting endless wars for greedy liars is getting pretty boring
They think they got us trained, so we’ll think we’re living free
If we got time and money for junk food and TV
But it’s plain honest people never stand a chance of winning elections
They just let us pick which liars take our rights away for our own protection

The corporate propaganda paralyzes us with fear
Destroying our ability to trust
Fear keeps us fighting with each other over scraps
Starving to death in the dust
Organized religion really helps you submit
But the meek are inheriting the short end of the stick
Think twice (think twice) we’re awaking from the dream
Think twice (think twice) we don’t like what we see

Fear surrounds compassion like a layer of mold
And weakens our defenses so we’re too weak to be bold
Life could be heaven, but this corrupted system
Takes away our rights, expects us not to miss them
The middle class is shrinking while the lower class grows
If we don’t wake up soon, we’ll have no class left to lose
But at least we’re getting by, and there’s heaven when we die
It’s hard for honest people to recognize a lie

It’s an American dream, there’s no pie in the sky
We’re running out of credit, we can’t afford to buy it
If it weren’t so sad, it’d be a goddamn riot

Think twice, the change that we need can be found
Think twice, just don’t expect to get it handed down
Think twice, right now it’s up to you and me
Our hearts guide our minds to make greed obsolete
Don’t run in circles all your life just hoping
To grab a horse on a debt carousel

(Source: teantacles)

(this post was reblogged from fuckyeahbluegrass)
smithsonianmag: The Evolution of the Treble Clef The curving flourishes of music notation have always been something a mystery to me, although every day I, like many people, use other arcane symbols without thinking twice about it. The at (@) sign, the dollar sign ($) and the ampersand (&), for example, all function like ligatures or some sort of shorthand. They’ve been demystified by popular use in email, clues on “Wheel of Fortune,” and their inclusion on computer keyboards. But music notation is a semantic system that is entirely different from the written word; a non-spoken alphabet of pitch and rhythm. So, with apologies to the more musically inclined reader, I looked into the origin of the treble clef and the answer was quite simple. The treble clef, the top symbol you see in the photo above, is also known as the G-clef, which gives you the first clue to its origin. So for my own edification, if nothing else, let’s start with the basics. A clef is a sign placed on a music staff that indicates what pitch is represented by each line and space on the staff. The history of Western musical notation describes an effort toward the development a simple, symbolic representations of pitch and rhythm. It begins near the end of the 9th century when notation for the Plainsong of the Western Church, better known as Gregorian Chant, was first recorded with “neumes”. These were simple dashes or dots above lyrics that indicated a relative change in pitch. At the end of the 10th century, musical scribes increased the precision of his early notation by introducing a horizontal line to indicate a base pitch (see above image). The pitch of this line was indicated by a letter at its start – typically  F or C and, as higher range songs become more common, G. Neumes were no longer relative only to one another, but to a standard. This was the beginning of the musical staff. Continue reading at Smithsonian.com Click for high-res photo

smithsonianmag:

The Evolution of the Treble Clef

The curving flourishes of music notation have always been something a mystery to me, although every day I, like many people, use other arcane symbols without thinking twice about it. The at (@) sign, the dollar sign ($) and the ampersand (&), for example, all function like ligatures or some sort of shorthand. They’ve been demystified by popular use in email, clues on “Wheel of Fortune,” and their inclusion on computer keyboards. But music notation is a semantic system that is entirely different from the written word; a non-spoken alphabet of pitch and rhythm. So, with apologies to the more musically inclined reader, I looked into the origin of the treble clef and the answer was quite simple. The treble clef, the top symbol you see in the photo above, is also known as the G-clef, which gives you the first clue to its origin.

So for my own edification, if nothing else, let’s start with the basics. A clef is a sign placed on a music staff that indicates what pitch is represented by each line and space on the staff. The history of Western musical notation describes an effort toward the development a simple, symbolic representations of pitch and rhythm. It begins near the end of the 9th century when notation for the Plainsong of the Western Church, better known as Gregorian Chant, was first recorded with “neumes”. These were simple dashes or dots above lyrics that indicated a relative change in pitch. At the end of the 10th century, musical scribes increased the precision of his early notation by introducing a horizontal line to indicate a base pitch (see above image). The pitch of this line was indicated by a letter at its start – typically  F or C and, as higher range songs become more common, G. Neumes were no longer relative only to one another, but to a standard. This was the beginning of the musical staff.

Continue reading at Smithsonian.com

(this post was reblogged from smithsonianmag)
Every place Bob Dylan ever sang about. Click for high-res photo

Every place Bob Dylan ever sang about.

Played 129 times

Bob Marley and the Wailers, Three Little Birds

Played 9 times

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov, Russian Easter Festival Overture, op. 36, Gothenburg Symphony Orchestra, Neeme Järvi, cond.

Played 12 times

Fine Young Cannibals, I’m Not the Man I Used to Be

Played 22 times

J.S. Bach, Cello Suite No. 1, BWV 1007, Courante & Sarabande, Janos Starker, cello (1992 recording)

Played 112 times

homilius:

Mozart, Il re pastore (1775), Act I, No. 7 Duet: “Vanne a regnar ben mio”

Elisa - Eva Mei
Aminta - Ann Murray

Concentus Musicus Wien • Nikolaus Harnoncourt (1996)

ELISA
Vanne a regnar ben mio,
Ma fido a chi t’adora
Serba se puoi quel cor.
AMINTA
Se ho da regnar ben mio,
Sarò sul trono ancora
Il fido tuo pastor.
ELISA
Ah che il mio re tu sei!
AMINTA
Ah che crudel timor!
ELISA/AMINTA
Ah proteggete o Dei,
Questo innocente amor.

A halt during the chase [detail], Watteau

(this post was reblogged from blogthoven)