May 30 2014
Los Angeles New Music Scene May 2014
No Vocabulary For Music Today?
Three days of new music concerts, two dozen works—that was the Hear Now Festival of Los Angeles Composers May 2-4 2014. It was scrunched between the LA Philharmonic’s…
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Jun 6 2013
Mozart’s Figaro
Lorenzo Da Ponte’s genius was that while he removed the social taboos and political messages of the Beaumarchais play that offended the royalty, he still pushed right to the edge of morality in nearly every scene of the…
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Apr 29 2013
The Most Important Musical Invention
Teaching music, you sometimes confront great mysteries. Once a student innocently asked me to explain the difference between major and minor. Two hours later, still enthusiastically into the explanation, I realized it was hopeless. Once…
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Apr 25 2013
What do you regard as the most important musical invention? I had an interesting realization that I want to share. But first, I want to know what you think! So how about it?
Would you say harmony? The orchestra? The…
Mar 1 2013
If you ever wondered what it feels like to perform at Carnegie Hall…
first, the sound and energy on the stage are not to be believed. When we played three mighty chords near the end of the first movement of…
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Feb 18 2013
Schoenberg’s break with tonality inspired 20th concert composers to further explore the implications of harmonic freedom from a central musical key.
Igor Stravinsky
Like Schoenberg, Stravinsky’s music also changed dramatically over his career. As Schoenberg first absorbed then mastered the…
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Feb 5 2013
This was my outline for the Schoenberg evening from my series THE GREAT MUSICAL DIVIDE
The Great Musical Divide: Romanticism and the Modern Era
Russell Steinberg, Ph.D.
Outline for Evening 4: Breaking Tonality
Arnold Schoenberg—Pierrot Lunaire, Five…
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Sep 1 2012
Moments of Glory:
The Second Annual Hear Now Festival of New Music by Contemporary Los Angeles Composers (2012)
From what I can tell, Los Angeles is the only major U.S. city with little interest acknowledging or promoting its local concert…
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May 7 2012
Mar 18 2012
Invariably, descriptions and analyses of Shostakovich’s music focus on the composer’s relation to Stalin and the intense political situation of the former Soviet Union. People read different meanings from his music, some critics calling passage triumphant, others sarcastic and ironic…
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Feb 17 2012
This is a response to the many excellent comments on my last blog post—Steve Jobs and Apple: Creative Muse or Destroyer?
I particularly address Markus's challenge about whether the way artists adapt to our current software revolution is essentially…
Feb 5 2012
Steve Jobs and Apple: Muse and Destroyer for the Creative Artist
Computer technology has made us zombies—overawed, overwhelmed, and unconscious. We are overawed with its capabilities (which we nevertheless and rightly enjoy), overwhelmed with its complexity of interface and use…
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