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Essays, investigation and opinion on today’s cultural landscape
As the headlines are dominated by the cruel treatment of the Windrush Generation and Labour's issues with Anti-Semitism, David Bennun argues that politicians of all stripes must be held responsible (photo Wikipedia Commons)
In 1958, Decca Records audaciously began to record Wagner’s epic, 15-hour Ring Cycle. As Phil Hebblethwaite explains, there was more at stake than art. Decca was a classical music underdog determined to land a knock-out punch on arch rival EMI
As Record Store Day hoves into view, you can expect a whole load of waffling about the brilliant news of the #vinylrevival. But, Alex Marshall, discovers, the reality for many shops is not so rosy or clear cut
Debussy sparked a punk moment for classical music, says Phil Hebblethwaite. He uncluttered it and ensured, as the 20th century began, that none of the old rules applied. He died 100 years ago, after which his radical sounds weaved their way into almost everything we hear today
Black Eyed Peas have been praised for a supposed return to their "political roots" away from the "party bangers" of now-ten-year-old The E.N.D. But, argues Aida Amoako, the group have always had a politicised Afrofuturism at the heart of what they do.
The enigmatic Carlos Kleiber was voted the greatest conductor of all time, although he performed infrequently and released only a few albums. Who was he, asks Phil Hebblethwaite, and how come his immense talent was coupled with such paralysing self-doubt?
Stravinsky’s merciless Rite Of Spring from 1913 was the last hit piece he had, although he lived and worked prolifically until 1971. So how come we’re still talking about the Russian modernist as one of the greatest composers of the 20th century?
Music copyright experts Guy Osborn (Professor of Law at the University of Westminster) and Simon Anderson (musician and music publisher) of Lost In Music cast their expert eye over the current plagiarism farrago and ask, are musicians doomed to be forever on repeat?
Ten years on, the story of how English pianist Joyce Hatto and her husband scammed the classical music industry takes on an extra potency, says Phil Hebblethwaite, as if it foresaw the world we live in now, with blurred lines between what’s real and fake, and experts firmly on the ropes
Next week, The Quietus hosts a panel at Hull City Of Culture about the perils of trying to survive as a musician in London, and music scenes that are thriving across the UK. Here, international music man and Sheffield stalwart Adrian Flanagan of The Moonlandingz tells us a thing or two about the North-South divide, snazzy donuts and the importance of bickering.
Phil Hebblethwaite invites you into Brahms’s German Requiem, one of the worst-named pieces of classical music in the canon. It has nothing to do with nationalism, or the church, and should have been called what Brahms later suggested: A Human Requiem. It couldn’t be more relevant in 2017