John Cage
‘A wonderful, wacky woman’: a tribute to Betty Freedman
The gifted pianist, photographer and art collector had an extraordinary love of the contemporary, and this account of her friendship with David Hockney is deeply moving
The genius of Morton Feldman
To accompany an exhibition of paintings by Philip Guston at the Royal Academy of Arts in London in 2004, a…
Music to some ears: how 20th-century classical music led to pop
You can easily draw a line from John Cage to Sonic Youth – but Elizabeth Aker’s book does not really tell you how
The unnerving world of Erik Satie’s 20-hour composition
Once Igor Levit starts playing Erik Satie at 10 a.m. on 24 April at the Queen Elizabeth Hall, he can…
What a joy to see some Merce Cunningham again
How salutary to encounter the cool cerebral elegance of Merce Cunningham’s choreography again. A figure at the heart of the…
When atonal music was original and exciting
Alexander Goehr, the sole survivor of the radical Manchester School of Music in the 1960s, describes turning pre-war European tradition into British cutting edge
Surfer’s paradise
The full addictive potential of classical YouTube needs to be experienced to be understood. And let’s be honest, there are…
Full of wonders: Takis at Tate Modern reviewed
Steel flowers bend in a ‘breeze’ generated by magnetic pendulums. This is the first thing you see as you enter…
The bias against digital music is more emotional than scientific
It’s an increasingly common lament that computers have ruined everything, and a longing for the days before Google and Twitter,…
Merce Cunningham’s work was magical, intangible, Einsteinian – revival is futile
On Tuesday, thousands of miles apart, in three great cities, London, New York and Los Angeles, 75 dancers will dance…
Intelligent, poetic and profound: Tacita Dean at the National and National Portrait galleries
Andy Warhol would probably have been surprised to learn that his 1964 film ‘Empire’ had given rise to an entire…
Good cop, bad cop
One of the most shocking items of recent news has been the bald statistic that the number of people shot…
Bach breaking
It’s just not what you expect to hear on Radio 3 but I happened upon Music Matters on Saturday morning…
The London ear
It’s easy to tag the city’s terrain by writer. But what, wonders Philip Clark, might a map of its music look like?
