“The radio announcer for Classic FM informs his audience that Vaughan Williams’ ‘The Lark Ascending’ has landed, by popular vote, the number one spot in the station’s classical ‘Hall of Fame.’ The background is established: that Vaughan Williams is widely understood – sometimes loved, sometimes loathed for it – as the greatest representative, even as […]
Author Archives: Maddie Lay
… is a freelance arts writer based in Oxford, England.
Posted inReport
Inside the UK’s Amateur University Opera Societies
The supporting pillars, ornate in red and gold, glimmer dully in the dark. Icons of the Church Fathers line the walls. An elaborate altar, framed by stained-glass windows, is upstaged metaphorically and downstaged literally by a gaudy Christmas tree, every decoration glittering in the light from a small rig. Several young people stand at the […]
Posted inReport
Grokipedia Is A Terrible Way To Learn About Music
One week ago, Elon Musk took a break from his busy schedule of defunding pediatric cancer research and paying other people to play video games for him to launch Grokipedia, an LLM-generated and LLM-edited online encyclopedia explicitly designed as a competitor to Wikipedia. Musk’s rationale for launching this tool is based on his perception that […]
Posted inBarTálk
Fluid and Amorphous
A new autumn brings with it a new season from Vache Baroque, les nouveaux enfants terribles of Baroque opera. This year’s offering is André Campra’s 1699 opera-ballet “Le Carnaval de Venise,” which received its UK premiere 326 years overdue. Directed by James Hurley and conducted from the harpsichord by Vache’s cofounder Jonathan Darbourne, this production, […]
Posted inRankings & Roundups
I Listened to 31 Recordings of “Parsifal” in a Month
David Blaine sat in a Perspex box for 44 days. Sir Ranulph Fiennes crossed Antarctica on foot. When one isn’t athletically gifted, one’s endurance stunts must take a different form. So I listened to every recording of “Parsifal” on Spotify. Though “Parsifal” is Wagner’s slowest and oddest music-drama, I love it dearly, and I wanted […]