Post 8: The Arts and Public Policy

I noticed Ross' recent entry about the resignation of New York City Opera's ambitious impresario due to funds that never materialized. He also mentioned one other company that has recently closed down, Opera Pacific. 

I've been terribly concerned and disheartened lately over Prop 8 in California, so one of my main concerns in thinking about the President-Elect was researching his platform on gay marriage. Then it dawned on me when I saw Ross' entry that my livelihood is partially dependent on his platform on the arts. I quickly Googled "obama arts funding" and came across a PDF on his website. It calls Obama and his vice presidential pick, Joe Biden "champions of the arts." I wondered what qualified someone or a group to be champions of the arts. Is not Alex Ross a champion as well? 

Luckily for my musical future, they claim to want to start and Artists Corps. Like the Peace Corps, except for artists. Woot!!! I'm excited to see that day. I'll be first in enlist. The platform also makes a point of including health care for artists as well. My demographic, starving young artists who are fresh out of the best arts programs in the world are the largest uninsured groups of Americans. Statistics show that 18-34 year olds have the greatest percentage of uninsured. Also, childless adults, usual the career oriented men and women who are more "free-lance," newspaper columnists and piano teachers.  

Someone is coaching the Obama crew well. I hope that they can follow through.

Class Post 7: Copland will rock you

Queen and Copland have a little in common it seems. Ross points out the melodic similarities between the chorus "we will rock you" and a portion of the melody from Fanfare for the Common Man, which is now included in his Audio Guide. (Scroll to the bottom.)
I decided to look for more similarities like this, and I remembered that The Beatles actually included parts of the Brandenburg Concertos in It's All Too Much. I went to dig that up, available here.
It was difficult to find other examples of classical tunes being used or being similar to rock n roll tunes. However there are a few examples like that of The Beatles, integrating them into the production of songs. I came across a blog entry in my Google search about the same idea. A review of classical musicians playing rock n roll. It works both ways I guess.
Similarly I was lead back to Ross' blog where I knew there were examples of classical composers writing jazz laden music, and once again found Copland. I guess that fundamentally, at some level, being an American composer made him closer to popular forms than others. Perhaps.