Classical

Tech giant Apple has released its second beta of iOS 16.4 to developers, and code in the update revealed that the company is still working on its classical music application. According to code in the beta, users will have to install the standard Apple Music app in order to listen to "Apple Music Classical", reports MacRumors. "To listen in Apple Music Classical, you'll need to install Apple Music," read a line in the MusicKit framework. The beta update also reintroduced the…

In the liner notes for her 1969 folk album Anthems in Eden, Shirley Collins wrote about the musician with whom she made it: her big sister, Dolly. Dolly had arranged the ambitious song cycle about changes in rural England, weaving rare early music instruments such as sackbuts, crumhorns and viols around her sister’s stark English voice.Anthems in Eden was a landmark album but Dolly’s next project was to be bigger. “Now she lives in a cottage in Hastings and is currently working on a full-scale secular Mass,” Shirley…

I’ve lost track of the number of times I’ve been asked my thoughts on the film Tár these last few weeks. It seems as if everyone wants to know what it’s really like to be a woman in conducting, and how I feel about the abusive fictional character causing a stir on cinema screens across the globe.Lydia Tár lives in a world that closely resembles present-day reality, complete with references to a recent pandemic. But one notable difference is apparent: in Tár’s world, female conductors have well and truly smashed the glass…

A unique performance of Gustav Holst’s masterwork The Planets – played on a magnificent pipe organ rather than by an orchestra and punctuated by poems inspired by children’s responses to the music – is to be staged in the suitably vast Salisbury Cathedral.The idea of the community music project is to introduce more people, young and old, to the 140-year-old “Father” Willis organ, one of the treasures of the cathedral.It is also intended to get the children who took part and the adults who will watch and listen thinking…

As a guitarist, Tom Verlaine was a player whose unhinged vibrato, sweeping volume swells, splintered harmonics, cool noir ambience, and, most crucially, his discursively elegant lyricism, emerged in the mid-1970s as a moody antidote to the macho guitar heroism of that era. And for a certain kind of guitarist – like me – he was a fountainhead for an entirely new era to come.I struggle to think of a player before Verlaine who synthesised the same range of influences – early Stones stomp and sneer, angular Ayler-isms,…

Tech giant Apple is reportedly working on a standalone classical music application, according to hidden code found in iOS 16.3, which it planned to release last year.The hidden code change was discovered by Twitter account @iSWUpdate, reports MacRumors.The iOS 16.3 software update is in the final stage of beta testing and is expected to be released to the public next week.However, it is still unclear if or when the standalone application will launch.Read AlsoAccording to the code, the tech giant has changed a line of text…

Earlier this month, director Todd Field was interviewed for Radio 3’s Private Passions about his new film, Tár. The presenter Michael Berkeley had seen it the night before and commented: “It’s the kind of film you want to see with friends and have a good argument about. Is that perhaps what you wanted?” Field replied with a confident “yes” before bursting into laughter.At its root, Tár is a study of power. Field might have conjured up a ruthless politician to make his film about, but he chose to go one step higher –…

In 2021, Apple acquired the classical music streaming service Primephonic. At the time, the Cupertino firm said the service “plans to launch a dedicated classical music app next year combining Primephonic’s classical user interface that fans have grown to love with more added features.” But as 2022 passed, the company didn’t state when Apple Music Classical would be released. With that, it’s been more than a year since Primephonic users don’t have a place to listen to their favorite classic songs properly.…

Image Source : FILE Apple Apple reportedly failed to launch a 'dedicated' application for classical music in 2022, post acquiring classical music service Primephonic. The tech giant stated that it planned to release a ‘dedicated’ classical music application in 2022, but could not launchh because without any specific reason given. ALSO READ: ‘Amazon Prime Air’ drone…

For Observer readers, January’s cultural diet is now a habit: first literature, in 2020, then last year’s sequel, short films. The best way to engage with those, surely, was sitting down with a box of chocolates and a hot-water bottle. Here’s a diet where you can listen and walk the dog, lift dumbbells, practise hula or, with care, reverse running. Whatever fitness trend you may have signed up to in a fit of optimism can also, in theory, be done with headphones on.You can also do nothing but be an active listener: follow…