Classical Crossroads

Legendary maestro Leonard Slatkin provides personal insights and offers his ideas to solve the current dilemmas of classical music. As the new millennium poses some of the greatest challenges to the relevance of the art form, Slatkin reflects on the modern evolution of classical music and presents ways for both music lovers and musicians alike to navigate these uncertain times. Classical Crossroads: The Path Forward for Music in the 21st Century addresses a wide range of relevant and provocative topics such as performance in the era of COVID-19, dwindling audience attendance, the lack of classical music in public education, broken audition systems, technology replacing live concerts, and diversity in the classical music world. While the new millennium has provided great obstacles, Slatkin emphasizes that there are also new opportunities—if there was ever a time for change in classical music, that time is now.

Reads the oeuvre of the Argentine author Jorge Luis Borges as a radically globalized model for reimagining our relationship with the classical past. The first in-depth exploration of Borges' engagement with classical antiquity in any language and a major contribution to the field of global classics and to Borges studies.

Classics in Extremis reimagines classical reception. Its contributors explore some of the most remarkable, hard-fought and unsettling claims ever made on the ancient world: from the coal-mines of England to the paradoxes of Borges, from Victorian sexuality to the trenches of the First World War, from American public-school classrooms to contemporary right-wing politics. How does the reception of the ancient world change under impossible strain? Its protagonists are 'marginal' figures who resisted that definition in the strongest terms. Contributors argue for a decentered model of classical reception: where the 'marginal' shapes the 'central' as much as vice versa – and where the most unlikely appropriations of antiquity often have the greatest impact. What kind of distortions does the model of 'centre' and 'margins' produce? How can 'marginal' receptions be recovered most effectively? Bringing together some of the leading scholars in the field, Classics in Extremis moves beyond individual case studies to develop fresh methodologies and perspectives on the study of classical reception.

The 1927 Solvay conference was perhaps the most important in the history of quantum theory. Contrary to popular belief, questions of interpretation were not settled at this conference. Instead, a range of sharply conflicting views were extensively discussed, including de Broglie's pilot-wave theory (which de Broglie presented for a many-body system), Born and Heisenberg's 'quantum mechanics' (which apparently lacked wave function collapse or fundamental time evolution), and Schrödinger's wave mechanics. Today, there is no longer a dominant interpretation of quantum theory, so it is important to re-evaluate the historical sources and keep the debate open. This book contains a complete translation of the original proceedings, with essays on the three main interpretations presented, and a detailed analysis of the lectures and discussions in the light of current research. This book will be of interest to graduate students and researchers in physics and in the history and philosophy of quantum theory.

Explores how cultural conceptions of mobility and the road contribute to identity and culture in early modern BritainOpens new windows on early modern culture, subjectivity and perceptions around the experience of the road and how that shapes the idea of the road itselfOffers insight into the ways both the bare boards of the stage and prose narratives were used to imagine road journeys and the intersections between public and private spaceEnhances historical understanding of the literal place of theatre in the road networks around early modern LondonProvides a crucial ligature in English literary and cultural history. The present plays and prose are prolegomena to the travel literature of Montagu, Swift, Boswell and Johnson in the Hebrides, Sterne's Sentimental Journey, Fielding's Tom Jones, and peripatetic Civil War narrativesThis book brings together thirteen essays, by both established and emerging scholars, which examine the most influential meanings of roads in early modern literature and culture. Chapters develop our understanding of the place of the road in the early modern imagination and open various windows on a geography which may by its nature seem passing or trivial but is in fact central to all conceptions of movement. They also shed new light on perhaps the most astonishing achievement of early modern plays: their use of one small, bare space to suggest an amazing variety of physical and potentially metaphysical locations.

Based on his decades of experience conducting these works, Leonard Slatkin guides readers through eight of the most beloved orchestral pieces of the twentieth century: Claude Debussy’s La Mer Dmitri Shostakovich’s Symphony No. 5 Béla Bartók’s Concerto for Orchestra Igor Stravinsky’s Le Sacre du printemps (The Rite of Spring) George Gershwin’s An American in Paris Aaron Copland’s Appalachian Spring Suite Samuel Barber’s Adagio for Strings Benjamin Britten’s The Young Person’s Guide to the Orchestra Slatkin tackles problems conductors face before stepping onto the podium and highlights the many decisions they make during the study process, as well as in rehearsal and performance, to bring a score to life. He also shares tricks of the trade for leading efficient rehearsals and recounts engaging anecdotes from a lifetime of music making. This book will open the world of score study to conductors, other musicians, and students interested in expanding their knowledge of this essential repertoire.

The protagonists of the ancient novels wandered or were carried off to distant lands, from Italy in the west to Persia in the east and Ethiopia in the south; the authors themselves came, or pretended to come, from remote places such as Aphrodisia and Phoenicia; and the novelistic form had antecedents in a host of classical genres. These intersections are explored in this volume. Papers in the first section discuss “mapping the world in the novels.” The second part looks at the dialogical imagination, and the conversation between fiction and history in the novels. Section 3 looks at the way ancient fiction has been transmitted and received. Space, as the locus of cultural interaction and exchange, is the topic of the fourth part. The fifth and final section is devoted to character and emotion, and how these are perceived or constructed in ancient fiction. Overall, a rich picture is offered of the many spatial and cultural dimensions in a variety of ancient fictional genres.

How can Christians live faithfully at the crossroads of the story of Scripture and postmodern culture? In Living at the Crossroads, authors Michael Goheen and Craig Bartholomew explore this question as they provide a general introduction to Christian worldview. Ideal for both students and lay readers, Living at the Crossroads lays out a brief summary of the biblical story and the most fundamental beliefs of Scripture. The book tells the story of Western culture from the classical period to postmodernity. The authors then provide an analysis of how Christians live in the tension that exists at the intersection of the biblical and cultural stories, exploring the important implications in key areas of life, such as education, scholarship, economics, politics, and church.