Music Website News

Today some news about new or recently discovered music websites - a mixed bag, and hopefully something for everyone.

Doctoral Dissertations online

Two sites list all known doctoral dissertations in the field of music - one in the US and one in the UK. They are Doctoral Dissertations in Musicology Online or DDM-Online (listing, since 1995, dissertations in progress and completed) and an Archive of Dissertation Abstracts in Music (with some other useful dissertation links at the end of the page).

Music Lessons

MiBAC Music Software sells downloadable programs which gives music lessons in theory and jazz. Demos can be downloaded free. At Private Lessons you can find a music teacher (and much more). The Online Conservatory has gone one step further and claims to give you online lessons over the net.

Early recordings

Hear some early phonograph and wax cylinder recordings, including 'cylinder of the month', at www.tinfoil.com . At the opposite end of the technology spectrum, Classic Records are selling High Definition Compatible Digital (HDCD) recordings, which use 24 bit encoding and a 96kHz sampling rate. The HDCD home page, using the slogan 'Digital gets a soul', gives details about this new format.

Notation Software

Many composers and arrangers use Finale or Sibelius 7 for their work. There's also a less expensive 'home grown' option from Australia - Music Master.

Mexican Orchestras

A page of information about Mexican orchestras can be found at Música Mexicana en Internet. You'll see links to eight Mexican orchestras' homepages, although the last one didn't work when I tried it. The Mexico City Philharmonic appears to be the only orchestra listed with online information in English!

Edinburgh Festival

The website for this year's Edinburgh International Festival (15th August - 4th September) is now online at www.eif.co.uk .

Opera on the web

The New Grove Dictionary of Opera will be on-line at www.groveopera.com from May 1st, so bookmark the URL and return in May if you're interested. No other details at present. OperaStuff is mostly a collection of links to web sites related to opera (and in particular singers and companies), but it also contains original content which is to be expanded over the coming months. OperaStuff has a new URL: www.operastuff.com .

San Francisco Classical Voice

A project of the San Francisco Foundation Community Initiative Funds, San Francisco Classical Voice is a localised classical music website/magazine which is published weekly, each Tuesday.

No Hitler without Wagner

Gottfried Wagner is author of He Who Does Not Howl With The Wolf and great grandson of Richard Wagner. Click here to hear a twenty three minute Real Audio discussion from the Australian Broadcasting Corporation's Late Line with Jennifer Byrne, in which Gottfried states that 'there would not have been a Hitler without Wagner'. Can musical sounds be anti-Semitic?

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