Culture Briefs

Classical claims

“Alicia Keys, Dave Matthews’ violinist Boyd Tinsley, Beyonce, and even the avant-hop producer the Automator, all have some form of ’classical training.’ …

“But merely practicing curriculum-standard classical music and actually having demonstrable ’classical training’ are two very different things. …

“Take Alicia Keys, for example. A capable pianist, she studied classical piano for more than a decade as a youth. … Truly ’classically trained,’ right? Well, maybe. A lot of people studied classical piano in their youth — by itself it means nothing. Imagine someone claiming pro baseball skill based on 10 years of Little League and high-school experience. …

“[W]hy do claims of classical training remain so prevalent? First of all, few artists are foolhardy enough to allow anyone to describe them as a true classical virtuoso. Stating a provable, publicity-worthy fact — that a headbanging guitarist negotiates Bach lute pieces in his spare time — is enough. Fans and journalists often do the embellishing on their own. … Which brings up the second reason pop stars use the term so widely: It lets people know that you are a serious musician, and not just a singing aerobics instructor.”

— Tony Green, writing on “Classically Lame,” Tuesday in Slate at www.slate.com

Grate scene

“The subway grating at the southwest corner of Lexington Avenue and East 52nd Street [in New York] looks like hundreds of others, but it’s different — it’s where Marilyn Monroe made movie history half a century ago.

“As a crowd of thousands watched, she filmed the most iconic scene of her career — in which the rush of air from a subway train below lifts her billowing skirt in the 1955 movie ’The Seven Year Itch.’

” ’It’s a very sensuous scene,’ says Bruce Goldstein, directory of repertory programming for Film Forum, which will be presenting a 50th-anniversary engagement of the film beginning on July 22. ’It was her quintessential dumb-blonde role, and every Marilyn Monroe impersonator is doing it in that specific dress.’ ”

— Lou Lumenick, writing on “Billow talk hasn’t stopped 50 years after famed scene,” Wednesday in the New York Post

Academic absurdity’

…”It’s been a great year for academic absurdity. … Where to start?

“Hamilton College in Clinton, N.Y. — has really outdone itself lately. In December, the college cleverly timed the announcement of their new capital campaign to coincide with an invitation to Susan Rosenberg, late of the Weather Underground, to teach a monthlong seminar as an ’artist/activist-in-residence.’

“Guess what? Many people objected quite vigorously to the idea that a liberal arts college should hire a felon whose only public accomplishments were 1) driving a getaway car in an armed robbery that left a Brinks guard dead and two police officers wounded, and 2) transporting a cache of automatic weapons, and 740 pounds of high explosives. Hamilton tried to brazen it out: ’Free speech!’ ’Diversity!’ ’Women writers!’ … the administration tried out all the usual mantras. Nevertheless, donations to the college dried up and Rosenberg ’withdrew.’ …

“American higher education is in a state of crisis. For once, the public — has suddenly sat up and begun to take notice. This is exactly what the professors do not want. But such scrutiny is the only thing that will save the academy from its malignant addiction to left-wing pieties.”

— From “Faculty follies,”CQ unsigne in the June issue of New Criterion