Beatriz Ilari, University of Southern California and Lynne Snyder, University of Southern California
In the past, adolescents’ musical palettes were dominated by the Top-40 artists, creating a widely shared – if perhaps narrow – repertoire of musical knowledge.
Live Aid showed charities how much celebrity involvement could raise the profile of particular causes – but also the kind of problems that associations like this can bring.
Across the program, I was struck by how it was often more in the act of putting on and performing the work, rather than their spoken content, that expressed political responses to our times.
Though composers after Schoenberg used his technique to create atmospheric music in film, Schoenberg’s own ‘Accompaniment to a Film Scene’ was written for concert performance.
Using a variety of instruments and playing live music on the film set are all part of how composer Jerskin Fendrix generated brilliant sonic accompaniment for ‘Poor Things.’
Artificial intelligence helped produce the Beatles’ 2023 hit “Now and Then.” But despite the sophisticated technology, the song reveals our obsession with the past and our anxieties about the future.