News

The best Christmas music is heartwarming. The Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s “Christmas Canon” is a shockingly cynical rebrand of an earlier piece of classical music. The tune is awful — but it’ll stick with us forever.

The Trans-Siberian Orchestra’s ‘Christmas Canon’ is 1 of many songs based on this tune

Pachelbel’s Canon is one of the most popular pieces of classical music today. In his 2020 book A Sound Mind: How I Fell in Love with Classical Music (and Decided to Rewrite its Entire History), Paul Morley discussed the origin of the piece. “It was written possibly for his mentee Johann Bach’s (J. S. Bach’s father) wedding in 1694, more likely for just the kind of ordinary domestic function Telemann’s Table Music was designed for, and after being rediscovered in the 1920s, it became a wedding-ceremony favorite, a little less used than ‘Here Comes the Bride,'” he said.

Classic rock wouldn’t be the same without classical music. The Beatles’ “Let It Be” is based on one of the most famous classical pieces ever. So are a lot of other pop songs!

The Beatles’ ‘Let It Be’ is 1 of several pop songs inspired by Pachelbel’s Canon

In his 2020 book A Sound Mind: How I Fell in Love With Classical Music (and Decided to Rewrite Its Entire History), music writer Paul Morley discussed the impact of Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D, a piece of classical music also known as Pachelbel’s Canon. “Johann Pachelbel’s Canon in D major [is] the original source of ambient music,” he said. “It was written possibly for his mentee Johann Bach’s (J. S. Bach’s father) wedding in 1694, more likely for just the kind of ordinary domestic function Telemann’s Table Music was designed for, and after being rediscovered in the 1920s,...

Videogame tie-in Frankie Goes To Hollywood was one of the most bizarre games of the 1980s. Ryan takes a look back...

Imagine this scenario: it’s the mid 1980s, and your massive, chunky BT telephone suddenly rings. It’s the boss of Ocean Software, and he has a project for you: design a game based on the pop band Frankie Goes To Hollywood.

What sort of game would you come up with? A platform game, perhaps? A Space Invaders shooter with a bleepy, 8-bit rendition of Relax playing in the background? Most game designers, I reckon, would have knocked out something quick and unimaginative - after all, it’s only being sold on the licence, isn’t it?

Instead, Denton Designs made one of the most unusual and innovative games of the 8-bit era.

Forming in the early 80s, Liverpool’s Frankie Goes To Hollywood played the northern club circuit...

Hilary Mantel, Jonathan Franzen, Mohsin Hamid, Ruth Rendell, Tom Stoppard, Malcolm Gladwell, Eleanor Catton and many more recommend the books that impressed them this year

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

Five Star Billionaire by Tash Aw (Fourth Estate) is a brilliant, sprawling, layered and unsentimental portrayal of contemporary China. It made me think and laugh. I also love Dave Eggers' The Circle (Hamish Hamilton), which is a sharp-eyed and funny satire about the obsession with "sharing" our lives through technology. It's convincing and a little creepy.

William Boyd

By strange coincidence two of the most intriguing art books I read this year had the word "Breakfast" in their titles. They were Breakfast with Lucian by Geordie Greig (Jonathan Cape) and Breakfast at Sotheby's by Philip Hook (Particular). Greig's fascinating, intimate biography of Lucian Freud was a revelation. Every question I had about Freud – from the aesthetic to the intrusively gossipy – was...

The top-line on the big film news stories for Tuesday 27 August 2013 – plus everything else that we're launching on the film site today

Subscribe to our RSS feed

The headlines today

This morning on the site we'll be launching full stories on the following. But you can get a sneak preview right here, right now.

• Bish-Posh: Tories angry over BFI funding for film about Bullingdon Club members

• Ben Affleck "signed for multiple Batman movies"

• An animated Scooby-Doo movie is in the works.

• The mayor of La has declared a state of emergency as movie production flees the city.

• Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys heading for TV remake

• The Godfather IV: Tate Taylor to direct James Brown biopic

• This film is not yet banned: some in China are calling for the introduction of a film ratings system.

In the paper

• Gloria Steinem and Catherine MacKinnon talk about their part in Lovelace.

• A...

From a full programme of film and stage adaptations to a new James Bond novel, unpublished works by Rs Thomas and Wg Sebald and a new prize for women writers, 2013 is set to be a real page-turner

January

10th The Oscar nominations are announced unusually early this year. Keep an eye out for a bumper crop of literary adaptations, including David Mitchell's Cloud Atlas, Yann Martel's Life of Pi, the David Nicholls-scripted Great Expectations, as well as Les Miserables, Anna Karenina and The Hobbit.

18th A new stage adaptation of Henry James's The Turn of the Screw at the Almeida theatre in London. In the year of the centenary of Benjamin Britten's birth, his musical version will also feature around the country in both concert and stage performances.

24th The finalists for the fifth Man Booker International prize will be announced at the Jaipur festival.

The best of your comments on the latest films and music

Did you get a box set for Christmas? Was it one of those pathetic, mangy little ones that just has four CDs and a booklet? Or was it one of the super deluxe editions, with enough audio and video to keep you entertained for several years, plus a vial of the singer's sweat, and a special book about how they made the box for the set? Those were the box sets Alexis Petridis wrote about in our 23 December edition. The reason I ask if you got one was because of something Robstacle said: "Surely most people who buy these are the spouses of musos who are stuck for an obviously extravagant Christmas present. They're ready-made for that kind of thing. You know they're going to like it (because the original album is on their CD rack), you know they...

Paul Morley has confirmed that he is currently writing a book about Factory Records founder Tony Wilson, who passed away in 2007 at the age of 57. The journalist revealed plans for the project at yesterday's 'Tony Wilson Interviews' evening at the Purcell Room in London's Queen Elizabeth Hall. Morley said: "I'm writing a book about Tony Wilson... He's a fascinating figure and already there have been two or three books written about Tony. It doesn't put me off at all - I'm keeping going. "Often what happens with a book is that after it's published and the marketing things, there's the book launch and there are these kind of (more)...

Elly Jackson has explained why she decided never go to Glastonbury until she played there last year as an artist. The La Roux singer previously revealed that she had "made a pact" with her sister not to visit the annual music festival at Worthy Farm, Pilton. Jackson told Paul Morley for The Guardian: "My sister went every year since when she was about 14. She went to a school called Pimlico in central London which was very left wing and arty and I went there as well "Obviously they didn't want all the students to go to Glastonbury - and they actually protested and rallied against it and the whole year went, regardless of the fact that they were supposed to be in school on the Friday and the Monday." She continued: "She used to tell me these stories. She'd (more)...