Arts & Culture

Got an idea for a classical cartoon, or a reaction to this one? Leave your thoughts in the comments section.

Pablo Helguera is a New York-based artist working with sculpture, drawing, photography and performance. His new book is Helguera's Artunes. You can see more of his work at Artworld Salon and on his own site.

In pop music, pieces featuring the "original artists" are usually big sellers. These are the performances we heard first and are used to -- not the cover songs performed by other artists years later. Some pieces are so familiar that we mentally hear the scratches and pops on the 45's that we had at home back in the day.

• In its annual December feature called "The Music They Made" commemorating artists who have died in the preceding year, the New York Times Magazine once again neglected to include a single classical musician.

With a mixture of trepidation and excitement, Hector Berlioz, the composer, critic and conductor, stood poised to lay aside many of the usual tasks and distractions of his life and give himself up to the dream of a lifetime: The composition of an epic on antique themes inspired by Virgil's "Aeneid," Les Troyens.

It was on a Summer morning in Mexico City that I heard the sad news of the passing of Herbert von Karajan. The notice was on the radio as I drove over to the Sala Nezahualcoytl, on the campus of Mexico's National University. I was on my way to play a matinee concert with the Orquesta de la Mineria.

Once I arrived, I immediately went to the dressing room of the conductor, Luis Herrera de la Fuente, to relate the bad news. He was alarmed. "Are you sure?" he asked. "I'm afraid so, Maestro," I replied.