Apart from the breathtaking beauty of his musical compositions, it is the ethos of Butterworth that attracts me. He was rooted in the soil and soul of England and enamoured of its shires. He was a true localist before the word was invented, the very antithesis of the modern and modish cosmopolitan. If I should [...]
“What is hell? I maintain that it is the suffering of being unable to love.” —Father Zossima, in Fyodor Dostoevsky’s “The Brothers Karamazov” Is there an opera that better conveys the mood of late autumn—with the inevitability of winter’s desolation on the doorstep—than Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky’s Eugene Onegin? Based on the “novel in verse” by [...]
Last week, I went to see the great American conductor, Michael Tilson Thomas, who is battling an aggressive form of brain cancer, conduct Beethoven's 9th Symphony. I adore MTT not just because he’s a rock star in the classical music and a delightful and compelling orator, but because he has essentially been the host of [...]
In addition to melody, great and beautiful classical symphonies must display a mastery of structure and orchestration, a command of tone color and harmony, and an expertise in developing musical ideas. Here are the ten most beautiful symphonies ever composed. “Imagination creates reality.” —Richard Wagner Though beauty is an absolute reality, we human beings [...]
The Baroque period showed dynamic and original qualities not seen before or since in Western culture. In experiencing this period, we are reminded of the need for mystery and mysticism, color and splendor, a life of the spirit that is closely united with a vivid life of the senses, and for all these reasons I [...]
“The Magic Flute” has been called Mozart’s “Masonic opera,” and so it is. Mozart was a serious Freemason. But the Masonic influence is of secondary importance to the power and precision of Mozart’s music, which, like all great music, is inexhaustible. Every act of listening to this work brings new discoveries. “Feelings are ‘vectors’; for [...]
The music of Henryk Górecki, Arvo Pärt, and John Tavener is the music of a new civilization. These composers have gone against the prevailing grain of the twentieth century for the sake of a greater love. The attempted suicide of Western classical music has failed. The patient is recovering, no thanks to the efforts of music’s [...]
I return to the Grieg concerto annually; it seems to be a late summer thing. The music taps into a deep spring that flows eternal, and my feelings, in the twenty years I’ve listened to this, haven’t changed. Which makes me so deeply grateful that art like this exists, to remind me of all that [...]
If you have never wept for joy at, or been shaken to the roots of your being by, music, here is the music to do it. Should I ever have the privilege of hearing God’s orchestra play, I am not sure what I will hear. But if it is Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony, I will know [...]
Since the deaths of the modern musical giants, a great many composers have exerted themselves writing ephemera that is forgotten as soon as it’s heard and means nothing to the vast majority of people. But there are modern choral composers that have produced music that means a good deal to a great many people. One [...]
So you’re acquainted with Antonin Dvořák’s buoyant, instantly accessible “New World Symphony,” are you? And you loved it? Yay, you are part of an enormous fan club that has a spectacularly broad base of listeners. So, what other compositions by Dvořák do you like? {{Silence}} Ah. I get it. I was there too, once. But [...]
As we think about the problems of modernity, let us recognize what the great mid-20th-century artists and thinkers achieved and immerse ourselves in their works. While it is a good thing to react against modern times with the conscience of a conservative, let us do so fully aware of our roots in this most modern [...]
The human heart desires to sing. Enlivened by God, it seeks, at its most basic, to make a worthy return to the Lord in songs of praise and thanksgiving. Language can be beautiful. Order is peaceful and pleasing. The combination of the two—ordered language—gives man the stuff with which to fill his lungs. Down through [...]
Arthur Foote’s “cult of the restrained in art,” so well expressed in “A Night Piece,” represents another America, a parallel native culture pushed aside by the “cult of unrestrained expression.” Foote demonstrates that one need not be Aaron Copeland or Leonard Bernstein to be fully American. Nestled in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, [...]