The Mellon Foundation’s "Monuments Project" is totalitarian in its proposed scope and radical vision, something utterly in conflict with American pluralism and preference for localism, a brazen effort to wrest control away from communities as to the state of their own public spaces. Not to be outdone by The New York Times' 1619 Project, the Mellon Foundation [...]
Beethoven’s eccentricities only enhanced his reputation. They confirmed the divine madness that propelled his creative genius. He was a martyr to his art, a new kind of saint whose agonies and ecstasies brought him neither peace of mind nor purity of soul, but an admixture of public renown and disrepute. Sculpture by Max Klinger [...]
If you’re a fan of classical music and American history, Symphony No. 5 “Western Hemisphere” by William Grant Still serves as an excellent starting point for studying America’s unique cultural footprint. Contained within its four movements are a heroic but soulful three-note melody, which graces its way across a plethora of musical textures before finally [...]
Zur Namensfeier (English: Feastday or Name day), Op. 115, is a symphonic overture in C major by Ludwig van Beethoven completed in 1815, and first performed on Christmas Day 1815. It is dedicated to Polish prince Antoni Radziwiłł, who is remembered for his patronage of the arts. The piece was never one of Beethoven's more [...]
I greatly enjoyed reading Roger Scruton’s "Groans Wrapped in Mathematics," published here recently. However, it raises as many questions as it answers. How and why has this lamentable state of affairs—postmodern classical music that hardly anyone likes, foisted upon the public—persisted for so many decades? Why do opera companies and orchestras continue to program music [...]
"This wasn't written for you!" Beethoven once stormed at string players who complained that one of his quartets was impossible to play. "It was meant for a later age!" And so all Beethoven's works are. They are, indeed, music for all time. Please enjoy this symposium on Ludwig van Beethoven, with contributions from our distinguished [...]
Le corsaire (The Corsair), Op. 21 is an overture composed while Berlioz was on holiday in Nice in August 1844. It was first performed under the title La tour de Nice (The Tower of Nice) on 19 January 1845. It was then renamed Le corsaire rouge (after James Fenimore Cooper's novel The Red Rover) and finally Le corsaire (suggesting Byron's poem The Corsair).* Berlioz scholar [...]
The atonal music produced in the twentieth century consists largely of random outbursts that could be described as groans wrapped in mathematics. The result makes little or no sense to the ear, and these works remain more items of curiosity than objects of love, and audiences have begun to turn their backs on them. In [...]
The sunshine, and the grace of falling rain, The fluttering daffodil, the lilt of bees, The blossom on the boughs of almond trees, The waving of the wheat upon the plain— […]
The Mass in C was certainly a test piece for Beethoven, extending his composing experience into the sacred sphere where he would rise to glorious heights in the "Missa Solemnis." But it is also a gem in its own right, combining the serene dignity of the old forms of the Mass with the new heightened [...]
In music, there has arisen in recent times the illusion that knowledge is not necessary, that the old forms of discipline are merely obstacles to the true creative process, and that real originality means doing your own thing, free from traditional constraint. I recently acquired a CD of music for piano duo by Jeremy Menuhin, [...]
Beethoven's final and most popular piano concerto, the "Emperor's" heroic style and grandeur well earn the nickname given it by its English publisher. "Beethoven's Piano Concerto No. 5," James Keays opines , "could be considered either the last great concerto in the classical style or, because of its immensely powerful gestures, the first of the [...]
At a certain stage and for no apparent reason, self-criticism among those of us in the West gave way to repudiation. Instead of subjecting our inheritance to a critical evaluation, seeking what is good in it and trying to understand and endorse the ties that binds us to it, a great many of those appointed [...]
Fidelio, originally titled Leonore, oder Der Triumph der ehelichen Liebe (Leonore, or The Triumph of Marital Love), Op. 72, is Ludwig van Beethoven's only opera. The German libretto was originally prepared by Joseph Sonnleithner from the French of Jean-Nicolas Bouilly, with the work premiering at Vienna's Theater an der Wien on 20 November 1805. The [...]