Because this column usually focuses on a specific composer or theme, I have fallen behind in bringing to your attention a flood of excellent individual releases. Herewith is an attempt to catch up in time for your summer vacation. Summer is full of moments for music that is not meant to storm the heavens but … Read more
The Feast of St. Augustine of Hippo falls on August 28. In his Sermon 34, Augustine observes: “There is not one who does not love something, but the question is, what to love?” Augustine did not examine whether people loved but what they chose to love. He added, “The Psalms do not tell us not … Read more
I was in L.A. I should have known better. I went to Sunday morning Mass in a beautiful Spanish Baroque-style church that lulled me into expecting a liturgy that comported with its appearance. That didn’t happen. The experience reminded me afresh of the pod-people feeling I have as a pre-Vatican II Catholic every time I … Read more
In Book Four of his Ethics, Aristotle discusses the virtue of “liberality,” or “generosity”—what we do with our wealth, or better, our material goods. Aristotle held that from the point of view of virtue, it doesn’t make much difference if we have much or little wealth. Rich or poor, we have essentially the same problem: … Read more
In January, Crisis music critic Robert R. Reilly spoke with Italian composer Gian Carlo Menotti (b. 1911) when he was at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., to direct the 50th- anniversary production of his opera, The Consul, for the Washington Opera Society. Menotti has written some of the … Read more
Still shaken over the passing of the millennium, I have retreated to my favorite musical refuge, the 18th century. Thanks to the Naxos, Chandos, CPO, and Hyperion labels, my refuge is secure. The composers of the last half of the 18th century produced some 20,000 symphonies, along with similar quantities of compositions in other genres. … Read more
One of our favorite buzzwords these days is “globalization.” Globalization is when someone sitting on the Metro in Washington, D.C., talks on a cellphone to a colleague in a skyscraper in Tokyo about opening a branch office in Hamburg. Many people can hardly wait to take it a step further and set up a global … Read more
Growing up in pre-revolutionary Russia, Alexander Tcherepnin (pronounced cher-up-neen) imbibed music from his composer father, Nicolai, and his mother, an accomplished pianist and singer. “There was plenty of music paper around our home,” he recalled in his autobiography. “I observed how my father was writing his scores and tried to do the same while alone.” … Read more
Last December the executive council of the Fédération Internationale de Football Association met Pope John Paul II at the Vatican. The “football” in the association’s title does not, of course, refer to our ellipsoid American pigskin, but to the checkered sphere of futbol, or soccer, the game that doesn’t allow blocking. In his brief address, … Read more
Last month, I wrote about the rough treatment American composer George Rochberg received from the artistic “community” when he turned away from systematized cacophony toward tonality in the 1970s. “Why is George writing beautiful music?” asked one shocked colleague. “That’s already been done.” Rochberg felt an arctic blast familiar to many other American composers who, … Read more
The Crisis Columnist B.F. Smith was in Washington from Atherton, California, with her daughter Whitney, once a student at Georgetown University, where I teach. They were visiting their Pentagon-stationed son/brother. Knowing Smith’s almost infallible instinct for precise language (her daughter is not far behind), I asked her, “What is the most common verb appearing on … Read more
The Cold War was so cold that only now, more than ten years after its end, are some composers’ works being thawed out for a general hearing. Hungarian composer László Lajtha (1892-1963) is finally emerging from the deep freeze in which the Hungarian Communist regime placed him. In 1947, when Lajtha (pronounced “Loy-tah”) returned to … Read more
When it seemed like a long way into the future, I saw a spectacular film called 2001. The beginning focused attention on a mysterious monolith. This monolith was somehow connected with the meaning of the universe, although my memories of this are vague. The film was not explicitly Christian because for us, the center of … Read more
In the Phaedo, Plato tells of the punishment handed out in Tartarus for sins committed in this life. He pictures those swept along through the Acherusian Lake crying out to those they have “killed or misused.” It seems that “there is no relief for their suffering until they prevail upon those whom they have wronged; … Read more
The two giants of 20th-century Scandinavian music, Danish composer Carl Nielsen and Finnish composer Jean Sibelius, were born in the same year, 1865. Though they sound nothing alike, together they account for my initial love of music. Sibelius’s Fifth Symphony and Nielsen’s Fourth, both written around 1915, are the two works that revealed to me, in … Read more
Two composers dominated the music of the 20th century: Igor Stravinsky (1882-1971) and Arnold Schoenberg (1874-1951). Robert Craft was especially close to the former and knew the latter, whom he called “the one composer who challenged Stravinsky’s supremacy in 20th-century music.” Maestro Crafthas had a front-row seat on the most important musical developments of our … Read more
As Halloween approaches, our thoughts turn to horror movies—at least mine do, since I am a Halloween baby and have a disordered soul. I have followed this genre avidly and find that it contains some interesting and unexpected messages beyond “Boo!” While working for the Reagan administration, I was once dispatched on a speaking tour … Read more
Oh, we got trouble my friend / Trouble at the Neil Simon Theater / Oh, I bet you’re wonderin’ what could be the matter with a saccharine-sweet, apple pie, all-American, brass-band, flag-waving show like The Music Man? How ’bout the lead? Yes, my friends, Susan Stroman’s truly glorious revival of Meredith Willson’s musical chestnut has … Read more
A short but curious 1780 passage in Boswell reads, “Of a certain noble Lord, he [Samuel Johnson] said, ‘Respect him, you could not; for he had no mind of his own. Love him you could not; for that which you could do with him, everyone else could.’” No doubt, this lack of respect or love … Read more
Relax. Premised on pleasure, summer is not the time to delve into the complete works of Arnold Schoenberg or bring Alban Berg’s Wozzeck to the beach. It is a fun period to explore more accessible music and to pretend that you have the leisure to do so. Happily buried under a flood of superb new … Read more
