Blog features innovative prose writings of the intersections between composers, their music, and selected works of art.
Endless latin church chants of “eternal rest.” One note soft, repeated, staccato. Another note soft, repeated, staccato. Again and again and again as if that’s all that mattered. Twelve gassed soldiers move slowly, stumbling from left to right. They lightly touch or hold on to each other, the blind leading the blind but not one […]
Botticelli’s twelve angels hold hands in a mystic circle of dance. Handel’s sopranos climb music’s ladder step by step towards the heavens.* Three angels, three men, embrace on earth. Every voice breaks out in a dancing, leaping phrase–“And he shall reign forever”—treated polyphonically while punctuated with energetic, triumphant Hallelujahs. Mary and Jesus painted larger than […]
1893. Tanner’s The Banjo Lesson a challenge to white caricatures of blacks playing the banjo as happy, lazy, drunk, untutored . . . Dvorak’s New World Symphony a challenge to all would-be American composers: the future music of this country must be founded upon what are called the negro melodies. Dvorak opens his Largo with […]
Vermeer’s sacred light travels across the room to illuminate her forehead, her fingers. She looks off to her left where someone listens offstage. Not the ancient lute, but a guitar from Spain. More chic, more modern. Easier to play, too. Catchy melodies, simple accompaniments. I imagine she plays music from Sanz’s Instrucción de música sobre la […]
Each of Debussy’s notes a delicacy, a dream. Each of Klimt’s flowers, faces a desire to be touched. Spiral after spiral on the maiden’s dress spinning round and down into the deepest part of ourselves. Desire? Fertility? Cosmos? Earth? Debussy begins with a low breathy flute. Pan’s seductive instrument rises and falls, directionless. Angelic harp […]
On our third date, my wife and I saw the Rite of Spring. Victorian sexuality freed. The piano’s legs uncovered, its heart grabbed hard. Stravinsky invents chords at the piano, a shot of vodka in hand. Experiments, inventions, of rhythm. Russian folk songs, violence. I wanted to move in 4/4 time, but Stravinsky invents a […]
Two women lead the way. One with the tricolored flag—white, purple, and green– of the women’s movement. The other with a baby in her arms. Behind them a long line of women who had never cast a vote. If you can’t cast a vote, cast a rock through a parliament member’s window. That’s why Ethel […]
A solitary figure looks out over mountaintops, mystery, creation. Caspar David Friedrich’s The Wanderer. The wanderer is us. Wisps of fog everywhere at the beginning or middle or end of a journey. Beethoven’s introduction marked Grave. A big bang dissonant chord grabs us by the arm or scruff of the neck. It is followed immediately […]
Five tongues of flame descend upon her. “Warming, not burning,” as she says in one of her many visions. She dictates this vision to her teacher, Volmar. The gold background the background of eternity. God’s paradise always reoccurring, available. Music the richest part of paradise. It floats high above us, yet penetrates most deeply. Hildegard […]
Hi everyone, Happy to announce that Tennis Players as Works of Art was chosen as one of eight Outstanding Books of the Year for the 29th annual IPPY Awards. IPPY is short for Independent Publisher’s Book Awards. Tennis Players as Works of Art won the award for its Original Concept. Last year there were over […]