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I have a rule to which I stick pretty closely: I don't write about a piece of music until I've heard it three times. That applies whether it's a three-minute pop song or a ninety-minute Mahler symphony (sometime in the next month or two I'm going to say something about his Sixth). After I'd heard
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When I wrote about Tallis's Lamentations of Jeremiah a couple of weeks ago I mentioned that the LP I had was a 1969 "rechanneled for stereo" reissue of a recording originally made in 1955. Rechanneling was a gimmick used for a while in the earlier days of stereo, when purchasers paid a significantly higher price for
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Dante's cosmology is intrinsically a stumbling block for the modern reader. Unless some truly astonishing revolution in scientific knowledge takes place, we are, and have been for centuries now, in a position to say that we know that his Ptolemaic system (with Christian modifications) of concentric spheres with earth at the center is incorrect. And
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The misty delicately flowering branch of this album cover is an excellent visual representation of its sound: Some music forces itself on your attention by volume and busy-ness, and in pop music a steady and very assertive beat. Some does it by quietness and simplicity, causing you to grow quiet and attentive yourself–as if a
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I’ve listened to this several times since the beginning of Lent, as it seems appropriate to the season. That, plus a sort of mood that made it seem appealing (and thus hardly penitential), plus a desire to make another attempt at grasping Renaissance polyphony, prompted me to get out this LP, which I’ve had for
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A few years ago I finally read the entire Divine Comedy. Oops. That was the way I originally started this post. Then I wondered whether "a few" was accurate, and how long it actually had been. And because I had written about it at the time I was able to find the answer. So here's
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A friend heard Kenneth Branagh recite this poem in the film Coming Through, which is about D.H. Lawrence's affair with Frieda Weekley, who left her husband for him. The poem is in the dialect of Lawrence's native Nottinghamshire, and my friend liked the way it sounded but couldn't understand some of it. So she looked
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Well, this is more like it–more what I hoped for from a Beethoven concerto. More like Beethoven, I would even say. I mean, if Beethoven had died in, say, 1802, when he had written only the first two symphonies and the first two piano concertos, he would certainly have been remembered, but he wouldn't be
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I had planned to go, then decided not to go, then decided to go, then didn't. The reasons wouldn't interest you, but one reason for the shifts was that I wasn't all that enthusiastic about the program. There were two pieces, the first being a Concerto Fantasy for Two Timpanists, by Philip Glass. What? Or
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I heard a story many years ago that Mick Jagger objected to the popular impression that he had corrupted the angelic-looking young Marianne Faithfull. He claimed it was the other way around. Whether that story is true or not, she was certainly a very enthusiastic drug user for some large part of her life (at
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Light On Dark Water 