When pianist Mark Austin began researching composer Peter Warlock, ahead of recording an album of his songs with the mezzo-soprano Anna Harvey, Austin focussed on the music and not the life. “I started to read a biography of Warlock and I got about halfway through,” he says. “This is unusual for me, as I’m normally […]
Category: History
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Rhapsody in the Dark
In 1989, the Government of Algeria submitted to the journal of the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation Centres (IAML) what it termed a “somewhat difficult request.” It concerned the country’s most fabled and lauded composer, Mohamed Iguerbouchène. By then he had been dead for almost a quarter of a century. Born in […]
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Talking to Ghosts
About seven years ago, HBO almost made my dream television show. It was called “Virtuoso,” and was produced by Elton John and written and directed by Alan Ball. From all accounts—and I followed them closely—it was to be something of a soap opera about the founding of a conservatory obviously based on the real-life Vienna […]
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The Pianist who Killed Stalin
In his 2017 film “The Death of Stalin,” Armando Iannucci links the titular event to a letter penned by pianist Maria Yudina: “Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin, you have betrayed our nation and destroyed its people. I pray for your end and ask the Lord to forgive you. Tyrant.” In Iannucci’s history-as-farce, the dictator reads this note […]
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Engineered Consent
In 1905, two years after his Met debut and two minutes into an interview with the New York Times, Enrico Caruso came tantalizingly, presciently close to coining the term “fake news.” Over oysters and martinis, the first question launched, the Neapolitan tenor looked at his interviewer incredulously: “Dolls? Dolls? Ma che? What dolls do you […]
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The Smoldering Progressive
Pity Paul Dukas. For most listeners—even serious music lovers—his work is the mere soundtrack to the anthropomorphic avatars of the Disney corporation. Despite floating in the same fragrant creative broth of early 20th-century Paris as Igor Stravinsky and Claude Debussy he has been rather overshadowed by both, to say nothing of his twelve-tone contemporaries in […]
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My Racist Kentucky Home
In July 1957, Frank Chelf, a Democratic congressman from Kentucky brought his harmonica to the Capitol. As members of the House Rules Committee (and a photographer from the Associated Press) looked on, Chelf played “My Old Kentucky Home,” a 19th-century ballad his state had adopted as its official song. “The sun shines bright in the […]
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Self-Sufficient Sound
Roland Kayn was a composer who pushed his music to the furthest extremes he could reach while doing his best to remove himself as completely as possible from the work. Kayn composed what he called “cybernetic music,” building elaborate electronics to generate systems that would respond in unplanned-for ways. He would build the basic system […]
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Pieces of History
In 2011, the Stradivarius violin known as the “Lady Blunt” sold for $15.9 million—four times the amount for any previous Stradivarius. The hefty price tag for these instruments is commensurate with their reputation. The Scottish violinist Nicola Benedetti, who plays the 1717 “Gariel” Strad, has spoken of its “addictive quality,” while Anne-Sophie Mutter, who plays […]
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Drama Queens and Fever Dreams
By the time we get to Munich, the cold sopping spring has turned to a sultry summer—in like a lion, out like a lamb shank, meat falling right off the bone. Sunbathers in the Englischer Garten lie sanguine and naked in the grass. But instead of joining them in Edenic glory, my boyfriend Nick and […]