Archives for July 4, 2017

Arcadi Volodos plays Vladimir Horowitz’s transcription of John Philip Sousa’s “The Stars and Stripes Forever” on Polish television:

From 2007:

Perhaps more than any other American classical musician of her generation, she did her best to communicate to ordinary Americans the idea that the making of high art is a normal human activity, one whose fruits are accessible to all who make a good-faith effort to understand them. That’s not quite true, of course, but it’s a noble and ennobling lie, and I wouldn’t be greatly surprised if Beverly Sills is remembered for telling it long after the particulars of her performing career are forgotten….

Read the whole thing here.

“What is patriotism but love of the good things we ate in our childhood?”

Lin Yutang, The Importance of Living