It’s said that Walt Whitman has been set to music more than any other poet save Shakespeare. Oddly, the most memorable of these settings may be by an Englishman: Frederic Delius’s Sea Drift (1904) and Songs of Farewell (1930). There are also notably affecting Whitman settings by Ralph Vaughan Williams and Kurt Weill. What about settings by American-born composers? An … [Read more...] about Whitman and Music: A Fresh Discovery
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Why “Porgy and Bess” Is More than a “Period Piece”
However popular it may be, Porgy and Bess remains an object of rampant controversy and confusion. An odd item in the New York Times the other day reported that the white cast of the Hungarian State Opera’s Porgy and Bess (above) had been instructed to declare themselves “African-Americans.” “The singers were asked to sign a declaration stating that ‘African-American origins … [Read more...] about Why “Porgy and Bess” Is More than a “Period Piece”
Music from Paradise
Claude Debussy wrote: “But my poor friend! Do you remember the Javanese music, able to express every shade of meaning, even unmentionable shades which make our tonic and dominant seem like ghosts? . . . Their school consists of the eternal rhythm of the sea, the wind in the leaves, and a thousand other tiny noises . . . that force one to admit that our own music is not much … [Read more...] about Music from Paradise
Mark Twain, Charles Ives, and Race
In the current issue the quarterly review Raritan, I write that Mark Twain’s Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and Charles Ives’s Symphony No. 2 “are twin American cultural landmarks, comparable in method and achievement.” They both transform a hallowed Old World genre – the novel, the symphony -- through recourse to New World vernacular speech. To read the whole piece, … [Read more...] about Mark Twain, Charles Ives, and Race
Did Wagner Exploit King Ludwig?
Did Wagner exploit King Ludwig? In Luchino Visconti’s magnificent four-hour film Ludwig, the king is ingeniously cast as an embodiment of the Wagnerian pariah; Visconti has transformed Ludwig’s story into a veritable homage to Richard Wagner. Is Visconti’s Ludwig a credible re-enactment of history? Doubtless it could be considered a whitewash job. But not be me. Wagner … [Read more...] about Did Wagner Exploit King Ludwig?