The Music of the Future
Important composers, from Schoenberg and Stravinsky to Ligeti and Stockhausen, have been premiered in this place and before this audience. Along with Darmstadt, Donaueschingen has helped to…
The Post-Modern Ear
In Gurrelieder, Verklärte Nacht, and Pelléas et Mélisande Schoenberg showed total mastery of tonality and of late romantic harmony, and these great works entered the repertoire. But…
The Virtue of Irrelevance
How many writers, educators, and opinion formers, urgently wishing to convey the thoughts and feelings that inspire them, have found themselves confronted with the cry “that’s not…
Tilo Schabert
Please visit Tilo Schabert's new webpage, especially the media section which has videos of his presentations!
The Lost Art of Great Popular Song
Is the Great American Songbook still being written? The so-called Great American Songbook is defined as a canon of the memorable “standards” of popular song that helped…
When Bad Composers Do Good Things
No, my title does not refer to good people who compose badly but to bad people who compose well. Composer Carlo Gesualdo (1566 – 1613) committed the…
The Journey Home: Wilhelm Röpke and the Humane Economy
Two Greek words define my topic: nostos and oikos. The first—from which we have ‘nostalgia’—denotes return to the home, and it is the great theme of Homer’s…
Conservatism Means Conservation
Environmentalism has all the hallmarks of a left-wing cause: a class of victims (future generations), an enlightened vanguard who fights for them (the eco-warriors), powerful Philistines who…
Can a Generation Own the Earth?
Jefferson, of course, was the President who praised the French Revolution, even apologizing for its murderous Reign of Terror. He was the public opponent of slavery, whose…
Glacial Progress: Inventing the Ice Age and Climate Change in Nineteenth-Century America
The Eric Voegelin Institute is sponsoring Caroline Winterer, the Willliam Robertson Coe Professor of History at Stanford University, will be giving a lecture, "Glacial Progress: Inventing the…
Conservatism and the Conservatory
The observation is often made that political conservatives do not have anything much to say about the arts, either believing, with the libertarians, that in this matter…
Counterpoint and Why It Matters
I recently acquired a CD of music for piano duo by Jeremy Menuhin, son of Yehudi, the great violinist and cultural icon. The CD, issued by Genuin…
Symbols in Painting
“The second fabling-talk [parlare], which corresponds to the Age of Heroes, the Egyptians indicated to have been fabled [parlato] through symbols; to which are to be retraced…
In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England
In Pursuit of Civility: Manners and Civilization in Early Modern England. Keith Thomas. New Haven, CT: Yale Univeresity Press, 2018. Since the times of the ancient…
Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World
Bourgeois Dignity: Why Economics Can’t Explain the Modern World. Deirdre N. McCloskey. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2010. According to McCloskey, a change in the common…