Music and the Idea of a World: Part II
From Divine Circles to the Wheel of Ixion: Music in a World of Woe The first and main volume of The World as Will and Representation is…
Music and the Idea of a World: Part I
“Music, too, is nature.” —Victor Zuckerkandl, Sound and Symbol This lecture explores the differences between two perspectives on music: one ancient, one modern. The texts I…
Fighting Back: Thoughts on Robert R. Reilly
Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music. Robert R. Reilly. San Francisco, CA: Ignatius Press Robert R. Reilly was the music…
Music in the Modern Age
Surprised by Beauty: A Listener’s Guide to the Recovery of Modern Music. Robert R. Reilly, Washington, DC: Morley Books, 2002. In his generous and beautifully written…
Schopenhauer’s Will and Wagner’s Eros
They who were two and divided now became one and united.” —Gottfried von Strassburg, Tristan and Isolde I come before you this evening not as a…
Tending the Gardens of Music: Part II
A word about the audience – the concertgoers, the operagoers. From time immemorial, people have fretted over the “graying” of the audience, and the relative paucity of…
Tending the Gardens of Music: Part I
America may be a young country, but it fairly dominated music in the twentieth century. When I say music, I mean classical music, but the statement applies…
Music and Culture
Why does today’s Western art music strive so conspicuously for cultural relevance? Why are many of our university music faculties more concerned with cultural theory than with…
Finding Faith in the Manger: Berlioz’s “Infancy of Christ”
The poet Wallace Stevens once wrote that “The major poetic idea in the world is and always has been the idea of God.” One might modify that…
Berlioz, A Reckoning
Many years ago, a reader introduced himself to me outside the Metropolitan Opera House. I already knew of him, for he was a friend of a friend…
Classical Modernity
Sometimes one hears the critique that classical music is no longer compatible with modernity. What “modernity” is supposed to mean always remains in darkness, as if the…
The Enduring Presence of the Past
If we put the last century’s notions of “old” and “new” in a broader historic perspective, it becomes clear how short-sighted these notions were and how wrong…
The Myth of Progress in the Arts
In the last century, very often the concept of “progress” was projected upon the arts as a measurement of quality: “good art” was “progressive art.” If an…
The Relevance of Classical Music, Part III
Last but not least, the burning question of repertoire. For classical music as a genre to survive in modern times, renewal of the repertoire is a fundamental…
The Relevance of Classical Music, Part II
If classical music is the art of “therapeutic” interiority, then thinking about presentation, marketing, funding, etc. needs to be developed from this insight. “Selling” music in wrapping…