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…
The Relevance of Classical Music, Part I
As Sir Roger has explained elsewhere on this site, the relevance of classical music lies in its irrelevance in relation to practical, worldly concerns. If classical music…
Deep Listening
Classical music is surrounded by a thick wall of brain activity: an extensive world of analysis and research; a history still being investigated in the remotest corners;…
The Symphony: A Moral Vision Revealed in Music
A few days after the première of my Fourth Symphony at the BBC Proms in the Royal Albert Hall I was given an advanced copy of Lewis…
Music and the Quest to Rediscover the Sacred
There are certain words associated in the public mind with modernism in the arts and modernism in music in particular. Modern music can sound wild and even…
The Music of Love
I am not actually a child of the Sixties, although I almost was. Born in July 1959, I had a fairly contented, provincial Scottish boyhood when all…
Eduard Tubin: Symphonist
Despite the advocacy of conductor and countryman Neeme Järvi and the determination of record-producer Robert von Bahr (founder of the BIS label) in the 1980s and early…
The Music of E. J. Moeran
The opening bars of Ernest John Moeran’s Symphony in G-Minor (completed in 1937) etched themselves in my memory when I first heard them in the early 1970s…
Vincent d’Indy, le Wagnérisme, and Tradition
Vincent d’Indy (1851 – 1931), a close contemporary of Sir Edward Elgar (1857 – 1934), studied under César Franck (1822 – 1890) at the Paris Conservatory. On…