Music in the Life of Thomas Jefferson
One of our greatest founding statesmen, Thomas Jefferson was just as remarkable for the breadth of his interests outside of politics. This American “Renaissance man” (and he…
Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music
Wagnerism: Art and Politics in the Shadow of Music. Alex Ross. New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 2020. Friedrich Nietzsche wrote that Richard Wagner “sums up…
The Drama of Love in Richard Wagner’s “The Ring”
Richard Wagner’s grand operatic drama The Ring of the Nibelung is rightly celebrated as one of the finest accomplishments of modern art. The story that Wagner tells,…
Reflections on “The Ring of the Nibelung”
The Ring of the Nibelung, Wagner’s great cycle of operas exploring the origin of consciousness and the birth of the human world begins in the depths of…
Music and the Transcendental
I am greatly encouraged by this initiative of actually bringing into public awareness just what matters about the symphony and what its place in modern cities should be,…
The Heart of Music
I grew up in post-war Britain, at a time when people were beginning to treat the radio as a daily companion, when long-playing records were edging their…
Redeeming Film Music From the Avant-Garde
There is a kind of listener who first becomes acquainted with the symphony orchestra through film music. And many such listeners want to hear the music again—willingly…
Renewing and Rejecting: Comparing Architecture and Music
It has been widely accepted for a hundred years, and in any case since Oswald Spengler’s Decline of the West, that ‘the West’ denotes a comprehensive form of…
Building Communities With Music
Editor’s Note: This essay was presented as the opening address at the Future Symphony Institute’s 2018 symposium in Seaside, Florida. So, why would a research institute focused on…
Beauty, Home, and the Concert Hall
Hot on the heels of what was surely disappointing news for Maris Jansons and Munich’s musical community—that, despite their protracted efforts, the Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra will not…
Our Hearts Are Restless… Until They Rest in Meta-Luxury
In the first part of this series, I acknowledged that there may be something wrong with the pursuit of luxury as exclusionary and materialistic, and that orchestras,…
Is Luxury a Bad Thing?
It shouldn’t surprise up that orchestras are distancing themselves from the idea of luxury. We generally, and perhaps rightly, sense that there is something wrong with it. The…
To Orchestrate A Renaissance
Sed me Parnasi deserta per ardua dulcis raptat amor.1 —Virgil Perhaps our modern world is not so far gone as yet, but it is easy for…
Saving Classical Music: A Return to Tradition
I founded the Future Symphony Institute as a think tank, modeled on the many think tanks that study complex issues in sciences and economics and that through…
The Glorious Music of Heinrich Biber
Fifty years ago, most music lovers had not heard of Heinrich Ignaz Franz Biber (1644-1704), let alone heard any of his works. Now he has claimed his…