From a later preface to Hans of Iceland, originally published anonymously in 1823: “When a man’s prime is past, when his head is bowed, when he feels compelled to write something more than strange stories to frighten old women and children, when all the rough edges of youth are worn away by the friction of […]
Victor Hugo on the power of the mature writer Read More »
A favorite poem, by Rupert Brooke, which I sometimes use in my Introduction to Philosophy course. The Great Loverby Rupert Brooke I have been so great a lover: filled my daysSo proudly with the splendour of Love’s praise,The pain, the calm, and the astonishment,Desire illimitable, and still content,And all dear names men use, to cheat
Some fascinating glimpses of Franz Liszt, the virtuoso pianist and composer. Biographer Alan Walker writes:
More on how great artists become great: Liszt Read More »
Plato was an advocate of censorship of all the arts. But he did allow for some exceptions, so the cartoon above need not be only about ego-boosting hypocrisy. Here’s my summary of Plato’s arguments for censorship, as presented in The Republic. (Image source: An early edition of Douglas Palmer’s fun Does the Center Hold? An
Plato and art that is more noble Read More »
Reprising this post on a fascinating and oft-debated issue: Beethoven’s sense of life. To start — three sensitive commentators on the meaning of Beethoven’s music. * Hermann Hesse, the Nobel-Prize-winning novelist, in Steppenwolf, contrasting Mozart to Beethoven (and to Kleist, who committed suicide at age 34): “You have lent a deaf ear to those that
Beethoven’s romantic fatalism Read More »
Beethoven, according to biographer Maynard Solomon’s Beethoven: “Wegeler tells us that when a series of lectures on Kant was organized in Vienna in the 1790s, ‘Beethoven didn’t want to attend even once, even under my urging.’ Rather, Beethoven preferred self-education through voracious reading in popularizations of the works of the major thinkers; through rich encounters
How great artists become great Read More »
Reprising this amusing anecdote from Tchaikovsky, by Anthony Holden. Tchaikovsky was traveling from St. Petersburg to Tiflis “via the scenic route, aboard a steamship down the Volga. Concealing his identity from the other passengers, he agreed one evening to accompany an amateur soprano in a romance by Tchaikovsky, only to be told by the singer
Could Tchaikovsky play Tchaikovsky? Read More »
One more thing to thank the Enlightenment for. I’m reading a biography of Rossini. Gioachino was born into a musical family in February 1792 (two months after the death of Mozart), but his family always struggled financially. In the music world of the 1700s, the castrati had reached the height of their popularity due to
Rossini and the end of the castrati Read More »