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 »
From a favorite novel. A mentor to the main character, a young boy named Peekay, speaking to the boy’s mother in the context of trying to convince her to let the boy take music lessons: “God and I have no quarrels, madame. The Almighty conceived the cactus plant. If God would choose a plant to
Cacti and metaphysics [From *The Power of One*] Read More »
[I use Ayn Rand’s classic The Fountainhead in my Introduction to Philosophy course, analyzing the five major characters as moral-philosophical types. Here is a digest of the novel’s brilliant-manipulator villain, Ellsworth Toohey.] The ethics of altruism holds that others are the standard of value. One is good to the extent one puts the interests of
Ellsworth Toohey’s five strategies of altruism [repost] Read More »
Great Books: Seven categories. Five only in each. Works that I love or learned from or influenced me or that I return to regularly. LiteratureVictor Hugo, Les Misérables (1862)Edmond Rostand, Cyrano de Bergerac (1897)L.M. Montgomery, Anne of Green Gables (1908)Ayn Rand, The Fountainhead (1943)Elliott Arnold, White Falcon (1958) Historical FictionMary Renault, The Persian Boy [Alexander the
Great Books — My Recommended Reading List Read More »
Wean Yourself By Mevlâna Jalâluddîn Rumi Little by little, wean yourself.This is the gist of what I have to say. From an embryo, whose nourishment comes in the blood,move to an infant drinking milk,to a child on solid food,to a searcher after wisdom,to a hunter of more invisible game. Think how it is to have
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Did the death of one man in Mongolia affect the entire course of European history since the 1200s? Here’s the context: In 1227, Genghis Khan’s son Ogedai became head of the Mongolian empire, which at that time included much of northern China, southeastern Russia, and Persia. Ogedai sent one of his generals, Tsubodai (or Subotai),
The Mongols and modern European history Read More »