Writing Worth Reading
Writing Worth Reading
On Dietrich Fischer Dieskau, and why classical music is worth the learning curve. "You’ll hate it at first perhaps. But leave it on. Leave it on over the next few days and suddenly, it will steal into you and never leave you"
Fan of 40 years reflects on music of Van Morrison: "If the music of Astral Weeks had mined a deep vein of human pain then Moondance provided an acute contrast, being in equal measure romantic, life-affirming and celebratory"
"He’s so attuned to the fervent emotions of German lyric poetry that you almost feel he might have written the poem in a previous life. He seems to be inside each song, speaking with the voice of both the composer and the poet"
Goebbels knew he had to engage the public, at home and abroad. "It was an effort that led directly to the creation of that oxymoron in four-bar form: A Nazi-approved, state-sponsored hot jazz band known as Charlie and His Orchestra"
Revolt against Assad is also being fought through satire and cultural resistance. River running through Damascus was dyed red. Sound systems get hidden in ministries and municipal buildings to play revolutionary songs
On writing for ballet, how orchestras are organised, and why everybody should answer their email. Muhly is both a fine modernist composer and a fine blogger. Read him and sense how it feels to live and work as a musician
Remembering Intervision, Soviet Union's version of Eurovision song contest. Concept came from Wladyslaw Szpilman, hero of Polanski's film The Pianist. Aim was "to prove to the West that 'anything you can sing, we can sing better'"
"Rap has lost touch with a lot of its roots," says Public Enemy's Chuck D. Compare Kanye West with Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five to see what he means. Rap began as hard-hitting, social commentary. Now it's like rock music
Deft, admiring review of new volume of essays by Charles Rosen—musician, critic, polymath. He shows his age, but "no other living critic has produced a corpus that so fully exemplifies the virtues and achievements of civilisation"
Huge feature revisits Whitney Houston's life, and death. How one of the greatest female vocalists in history fell foul of hard drugs, and toxic relationships. “She became a huge star but, like so many creations, they fall apart”
Guitarist reminisces about childhood in Essex, joining Dr Feelgood, working with Ian Dury's Blockheads. "In the early days I thought after five years I'd have lots of money, and I'd go back to university and study Mandarin"
When Korean hip hop act Epik High was at the top of its game, online agitators turned against frontman Dan Lee, claiming, among other things, that he lied about his Stanford degree. Davis unravels a bizarre tale
How classical music developed through written notation, the record, and the re-mix
"The trouble with a bad show is that you can make it better, but you can never make it good"
