Tag Archives: classical music

Remembering Richard Wagner
(May 22, 1813–February 13, 1883)

472 words

Richard Wagner was born 206 years ago today in Leipzig in the Kingdom of Saxony. He died on February 13, 1883 in Venice. As an artist, intellectual, author, and cultural force, Wagner has left an immense metapolitical legacy, which is being evaluated and appropriated in the North American New Right. I wish to draw your attention to the following writings which have been published at Counter-Currents. Read more …

Published: May 22, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, commemorations, Greg Johnson, metapolitics, North American New Right, Richard Wagner | 6 Responses

Now Let Us Praise Great Jewish Violinists

Spencer J. Quinn

Itzhak Perlman

2,223 words

Nothing can divide white people more than the presence of non-whites: blacks and Jews, especially. It seems that whites just can’t agree on what to do with them — other than to fight over them. One side will identify with the non-whites’ supposed outsider status and remain in thrall of their charms and talents. The other side will, well, see them for what they are.

I was reminded of this state of affairs regarding Jews when reading another brief essay by Kim du Toit. Read more …

Published: April 30, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Jews in music, Kevin MacDonald, Kim du Toit, NAXALT, North American New Right, originals, Spencer J. Quinn | 38 Responses

Arne Nordheim’s Draumkvedet

1,108 words

Arne Nordheim was the most celebrated Norwegian composer of the 20th century. He is known for both his avant-garde electronic works and his large-scale orchestral works and music dramas. Nordheim’s Draumkvedet (“The Dream Ballad”), a music drama based on the medieval Norse poem of the same name, fuses his modernist idiom with folk influences to great effect. Read more …

Published: April 28, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Alex Graham, articles, Christianity, folk music, music reviews, Norse mythology, North American New Right, originals | 2 Responses

Remembering Krzysztof Penderecki
(November 23, 1933 — March 29, 2020)

2,836 words

Krzysztof Penderecki, who died on March 29, 2020, was one of the most prolific and creative composers of the past century. His works include four operas, eight symphonies plus other orchestral works, about a dozen concertos, vocal and choral works, and chamber and solo instrumental works. Read more …

Published: April 9, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Alex Graham, articles, commemorations, electronic music, North American New Right, originals | Leave a comment

Wieland der Schmied

Wilhelm von Kaulbach, The Fifth Adventure, 1848

1,529 words

A manuscript containing Hitler’s ideas for an opera entitled Wieland der Schmied, inspired by Wagner’s draft for a libretto of the same name, was recently put on display for the first time at the Museum Niederösterreich. The museum is currently running an exhibit on Hitler’s early life featuring artifacts collected by August Kubizek between 1907 and 1920. Read more …

Published: April 2, 2020 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Adolf Hitler, Alex Graham, articles, German art, Germanic paganism, Norse mythology, North American New Right, opera, originals | 3 Responses

Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 257
Culture Jamming with Morgoth

Counter-Currents Radio

185 words / 59:55

To listen in a player, click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link as” or “save target as.”

Greg Johnson talks to Morgoth of Morgoth’s Review on the web, Bitchute, and YouTube about White Nationalist culture jamming, the Eternal Anglo vs. Tolkienism, Arts & Crafts, and Aestheticism, Roger Scruton, whiteness in classical and pop music, the 2019 UK General Election, Read more …

Published: January 24, 2020 | Posted in Counter-Currents Radio | Also tagged 2019 UK National Elections, aestheticism, Arts and Crafts movement, Counter-Currents Radio, culture jamming, Denis Villeneuve, Dune, England, Frank Herbert, implicit whiteness, interviews, J. R. R. Tolkien, Labour Party, liberal education, Morgoth, Oscar Wilde, pedophilia, podcasts, popular culture, popular music, rape, Roger Scruton, Rotherham, Scotland, Scottish Independence | 8 Responses

Christmas at Counter-Currents
Gabrieli’s “Hodie Christus natus est”

Video of the Day

Merry Christmas to all friends of Counter-Currents. “Hodie Christus natus est” (Today Christ is born) is my favorite motet by Giovanni Gabrieli (c. 1554/1557 to 12 August 1612). My favorite recording is an out-0f-print Decca release by Choir of Magdalen College, Oxford. This performance is the best I could find on YouTube. Enjoy! — Greg Johnson

Published: December 25, 2019 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Christmas, video of the day | Leave a comment

Evropan Edward Elgar

1,568 slov

English original here

Evropan Edward Elgar: Vlastenec, Angličan a Evropan

Edward Elgar (2. června 1857–23. února 1934) patří k čelním představitelům poslední generace evropských romantických skladatelů. K této generaci bývají řazeni mj. Read more …

Published: December 5, 2019 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Edward Elgar, Evropa, Greg Johnson, in Czech, music reviews, nationalism, North American New Right, originals, Romanticism | Leave a comment

The Karl Muck Scandal:
A Study in Ethnocentrism

Fordham T. Smith

3,940 words

Melissa D. Burrage
The Karl Muck Scandal: Classical Music & Xenophobia in World War I
Rochester, N.Y.: University of Rochester Press, 2019

This year saw the publication of a curious little history about a curious little event from the First World War. Karl Muck is a name that might not be on the lips of many people these days. Read more …

Published: October 1, 2019 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, book reviews, ethnocentrism, First World War, North American New Right, originals | 2 Responses

Remembering Richard Wagner:
May 22, 1813–February 13, 1883

444 words

Published: May 22, 2019 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, commemorations, Greg Johnson, metapolitics, North American New Right, Richard Wagner | 1 Response

Video of the Day
Wagner & Great Art

Theberton

time: 4:35

Published: January 17, 2019 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged art, Bryan Magee, Richard Wagner, the Jewish question | Leave a comment

Blue-State Arcadia:
A Summer’s Eve in the Berkshires

Jacques

3,035 words

Berkshire County in Massachusetts consists of the westernmost nine percent of the state that played such an illustrious role in the founding of our nation. Today, that county illustrates the irony confounding much of our nation: that we hear the loudest yelps for diversity among those who live in almost entirely white areas. Read more …

Published: August 27, 2018 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, concert reviews, exhibition reviews, New England, North American New Right, originals, William Shakespeare, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart | 6 Responses

Hitler as Artist & Patron

3,042 words

Frederic Spotts
Hitler and the Power of Aesthetics
New York: The Overlook Press, 2003

Leaders throughout history have frequently deployed the arts as a means by which to display their power. Hitler is unusual, however, in that art was central to his political vision. He was intensely interested in the arts (painting, sculpture, music, and architecture) and dreamed of forging a state whose artistic and cultural achievements would rival those of ancient Greece and Rome. Read more …

Published: July 25, 2018 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged A. Graham, architecture, art, book reviews, North American New Right, opera, originals, Third Reich | 1 Response

Stravinsky

4,460 words

Igor Stravinsky is justly regarded as one of the giants of twentieth-century music. His influence upon contemporary music has been enormous; composers influenced by him include Carl Orff, John Tavener, Aaron Copland, Edgard Varèse, Frank Zappa, and others. He is best known for his three ballets: The Firebird, Petrushka, and The Rite of Spring, Read more …

Published: June 8, 2018 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged A. Graham, articles, ballet, folk music, Igor Stravinsky, North American New Right, originals, paganism | 5 Responses

Remembering Richard Wagner:
May 22, 1813–February 13, 1883

375 words

Richard Wagner was born 205 years ago today in Leipzig in the Kingdom of Saxony. He died on February 13, 1883 in Venice. As an artist, intellectual, author, and cultural force, Wagner has left an immense metapolitical legacy, which is being evaluated and appropriated in the North American New Right. I wish to draw your attention to the following writings which have been published at Counter-Currents/North American New Right. Read more …

Published: May 22, 2018 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, commemorations, Greg Johnson, metapolitics, North American New Right, opera, originals, Richard Wagner | Leave a comment

Percy Grainger:
Artist of the Right

Percy Grainger, 1882–1961

2,413 words

Percy Grainger was a polymath: a pianist, composer, conductor, ethnomusicologist, inventor, artist, polyglot, and man of letters. He was one of the most celebrated pianist-composers of the early twentieth century. His work and writings reflect a worldview marked by both racial consciousness and an opposition to modernity that coexisted alongside radical artistic modernism. Read more …

Published: December 12, 2017 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged A. Graham, agrarianism, anti-modernism, articles, Asatru, Australia, electronic music, folk music, Nordicism, North American New Right, Norway, originals, Rudyard Kipling, vegetarianism | 7 Responses

Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 205
Interview with Tito Perdue

Counter-Currents Radio

458 words / 71:54

Audio version: To listen in a player, use the one above or click here. To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save link as” or “save target as.” To subscribe to the CC podcast RSS feed, click here.

Greg Johnson, John Morgan, and Michael Polignano reconvene for a new weekly Counter-Currents Radio podcast. This week, we interview Counter-Currents author Tito Perdue. Read more …

Published: November 20, 2017 | Posted in Counter-Currents Radio | Also tagged Adolf Hitler, Christianity, Counter-Currents Radio, Counter-Currents Radio Weekly, Friedrich Nietzsche, Greg Johnson, John Morgan, Michael Polignano, philosophy, podcasts, Tito Perdue, vanity | 7 Responses

John Powell & the Soul of American Classical Music

John Powell

3,292 words

The history of American classical music has been shaped by the quest to define the nature of American identity. Lacking the rootedness and history of Europe, we have been forced to mold a new identity as a nation. Likewise American composers have been faced with the task of creating an authentically American sound.

A number of American composers during the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries held the view that American music must necessarily reflect America’s racial and cultural inheritance. Read more …

Published: October 26, 2017 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged A. Graham, American identity, articles, Blacks in America, eugenics, folk music, miscegenation, North American New Right, originals, race-mixing, WASPs | 4 Responses

Mozart Won’t Make You Smart
(But Rap Will Make You Dumb)

Spencer J. Quinn

2,340 words

After listening to Greg Johnson’s recent conversation with Rob Kievsky entitled “Leveraging Social Decline,” in particular, the part of it in which they discuss parenting, I (being a parent) felt the need to weigh in. Around the 47-minute mark, the two got into a friendly dispute over the best way to be a parent. In reality, I think both were presenting sides that seemed antithetical but really weren’t because they were each addressing different problems with their arguments. Read more …

Published: October 17, 2017 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, education, Greg Johnson, North American New Right, originals, parenting, popular music, Spencer Quinn, taste | 18 Responses

Remembering Richard Wagner:
May 22, 1813–February 13, 1883

375 words

Richard Wagner was born 204 years ago today in Leipzig in the Kingdom of Saxony. He died on February 13, 1883 in Venice. As an artist, intellectual, author, and cultural force, Wagner has left an immense metapolitical legacy, which is being evaluated and appropriated in the North American New Right. I wish to draw your attention to the following writings which have been published at Counter-Currents/North American New Right. Read more …

Published: May 22, 2017 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, commemorations, Greg Johnson, metapolitics, North American New Right, opera, originals, Richard Wagner | Leave a comment

The Barbarian & the Globalist:
Alain Daniélou on Harmonic Aggression

James J. O'Meara

3,302 words

Alain Daniélou
Sacred Music: Its Origins, Powers, and Future — Traditional Music in Today’s World
Ed. Jean-Louis Gabin
Varanasi, India: Indica Books, 2002

“People who lose their language and their music cease to exist as a cultural and national entity and have no further contribution to make to world culture.” — Alain Daniélou Read more …

Published: August 3, 2016 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Alain Daniélou, book reviews, cultural relativism, James J. O'Meara, jazz, multiculturalism, North American New Right, originals, philosophy, popular music, religion, Traditionalism | 11 Responses

“I’d Like to Teach the World to Sing . . . Or Else”
Britons Break Bad

James J. O'Meara

2,066 words

“A beginning,” Princess Irulan tells us in Dune, “is a very delicate time.” Aristotle would agree: “The mistake lies in the beginning — as the proverb says — ‘Well begun is half done’; so an error at the beginning, though quite small, bears the same ratio to the errors in the other parts.”[1] Read more …

Published: July 12, 2016 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged articles, Brexit, James J. O'Meara, North American New Right, originals, political correctness | 4 Responses

Brigitte Hamann’s Hitler’s Vienna, Part 3:
Portrait of the Young Man as an Artist

Guillaume Durocher

4,508 words

Part 3

Hitler is awake all the 24 hours of the day in perfecting his sadhana [self-transcendence]. He wins because he pays the price. His inventions surprise his enemies. But it is his single-minded devotion to his purpose that should be the object of our admiration and emulation. Although he works all his waking hours, his intellect is unclouded and unerring. Are our intellects unclouded and unerring? — Mahatma Gandhi[1] Read more …

Published: June 20, 2016 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Adolf Hitler, aestheticism, architecture, articles, Austro-Hungarian Empire, book reviews, Brigitte Hamann, Guillaume Durocher, Hitler's Vienna, multiculturalism, North American New Right, opera, originals, Richard Wagner, the Jewish question | 3 Responses

Frankfurt School Revisionism

Jonathan Bowden

Max Horkheimer & Theodor Adorno

6,478 words

Editor’s Note:

This is the transcript by V. S. of Richard Spencer’s Vanguard Podcast interview of Jonathan Bowden about the Frankfurt School and Cultural Marxism, released on February 16, 2012. You can listen to the podcast here.

Richard Spencer: Hello, everyone, and welcome back to Vanguard! And welcome back, Jonathan Bowden, Read more …

Published: June 3, 2016 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged cultural criticism, cultural Marxism, elitism, Frankfurt School, Herbert Marcuse, interviews, Jonathan Bowden, Marxism, Max Horkheimer, North American New Right, originals, political correctness, Richard Spencer, Richard Wagner, the 1960s counter-culture, Theodor Adorno | 1 Response

Counter-Currents Radio Podcast No. 157
Interview with Weev

Counter-Currents Radio

54:49 / 156 words

To listen in a player, click here.

To download the mp3, right-click here and choose “save target or link as.”

To subscribe to our podcasts, click here for iTunes and here for RSS.

Greg Johnson interviews the legendary hacker and internet troll Andrew “Weev” Auernheimer. Read more …

Published: April 18, 2016 | Posted in Counter-Currents Radio | Also tagged Christianity, Counter-Currents Radio, interviews, memes, opera, podcasts, pranks, Weev, white activism, white nationalism | 10 Responses

“Make Rome Great Again”
Rienzi in Berlin

1,906 words

On Friday, March 11, I saw the Deutsche Oper in Berlin’s production of Rienzi, Richard Wagner’s third opera. Rienzi is a Grand Opera in the Parisian style, an approach Wagner eventually rejected. Although Wagner excluded Rienzi and his first two operas from the canon of the Bayreuth Festival, Rienzi remained his most popular opera throughout his lifetime. Wagner came to find Rienzi “quite repugnant,” but Gustav Mahler characterized it as nothing less than “the greatest musical drama ever composed.” Read more …

Published: March 17, 2016 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged Adolf Hitler, articles, Greg Johnson, music reviews, North American New Right, opera, originals, Richard Wagner | 7 Responses

The Enjoyment of Vulgarity

Julius Evola

Max Ernst, "The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child before Three Witnesses: Andre Breton, Paul Eluard, and the Painter, 1926

Max Ernst, The Virgin Spanking the Christ Child before Three Witnesses: André Breton, Paul Eluard, and the Painter, 1926

3,285 words

Trans. G. A. Malvicini

One of the most indicative signs of the influence of the regressive processes that we have described in the preceding pages of this book [L’Arco e la Clava] with regard to customs and tastes, is the enjoyment of vulgarity, with its more or less subconscious undercurrent of pleasure taken in degradation and self-contamination. Related to it are the various expressions of a tendency towards deformation and a taste for the ugly and the base. A few observations with regard to this matter will perhaps not be devoid of interest.

Sibelius et les nazis : anatomie d’une diffamation

1,332 words

English original here

Je suis un grand admirateur du compositeur finnois Jean Sibelius, qui avec Richard Strauss et Ralph Vaughan Williams, fit partie de la dernière génération (jusqu’ici) des grands compositeurs romantiques européens. Ainsi mon attention fut attirée par un article du 29 novembre 2009 sur Sibelius dans la Chronicle of Higher Education, « A Composer’s Ties to Nazi Germany Come Under New Scrutiny » Read more …

Published: February 24, 2016 | Posted in North American New Right | Also tagged academia, anti-Semitism, European nationalism, Finland, Greg Johnson, in French, in translation, Jean Sibelius, National Socialism | Leave a comment