Today is the 250th anniversary of the christening of Ludwig van Beethoven, a titan of classical music and one of the greatest composers of all time. Beethoven transformed every genre in which he wrote and singlehandedly changed the trajectory of classical music. Rooted in the Classical idiom of Mozart and Haydn, he paved the way for the Romantic era and influenced composers such as Brahms, Liszt, and Wagner. His works remain cornerstones of the classical repertoire. (more…)
Today is the 125th anniversary of the birth of Walter Gieseking, one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century. Known for his extensive repertoire, nuanced playing, and powerful memory, he was a formidable musician of rare gifts. In his later years, he attracted controversy on account of his association with National Socialism (more…)
Today is a fitting occasion to celebrate the works of Charles Ives (October 20, 1874–May 19, 1954), one of America’s greatest composers. In true American fashion, Ives was an iconoclast who combined old-world influences with adventurous musical experimentation and the sounds of his small-town New England childhood. He could justly be called the musical equivalent of Ben Franklin or Thomas Edison. (more…)
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
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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, (more…)
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
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
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/North American New Right. (more…)
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
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, (more…)
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
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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. (more…)
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
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. (more…)
“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 (more…)
“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] (more…)
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] (more…)
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, (more…)
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.” (more…)
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.