Tag: classical music
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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…)
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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.
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February 24, 2016 Greg Johnson
Sibelius et les nazis : anatomie d’une diffamation
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 » (more…)
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January 13, 2016 Christopher Pankhurst
Tapiola:
Sibelius et le Dieu des Bois1,437 words
English original here
Tapiola est la dernière œuvre majeure composée par Jean Sibelius. Elle fut commandée par le chef d’orchestre de New York, Walter Damrosch, au début de 1926, et fut jouée pour la première fois le lendemain de Noël de la même année. Damrosch avait demandé un poème symphonique, le choix du sujet étant laissé au compositeur. Pour trouver l’inspiration, Sibelius se tourna, comme il le fit si souvent, vers le Kalevala, le recueil de folklore finnois qui transparaît si souvent dans son œuvre. (more…)
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André Pogoriloffsky (Andrei Covaciu-Pogorilowski)
The Music of the Temporalists
Charleston: Createspace, 2011“The fact that no new pitch system ever replaced the twelve tone system is no proof that our forefathers were right.”
Having unwittingly unleashed upon myself a tsunami of abuse by publishing a series of essays questioning the value, or validity, of the European musical tradition — accompanied by, I thought, the “say something positive,” (more…)
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English original here
« Je suis l’être le plus allemand. Je suis l’esprit allemand. » [1] — Richard Wagner
Richard Wagner (1813–1883) est aujourd’hui universellement célébré comme l’interprète achevé de l’opéra allemand du XIXe siècle, dont le langage romantique élaboré contribua à inaugurer les innovations musicales du Modernisme au début du XXe siècle. (more…)
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2,937 words
Oswald Kabasta, Conducts Mozart and Schubert, with the Munich Philharmonic and the Vienna Philharmonic, ©1996, 1940, 1941, 1942-43 Preiser Records 90303, Compact disc.
Ulf Björlin, Berwald: Overtures, Concertos & Symphonies, with the Royal Philharmonic Orchestra, ©2007, EMI Classics, 3 CDs.
On February 6, 1946, the Austrian conductor Oswald Kabasta “wrote a poignant letter . . . to the Mayor of Munich, thanking the orchestra and audience for their great enthusiasm and loyalty, (more…)
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Richard Wagner was born 202 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…)
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2,690 words
Lars Holger Holm
Hiding in Broad Daylight: An Analysis of the Political Radicalisation and Commercialisation of Artistic Modernism
London: Arktos, 2015“Charles,” said Cordelia, “Modern Art is all bosh, isn’t it?”
“Great bosh.”
—Brideshead Revisited (1945) (more…)
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April 14, 2015 Deems Taylor
O monstro
English original here
Translated by Lawrence
Ele era um homenzinho pequenino, com uma cabeça grande demais para seu corpo — um homenzinho adoentado. Ele sofria dos nervos. Ele tinha problemas de pele. Para ele, era uma agonia ter que usar qualquer coisa próximo à pele que fosse mais áspera do que a seda. E ele tinha ilusões de grandeza. (more…)
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January 24, 2015 Greg Johnson
Richard Wagner, Great Recordings, Great Price
Richard Wagner
Great Recordings
SONY/RCA/Eurodisc
40 CDsCurrently priced at $15.79 at Amazon.com, this is 40 CDs of Wagner for the price of one. (more…)