First peeps at Frank Castorf’s new “Ring” at Bayreuth.
(Photo: Enrico Nawrath).
More set photos here.
Filed under: opera, Ring cycle, Wagner
July 24, 2013 • 12:19 pm Comments Off on Walhall Street
Walhall Street
July 18, 2013 • 7:16 pm Comments Off on Nietzsche as Composer
Nietzsche as Composer
There are libraries about Nietzsche and his intense connections to music. Special attention has been paid to his shifting assessments of Wagner, but I wonder if that hasn’t been so exaggerated as to eclipse other interesting questions about the musical Nietzsche. How did his aesthetic ideas influence his own attempts to compose music – and vice versa? Here’s his “Manfred Meditation,” composed around the time of the early and pivotal “Birth of Tragedy.”
And what about the other potential Nietzsches that got eclipsed by Nietzsche the iconoclast philosopher? As noted by my friend Q, author of the lively and addictive Mangan Paper, in response to the Nietzschean apothegm, “the wisest among us is a cross between ghost and plant,” “What a prodigious sci fi writer was lost in old Nietzsche!”
Filed under: unanswered questions
July 17, 2013 • 12:44 pm Comments Off on Which Mahler Symphony Comes to Mind?
Which Mahler Symphony Comes to Mind?
July 15, 2013 • 11:18 pm Comments Off on Screams and Drums: Nature’s Score for “Götterdämmerung”?
Screams and Drums: Nature’s Score for “Götterdämmerung”?
(Credit: Oliver Spalt)
According to a report released yesterday by the University of Washington, “Some volcanoes ‘scream’ at ever-higher pitches until they blow their tops. It is not unusual for swarms of small earthquakes to precede a volcanic eruption. They can reach a point of such rapid succession that they create a signal called harmonic tremor that resembles sound made by various types of musical instruments, though at frequencies much lower than humans can hear.”
Smithsonian’s blog has a recording of an eruption sequence from March 2009 at Alaska’s Redoubt Volcano.
Filed under: science
July 15, 2013 • 4:20 am Comments Off on “Missing Out”
“Missing Out”
I’ve been told I should read Adam Phillips – and I now see why. Just began his latest, Missing Out: In Praise of the Unlived Life, which shows a real inside understanding of tragedy:
And yet there is something symmetrical about Lear and Cordelia; they both, at the beginning of the play, know exactly what they want. And I don’t think we solve this problem by saying…that what Cordelia wants is better than what Lear wants.
Filed under: book recs
July 12, 2013 • 11:41 pm Comments Off on The Ehnes Era in Seattle: Season Two
The Ehnes Era in Seattle: Season Two
My take on the opening week of the Seattle Chamber Music Society’s Summer Festival, now underway (from crosscut):
Everyone has their individual barometer when it comes to deciding whether summer has actually “arrived” in our fickle city. But for many local music lovers, Seattle Chamber Music Society’s (SCMS) summer festival clearly marks the cultural solstice…
Filed under: chamber music, James Ehnes, SCMS, Seattle music
MEMETERIA by Thomas May 