Alex Ross: The Rest Is Noise

Zürcher Schneetag

My visit here, motivated primarily by Thomas Mann research, happily coincides with the Sonic Matter Festival, under the artistic direction of Katharina Rosenberger.

Am Bodensee

A Jonah Haven moment

From Haven's debut CD on Wergo.

A Friedrich Hollaender moment

Hollaender's scalding satire of antisemitism appeared in his Spuk in der Villa Stern revue of 1931. The lyrics are here, though they lose bite in translation. My attempt at one verse:

    If the telephone is busy,
    If the bathtub's sprung a leak,
    If your income's wrongly added,
    If the sausage tastes like soap,
    If there's no baked bread on Sunday,
    If the Prince of Wales is gay,
    If the furniture makes noise at night,
    If your doggie's stool is hard:
    The Jews are to blame for everything,
    For everything the Jews are to blame ...

An Alkan moment

This is equally a Mark Viner moment.

A Raven Chacon moment

Dike Newlin at 100

The astonishing life of Dika Newlin, who would have been one hundred today, can hardly be summarized in a couple of sentences. Some years back, Donna Arnold wrote a wonderful piece about her for NewMusicBox.

A Georges Lentz moment

Lentz's Violin Concerto, “…to beam in distant heavens…,” had its première at the Sydney Symphony in April, with Umberto Clerici conducting and Arabella Steinbacher undertaking the monumental solo part. In other Lentz news, the Cobar Sound Chapel is now up and running in the Australian Outback.

Bookshelf

New and recent publications of interest.

Jeremy Eichler, Time’s Echo: The Second World War, the Holocaust, and the Music of Remembrance (Knopf)

Jeffrey Arlo Brown, The Life and Music of Gérard Grisey: Delirium and Form (University of Rochester Press)

Harald Kisiedu and George E. Lewis, eds., Composing While Black: Afrodiasporische Neue Musik Heute / Afrodiasporic New Music Today (Wolke Verlag)

Fiona Maddocks, Goodbye Russia: Rachmaninoff in Exile (Pegasus)

Bonnie Gordon, Voice Machines: The Castrato, the Cat Piano, and Other Strange Sounds  (University of Chicago Press)

Mark Hugh Malone, William Levi Dawson: American Music Educator (University Press of Mississippi)

Mark Davidson and Parker Fishel, eds., Bob Dylan: Mixing Up the Medicine (Callaway)

Sasha Frere-Jones, Earlier (Semiotext(e))

For David Del Tredici

    Gaunt in gloom,
    The pale stars their torches,
    Enshrouded, wave.
    Ghostfires from heaven's far verges faint illume,
    Arches on soaring arches,
    Night's sindark nave...

                            James Joyce, "Night Piece"