Le Teachout posts this fascinating musicological digression by our incoming Secretary of State: "I love Brahms because Brahms is actually structured. And he's passionate without being sentimental. I don't like sentimental music, so I tend not to like Liszt, and I don't actually much care for the Russian romantics Tchaikovsky and Rachmaninoff, where it's all on the sleeve. With Brahms it's restrained, and there's a sense of tension that never resolves." Don't we all love the tension that never resolves! When was the last time an expert apostle of Absolute Music rose to such an exalted position of power? (No, not him; he hated Brahms.) I'd like to have it noted for the record that Brahms was a patriotic liberal who detested the religiously motivated bigotry of late nineteenth-century Vienna. In honor of Ms. Rice, I am now listening to the last of Brahms' Four Serious Songs: "Though I speak with the tongues of men and of angels, and have not charity, I am become as sounding brass, or a tinkling cymbal ... And now abideth faith, hope, charity, these three: but the greatest of these is charity."
