In the afternoon 180 years ago, on May 27, 1840, the Genoese violinist and composer, who surprised the world for his splendid technique and the great innovations brought to his instrument, died in Nice, then part of the kingdom of Sardinia (Savoy-Piedmont), at the age of 58: Niccolò Paganini (1782–1840). His biography states that when…
By Stephen Morris One of our family lockdown survival strategies has been a year-long subscription to Disney+. As a father of five, it didn’t me take long to follow the buzz to The Mandalorian, Disney’s latest installment in the Star Wars franchise. Set five years after Return of the Jedi and 25 years before The Force Awakens, the show tells the…
When introducing the instrumental works of a composer to a musically untrained audience, a bit of trepidation naturally sets in. Tastes in music are often entrenched and become even more so where instrumental music is concerned. People are naturally more responsive to the sound of the human voice in music, while the modern era of…
A late romantic, restless, and sentimental Russian composer, was born 180 years ago, on May 7, 1840, at Votkinsk, a town in Russia’s Ural Mountains: Pyotr Ilyich Tchaikovsky (1840–1893). He studied composition, we read in the biography, at the St. Petersburg Conservatory with Anton Rubinstein, pianist and composer attached to German Romanticism. After earning his…
When a maverick journalist opposes popular opinion, at least as promoted by prominent media, what happens next? For rock critic turned cultural commentator John Waters, it’s condemnation followed by self-imposed exile from Dublin’s left-liberal, bien-pensant paper-of-record, The Irish Times. This unrepentant dissident, not to be confused by Americans with Baltimore’s cult icon and iconoclastic filmmaker,…
Twenty twenty is the 640th year since the death, on April 29, and the 50th since the proclamation as Doctor of the Church, on October 4, of a woman who played a primary role in the Church of her time: St. Catherine of Siena (1347–1380). How can we fail to be filled with wonder at…
On April 11, 250 years ago, on Holy Wednesday, when the Eternal City is the most crowded with pilgrims and visitors, attracted by the papal liturgy of Holy Week and Easter, that musical genius, Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, fourteen years old, and his father Leopold, a good musician, arrive in Rome. The young Amadè — as…
I wanted to learn how to chant. Those inky little square notes zigzagging across the four-line staff were as exciting to me as the markings on a pirate treasure map. My first attempts were in large scholas in which experienced chanters guided the whole group the same way foreign guides shepherd timid tourists: they know…
Twitter is stupid. Change my mind…in 280 characters or fewer. To that I add Instagram; Netflix; Snapchat; and, hypocritically, Facebook as being more or less worthless. Present a meme to convince me otherwise [i]. Our reliance on social media has been amplified to beyond epic proportions since the worldwide COVID-19 lockdown began. This is a…
On the night between March 26 and 27, 250 years ago, the great painter, interpreter of the splendors of the Venetian aristocracy, died suddenly: Giambattista Tiepolo (1696–1770). While the Vatican Post Office celebrates him with a stamp, we approach the greatest artist of the eighteenth-century Venetian painting in our usual way: through passion for music.…
This year marks the five hundredth anniversary of the death of Raphael (Raffaello Sanzio, 1483–1520), the painter who left us a vast legacy of inestimable beauty and grace. This outstanding artist died, “having sunk under continuous acute fever which carried him off in eight days” — as Alfonso Paolucci sadly writes in Rome to Alfonso…
