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This 1909 thriller is a novel about anarchists (who were all the
rage back at the turn of the century). But it might instead be a
religious allegory or a psychodrama. You be the judge. In any
case, this masterpiece of suspense is a must read. And
Chesterton’s delicious put downs of assorted lunatics like
anarchists, vegetarians and terrorists are as insightful today
as they were in 1909.
Michael
H. Kater, The Twisted Muse: Musicians and Their Music in the
Third Reich
There aren’t many heroes in this well-researched book about the
“the willing musicians” of the Third Reich. Kater clearly
demonstrates that the vast majority of Germany’s composers and
performing musicians gladly lent their talents to the
glorification of that awful regime. This book is a cautionary
tale of the dreadful results that ensue when art tries to mix
with politics.
Malcolm
Cowley, Exile’s Return
America as the land of selling and consumption, a Christian
nation obsessed with the gaining of material wealth, businessmen
and stockbrokers as heroes to the masses...no, this isn’t
another portrait of the reckless 1990’s but America in the
1920’s before the Big Crash. It’s all captured in brilliant,
biting, scathing insights by Malcolm Cowley in his memoir of the
Lost Generation, Exile’s Return. Cowley lambastes the bourgeois,
the bohemians, the Bobos (before their were Bobos), the
middle-class, the aesthetes, artists, writers, critics and
journalists who went to Paris after the First World War,
stumbled around drunk with the Surrealists and returned to
America’s mass consumer culture to sell out as advertising
copywriters, stock pushers and family men. Not everyone hanging
out at the Dôme or the Select became an Ernest Hemingway or Ezra
Pound.
CDS
Ernst
Krenek, Jonny spielt auf (Johnny Strikes Up the Band)
The Nazis hated it, so you gotta love it. This wonderful opera
by Krenek (1900-1991) is all about the contrast between the
music of the Old World (which is now called Old Europe)
represented by the composer Max, and that of the New World which
is symbolized by the black jazz musician Jonny. Well, suffice it
to say that after a series of mishaps Max gets back together
with his girl, Anita, and they emigrate to America. True love
and a bit with a dog. No, wait, that’s “Shakespeare in Love.”
Extremely popular in the late 1920s, this opera is reclaiming a
foothold in the repertory.
Arnold
Schoenberg, Erwartung (Expectation)
This short monodrama (an opera with only one character) has a
libretto that was written by Marie Pappenheim, one of Sigmund
Freud’s disciples from Vienna. It concerns an unnamed woman who
is lost in a forest and is separated from her lover. A prime
example of expressionism, that is, works of art that display an
emotional hypersensitivity, this is one work that never ceases
to amaze with its musical and emotional intensity.
Stan
Kenton, Adventures in Time
This is my favorite Stan Kenton album. It features an
eight-movement suite for jazz orchestra that was composed by
Johnny Richards, one of the most influential jazz composers of
the post-World War II era. Even though it was recorded in 1964
it still sounds as blazingly modern today.
