Category Archive: MUSIC
Blinded by the Light
KONICA MINOLTA DIGITAL CAMERA
Songs in Our Heart # 10 Blinded by the Light (Bruce Springsteen version) (Written by Bruce Springsteen; released February 1973) [Jersey enunciation and a rhyming dictionary makes for a strange brew…]*
Continue Reading →Bird Song
Songs in Our Heart # 9 Bird Song (Lene Lovich) (Written by Lene Lovich and Les Chappell; released September 1979) [The bird sounds like a pterodactyl, but it’s still a great dramatic betrayal song.]
Continue Reading →Bennie and the Jets
Songs in Our Heart # 8 Bennie and the Jets (Elton John) (Written by Elton John and Bernie Taupin; released October 1973) [First chord – confected applause – stylish stuttering – electric boots.]*
Continue Reading →Wagner and Modernism
Wagner by Albrecht Leistner, 1911 (photo by Koernerj2000)
Modernism has many adherents and many parents. It began, more or less, in the late 19th century (particularly in France) and flourished in the 20th century (early on, particularly in Italy – Ezra Pound’s admonition to ‘make it new’ probably reflected his italianate longings). Although some point to Kant as the great begetter of modernism, there are folks who were closer to home that can stake a better claim. In France: Édouard Manet, Gustave Flaubert and especially Charles Baudelaire, and rather more globally, Richard Wagner. Nietzsche regarded Baudelaire in this context as Wagner’s ‘intelligent adherent.’ But surely Wagner takes the prize, both in…
Continue Reading →“Leitmotifs Through the Aether”
A Tribschen idyll...Wagner with Eva
May 22, Happy 203rd birthday to Maestro Richard Wagner! On the evening of 19 May 2016, the Richard Wagner Society of SA hosted ABC broadcaster and programmer Simon Healy to give the annual Brian Coghlan Lecture on Leitmotifs Through the Aether:Wagner’s Operas in Broadcasting History. In a highly detailed and fascinating talk, Simon spoke (in his classic, Classic FM voice) of the technological advances through the last couple of centuries, referring first to the ancients and their perception of the ‘aether’ as the fifth element, onward and upward to the telegraph, which really paved the way for mass communication since….
Continue Reading →