The first bird I searched for was the nightjar, which used to nest in the valley. Its song is like the sound of a stream of wine spilling from a height into a deep and booming cask. It is an odorous sound, with a bouquet that rises to the quiet sky. In the glare of […]
Category Archives: Issues
Wherever we look in nature we are confronted with the sweetness and charms of music. Even in inanimate life we see, feel, and hear evidences of it: the whistling wind as it moves through the trees and rings out its melodies: the musical rhythm of the oceans, rivers, and streams as they perform their proper […]
After two-and-a-half years of work we’ve launched the official website for the Irv Teibel Archive.
I’m looking forward to this documentary on Minnesota naturalist Sigurd F. Olson. I discovered his work through two beautiful editions of his books The Singing Wilderness (1956) and Listening Point (1958). Olson writes elegantly about nature without romanticizing it–not an easy task!
I’ve followed Vincent Moon’s films since the nascent days of YouTube. It’s near impossible to overstate how important his Take Away Shows with La Blogothèque have been for filmed music in the 21st century. Today you’ll find countless imitators of his style: long, uninterrupted shots that float between brutal closeups of the performers and curious […]
Wilderness sounds would be here, bird songs in the mornings and at dusk. The aspen leaves would whisper and the pines as well, and in the sound of water and wind I would hear all that is worth listening for. I would come in all seasons, when the first buds of spring were painting the […]
Carlo Gesualdo, the Prince of Venosa, is one of the great myths in Western music. He’s remembered for his sinister acts of vengeance as much as he is for penning intensely chromatic and passionate madrigals, which, even today sound terrifyingly modern. However, his music is deceptively anachronistic. At the same time he thrust word painting beyond the […]
Inuksuit, University of Richmond, 2013 This wonderful piece by John Luther Adams shows how twenty-five years in Alaska have shaped his music and life. Adams details his quaint studio on a plot outside of Fairbanks. The shelves inside survey his development: musical writings by Henry Cowell, John Cage, and his mentor, Lou Harrison, scores by Stravinsky and […]
Kaka’ako, Honolulu, 2014 I took the train from Manhattan to Coney Island this past week. I enjoy riding the elevated lines for the peek at random acts of art. In my own city of D.C., I recently biked by a painting crew splotching over an especially cool tag. The effects of gentrification ripple out like a stone dropped […]
In these days of strong party feeling and of keenly-contested social and religious issues, it might perhaps be thought difficult to find a single question having a vital bearing upon national life and well-being on which all persons, no matter of what political party, or of what shade of sociological opinion, would be found to […]
