Seen from within its courtyard off busy Euston Road in London, the British Library is meant to look like a stately ocean liner pulling out to sea against the gables, turrets, and clock tower of…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
Shakespeare’s A Midsummer Night’s Dream, now at the Sam Wanamaker Theatre on London’s Southbank, might seem to make for oddly out-of-season fare. Yet the play itself conjures calendric confusion and climate catastrophe. In the midst…
The Christian church year begins on the first Sunday of Advent, which falls either in late November or early December. Many traditions mark the occasion with festive pomp as befits a New Year celebration: organ…
Bach is back, bigger than ever and just in time for the holiday buying season in this 275th year since his death. The bicenterquasquigenary Bach buzz reached a frenzied fortissimo after last week’s officially sanctioned—not…
A conductor waves his arms in front of other musicians. The audience usually sees the maestro (less often maestra, still) from the back. Hidden from the concertgoers during the performance, the conductor’s face can convey…
Nature makes music—the wind, the waves, the rain, the rustle of leaves, the creak and complaint of trees. The human impulse to transform these sounds into something that might be called Automatic Art spawned the…
The 19th century developed industrial-aesthetic machinery to keep women who harbored public musical aspirations in their place—off the concert stage and in the home. One of the most potent of these tools was the printed…
The Christianization of Scandinavia took place over a few hundred years and was completed by the early 12th century thanks to Sigurd the Crusader, the Norwegian king who subjugated the intransigent pagans of southern Sweden…
The Berlin Wall was breached on the night of November 9th, 1989. The German Democratic Republic was done. East Berliners poured through the suddenly opened border, stood on top of the “Anti-Fascist Protection Rampart” (Antifaschistischer…