J.S. Bach’s two musical confrontations with taxes span his career composing and performing cantatas. Nur jedem das Seine (To Each His Own!), BWV 163, dates…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
I live between a gorge and a graveyard. The gorge just to the south began forming some ten thousand years ago at the end of…
Texas loosens, Italy locks down. With the skies mostly still clear and quiet, one can hear the collective champing at the bit before the gates open...
February 15th marked the 400th anniversary of Michael Praetorius’s death. It passed without fanfare or flourish, though this musical titan was a master of both.…
A month and a day after the storming of the Capitol came the national rites of healing. These were enacted not in an atmosphere of…
Here in Upstate New York nearly two feet of snow blanket the ground. Old Timers reminiscence over Zoom cocktails about the real winters of their…
In 1835 Henry Wadsworth Longfellow hailed music as “the universal language of mankind.” Few would disbelieve him and deny themselves the comfort of the cliché…
It took another Barbarian to deliver the toughest talk to the Vandals and Goths who sacked the American Capitol last week. Whether any from these…
Christmas is a dangerous time, for it threatens social instability, political disorder, even revolution. At the culmination of the story kings kneel before a helpless…
Much has been made of the playlists of the erstwhile presidential contenders. Back in 2016 Trump’s obsession with winning was given voice by Queen’s “We…
Theodora was Handel’s penultimate oratorio and his least successful. The London premiere came in March of 1750, but the work closed after just three performances.…