One of the most famous trees in music is the one hymned by the title character in the opening scene of Handel’s 1738 opera Xerxes. The Persian King—in the original production sung by a male…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
As the flag-waving scenes of this election week recede in the rearview mirror of the campaign bus, the numbers of the discontent increase in the ether like those brooms in the Sorcerer’s Apprentice: the inundations…
Less than a month before the first presidential election of December 1788, Francis Hopkinson published his Seven Songs for the Harpsichord or Forte Piano, dedicating the set “To His Excellency George Washington, Esquire.” Hopkinson was a Philadelphia…
He had oil in his beard and defiance in his eye. Both gleamed in the October sunshine streaming through the windows at the back of the immigration hall at Heathrow Airport Terminal 2. The meticulously…
The playlist of life follows patterns, tends to the familiar. We don’t need Silicon Valley algorithm makers to seduce us into routines. We fall into them ourselves. Once these tastes are formed, we continue to…
One has come to accept, even perversely enjoy, the full foolish fury of America’s National Anthem as patriotic prelude to the country’s most brutal sports. Why not introduce the bone-crushing, brain-rattling hand-to-hand combat of football…
For some thirty years now your Musical Patriot has marched in step with a woman named Annette to countless nights in the cinema, opera, and theater. Last Friday was not one of them. Her given…
An early August road trip heading east from the city of Ithaca across New York State promises calm, pastoral progress. With farming in steep decline the forest has for decades been reclaiming large swaths of…
Among the most alluring of cross-species collaborations is truffle hunting, a pursuit that brings dog—or, more rarely these days, pig—together with man. Women, it seems, are as uncommon as swine in this field. Unearthing culinary…