Remember going to the library? I miss the reading rooms most—the busy hush of reading and research underway; the reluctance of old pages being turned; the furtive glances at the mysterious materials laid out on…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
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 from 1715, the year after Bach had been promoted from…
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 last Ice Age, and its northern rim is moving inexorably…
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. His gifts served the devotional, but, from the intimate to…
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 penitential sacrifice and prayer, but through elaborate choreographies of unbridled…
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 youths. When temperatures plunged below zero in the wee hours…