Many have had a go at explaining the madness of Hamlet, not least generations of high school and college students faced with faking their way through that perennial exam essay question: Is the prince’s insanity…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
Organists have long been present at, indeed participants in, great political events: the 759 Byzantine delegation from Constantinople to the French court of Pippin the Great, the diplomatic mission that is said to have reintroduced…
It is late August and millions of North Americans and Europeans continue to mass on beaches from Cape Code to the Costa del Sol, the mood of carefree seaside relaxation on the latter shores occasionally…
I learned of Clancy Sigal’s death on July 16th only on returning home Saturday to Ithaca, New York after five weeks on the road. I owed him an email. I’d meant to write him back…
Histories of the organ draw a stark distinction between the instrument’s origins in antiquity, where it was deployed in the arena to accompany gladiatorial combat, and its later life in Christian Western Europe as a…
It there’s one comfort to be had in the mad scrum of high summer tourism it is that the crowds can still be escaped, even with just a few deft steps or well-chosen road miles.…
The late 1950s were great years for black-and-white movies in France: I’m referring specifically to those with white people on screen, and black musicians invisible on the soundtrack. The most famous of these films is…