The current clan occupying the English throne came to it not through military conquest but the generally less trying expedient of marriage. The route laid out by this marital union was circuitous: two generations after…
Posts published by “David Yearsley”
While reading Peter Roderick’s account of the dismantling of Britain’s National Health Service in the latest issue of the London Review of Books, I put on the relevant Bach cantata. Bach has many lessons to…
When it comes to piano scenes in movies I go for the kind that are keen to dismantle the homey myths that surround the instrument. In and around the seemingly impregnable bunker of the living…
I always find it curious when moderns harp on the of problem opera’s verisimilitude. Theorists of the genre began to grapple with such objections as soon as the genre was hatched as a rebirth of…
Entrusting the USA to its patroness, Mary Immaculate, then offering one final “God Bless America,” Pope Francis launched heavenward from Philadelphia on his Alitalia jet nearly two weeks ago. The diverse music that graced and…
Media coverage of Kelly Gissendaner’s execution in the small hours of Wednesday morning stressed the apparent anomalies of an act that, in this country, is hardly anomalous: that she was first woman to be killed…
Live long enough if you’re human, or stand long enough if you’re a building, and you’ll witness history overtake you. For the phenomenon to assume public form you must have attained some measure of fame…