Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City
“I believe television is going to be the test of the modern world, and that in this new opportunity to see beyond the range of our vision we shall discover either a new and unbearable disturbance of the general peace or a saving radiance in the sky. We shall stand or fall by television—of that I am quite sure.”
E.B. White, “One Man’s Meat: Removal” (Harper’s, July 1938)
“With most men, unbelief in one thing springs from blind belief in another.”
Georg Christoph Lichtenberg, Notebook L
Glenn Gould plays Richard Strauss’ Burleske on TV, accompanied by Vladimir Golschmann and the Toronto Symphony. (The announcer is Alex Trebek.) This performance was originally telecast by the CBS on November 15, 1967:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“Their one idea was to get in with people who didn’t want them and to take snubs as if they were honorable scars.”
Henry James, “The Pupil”
From 2005:
Falstaff, after all, is no knockabout farce but one of Western art’s most searching commentaries on the vanity of human wishes, no less so because it says what it has to say with a smile. What makes Verdi’s Falstaff immortal is the comic finality with which his remaining delusions of potency are dispelled—and the nobleman’s grace with which he accepts his reversal of fortune. Verdi, who was seventy-nine years old when he completed Falstaff,, understood such matters in his bones, which is why it is the most Shakespearean of all operas.
Sir John may be a fool to chase after Alice and Meg, but if he is, so are we all, and there is nothing even slightly absurd about the piercing moment when he assures Alice that he was not always the fat, tumescent rake who stands before her….
Read the whole thing here.
“History is irony on the move, the Mind’s jeer down through men and events. Today this belief triumphs; tomorrow, vanquished, it will be dismissed and replaced: those who accepted it will follow it in its defeat. Then comes another generation: the old belief is revived; its demolished monuments are reconstructed…until they perish yet again.”
E.M. Cioran, A Short History of Decay
Chet Atkins and Doc Watson perform “Tennessee Rag,” “Beaumont Rag,” and “On My Way to Canaan’s Land” on The Tonight Show. They are introduced by Johnny Carson. This performance was originally telecast by NBC on November 20, 1980:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wednesday, and Friday)
“Why is it when we get older, we think it’s the weather that’s changing?”
Robert W. Lenski, teleplay for Decoration Day (adapted from a novella by John William Corrington)