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About Last Night

Terry Teachout on the arts in New York City

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Archives for September 11, 2019

How it was

September 11, 2019 by Terry Teachout

• A few weeks after 9/11, I wrote an essay about where I was and what I did that day:

“Get up, son,” my mother said, tapping softly on the door of the bedroom of my childhood home in Missouri. “An airplane hit the World Trade Center.” I came awake a split-second later, my head full of memories. For years, I had wondered when the long arm of terrorism would strike again at New York. I thought of a sunny Saturday morning back when I was living in an apartment house on a hill north of the city. A small earthquake shook the building as I lay sleeping, and the groaning of the old walls woke me. I heard a soft whir through the open window, the rustle of the leaves on the shaken trees. It’s a car bomb, I told myself, unable for one stunned moment to conceive of any other possibility.

All these thoughts flew through my mind in the time it took me to pull on my pants. Then I trotted to the living room, there to behold the coming of the new age….

Read the whole thing here.

• In 2001 I was writing a monthly “New York letter” for the arts section of the Washington Post, and three years later I posted several excerpts from the columns that I filed in the wake of 9/11, about which I had this to say:

Could it be that I–we–were living more intensely in those days? It happens that my life was turned inside out in all sorts of ways in the immediate wake of 9/11, but no matter what fears I found myself facing, I almost always managed sooner or later to slip out of the fearful present and immerse myself in the blessed world of art, responding all the more passionately because of my renewed consciousness of life’s brevity. Strange that it so often takes a catastrophe, whether personal or public, to make you face a fact that was no less true on 9/10, or 9/12….

To read those excerpts, go here.

Solemn musics

September 11, 2019 by Terry Teachout

Because music is my first language, it stands to reason that for me, the memory of 9/11 should be inextricably caught up with the sound of music. I attended and wrote about many memorial concerts in the immediate wake of the tragedy, and I listened ceaselessly to all sorts of music throughout that terrible time, searching for a measure of comprehension and consolation and—once in a while—finding it.

In honor of that grave and reverend day, here are four pieces of variously solemn music that I love deeply:

• From Aaron Copland’s Twelve Poems of Emily Dickinson, “Sleep is supposed to be,” performed by Barbara Bonney and André Previn:

• The Third Courtly Dance from Benjamin Britten’s Gloriana, performed by Steuart Bedford and the London Symphony: 

• The “Dead March” from Handel’s Saul, performed by Ivor Bolton and the Orchestra of the Age of Enlightenment:

• Hugo Wolf’s Anakreons Grab, performed by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau and Gerald Moore. A translation of Goethe’s German text is here:

Almanac: Mr. Dooley on fanaticism

September 11, 2019 by Terry Teachout

“A fanatic is a man that does what he thinks th’ Lord wud do if He knew th’ facts iv th’ case.”

Finley Peter Dunne, Mr. Dooley’s Philosophy

Terry Teachout

Terry Teachout, who writes this blog, is the drama critic of The Wall Street Journal and the critic-at-large of Commentary. In addition to his Wall Street Journal drama column and his monthly essays … [Read More...]

About

About “About Last Night”

This is a blog about the arts in New York City and the rest of America, written by Terry Teachout. Terry is a critic, biographer, playwright, director, librettist, recovering musician, and inveterate blogger. In addition to theater, he writes here and elsewhere about all of the other arts--books, … [Read More...]

About My Plays and Opera Libretti

Billy and Me, my second play, received its world premiere on December 8, 2017, at Palm Beach Dramaworks in West Palm Beach, Fla. Satchmo at the Waldorf, my first play, closed off Broadway at the Westside Theatre on June 29, 2014, after 18 previews and 136 performances. That production was directed … [Read More...]

About My Podcast

Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I are the panelists on “Three on the Aisle,” a bimonthly podcast from New York about theater in America. … [Read More...]

About My Books

My latest book is Duke: A Life of Duke Ellington, published in 2013 by Gotham Books in the U.S. and the Robson Press in England and now available in paperback. I have also written biographies of Louis Armstrong, George Balanchine, and H.L. Mencken, as well as a volume of my collected essays called A … [Read More...]

The Long Goodbye

To read all three installments of "The Long Goodbye," a multi-part posting about the experience of watching a parent die, go here. … [Read More...]

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