“It is always instructive to read European newspapers on American affairs. It gives us the much needed opportunity to see ourselves as others see us – with their eyes shut. . . Do we not all reek with malodorous lucre? Are we not a nation of tradesmen?”? Thus W. J. Henderson, in the New York Sun (March 8, 1908), on the arrival of Gustav Mahler in New … [Read more...] about Mahler, New York, and Cultural Memory
Archives for August 2024
When Charles Ives Wrote a Song as Magnificent as Brahms’s
In the remarkable absence of any suitable acknowledgement of the Charles Ives Sesquicentenary by our nation's slumbering orchestras, it has fallen to the National Endowment for the Humanities to celebrate the 150th birthday of America's greatest creative genius in the realm of classical music. In its latest embodiment, the NEH Music Unwound consortium, which I have directed … [Read more...] about When Charles Ives Wrote a Song as Magnificent as Brahms’s