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Patti Smith and Rimbaud
Patti Smith’s direct assimilation of Arthur Rimbaud’s work into hers presents a case of cultural cross-fertilization in which the poetry of a foreign high-cultural figure enters into and influences a...
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Dickens and music
Charles Dickens’s works attest to a keen familiarity with the ballads and traditional songs of Ireland and the United Kingdom. Less obvious from his writings is his deep love of Western classical...
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Sherlock Holmes, violist
A close reading of the canonical texts yields conclusive evidence that the celebrated sleuth was not a superb violinist—he was a superb violist. The mistake was likely perpetuated by an early...
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Sendak and Mozart
The beloved author and illustrator Maurice Sendak, who died yesterday, was deeply influenced by Western classical music, particularly by the works of Mozart. “Art has always been my salvation,” he...
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Prokof’ev’s bad dog
In 1917 Prokof’ev briefly returned to one of his childhood interests: writing fiction. He considered what this pursuit entailed. “My style caused me concern,” he wrote. “Did it have individuality or...
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Blake and Jerusalem
In its stirring setting by Hubert Parry, William Blake’s Jerusalem furnishes the text of one of England’s most popular hymns—it has been called the country’s second national anthem. It is particularly...
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Albéniz and Shaw
While there is no evidence that Isaac Albéniz and George Bernard Shaw ever met, the latter attended and reviewed some of the former’s London recitals. The outspoken Shaw pointed out what he perceived...
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Dead fiction
The storyteller speaks: Rare & different fictions of the Grateful Dead (Bellingham: Kearney Street Books, 2010) is a Grateful Dead-inspired collection of literary short stories. Genres represented...
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Rahmaninov and Tolstoj
In January 1900 Rahmaninov and the bass Fëdor Ivanovič Šalâpin were invited to perform for a gathering at Tolstoj’s home; they were both 26 years old. Their excitement was tempered with no little...
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Epic memories
The Tibetan saga of King Gesar of Ling comprises some 120 epics; individuals have been documented performing as many as 40 of these, and some claim that they are able to perform all of them. While...
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Händel and Johnson
Samuel Johnson lived in London during a struggle between English and foreign composers—epitomized by the rivalry between Händel and Thomas Arne—and witnessed its climax, which was to have a...
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Marie-Louise Desmâtins in life and death
The novel La musique du diable, ou Le Mercure galant devalisé (Paris: Robert le Turc, 1711) describes the arrival and subsequent activities of Marie-Louise Desmâtins and Lully in Hell; it also...
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Brahms and the “cremation cantata”
Mathilde Wesendonck (above) is known to music historians for her romantic entanglement with and artistic influence on Wagner in the 1850s. What is less commonly known is that once her relationship...
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Bhāgavata purāṇa as performance
A week-long festival centered on stories about the deity Kṛṣṇa is held in the hamlet of Naluna, Garhwal district, Northern India; this practice (known as a saptāh) is primarily a product of an elite...
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The Pied Piper and his clarinet
The German town of Hameln continues to re-enact the legend of the Rattenfänger, known in English as the Pied Piper, each weekend during the summer. A number of musicians have assumed the role of the...
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Tippett and Eliot
Michael Tippett called T.S. Eliot his spiritual and artistic mentor, and their numerous discussions in the 1930s proved a lasting influence on the composer’s beliefs about the coming-together of words...
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The riddle of the tortoise and the lyre
The inscription Dum vixi tacui, mortua dulce cano on an early 18th-century Italian spinet in Edinburgh is identifiable with the second line of a riddling couplet found in Nikolaus von Reusner’s...
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Slim Gaillard on the road
In On the road (New York: Viking, 1957), Jack Kerouac described an encounter with the pianist, guitarist, and percussionist Slim Gaillard, “a tall, thin Negro with big sad eyes who’s always saying...
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Dortmunder Schriften zur Musikpädagogik und Musikwissenschaft
In 2015 Technische Universität Dortmund launched the series Dortmunder Schriften zur Musikpädagogik und Musikwissenschaft with Ludwig Uhland und seine Komponisten: Zum Verhältnis von Musik und Politik...
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Joyce’s musical sirens
In the “Sirens” episode of Ulysses James Joyce made words represent music by playing with or even overcoming certain conventional features of language. Particularly notable are Joyce’s representation...
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