18576. (Steve Muhlberger) [in blog Muhlberger’s Early History] Population Crash in Europe?
.… . [article]
18577. (Steve Muhlberger) [in blog Muhlberger’s Early History] The Chronicle of the Good
.… . Duke and “Modern Times” [article]
Read more »
Category Archives: BL - Reading 2010 - Page 3
READING – FEBRUARY 2010
William Bolcom’s Songs of Innocence and Songs of Experience
Musicians have long been attracted to William Blake’s interconnected poems known as the Songs of Innocence and of Experience. Allen Ginsberg has asserted that a study of the rhyme and meter of the poems reveals that Blake intended them to be sung. They certainly have the feeling of English tavern ballads strangely mutated into moral and metaphysical meditations. This mixture of serious purpose and popular form is exactly the stuff that best suits American composer William Bolcom. Read more »
READING — JANUARY 2010
18426. [3] (Elias Lönnrot) The Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People [translated by Eino Friberg ;
. . . . . editing and introduction by George C. Schoolfield; illustrated by Björn Landström]
. . . . . [read previously in Kirby (1) and Bosley (2) translations]
18427. [2] (F. R. Kreutzwald) Kalevipoeg: An Ancient Estonian Tale compiled by Fr.R. Kreutzwald ;
. . . . . translation with notes and afterword by Jüri Kurman Read more »
18586. [3] (Edgar Pangborn) Davy
A most pleasurable third reading of an old favourite of mine. Edgar Pangborn’s gentle and humane novels had a tremendous influence on me. The book that really hit the mark was A Mirror For Observers, but the Davy stories were almost as good. This novel introduces the character at the age of fourteen, but hops back and forth in time. The background is post-apocalyptic, with the human population of upstate New York and New England reduced to an early Medieval level of technology and the Huly Murcan Church providing what little social cohesion exists. But this is not a remake of Miller’s A Canticle For Leibowitz. Pangborn saw organized religion as more of a repressive and regressive force than Miller did. Nothing rings false in Pangborn’s imagined world. The young Davy is a randy little ragamuffin, and his picaresque progress is more along the line of Fielding than Bunyan. But unlike most picaresque writers, Pangborn never placed sex in opposition to love, or to morality. Rather, he understood that sex stands at the heart of morality. Spider Robinson has remarked that “Edgar Pangborn said again and again in his books that love is not a condition or an event or even a state of mind — that love is a country, which we are sometimes privileged to visit.”
18426. [3] (Elias Lönnrot) The Kalevala: Epic of the Finnish People; 18427. [2] (F. R. Kreutzwald) Kalevipoeg: An Ancient Estonian Tale
As my December reading has concentrated on the related subjects of shamanism, Finno-Ugric linguistics and folklore, it’s appropriate for me to start off the year by re-reading the Kalevala and the Kalevipoeg. The Finnish Kalevala has been a constant, haunting presence with me for most of my life, but the less well known Estonian Kalevipoeg is something I’ve gotten into more recently. Read more »
Sibelius’ Kullervo
As I’m beginning the year with a re-reading of the Kalevala, the Finnish mythological epic that has haunted me since childhood, it’s logical for me to begin the year’s musical listening with Sibelius’ largest scale work based on it, the spectacular unified sequence of tone poems about the Kalevala hero Kullervo. I have two recordings of Kullervo, Symphonic Poem for Soprano, Baritone, Chorus and Orchestra, Op.7: Jorma Panula conducting the Turku Philharmonic Orchestra, and Paavo Berglund directing the Helsinki Symphony Orchestra. They’re both fine, but I prefer the Berglund. Eeva-Liisa Saarinen’s soprano in it is superb.
Read more »