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Singer-songwriter John Prine fell ill with the Covid-19 virus in March and eventually succumbed to it on April 7. He was a balladeer of the common man, a poet of everyday life with a knack for folding narrative fragments into an elemental lyricism very much in the manner of Wordsworth’s Lyrical Ballads. He got his […]
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I have always been fascinated by the imposing Pestsäule (Plague Column) in Vienna, erected by Emperor Leopold I soon after the plague epidemic of 1679 that killed as many as 75,000 people. Situated on the Graben, Vienna’s most famous thoroughfare, it attracts little attention from the hoards of tourists eager to walk from St Stephen’s […]
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“Bombardment of Vienna on the night of the 12th of May [1809],” from the collections of the Ira F. Brilliant Center for Beethoven Studies, San José State University.
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A few years ago, I saw my daughter perform in her school musical, Singing in the Rain. I had performed in many such shows in my youth, and watching her I vividly remembered my own experiences singing, dancing, and acting in roles that were meant for adults, performances that sometimes went well (I’m quite proud […]
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It was fifty years ago, on 10 April 1970, that Paul McCartney announced the break-up of the Beatles. That the end of the Beatles came so soon after the end of the 1960s helped to cement the association between the decade and band. An optimistic perspective on the relationship between the 1960s and the Beatles […]
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Imagine. It’s 1965, you’re at home in on Prenzlauer Berg, the Berlin Wall is visible from your window, and you’re having friends over to your flat. Someone brings the latest Thelonious Monk record, smuggled across the border from the West, and everyone gathers round in excitement. You could go to jail for this, you realize—after […]
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Acting is an elusive art, because – unlike for example a painting, sculpture, poem or score – an actor’s performance cannot be held in the hand, and is not available to pin down for scientific analysis. Yet it is an art, like the art of playing the piano. In the language of the ancients, acting […]
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The following text is excerpted from chapter 8 of The Beatles in Context (ed. by Kenneth Womack), ‘Beatlemania,’ by Melissa Davis. Beatlemania: biːt (ə) lˈmeɪnɪə/ From Gr (noun) mania (ma’-ni-a)mānēə meaning madness or frenzy. Extreme enthusiasm for the Beatles pop group, as manifested in the frenzied behaviour of their fans in the 1960s. Synonyms: madness, […]
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