machine music Archives : Professor Carol

Friday Performance Pick – 80

January 8, 2022June 10, 2016 by Hank Reynolds

Honegger, Pacific 231 The impetuous and relentless energy of Prokofiev’s Precipitato (last week’s selection) seems like a good entrée into what can be called “machine music.” And one of the best examples would be “Pacific 231” composed in 1923 by Arthur Honegger (1892-1955). Composers have used … Read more

Leroy Anderson’s “The Typewriter”

September 21, 2020October 1, 2013 by Professor Carol

The typewriter made a great percussion instrument. In the hands of a skillful typist, it churned out a steady rhythm with each episode punctuated by a satisfying bell. Have you forgotten the sound and the physical satisfaction of mastering the device? No electronic gadget, handy … Read more

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And Then There's This . . .

Vince Bielski, When Classical Learning Meets Public Education the Dialogue Isn’t Always Socratic. “Classical education, whose name gained traction in the 1980s to evoke the movement’s focus on liberal arts and the Western canon, is struggling to overcome local political opposition.”

Peter Wood, After College: The Coming Cultural Collapse of Higher Education. “Students graduate with a veneer of knowledge rather than a core. An increasingly obsolescent institution has wedded itself to an increasingly noisome cultural stance.”

Anthony Esolen, Heap Songs Upon Their Heads. “We are the most beauty-starved people, I am persuaded, who have ever trod the earth.”

Gregory Wolfe, The Wound of Beauty. “The time has come to bring beauty back, to give it the glass slipper and invite it to the prom.”