A Reader staffer shares three musical obsessions, then asks someone (who asks someone else) to take a turn.
Laurence Crane/Asamisimasa, Sound of Horse Extraordinary Norwegian chamber ensemble Asamisimasa applies a pitch-perfect touch to the minimalist marvels of British composer Laurence Crane. On this survey of his pieces, long tones and repetition create unexpected beauty, tenderness, and excitement. A quiet masterpiece.
Robeson was targeted by the House Un-American Activities Committee (which Newt Gingrich wants to revive), his passport was revoked, and his U.S. concerts were canceled at the behest of the F.B.I. (remember them?). When Robeson visited Chicago in October 1949, the Sun-Times and Tribune sent reporters. Worried about offending subscribers, though, they chose not to publish stories.
Igor Stravinsky, Le Sacre du Printemps Truthfully, I can’t stand this piece anymore. But I teach it every year. It should sound a century old—and for a long time, it did. Now it sounds—not new, but less like antiquity. As if everything it represented—the garish primitivist charisma, the vicious cool of the rhymeless and reasonless chord, modernity clawing out of its 19th-century host—needed representation again. The fossil has dug itself out.
