‘La-La-La!!! I CAN’T HEAR YOU!!!!’
There has been an indecently long gap since my last posting. This was due to a computer crash, travels and deadlines that were made all the more stressful with the loss of important… Continue reading
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A Feisstian View of Schoenberg in America
Just as I completed reading Sabine Feisst’s excellent Schoenberg’s New World – the American Years, the Times Literary Supplement asked if I would review two new books on Schoenberg. I won’t give away… Continue reading
The Skewered ‘Way of Life’ of Roger Scruton
This article in today’s Guardian is by Roger Scruton, a philosopher with a leaning towards Hegelian aesthetics. In it, he pleads for his concept of ‘conservatism’ and explains why it’s hard to ‘think’… Continue reading
Conferences – August 2014
Unlike full-time academics, conferences make up very little of my yearly schedule. When I can make one, I find them rewarding and encouraging as they highlight how far interest and research have come… Continue reading
Beyond Ideology
At the Ziering-Conlon Initiative for Recovered Voices symposium, ‘Music, Censorship and Meaning in Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union: Echoes and Consequences’, held at Los Angeles’s Colburn School, I gave the following paper.… Continue reading
Further Observations on Austria Hungary in the First World War
Now that I’ve finished Musil’s Mann ohne Eigenschaften, I can plough ahead with Manfried Rauchensteiner’s magisterial history of Austria-Hungary in the First World War. I’ve got as far as the 12th Isonzo Offensive… Continue reading
‘We’ve Conquered Reality and thereby lost our Dreams’: Robert Musil’s ‘The Man without Qualities’ – or ‘Der Mann ohne Eigenschaften’
Thank goodness I didn’t read Marcl Reich-Ranicki’s demolition job of Musil’s 2000 page, incomplete novel – is that the right word? – The Man without Qualities. Everything Reich-Ranicki criticises about Musil’s monster is… Continue reading
Interview with Michael Haas by Jewish Music Institute Radio
An Interview with me at the Jewish Music Institute’s Radio, based at London University. Selections featured in the interview are (in order): Franz Schreker’s opera ‘Die Gezeichneten’, followed by Jaromir Weinberger’s ‘Schwander the… Continue reading
The Kaleidoscopic Contradictions of Hanns Eisler: 1898 – 1962
Few of the so-called ‘exiled composers’ were as controversial as Hanns Eisler. None since Wagner had written such copious and trenchant observations on society, politics and ethics in addition to writing about music.… Continue reading
Music From the End of Time: Franz Schreker 1878-1934
In nearly every book on Vienna’s fin de siècle, the only composers dealt with in depth, are Mahler and Schoenberg. It is, however, only a partial representation of what music was expressing at… Continue reading