music

Lully and music under Louis XIV

This entry was posted in History Music My writing and tagged France history music on by

Jean-Baptiste LullyHere’s my latest for the Online Library of Liberty: “The Politics of Music Under Louis XIV.” Under Louis, successful art was art which he liked, by people he liked. In music, that meant Jean-Baptiste Lully, who got monopoly privileges from the king.

There are lots of famous German and Italian composers from that period, but French composers who weren’t Lully didn’t have much of a chance. Lully finally killed himself by conducting too vigorously.

New article: “Bach’s Ode to Caffeine”

This entry was posted in My writing and tagged coffee history music on by

I’ve got a new article up on the Liberty Fund website: “Bach’s Ode to Caffeine.” Johann Sebastian Bach’s cantata, “Schweigt stille, plaudert nicht,” more often known in English as the “Coffee Cantata,” was likely first performed at Zimmermann’s Coffeehouse, where he was a regular performer. It’s a miniature comic opera in which a father wages a one-man War on Coffee.

If you’d like to hear the cantata, I highly recommend this performance on YouTube:

My favorite obscure composers 3

This entry was posted in Music and tagged music spohr on by

This post is something new. I’m thinking of making blog posts on classical music a regular feature here, for no better reason than that I love it. Liberty Fund has published several articles I’ve written on classical composers. If computer security expert Bruce Schneier can devote a post every Friday to squid, I think I can diversify too. I’ve added a WordPress category, “Music,” for these posts.

Here I’d like to talk about some composers whom I like but aren’t currently as well-known as the regulars on concert programs. The idea for this came when I learned that Vivaldi was known only to a few in the nineteenth century. He came to prominence, oddly, because of a piece which Fritz Kreisler wrote himself but attributed to Vivaldi. On the other side of the ledger, Louis Spohr and Joseph Joachim Raff were among the top-ranked composers of the nineteenth century but aren’t heard very much today.
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