BERLIOZ: VIBRATIONS OF THE UNEXPLORED DEPTHS
”As a conductor of his own compositions he was incomparable […] His music, frequently rugged in contrasts and daring leaps, is also insinuating and suave at times, and so too was his conducting; one...
View ArticlePARADISE POSTPONED: SHAKIN' ALL OVER
Works like Victor Hugo’s Hernani (1830) and Han d’Islande (1823), Frédéric Soulié’s Les Mémoires du Diableand (1838), Charles Nodier’s La Fée aux Miettes (1832), and indeed Berlioz’s Symphonie...
View ArticleABSURD ENIGMAS & STIGMAS:SPILLING THE GUTS WITH THE BEANS
It was gravity which pulled us down and destiny which broke us apart You tamed the lion in my cage but it just wasn’t enough to change my heart Now everything’s a little upside down, as a matter of...
View ArticleOLD VIENNA OBSCURED BY CLOUDS: Psychic Conflict, Anxiety and Hysteria
In a letter written in 1892 to Wilhelm Fliess, Freud made a remark, ” No neurasthenia or analogous neurosis exists without a disturbance in the sexual function.” “I am pretty well alone here in...
View Articleone day there time will surely come
Nothing like a little heresy to reinflate the sagging body of the church. The heresy of twenty plus centuries, as infinite as private choice , is hardly random, but keeps to certain well-defined...
View Articletencin: high wire act between rationalism and passion
“My menagerie,” Alexandrine Tencin called her salon; her guests were “mes betes.” Her Tuesdays she filled with good talk, high spirits, and low comedy involving chamber pots and such. Her leisure she...
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