Category Archives: Featured
Liberty and Honor
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th February 2022A reader asked me to define liberty as used in my post COVID – 2 Years and Counting. I will lean on JS Mill, Isaiah Berlin, and Frederich Hayek in the formulation that follows. Broadly assessed, liberty can be divided into two species – positive and negative. I realize this is a gigantic oversimplification, but…
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Too Much
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 22nd November 2021Winston Churchill remarked that a dominant characteristic of Germany and its people was a tendency to too much. I don’t think the great man was being fair to his Teutonic cousins as the trait seems universal, even more so with every change of the calendar. The descriptor seems to best apply to those parts of…
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Smaller Brains
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 31st October 2021The human brain is the most complex structure known. As human-like species evolved over several million years into homo sapiens, hominid brain size tripled. Today the average human brain weighs about three pounds. Our nearest primate relative, the chimpanzee, has a brain that weighs less than a pound. Our brains constitute about 2% of body…
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Met Opera Cancels Next 100 Seasons
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 17th October 2021Metropolitan Opera general Manager Peter Gelb announced that following this season the venerable company will take a century long sabbatical. The not unexpected action followed Anthony Tommasini’s likening of the current run of Franco Zeffirelli’s production of Puccini’s final opera Turandot to “anti-asian” hostility. Mr Tommasini, music critic for the New York Times, has pointed…
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Pericles’ Funeral Oration
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 29th August 2021Pericles’ Funeral Oration was recorded, in an edited version, by Thucydides in book two of his History of the Peloponnesian War. The speech was delivered at the end of the first year of the war with Sparta – around 430 BC. It was an Athenian custom of the time to hold an annual commemorative event to…
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On Musical Performance
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 25th April 2021For a long time I thought that the role of the performer was simply to play (or sing) the notes exactly as they were written in the score. It gradually dawned on me that this literal approach to musical performance was rather simple minded. During my come scritto period I thought Toscanini the prince of…
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Henri Legay
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 30th March 2021Henri Legay (1920-92) was a French tenor whose career was mostly based in Paris. For a while he supported himself singing while accompanying himself with a guitar at Parisian cabarets. He composed some of the songs he sang. He also played for Edith Piaf and Ives Montand. in 1947 he received a first prize from…
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One Flu Over the Cuckoo’s Nest
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 28th February 2021There are books abut white fragility which get a lot of attention, both pro and con. Someone needs to write a tome entitled Fragility without any modifier. The pandemic now stalking the world is not the one caused by a newish virus, it’s the one due to a fervid worldwide outbreak of the woollies and…
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On Corruption
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 22nd February 2021Lord Acton’s famous line about the relationship of power and corruption needs no more than its first phrase. The two are conjoined twins. Under the right circumstances all of us are likely to succumb to the corrosive effect of authority. Some occupations have it as part of their job descriptions. While corruption is ineluctably part…
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The Greatest Musical Composition Ever – 1
Written by Neil Kurtzman | 27th January 2021Obviously there’s a contradiction in my title. There can’t be more than one greatest musical composition ever written. My purpose is to list music so good that while you’re listening to it, it seems to be without peer – at least until you happen on the next greatest work. My plan for this series is…
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