Samuel Barber's Piano Sonata

John Browning's legendary recording

"Prairie Song" -- a poem by Julie Shavin

I keep listening to this.

Even though I'm an American, this thing affects me with a certain exoticism. It's quietly freaky and compelling, panoramic and metaphysical, moody and bizarre. I hope it also freaks out my foreign readers, who experience the haunted breeze of its old-west quintessence.

Besides all that, I think this is a well-crafted poem, an actual poem. Such things are rare these days.

Beckett & Feldman -- NEITHER

an article

Composer Morton Feldman requested from Samuel Beckett an original text as libretto for an opera (or anti-opera, or monodrama). Beckett sent him 87 words in a text titled Neither. The work, for soprano and orchestra, was completed in 1977.





Neither

to and fro in shadow from inner to outer shadow
--
from impenetrable self to impenetrable unself by way of neither
--
as between two lit refuges whose doors once neared gently close, once away turned from gently part again
--
beckoned back and forth and turned away
--
heedless of the way, intent on the one gleam or the other
--
unheard footfalls only sound
--
till at last halt for good, absent for good from self and other
--
then no sound
--
then gently light unfading on that unheeded neither
--
unspeakable home

about W. G. Sebald

If you'd like, you can click here to listen:

A German Genius in Britain