Tag: music

Simply beautiful. And inspirational. This one goes out to all the Boomers. We’re here for you. Right here, at your side, when you need a friend.

Starting today on Unauthorized, we are replacing the Good Gardening subscription with the Castalia Classics subscription. This is to support the existing library of audiobooks on UATV as well as the development of the classical music channel. We are in the process of substantially adding to the audiobook library, beginning with the complete A Throne of Bones, and expect to have the classical music streaming in a curated radio-style format in 3-6 months.

We will NOT be removing the existing Good Gardening badges on SocialGalactic, but will add a new Classics badge for new subscribers instead. If you are already subscribing to the Good Gardening channel and wish to continue supporting #UATV, you do not need to do anything and will continue to have full access to the existing 18 channels. The Good Gardening channel will be removed the first week of April.

And since the question is inevitable, I might as well address it up front. No, there isn’t any drama or bad blood behind the scenes. David the Good is simply leaving both UATV and Castalia House in order to focus on building his own multimedia gardening platform and we have no doubt that it will be successful. Thank you for your continued support!

The attack on classical music has begun in earnest:

The University of Oxford is considering scrapping sheet music for being ‘too colonial’ after staff raised concerns about the ‘complicity in white supremacy’ in music curriculums.

Professors are set to reform their music courses to move away from the classic repertoire, which includes the likes of Beethoven and Mozart, in the wake of the Black Lives Matter movement.

University staff have argued that the current curriculum focuses on ‘white European music from the slave period’, according to The Telegraph.  

Documents seen by the publication indicate proposed reforms to target undergraduate courses.

It claimed that teaching musical notation had ‘not shaken off its connection to its colonial past’ and would be ‘a slap in the face’ to some students.

And it added that musical skills should no longer be compulsory because the current repertoire’s focus on ‘white European music’ causes ‘students of colour great distress’. 

What this means is that classical music on public radio from the likes of NPR and the BBC are unlikely to survive, as those institutions are immediately proximate to the elite universities, from which they hire most of their employees.

This is why UATV will be adding a classical music channel later this year. We’re already beginning to build the FLAC library required to support it now.

How Western Civilization has been destroyed through Music and the Arts

One of the significant aspects of the current revolutionary madness sweeping the nation is the unrestrained assault on the cultural artifacts of Western Christian civilization. In effect the attack on monuments and the nomenclature of Army forts, schools and streets, and on so much more is emblematic of something more profound and irreparable, an assault on what those symbols signify.

In a broader sense, this assault portends a basic denial of the richness and nourishing fruits of our culture and what that culture has given us. For that denial goes far beyond visible symbols in copper and granite or in place names. We have seen this in the increasing demands for a Taliban-like “cultural cleansing” of our society. And thus the mounting attacks on our artistic heritage—on those works of art that remind us of what our civilization has created and, indeed, of its bounty, goodness and creativity that have helped fashion who we are as a people.

In this climate of nihilism the remarkable art, the superb literature, and the great classical musical heritage which have held us in delighted rapture, are being despoiled, even withdrawn from accessibility like the film classic “Gone With the Wind” (now no longer available via HBO video platforms). In some cases this has resulted in de facto or outright banning. And if a work of our heritage is simply too significant to be erased, then it will be re-cast and reinterpreted to support the revolutionary agenda.

Penalties are now routinely meted out to the guilty defenders of the two millennia of inherited Western culture. Thus, as we watch statues memorializing Confederate heritage destroyed and symbols commemorating Washington, Jefferson, Christopher Columbus, Father Junipero Serra, and others brought down, we also should understand that this vandalism encompasses far more: the abolition of the historic inheritance and rejection of twenty centuries of civilization.

The guardians of our patrimony may utter a mild demurrer, but more commonly, they accede to and go along with this radical transformation of Western culture. It is not as much for fear of being called “racist” or a defender of “male privilege,” rather, too many of our cultural elites are possessed of the same “wokeness” that dominates the streets, if a bit more rarefied.

The effects are particularly dramatic in performance music. Our musical expression gives voice to our joys, our sadness, our triumphs, our beliefs, and how we view ourselves; it is critical to our understanding of the civilization around us. Yet for decades there has been a constant effort to undermine and reshape that expression to fit a progressivist, post-Marxist mold and agenda. A concentration on race and gender is all-consuming. “Anti-racism” and “feminism” have become the benchmarks for this transformation.

Over the past half century and longer progressivists have been largely successful in restructuring what is sometimes termed “higher culture”—an appreciation and understanding of the role in our society of inherited art, literature, music, and architecture—and altering its relationship to most average citizens. When I was a boy, for instance, classical music was programmed regularly and popularly on commercial radio—the major local station at that time in Raleigh, North Carolina, WPTF, featured both the Metropolitan Opera broadcasts on Saturdays and a classical music program every night at 8 p.m. Network television offered us the long-running “Voice of Firestone” and “The Bell Telephone Hour.” Widely-viewed programs like Sunday prime time’s “Ed Sullivan Show” would feature Wagnerian soprano Birgit Nilsson and coloratura Joan Sutherland.

While many of my school chums from sixty years ago didn’t really get into classical music like I did, they at least recognized its significance and resonance in society, that it was an integral part of our inheritance, and that it surrounded and annealed and helped define our culture and made that culture more complete. Maybe they didn’t listen to the Met, but we all knew the themes from those popular TV programs like “The Lone Ranger” (with its use of Rossini’s “William Tell Overture”) or “Sergeant Preston of the Yukon” (with the “Donna Diana Overture,” by Reznicek). And who can forget Elmer Fudd belting out a cartoon version of Richard Wagner—“I killed the Wabbit!”

This is one area where a lot of us Gen-X parents have failed. Too many of us grew up where our Boomer parents filled the music space by leaving the television on, and thereby failed to instill our children with the habit of a classical soundtrack to their lives. The average Gen-X or Millennial probably can’t even name their five favorite composers in the way they can readily name their 20 favorite bands.

I was fortunate in this regard with regards to my parents. My mother had one Beatles record, one Beach Boys record, several Bill Cosby comedy records – she had been friends with his wife Camille in college – and a whole collection of various symphony recordings of Beethoven, Bach, Mozart, and Vivaldi. She would also take us to the symphony from time to time, and I eventually developed a taste for Dvorak, Haydn, and Wagner.

But it’s never too late to get in the fight. A few years ago, I decided to give Leoš Janáček a try after reading about his work in a Haruki Murakami novel, and while his Sinfonietta leaves me cold, his Complete Piano Works are in the regular rotation, and in fact, are playing on my music system right now.

And on a totally tangential note, this beginning of an interview with Murakami is a hilarious classic.

 “I prepared for my first-ever trip to Japan, this summer, almost entirely by immersing myself in the work of Haruki Murakami. This turned out to be a horrible idea. Under the influence of Murakami, I arrived in Tokyo expecting Barcelona or Paris or Berlin — a cosmopolitan world capital whose straight-talking citizens were fluent not only in English but also in all the nooks and crannies of Western culture: jazz, theater, literature, sitcoms, film noir, opera, rock ’n’ roll.”

I’m wondering how we can use UATV on this front. It occurs to me that if high-quality public domain recordings can be found, or permissions can be obtained, we could create a classical music channel that might be of some utility in this regard.

The Forge of Tolkien Episode 21, THE MUSIC OF CREATION, is now on UATV.

In the beginning there was Eru, the One, who made the Holy Ones, the offspring of his thought, and propounded to them a great theme. But whose story was this, and how did it come to be written down? Who, other than the Father of All, could know the story of Creation to tell it? And how would such stories be known to Elves and to Men? In this episode, Professor Rachel Fulton Brown introduces Tolkien’s story of Creation as a puzzle both of framing and of purpose. Who speaks in the telling of the Music—and why should Creation happen through song? And what should a Christian think about the Ainur’s singing such a mighty theme?

The converse, which might well be described as the music of damnation, is now also on UATV in the form of Metal Mythos: Danzig, as well as Episode 9 of the Junior Classics podcast and several new Wranglerstar episodes. We’re rapidly reaching the point that as much as three hours of new content that does not include the regular commentary from Owen, Razor, and me are being added on a daily basis.

If you haven’t subscribed yet, you might as well. Because it’s only going to improve from here.

This is literally music to my ears:

Back in 1959, on the cusp of the Swinging Sixties, I was posted to Germany as part of my National Service and quickly found myself a new niche. In those days, the Forces radio station played an endless diet of Bing Crosby and Peggy Lee — both wonderful singers, but their music was the sort of thing we young servicemen associated with our parents.

We wanted something different, something to call our own — and we’d found it in rock ‘n’ roll.

Powerful and energetic, these new songs had exploded on to the music scene to become the anthems for our changing times…. This was the dawn of two decades which would usher in some of the greatest music ever made and the greatest lyrics ever penned — written and performed by bands and solo artists whose names are now etched in the music hall of fame.

From Elvis and the Beatles to the Rolling Stones and The Who, Bob Dylan and the Kinks, Rod Stewart, Eric Clapton, Elton John, Queen — the music that emerged from that era has more than stood the test of time and is loved by baby boomers and their grandchildren alike.

Yet not, it seems, by the bigwigs at Radio 2.

As the Mail reported yesterday, it appears that they have quietly asked their DJs to ‘scale back’ on playing songs from the Sixties and Seventies in favour of music from the Eighties onwards.

I’m sure I can’t be the only one who is baffled. Yes, the Eighties and Nineties produced some terrific music, but it seems sheer folly to deprive the Radio 2 audience of some of the hits from the decades before — whatever their age.

I’ve hated Boomer music for literally decades. To me, the main difference between classic rock and punk rock is that at least the punk rockers knew they didn’t know how to play their instruments very well. There are ten-year-old girls now who play better guitar than the average classic rock guitarist. And it’s hilarious to see the characteristic complete lack of self-consciousness inherent in the Boomer braggadacio about their lack of interest in their parents’ music combined with their bafflement that their grandchildren have no interest in their music. 

The greatest music ever recorded? I think Beethoven and Mozart and Wagner might have a little something to say about that. No one even listens to the Rolling Stones, Bob Dylan, and the Kinks anymore and they’re still alive. I think… I don’t actually know or care. Generation Z thinks The Who comes from Mongolia.

Just go gently into that endless night, Boomer, to the comforting sounds of Hotel California if you please.

The HU covers Metallica’s Sad but True. And yes, it’s every bit as awesome as that sounds.

Choose one.

As for me, I won’t even hesitate to take Chopin, Wagner, Tchaikovsky, and Liszt. Understand that this is a war against Christianity, America, and Western civilization. Choose wrong, and forget classical music, you won’t even have flush toilets.

There is talent, and then there is what might be described as assisted talent. You don’t even have to ask if this guy took the ticket.

Ed Sheeran and wife Cherry Seaborn announce birth of daughter Lyra Antarctica – named after the main character in his favourite book, His Dark Materials.

That weird little guy doesn’t have skeletons in his close, he almost certainly has them on the grounds of his estate. Anyone dare to take the bet that he doesn’t eventually announce how he will not be leaving most of his vast fortune to this little girl?

And it has a soundtrack. Speaking of nationalism, I’m told that the Man in Black at the beginning is one of Mongolia’s Olympic champions. I don’t know about you, but that makes me want to saddle up and ride with the Golden Horde against the globalists trying to eliminate the nations. I wouldn’t have thought they could have topped The Great Chinggis Khan, but they did, and they did it without breaking a sweat.

The Men of the West should be as proud of their nations and heritages as the Mongols are of theirs. To Hell with civnattery.