The international attention Ukraine has received in the 270 days since Russia’s full-scale invasion of its sovereign neighbor is unprecedented. The world has never before shown such support for and interest in Ukrainian culture, including the world of the performing arts. Countless benefit concerts have been organized by high-profile orchestras,… Read More
On February 24, 2022, after Russian forces attacked the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, award-winning curator Sasha Andrusyk posted on social media: “I’ve lived a very happy, very full life in Ukraine, and I intend to continue. The end of [Putin’s] Russia is fast approaching.” Despite the expectation of further attacks and the… Read More
On May 14, 2017, while waiting to meet with Chinese President Xi Jinping, Russian President Vladimir Putin was filmed playing two Soviet-era popular tunes on a grand piano: Solov’ev Sodoy’s “Evening Song,” a famous melody in St. Petersburg (the song’s lyrics refer to the city by its Soviet-era… Read More
What of music in the time of war? It is not a new question, but a question whose answers unfold along complex and specific paths. In the eighteen days since the Russian government’s invasion of Ukraine on February 24, music and musicians have been part of many of this… Read More
Victory in Europe, or V-E Day, was proclaimed after the military surrenders in Reims on 7 May 1945 and in Berlin the next evening. The 70th anniversary, being commemorated today, is considerably tamer here in France than the big deal last… Read More
on Normandy’s coast a century ago, Claude Debussy fled the war and composed his final piano masterpiece by Sudip Bose This essay appears in the Spring 2015 issue of The American Scholar and its on-line version, vibrant offerings of the honorary fraternity Phi Beta Kappa, established 1776. Read More
Plundered bells on the Hamburg dock in Germany, August 1945 National Archives and Records Administration The centenary of UC Berkeley’s landmark campanile (formally Sather Tower) and carillon was commemorated in late February by a sobering centennial lecture entitled “Bells… Read More
by Carol A. Hess Among the many things World War I left in its wake is an impressive and diverse body of musical works. The first commercially successful antiwar song in history, Al Piantadosi’s “I Didn’t Raise My Boy to Be a Soldier,” enjoyed fleeting popularity in the United States… Read More