Latest Articles
We are encouraged to rely more and more on government officials to do for us what we could equally well do for ourselves—and, maybe more importantly, not to do what might help us solve our own problems.
Sep 08 2024
10 mins
If we imagine a metric called the Pinocchio Scale, which measures the number of lies told by a politician as a percentage of his or her overall public statements, our current prime minister (for want of a better description), Airbus Albo, has moved well into uncharted territory.
Sep 06 2024
5 mins
The Lonely Aristocracy of True Art
One of the great regrets experienced, living in our time, is the decline of literature, and that of art generally. We might lay the blame for this at many sets of feet. Certainly, the relentless commercialisation of beauty in the name of entertainment has done its work well; most classical symphony orchestras now record scores for video games. This isn’t to call them bad; take a listen to the work of Jeremy Soule or Marcin Przybyłowicz. They nobly hold their own, lift the chin skyward, and we must judge a thing on its own merits, however one regards the importance of the sculptor to the sculpture.
Nobody disregards Leonardo da Vinci thanks to the Borgias, though to enjoy a true flowering of the arts, we could do with some latter-day Medici. There is something to be said for patronage that is more than a mere market, for patronage that doesn’t need to always be considering mass appeal, bottom lines and sales figures; and this is to say nothing of the patronage of modern…
The Editor of Quadrant Music, Alexander Voltz, has won the symphonic section of the prestigious George Enescu International Competition in Bucharest.
Sep 03 2024
1 mins
Some have argued that Auden was a victim of his own naivety regarding the prospect of impending war. A few days before its declaration and while on a Greyhound bus at the end of that 1939 “honeymoon” with Kallman, he had written home to England: “There is a radio on this coach, so that every hour or so, one has a violent pain in one’s stomach as the news comes on. By the time you get this, I suppose, we shall know one way or the other.”
Aug 29 2024
15 mins
This is the paradox of the War Against the Past: those who are waging it are, inadvertently, denying themselves the capacity to win. For if your past is evil, if your centuries-old story is defined by bitterness and bad faith, how can you possibly hope to redeem yourself?
Aug 29 2024
11 mins
