Tag: early 20th century
The Case for Challenging Music
On December 1, 1900, at an intimate concert hall in Vienna, a respected local baritone gave the premiere of some early songs for voice and piano by Arnold Schoenberg. Today this music, though written in an elusive harmonic language, comes across as exuding hyper-Wagnerian richness and Brahmsian expressive depth. But the audience in Vienna broke into shouts, laughter, and jeers. From that day on, as Schoenberg ruefully recalled two decades later, “the scandal has never ceased.”
The author Harvey
Actually, Public Health Did a Remarkably Good Job With the Pandemic
When caring for two toddlers during the pandemic felt impossible, I took solace in knowing that raising children used to be considerably more difficult. During the early 20th century, infectious organisms in tainted food or fetid water exacted a frightening toll on children; in some places, up to 30 percent died before their first birthday. In those days, there was often little more to offer children suffering from dehydration and diarrhea than milk teeming with harmful bacteria or so-called