Recent links of note:

“God’s Own Music”
Ian Bostridge, The New York Review of Books

Ian Bostridge may be best known for his celebrated performances of Schubert, Wagner, Britten, and others on the world’s most prestigious stages, but the English tenor also maintains an active literary life. Educated in history and philosophy at Westminster School, Oxford, and Cambridge, Bostridge only began singing professionally at the age of twenty-seven. In the most recent issue of The New York Review of Books, Bostridge writes on a subject in which he is undoubtedly well versed: Anglican choral music. Reviewing two recent books on the matter, O Sing unto the Lord: A History of English Church Music by Andrew Gant (University of Chicago Press) and Messiah: The Composition and Afterlife of Handel’s Masterpiece by Jonathan Keates (Basic Books), Bostridge weaves anecdotes from his personal experience singing choral music into a thorough and well-informed history of the Anglican Tradition.

“The Idolatry of Journalism”
Kyle Smith, National Review

In 2008, the Freedom Forum, a nonprofit foundation “dedicated to free press, free speech, and free spirit” opened the “Newseum” at 555 Pennsylvania Avenue in Washington, D.C. Ten years and $272 million later, the institution is looking to move out in order to downsize. Kyle Smith’s takedown of the long-derided, postmodern institution in National Review Online this week gets at the crux of the issue: people tend not to want to spend twenty-five dollars to view this self-congratulatory, colossal altar to journalists who, by and large, have lost the trust of Americans.


From our pages:

“Amid pain and death, historic beauty”
Jay Nordlinger