On rare days when pop or rock is just too much for me, I turn to the quieter, but no less magnetic, side of music. This album has been on my cd player all day and has helped me find amazing amounts of peace. It's also a truly lovely listen.


All Music  has a solid review for it here:

Review by James Manheim  [-]

Originally recorded in 1988, this was one of the recordings that made historical performance practice the mainstream when it came to Bach's major choral works. Every moment of the mass was thought through anew, every bit of conventional piety purged. Major B minor mass recordings in the following years have developed one aspect or another further than conductor Philippe Herreweghe does here; Masaaki Suzuki's Bach Collegium Japan chisels out the counterpoint in greater detail, and for grand reverential warmth there's always John Eliot Gardiner. But for a constant sense of wonder that makes even the larger harmonic structure of the mass seem surprising as it unfolds -- for a real sense of a group responding not only to a conductor's control but to his artistic vision -- this reading by Herreweghe and his Collegium Vocale Ghent remains unexcelled. Herreweghe returned to the Mass in B minor in 2000; that later recording features soloists who are sublime (Véronique Gens, Andreas Scholl) rather than merely good, but it does not exceed the marvelous freshness of this release, which is holding up well close to a quarter century later. At a budget price, this can't be beat. The recording was also a milestone in its engineering technique; the choir and soloists sound natural and clear in the Ghent church where they were recorded. Basic booklet notes are provided in English, German, and French.

She was sometimes called "Cyclone Callas" because of her temperament. Even before I ever heard any of her recordings I had heard this. I've always been a bit fascinated by people with passionate personalities and super-amazing talent, as if the two forces are impossible to separate.

 

Arianna Huffington wrote a solid, fascinating biography on Maria Callas in the early 1980s, parts of which can be read here:

http://books.google.com/books?id=k7rhGRvxyWwC&pg=PA93&dq=maria+callas+personality&hl=en&sa=X&ei=EzbLU9SiBc-TyAS_44DQBw&ved=0CCQQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=maria%20callas%20personality&f=false


And of equal interest, if not more since it comes straight from the source herself, is this article from a 1950s issue of Life magazine:

Life article
http://books.google.com/books?id=W0gEAAAAMBAJ&pg=PA118&dq=maria+callas+temperamental+life&hl=en&sa=X&ei=uTvLU_7XLM22yAS21YGIBw&ved=0CCYQ6AEwAQ#v=onepage&q=maria%20callas%20temperamental%20life&f=false

 

So bleak and disparaging of love (especially physical love) and marriage ever existing in the same space, The Kreutzer Concerto is best read only if you're in a strong enough mood to handle its darkness...or if you're already in agreement with main character Pozdnyshev. Either way, the short novel is gripping and overwhelming (not necessarily in a good way)...and best followed with something happy.

 I prefer the views of a woman who appears briefly in the opening scene where a small group of people are discussing their takes on women, men, love and marriage. The lone female says:

"Ah, but what you say is terrible...there certainly exists among human beings this feeling which is called loved, and which lasts, not for months and years, but life."

On the other hand, there is almost an appealing frankness to Tolstoy's that society was better off when marriages were arranged and none of "what is this?...The young girls are seated, and gentlemen walk up and down before them, as in a bazaar, and make their choice." Leo Tolstoy seems honestly conflicted between how things should be and how they are, what is natural and what is not.

Much of what he writes in The Kreutzer Sonata is not friendly to women or romantic love, but he's being true to his own views, good ones or bad. In Epilogue To The Kreutzer Sonata, published in 1890, Tolstoy shared see what he saw as the novella's central theme:

"Let us stop believing that carnal love is high and noble and understand that any end worth our pursuit -- in service of humanity, our homeland, science, art, let alone God -- any end, so long as we may count it worth our pursuit, is not attained by joining ourselves to the objects of our carnal love in marriage or outside it; that, in fact, infatuation and conjunction with the object of our carnal love (whatever the authors of romances and love poems claim to the contrary) will never help our worthwhile pursuits but only hinder them."               

 

 



 

 

 

 

In the early 90s I subscribed to Time Life's AM Gold 1960s cd series. I was helplessly addicted and loved when each new package came in the mail. Of all the years, 1969 is my favorite...every single song on it except "Hair I played often.

 

 

I still own and love that cd and find a ridiculous amount of peace and happiness in listening to it on quiet nights like these, where the window is open, a soft breeze floats in and (for as long as the album lasts) I forget everything else in this crazy world.

 

 

My favorite single from it is Mercy's "Love (Can Make You Happy)." Its message is timeless, even if the cover art for the album it's from is not.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rF3MEpMciNA

 

(lyrics by Jack Sigler, Jr.)

 

Wake up in the morning with the sunshine in your eyes
And the smell of flowers blooming fills the air.
Your mind is filled with the thoughts of a certain someone - that you
love;
Your life is filled with joy when she is there.
Love can make you happy if you fine someone who cares
To give a life time to you and who has a love to share.
If you think you've found someone you'll love forevermore,
Then it's worth the price you'll have to pay (pay).
To have, to hold's important when forever is the phrase
That means the love you've found is going to stay.
Love can make you happy if you find someone who cares
To give a life time to you and who has a love to share.
La-love, la-love
Love can make you happy.
Love can make you happy.
Love can make you happy.
Love...

 

 



 

I will never understand boredom. To me it seems like a wasted luxury. There are so few free hours in the world to do extra things like read the books you want to read or go for nature walks, explore the larger world or have time to do whatever just for yourself. When you get that extra time it feels like a gift.

As if The Novel: A Biography wasn't giving me more ideas of what to read there's the above which is much more comprehensive and less mainstream than I would have thought. It's full of fascinating ideas for what to read next, including a rarely mentioned novel by Daniel Defoe called Roxana:

 

 

1001 Books starts chronologically from the 1600s and goes until now; the selections are varied and intriguing. Many of the ones mentioned that were written before the 1920s can be downloaded for free by going to Google Play and looking them up title:

Google Play