The years (preliminary)

1669: Sonata representativa (H. I. Biber)
1722: Das wohltemperierte Clavier (J. S. Bach)
1762: Orfeo ed Euridice (C. W. Gluck)
1783: Grosse Messe in C Minor (W. A. Mozart)
1791: Die Zauberflöte (W. A. Mozart)
1827: Il Pirata (V. Bellini)
1875: Carmen (G. Bizet)
1913: Le sacre du printemps (I. Stravinsky)
1927: Potato Head Blues (Louis Armstrong)
1941: Quatuor pour la fin du temps (O. Messiaen)
1957: Agon (I. Stravinsky)
1959: So What (M. Davis, B. Evans, C. Adderley, P. Chambers, J. Cobb, J. Coltrane)
1961: All of You (B. Evans Trio)
1963: Talkin' World War III Blues (B. Dylan)
1966: Wild Thing (The Troggs)
1968: In a Station (The Band)
1969: Gimme Shelter (Rolling Stones)
1971: The Wind (Cat Stevens)
1975: The Köln Concert (K. Jarrett)
1977: Watching the Detectives (E. Costello)
1978: White Man in Hammersmith Palais (The Clash)
1979: I Zimbra (Talking Heads)
1981: Themes for Great Cities (Simple Minds)
1993: Past the Mission (T. Amos)
1995: Helicopter String Quartet (K. Stockhausen)
1998: Crawl Back (R. Thompson)
2003: Paranoid Android (B. Mehldau)

Making light

This morning I dressed my wound. I removed yesterday's bandage, applied antibacterial ointment, and began to open a fresh bandage. Bandages come in sealed individual envelopes. You open one by pulling apart two flaps, the loose ends of the two pieces of platicked paper that make the envelope. I was standing in the dark because the sun had not yet risen. As I pulled at the two flaps and the envelope opened, light was released along the unsealing edges. I stopped; the light went out; I continued; the light reappeared. Wonderful.

I fight dirty

25

Here's how I'd describe the playing of Brad Mehldau

Imprecise, adventurous, shy of the dramatic gesture. He'll never do a cover of Richard Thompson's "Hard on me" (one of the angriest songs ever, with two agonized guitar solos wrenched from the diseased pit of murderous despair). He's angular, heading along a road he's never even scouted, trying something he can't quite do but gloriously failing.

Quiz

What do all of these people have in common?

Marcia Wachs Dam
Tosh Junior
Jonelle Niffenegger
Polly Sippy
Hy Speck
Lindy Trigg

Music

There's been some excitement about the rock band Led Zeppelin recently. The guy who sings (Robert Plant, ancient) did a record with a girl who sings (Alison Krauss, middle aged). Also there was a concert this week.
Leads one to think: painful as the Cordula Lippert memory may be for me, this is a truly marvelous band. No one has ever rocked more mightily. Some people think jazz should be one thing (thrilling?), classical another (Apollonian?), folk something else besides, which is tosh. But if you like your rock & roll Dionysian (a word Iggy Pop has to explain to Tom Snyder here), then surrender to the Zepp.

Here's how I'd describe the playing of Kenny Barron

Architectural, yet full of surprises. Bill Evans had the power of enchantment; Barron thrills me. He seems utterly in control, utterly composed, utterly sly. And there is considerable soulfulness.

Antonioni does the great debate

By taking the terms of the debate quite literally in his masterpiece, Blow-up, Michelangelo Antonioni showed that he sided with Sandburg.

Frost, belittling Sandburg: "Writing free verse is like playing tennis with the net down."

Sandburg, replying insufferably: "The poet that without imagination or folly enough to play tennis by serving and returning the ball over an invisible net may see himself as highly disciplined. There have been poets who could and did play more than one game of tennis with unseen rackets, volleying airy and fantastic balls over an insubstantial net, on a frail moonlit fabric of a court."

Reworking a piece of work

Author, actor and male model Fabio says U.S. Senator Hillary Clinton is his candidate of choice for U.S President. In an online interview, he explained Clinton's virtues: "She's, you know, my biggest reward, because I would love to have two success with her, with a woman president. And so it will be, to me, forgetting the first time I love the women I owe one to. Women: you're smart."