The Spin Doctor Europadisc's Weekly Column

A dot that went for a walk: The Art of Monophony

29th January 2025

In a quote now so famous that its exact source is seldom cited, the Swiss artist Paul Klee (1879–1940) stated that ‘A line is a dot going for a walk’. It chimes with similar formulations used in his Pedagogical Sketchbook of 1925, as does his further (oft-repeated) statement that ‘A drawing is simply a line going for a walk’. Klee was talking about graphic art, but his comments could also apply to music. If the ‘dot’ is taken to be a single note, then the ‘line’ is a melody. In its most basic form, this describes the... read more

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Musicae Princeps: Celebrating Palestrina

21st January 2025

For more than four centuries, the music of Giovanni Pierluigi da Palestrina has been held as the epitome of late Renaissance polyphonic mastery, clarity and balance. Only Josquin, Lassus and Victoria come close to rivalling his reputation. His exact date and place of birth are unknown, but he was 68 at the time of his death in Rome on 2 February 1594, and it is likely that he was born either in the town of Palestrina, near Rome, or in the Eternal City itself, where he was based (apart from a brief stint in Palestrina) for... read more

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The Year Ahead: 2025 Anniversaries

14th January 2025

Take a look at Wikipedia’s homepage on any given date and you’ll find under the section headed ‘On this day’ a clutch of anniversaries, often musical. Any year is, of course, replete with them, but there’s something about the multiples of 100 and 50 in particular that acts like a honeypot (moneypot?) to concert diary planners and record company executives. Most of us (mathematical geniuses apart) like dealing with round numbers: they make life so much simpler, even if most (unlike the late Jimmy Carter, or the recently... read more

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The Good, the Bad, the Beautiful and the Ugly

7th January 2025

For some, it is an article of faith. Music should be judged and appreciated not according to whether it is good or bad according to academic criteria, but whether or not it is beautiful. Ignore the academics and analysts, ignore the composer (their morals or lack thereof, their political opinions, their private lives, their public compromises): is their music beautiful? (Beauty, of course, being in the eye of the beholder.) It has been a powerful argument in the arts since the Enlightenment, although aesthetics (the... read more

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Late-Romanticism’s Final Flowering: Franz Schmidt

17th December 2024

In a year rich with anniversaries, one of the last and most overlooked comes in the shape of an Austrian composer little-hailed outside his native land, but whose works – particularly the symphonies – are finding increasing acceptance in the recording studios, if not yet in the concert hall. A generation or so ago, that might have described another of this year’s anniversary composers, Anton Bruckner; but this coming weekend (22 December) marks the 150th birthday of Franz Schmidt (1874–1939). Born in Pressburg (present-day... read more

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