2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
"Nothing is more difficult than talking about music: if it is a prickly business for musicians, it is almost impossible for anyone else"the strongest, subtlest minds go astray."
Camille Sain…
"Memory is, perhaps, selective and authors, even autobiographers, write for effect."
Piers Paul Read, Alec Guinness: The Authorised Biography
Continue reading Almanac: Piers Paul Read on …
Itzhak Perlman plays a movement from Wieniawski's Second Violin Concerto on The Ed Sullivan Show. This episode was broadcast on May 10, 1964, when Perlman was nineteen years old:
(This i…
"All other swindlers upon earth are nothing to the self-swindlers, and with such pretences did I cheat myself."
Charles Dickens, Great Expectations
Continue reading Almanac: Dickens on se…
From 2006:
I went to the new Snapple Theater Center Fiftieth and Broadway to see a press preview of the new revival of The Fantasticks. As anyone who knows anything about theater can tell…
"One of the jobs of art is to go to the impossible places that history must avoid."
Steven Spielberg, speech on the 149th anniversary of the Gettysburg Address
Continue reading Almanac: Stev…
Sarah Vaughan sings "Just One of Those Things" and "Eternally" on a 1960 episode of Perry Como's Kraft Music Hall:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos tha…
"To be able to know and still say nothing often seems to me the most creditable of human accomplishments."
James Gould Cozzens, By Love Possessed
Continue reading Almanac: James Gould Coz…
In today's Wall Street Journal I review webcasts of Bucks County Playhouse's Zoom reading of Dear Liar and a staged performance by Florida Repertory Theatre of Twelfth Night. Here's an excer…
In my latest Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column, I discuss the many film scores that Bernard Herrmann wrote for directors other than Alfred Hitchcock. Here's an excerpt.
*Â Â *Â Â…
A new episode of Three on the Aisle, the podcast in which Peter Marks, Elisabeth Vincentelli, and I talk about theater in America, is now available on line for listening or downloading…
Eddie "Rochester" Anderson appears as the mystery guest on What's My Line? John Daly is the host and the panelists are Hal Block, Bennett Cerf, Arlene Francis, and Dorothy Kilgallen. This…
"Everybody makes fun of virtue, which by now has, as its primary meaning, an affection of prudery practiced by hypocrites and the impotent."
Thomas Merton, The Seven Storey MountainÂ
Cont…
"Men imagine that they communicate their virtue or vice only by overt actions, and do not see that virtue or vice emit a breath every moment."
Ralph Waldo Emerson, "Self-Reliance"
Continue r…
"Dave Lambert: Audition at RCA," a 1964 documentary about the jazz singer by D.A. Pennebaker:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space e…
"An idealist is one who, on noticing that a rose smells better than a cabbage, concludes that it is also more nourishing."
H.L. Mencken, A Little Book in C MajorÂ
Continue reading Alma…
From 2004:
"This is absolutely the only place to live," I told her. "Nowhere else."
"Oh, I guess it's all right to visit other places," she replied. "And you could live somewhere else …
"The greatest pleasure I know is to do a good action by stealth, and to have it found out by accident."
Charles Lamb (quoted in The Athenaeum, January 4, 1834)
Continue reading Almanac: C…
Jascha Heifetz and Erick Friedman play the finale of Bach's Two-Violin Concerto, accompanied by Brooks Smith, at an undated master class:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and histor…
"I will not be modest. Humble, as much as you like, but not modest. Modesty is the virtue of the lukewarm."
Jean-Paul Sartre, The Devll and the Good Lord
Continue reading Almanac: Jean…
In today's Wall Street Journal I review the PBS Great Performances telecast of Bartlett Sher's 2015 Lincoln Center Theater revival of The King and I, which airs tonight and will subseq…
"Ernest Thesiger: Expert Embroiderer," a 1944 British Pathé newsreel featurette. A noted English stage and screen actor, Thesiger is best remembered for his appearances in Bride of Frank…
"Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim."
Henry Adams, The Education of Henry Adams
Continue reading Almanac: Henry Adams on friendship a…
"How can you have confidence in a woman who will not risk entrusting her whole life to you, day and night?"
Cesare Pavese, This Business of Living
Continue reading Almanac: Cesare P…
Carl Reiner is the guest on This Is Your Life. This episode, hostead by Ralph Edwards, was originally telecast by NBC on March 23, 1960:
(This is the latest in a series of arts- and history…
