2,374 stories by "Terry Teachout"
An excerpt from City Limits: Memories of a Small-Town Boy, my first book, published in 1991. * * * Not long after Thanksgiving, my mother would spend the better part of a Saturday afternoon …
"The miracle of Christmas is that, like the distant and very musical voice of the hound, it penetrates finally and becomes heard in the heart"over so many years, through so many cheap curtai…
Louis Armstrong recites Clement Moore’s "The Night Before Christmas." This was Armstrong’s last commercial recording. He made it at his home in Queens on February 26, 1971, five …
"I will honor Christmas in my heart, and try to keep it all the year." Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol
Tony Perkins appears as the guest on a 1958 episode of The Mike Wallace Interview: (This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, …
"It takes a great deal of history to produce a little literature." Henry James, Hawthorne
"History must not be written with bias, and both sides must be given, even if there is only one side." John Betjeman, First and Last Loves
Otto Klemperer leads Agnes Giebel, Marga Hoffgen, Ernst Haefliger, Gustav Neidlinger, and the New Philharmonia Chorus and Orchestra in a live performance of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony. This …
"Underlying this succession of moments which constitutes the superficial existence of beings and things, and which is continually modifying and transforming them, one can search for a truer,…
From 2005: Falstaff, after all, is no knockabout farce but one of Western art's most searching commentaries on the vanity of human wishes, no less so because it says what it has to say with …
"There is no such thing as was" only is. If was existed, there would be no grief or sorrow." William Faulkner, Paris Review interview (Spring 1956)
A 1931 newsreel of George Gershwin playing "I Got Rhythm" at the old Manhattan Theater (now the Ed Sullivan Theater) in New York. The performance was filmed from three different angles, and …
"Now, if the passions had no hold on us, a week and a hundred years would amount to the same." Blaise Pascal, Pensées
"A Recording Session With a Composer: Igor Stravinsky," a Columbia Records promotional film in which Stravinsky is seen conducting a 1955 studio performance of his L'histoire du soldat: (Thi…
"We get to think of life as an inexhaustible well. Yet everything happens only a certain number of times, and a very small number really. How many more times will you remember a certain afte…
"Time lost is time when we have not lived a full human life, time unenriched by experience, creative endeavor, enjoyment, and suffering. Time lost is time not filled, time left empty." Dietr…
Dock Boggs sings and plays "Country Blues" at the 1966 Newport Folk Festival: (This is the latest in a series of arts- and history-related videos that appear in this space each Monday, Wedne…
"People never want to be told anything they do not believe already." James Branch Cabell, The Cream of the Jest
From 2008: Louis Armstrong was not only a great artist but one of the brightest stars in the sky of America's popular culture. One of the signs of his admittance to that pantheon was the fre…
"To think out a problem is not unlike drawing a caricature. You have to exaggerate the salient point and leave out that which is not typical." Eric Hoffer, undated notebook entry (quoted in …
Members of the original off-Brodway cast of Godspell sings "Day by Day," by Stephen Schwartz, on The Mike Douglas Show. This episode originally aired on April 29, 1973: (This is the latest i…
"One wonders whether a generation that demands instant satisfaction of all its needs and instant solution of the world's problems will produce anything of lasting value. Such a generation, e…
In today's Wall Street Journal I review the Broadway openings of Network and The Cher Show. Here's an excerpt. * * * Broadway is a business"and a bad one. Not only does it cost a horrifying …
Hartford Stage didn't exactly need to be put on the map but in his seven year run Artistic Director DARKO TRESNJAK has made them one of New England's most admired theatre companies!
Today's Wall Street Journal "Sightings" column is about Daniel Barenboim's new YouTube channel. Here's an excerpt. * * * At 74, Daniel Barenboim is very much in the news. Among other things,…
