Paul du Quenoy on a concert of the National Symphony Orchestra in Washington.

Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series.

Purchase this and other timeless New Criterion essays in our hard-copy reprint series.

In 1815, the British and American navies were at war. The war in question was the economic warfare of British blockaders. It was backed by the naval strength that made possible attacks on American ...

On Instrument of War: Music and the Making of America’s Soldiers, by David Suisman.

While we are accustomed to thinking of the Spanish painter Joaquín Sorolla y Bastida (1863–1923) as an essentially cheerful figure, a man whose scenes are imbued with a refulgent Mediterranean light, ...

“Orphism” is what, exactly? According to Guillaume Apollinaire, who coined the term, It is the art of painting new structures out of elements which have not been borrowed from the visual sphere, but ...

“I was asked to write a five-minute orchestra work expressing the current world situation and to do it as soon as possible.” That is an interesting, possibly daunting, assignment. What was “the ...

Though he didn’t live to see it built, Sam Wanamaker left London a remarkable legacy. Visiting the city from America, as a young man, he made, as every actor should, a pilgrimage to the site of ...

There is an old Cape Cod legend about a whale named Crook Jaw. The story goes that Ichabod Paddock, a masterly shore whaler from Yarmouth, was time and again routed by the great leviathan. His usually ...

Although I have been writing for publication for more than forty years, it always pleases (and surprises) me when someone writes to tell me that he or she has read something that I have written. It is ...

Savor this—a passage of published prose written by a full professor at a major university, cited in Leonard Cassuto’s new book Academic Writing as if Readers Matter: [S]tudents’ production of texts ...