I must admit I'm a big fan of college basketball. I've tuned into ESPN instead of my ancient cares: Schoenberg, BeBop and philosophy. So I'm attending to "March Madness" instead of "Tenor Madness", basketball madness instead of the madness of so-called Conservatives, both musical and political. Since I watch the basketball games on TV with the sound off (until the last 4 minutes), I have been able to read in Robert Craft's recent collection of essays and reviews, Down a Path of Wonder: Memoirs of Stravinsky, Schoenberg and other cultural figures, Naxos Books (2006). I have long admired Craft's New York Review of Books' prose style. The essays in his prior collection, The Moment of Existence: Music, Literature and the Arts 1900 - 1995 are also recommended, especially the essay on Thomas Bernhard, "Austria's Negative Poet Laureate". In the Naxos' essays, Craft's three page chapter on Schoenberg's A Survivor from Warsaw illuminates this work for the listener.
I'm looking forward to Louisville verses Connecticut this evening. The Big East games are usually better with the sound up.
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