Ten years ago, a symposium was held in Berne, Switzerland on Jewish music under the title "Jüdische Musik? Fremdbilder – Eigenbilder" (Jewish Music? External perceptions – Own Perceptions). The question mark was the characterizing marker of the organizers' attitude on the... more...

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    If Paul Nizon had wanted to include a Swiss composer in his "Diskurs in der Enge" (1970), he could not have ignored Ernest Bloch (1880–1959) as a quintessential example in music. Switzerland did not afford the multi-talented musical artist the necessary opportunities to... more...

 Miami Beach on a balmy winter evening. Along Lincoln Mall, the pedestrian and restaurant mile in the downtown area, people are eating, drinking and celebrating with loud Latino sounds in the background. Only a block away from this hurly-burly, there are about 200 listeners in a public park... more...

    It is an archetypical story of American culture – a young white man hears black music and falls in love with it. From then on, he dedicates himself to his love for rhythms that found their way to America through African slaves who were brought here from across the ocean.... more...

Not a man of great spontaneity anyway, Mitt Romney never seems more forced than in those instances when he suddenly pauses during campaign appearances as if in the grip of an extraterrestrial power. This is when the former consultant, who is known for his cool wit, bursts out with bright excitement... more...

With his music, Erich Wolfgang Korngold has had a more profound impact on Hollywood than hardly any other composer who came before him or after him. He arrived at the movie metropolis as a classically trained composer with the musical heritage of Vienna after Gustav Mahler in his luggage. Korngold... more...