Michael White, Author at Catholic Herald

Michael White

Tippett was silly and pretentious, but his works are masterpieces

July 18, 2019

Michael Tippett: The Biography By Oliver Soden Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 768pp, £25/$34.95 It’s virtually a law of nature that composers fall from fashion when they die. And a distinguished victim was Sir Michael Tippett, whose reputation as the grand old man of British music could hardly have been higher when he died in 1998, aged

Schoenberg: The founding father of ‘heroic modernism’

June 20, 2019

Arnold Schoenberg By Mark Berry Reaktion Books, 224pp, £12/$19 Arnold Schoenberg was a composer much given to statements of sweeping portent which, even in print, seem to call for drum rolls and the clash of cymbals; and an example came in 1921 when he announced that he had “made a discovery through which the supremacy

For music lovers, Versailles is the place to spend Holy Week

April 25, 2019

Catholics will, one hopes, have spent the Easter Triduum on their knees with open hearts. But those who also managed open ears might have observed the way that festivals of sacred music during Holy Week are almost standard practice nowadays. And few are more impressive than the one that happens in the Chapel Royal at

Surviving Nazism with help from Bach

April 25, 2019

One Hundred Miracles By Zuzana Růžičková (with Wendy Holden) Bloomsbury, 368pp, £18.99/$25 Holocaust survivor stories follow a regrettably (in every sense) familiar pattern, so you tend to know what’s coming next. And it’s not usually a comfort read. But these are stories that demand persistent telling, if only to remind us of how fragile our

‘People are fascinated by the baffling aspects of Christian belief’: an interview with Sir James MacMillan

April 11, 2019

In a few days’ time, as has become its custom, the concert venue of St John’s Smith Square in London will revert to something like its origins as a church and celebrate Holy Week – not, alas, with liturgy but with a festival of choral music sung by whatever the collective noun is for conveyor-belts

Competitions expose musicians to the brutal truths of concert life

March 14, 2019

Competitions are the Marmite of the music world, applauded by the public for their bloodsports element but loathed by plenty of musicians for exactly the same reason: putting tender talent under too much pressure. Sitting on the fence, I’d say they were a necessary evil to get young performers noticed, and a timely introduction to

Is playing sport really a spiritual practice?

March 07, 2019

Ways to Go Beyond and Why They Work By Rupert Sheldrake Coronet, 336pp, £20/$25 To be a scientist in modern times has generally meant being a materialist: hostile to religion, hostile to the idea of a conscious universe, and adamant that “mind” is just the function of a selfish, self-contained and self-sufficient brain. The most

What do you get when you cross Cirque du Soleil with Vatican pomp?

February 28, 2019

Something about Philip Glass I’ve learned over the years is that by asking very little of his music you can sometimes be surprised by what you get. His endlessly repeating, “minimalist” processes of up-and-down arpeggios and simple harmonies are technically banal and brutal. But stop analysing, try accepting, and it’s possible to find in them

A masterpiece that triumphs over anything that’s done to it

February 21, 2019

Lucky readers of this publication won’t remember how the 1970s looked; but with its bad hair, flared jeans and depressing architecture, it was a look that survived in Eastern Europe long after extinction here in the West. And for that reason, it’s hard to say in which decade Richard Jones’s new Royal Opera production of

Mesmerising and eloquent: The Barbican’s Seven Last Words of Christ reviewed

February 14, 2019

Composers have always been wary of writing operas on the life of Christ; and Passion narratives aside, they haven’t exactly rushed to make it the basis for concert works either, since most of the standard oratorios take their texts from the Old Testament rather than the New. But there are other options, and a singular

Mariss Jansons ranks at the very top of the world league of conductors

February 07, 2019

Foreign orchestras fly into London frequently enough for them to pass unnoticed. But when the Bavarian Radio Symphony came to the Barbican last week it was a hot ticket – partly because they were playing the music of Richard Strauss, which is in their collective DNA; partly because they brought with them the starry Diana

The London households that host virtuoso musicians

January 31, 2019

The saddest funerals are those that mark the end not only of a life but also of a culture that surrounded it; and an example was the funeral Mass for Monika Saunders which took place a few weeks ago at St Augustine’s Abbey in the depths of rural Surrey. Monika had the good fortune to

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