What Violence Looks Like When It Has a Master

What Violence Looks Like When It Has a Master

Rome, autumn 1605Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio is in serious trouble with the law again, which means he is also, at this particular moment, producing some of the most extraordinary paintings Rome has seen in fifty years. These two things are not unrelated. The...
Everything Counted, Nothing Wasted

Everything Counted, Nothing Wasted

Leipzig, Good Friday, 1729Johann Sebastian Bach performed his St. Matthew Passion at the Thomaskirche today. A three-hour work for double choir and double orchestra. I sat in the back of the nave and did not move for the entire duration and when it ended I could not...