Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts
In the last decade of his life, Duke Ellington wrote three Sacred Concerts:
- 1965 - A Concert of Sacred Music
- 1968 - Second Sacred Concert
- 1973 - Third Sacred Concert
Ellington called these concerts "the most important thing I have ever done". He said many times that he was not trying to compose a "mass." (liturgy). Critic Gary Giddins has characterized these concerts as Ellington bringing the Cotton Club revue to the church.
Read more about Duke Ellington's Sacred Concerts: Concert of Sacred Music, Second Sacred Concert, Third Sacred Concert
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In a pattern called a war.
Christ! What are patterns for?”
—Amy Lowell (1874–1925)
“I never drank of Aganippe well,
Nor ever did in shade of Tempe sit,
And muses scorn with vulgar brains to dwell;
Poor layman I, for sacred rites unfit.
Some do I hear of poets’ fury tell,
But, God wot, wot not what they mean by it;
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I am no pickpurse of another’s wit.”
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“If you love music, hear it; go to operas, concerts and pay fiddlers to play to you; but I insist on your neither piping nor fiddling yourself. It puts a gentleman in a very frivolous, contemptible light.... Few things would mortify me more than to see you bearing a part in a concert, with a fiddle under your chin, or a pipe in your mouth.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)