The Aberdeen Bestiary, One of the Great Medieval Illuminated Manuscripts, Now Digitized in High Resolution & Made Available Online

For thou­sands of years, ordi­nary peo­ple all over the world not only worked side-by-side with domes­tic ani­mals on a dai­ly basis, they also observed the wild fau­na around them to learn how to nav­i­gate and sur­vive nature. The close­ness pro­duced a keen appre­ci­a­tion for ani­mal behav­ior that informs the folk tales of every con­ti­nent and the pop­u­lar texts of every reli­gion. Our delight in ani­mal sto­ries sur­vives in children’s books, but in grown-up lan­guage, ani­mal com­par­isons tend to be nasty and dehu­man­iz­ing. The demean­ing adjec­tive “bes­tial” con­veys a typ­i­cal atti­tude not only toward peo­ple we don’t like, but toward the ani­mal world as well. Orwell’s Ani­mal Farm and Kafka’s Meta­mor­pho­sis have become the stan­dard ref­er­ences for mod­ern ani­mal alle­go­ry.

Ear­ly lit­er­a­ture shows us a range of dif­fer­ent atti­tudes, where ani­mals are treat­ed as equals, with char­ac­ter traits both good and bad, or as noble mes­sen­gers of a god or gods rather than live­stock, mov­ing scenery, or exploitable resources.

We might refer in an east­ern con­text to the Jata­ka Tales, fables of the Buddha’s many rebirths in the human and ani­mal worlds that pro­vide their read­ers with moral lessons. In the Chris­t­ian west, we have the medieval bestiary—compendiums of ani­mals, both real and mythological—that intro­duced read­ers to a moral typol­o­gy through “read­ing” what ear­ly Chris­tians thought of as the “book of nature.”

The most lav­ish of them all, the Aberdeen Bes­tiary, which dates from around 1200, was once owned by Hen­ry VIII. Now, the Uni­ver­si­ty of Aberdeen has dig­i­tized the text and made it freely avail­able to read­ers online. Begin­ning with the key cre­ation sto­ries from the book of Gen­e­sis, the book then dives into its descrip­tions of ani­mals, begin­ning with the lion, the pard (pan­ther), and the ele­phant.

You’ll notice that these are not ani­mals that your typ­i­cal medieval Euro­pean read­er would have encoun­tered. One impor­tant dif­fer­ence between the bes­tiary and the fable is that the for­mer draws many of its beasts from hearsay, con­jec­ture, or pure fic­tion. But the intent is part­ly the same. These “were teach­ing tools,” notes Claire Voon at Hyper­al­ler­gic, and the Aberdeen Bes­tiary con­tains illus­trat­ed “lengthy tales of moral behav­ior.”

Like the sto­ries of Aesop, the bes­tiary presents impor­tant lessons, mix­ing in the fab­u­lous with the nat­u­ral­ist. As Voon describes the Aberdeen Bes­tiary:

The illus­tra­tions are impres­sive­ly var­ied, depict­ing com­mon ani­mals from tiny ants to ele­phants, as well as fan­tas­tic beasts, from the leocro­ta to the phoenix. Even the moral qual­i­ties of the hum­ble sea urchin are hon­ored with para­graphs of dis­cus­sion. Beyond this array of crea­tures, the bes­tiary details the appear­ances and qual­i­ties of var­i­ous trees, gems, and humans. Some of these may seem com­i­cal to 21st-cen­tu­ry eyes: a swarm of bees, for instance, resem­bles an order­ly line of shut­tle­cocks stream­ing into their hives. Yet oth­er paint­ings are impres­sive for their near-accu­ra­cy, such as one image of a bat that shows how its mem­bra­nous wings con­nect its fin­gers, legs, and tail. All of these rich details would have helped read­ers bet­ter under­stand the nat­ur­al world as it was defined at the time of the book’s cre­ation. 

Incred­i­bly ornate and bear­ing the marks of dozens of scrib­al hands, the book, his­to­ri­ans believe, was orig­i­nal­ly pro­duced for a wide audi­ence, then tak­en by Henry’s librar­i­ans from a dis­solved monastery. Nev­er ful­ly com­plet­ed, it remained in the Roy­al Library for 100 years after Hen­ry. “I doubt if the Tudor mon­archs took it out for a reg­u­lar read,” says Aberdeen Uni­ver­si­ty pro­fes­sor Jane Ged­des. Now an open pub­lic doc­u­ment, it returns to its “orig­i­nal pur­pose of edu­ca­tion,” writes Voon, “although for us, of course, it illu­mi­nates more about the past than the present.” See the high res scans here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2017.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

The Medieval Mas­ter­piece, the Book of Kells, Is Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

The Medieval Man­u­script That Fea­tures “Yoda”, Killer Snails, Sav­age Rab­bits & More: Dis­cov­er The Smith­field Dec­re­tals

How to Make a Medieval Man­u­script: An Intro­duc­tion in 7 Videos

When Medieval Man­u­scripts Were Recy­cled & Used to Make the First Print­ed Books

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

Mark Twain Makes a List of 60 American Comfort Foods He Missed While Traveling Abroad (1880)

Think­ing of tak­ing a trip abroad? Or maybe relo­cat­ing for good? Amer­i­cans would do well, even 150 years hence, to attend to Mark Twain’s satir­i­cal account of U.S. trav­el­ers jour­ney­ing through Europe and Pales­tine, The Inno­cents Abroad. The “Amer­i­cans who are paint­ed to pecu­liar advan­tage by Mr. Clements” (sic), as fel­low Amer­i­can satirist William Dean How­ells wrote at the time, still roam the Earth—including trav­el­ers like one who “told the Eng­lish offi­cers that a cou­ple of our gun­boats could come and knock Gibral­tar into the Mediter­ranean Sea.” The tact­less­ness and bel­liger­ence Twain skew­ered do not feel his­tor­i­cal­ly so far from home.

Twain’s portraits—“somewhat car­i­ca­tured… or care­ful­ly and exact­ly done”—proved so pop­u­lar with read­ers that he fol­lowed up with an unof­fi­cial sequel, 1880s A Tramp Abroad, a some­what more seri­ous fic­tion­al­ized trav­el­ogue of Amer­i­cans jour­ney­ing through Europe; this time but two, Twain and his friend “Har­ris.” In the pre­vi­ous book, com­plained How­ells, the read­er learns “next to noth­ing about the pop­u­la­tion of the cities and the char­ac­ter of the rocks in the dif­fer­ent local­i­ties.” Here, with­out his com­e­dy troupe of trav­el­ing com­pan­ions, Twain directs his focus out­ward with minute descrip­tions of his sur­round­ings. He is, as usu­al, supreme­ly curi­ous, often per­plexed, but most­ly delight­ed by his expe­ri­ences. Except when it comes to the food.

Grow­ing “increas­ing­ly tired of an abun­dance of what he described as ‘fair-to-mid­dling’ food,” writes Lists of Note, Twain com­ments: “The num­ber of dish­es is suf­fi­cient; but then it is such a monot­o­nous vari­ety of UNSTRIKING dish­es […] Three or four months of this weary same­ness will kill the robustest appetite.” Hav­ing nev­er spent so long a time away, I can­not speak to Twain’s gus­ta­to­ry ennui, but I can relate, as no doubt can you, read­er, to miss­ing one or two famil­iar com­fort foods (as well as “sin­cere and capa­ble” ice water). Twain, per­haps not as adven­tur­ous an eater as he was a traveler—and in that sense also very much a mod­ern American—made “an enor­mous list of the foods he’d missed the most, of which were to be con­sumed when he arrived home.”

The list, below, is itself a kind of trav­el­ogue, through the vari­eties of 19th cen­tu­ry Amer­i­can cui­sine, East, West, North, and South, includ­ing such del­i­ca­cies as “’Pos­sum” “Can­vas-back-duck from Bal­ti­more,” “Vir­ginia bacon, broiled,” “Prairie hens, from Illi­nois,” and “Brook trout, from Sier­ra Nevadas.” While we might pine for a region­al del­i­ca­cy or favorite processed food, Twain con­jured up in his mind’s gut a whole con­ti­nent of food to come home to. What kinds of food do you find your­self miss­ing when you trav­el? And how long a list might you find your­self mak­ing after sev­er­al months tramp­ing around in for­eign lands? Tell us in the com­ments sec­tion below. For now, here’s Twain’s list:

Radish­es. Baked apples, with cream
Fried oys­ters; stewed oys­ters. Frogs.
Amer­i­can cof­fee, with real cream.
Amer­i­can but­ter.
Fried chick­en, South­ern style.
Porter-house steak.
Sarato­ga pota­toes.
Broiled chick­en, Amer­i­can style.
Hot bis­cuits, South­ern style.
Hot wheat-bread, South­ern style.
Hot buck­wheat cakes.
Amer­i­can toast. Clear maple syrup.
Vir­ginia bacon, broiled.
Blue points, on the half shell.
Cher­ry-stone clams.
San Fran­cis­co mus­sels, steamed.
Oys­ter soup. Clam Soup.
Philadel­phia Ter­apin soup.
Oys­ters roast­ed in shell-North­ern style.
Soft-shell crabs. Con­necti­cut shad.
Bal­ti­more perch.
Brook trout, from Sier­ra Nevadas.
Lake trout, from Tahoe.
Sheep-head and croak­ers, from New Orleans.
Black bass from the Mis­sis­sip­pi.
Amer­i­can roast beef.
Roast turkey, Thanks­giv­ing style.
Cran­ber­ry sauce. Cel­ery.
Roast wild turkey. Wood­cock.
Can­vas-back-duck, from Bal­ti­more.
Prairie hens, from Illi­nois.
Mis­souri par­tridges, broiled.
‘Pos­sum. Coon.
Boston bacon and beans.
Bacon and greens, South­ern style.
Hominy. Boiled onions. Turnips.
Pump­kin. Squash. Aspara­gus.
But­ter beans. Sweet pota­toes.
Let­tuce. Suc­co­tash. String beans.
Mashed pota­toes. Cat­sup.
Boiled pota­toes, in their skins.
New pota­toes, minus the skins.
Ear­ly rose pota­toes, roast­ed in the ash­es, South­ern style, served hot.
Sliced toma­toes, with sug­ar or vine­gar. Stewed toma­toes.
Green corn, cut from the ear and served with but­ter and pep­per.
Green corn, on the ear.
Hot corn-pone, with chitlings, South­ern style.
Hot hoe-cake, South­ern style.
Hot egg-bread, South­ern style.
Hot light-bread, South­ern style.
But­ter­milk. Iced sweet milk.
Apple dumplings, with real cream.
Apple pie. Apple frit­ters.
Apple puffs, South­ern style.
Peach cob­bler, South­ern style
Peach pie. Amer­i­can mince pie.
Pump­kin pie. Squash pie.
All sorts of Amer­i­can pas­try.
Fresh Amer­i­can fruits of all sorts, includ­ing straw­ber­ries which are not to be doled out as if they were jew­el­ry, but in a more lib­er­al way. 
Ice-water—not pre­pared in the inef­fec­tu­al gob­let, but in the sin­cere and capa­ble refrig­er­a­tor.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Explore an Online Archive of 12,700 Vin­tage Cook­books

The Only Footage of Mark Twain: The Orig­i­nal & Dig­i­tal­ly Restored Films Shot by Thomas Edi­son

Mark Twain Drafts the Ulti­mate Let­ter of Com­plaint (1905)

Mark Twain Cre­ates a List of His Favorite Books For Adults & Kids (1887)

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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When David Bowie Starred in—and Created Music for—a Dystopian Cyberpunk Video Game: Discover Omikron: The Nomad Soul (1999)

When it was announced that SARS-CoV­‑2, the virus at the cen­ter of the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic, had evolved into an even more con­ta­gious vari­ant called Omi­cron, pub­lic reac­tions var­ied. For those of us with long mem­o­ries of com­put­er and video gam­ing, it brought to mind a title we had­n’t thought about in quite some time: Omikron: The Nomad Soul, released for Win­dows in 1999 and the Sega Dream­cast in 2000. More than a few gamers know it as the debut of con­tro­ver­sial design­er David Cage, whose stu­dio Quan­tic Dream has gone on to pro­duce var­i­ous games of con­sid­er­able cin­e­mat­ic and emo­tion­al ambit (if also an often frus­trat­ing eccen­tric­i­ty). But it made a wider cul­tur­al impact at the time by incor­po­rat­ing the per­for­mance of none oth­er than David Bowie.

Or rather, it incor­po­rat­ed per­for­mances, plur­al, by David Bowie: in the game, he used motion cap­ture tech­nol­o­gy to play both Boz, the whol­ly dig­i­tal leader of an ancient reli­gious order, and the lead singer of the band The Dream­ers, whose con­certs (shown in the video above) the play­er can view here and there around the dystopi­an cyber­punk city of Omikron.

Orig­i­nal­ly, the devel­op­ers had only gone to Bowie in order to license his songs for the game’s sound­track, but, as explained in the mrixrt video below, the project so appealed to his technophil­ia that he pro­posed a much deep­er involve­ment. That includ­ed record­ing a set of orig­i­nal songs, lat­er includ­ed on his album Hours… (which is itself notable in the his­to­ry of tech­nol­o­gy and cul­ture for being one of the first down­load­able releas­es by a major artist).

Among its many nov­el qual­i­ties, includ­ing pio­neer­ing the “open world” envi­ron­ment now stan­dard in big-bud­get games, Omikron grants the play­er — as the tit­u­lar “nomad soul” — the abil­i­ty to inhab­it the bod­ies of a host of oth­er char­ac­ters (includ­ing one played by Bowie’s wife Iman). It isn’t hard to imag­ine the con­cep­t’s appeal for a per­former who made his name with fre­quent changes of iden­ti­ty — and who even sug­gest­ed, at one point, that he leave that name behind in the real­i­ty of the game, re-emerg­ing into pub­lic life as David Jones. By the time he died, the bet­ter part of two decades lat­er, his role in gam­ing was most­ly for­got­ten, but one of the many trib­utes paid to him includ­ed a free re-release of Omikron. Those who took the chance to revis­it the game would have remem­bered the feel­ing it first gave them that its dig­i­tal world con­tin­ued even when they weren’t play­ing — accom­pa­nied by a sense that, some­how, Bowie con­tin­ues to live with­in it.

Relat­ed con­tent:

When David Bowie Launched His Own Inter­net Ser­vice Provider: The Rise and Fall of BowieNet (1998)

A Tour of the New David Bowie Archive Fea­tur­ing 90,000 Arti­facts from His Life & Career

How David Bowie Used William S. Bur­roughs’ Cut-Up Method to Write His Unfor­get­table Lyrics

David Bowie Pre­dicts the Good & Bad of the Inter­net in 1999: “We’re on the Cusp of Some­thing Exhil­a­rat­ing and Ter­ri­fy­ing”

The David Bowie Monop­oly Game Is Here: Advance to GO and Col­lect 200 Hunky Dorys!

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

Dr. Weil’s 60-Second Technique for Falling Asleep

Give Dr. Andrew Weil three min­utes, and he can teach you a 60-sec­ond tech­nique for falling asleep. Above, the alter­na­tive med­i­cine guru walks you through the 4–7‑8 breath­ing method. As he demon­strates, it “takes almost no time, requires no equip­ment and can be done any­where.” And once you mas­ter it, you can use the 4–7‑8 breath­ing tech­nique (explained and demon­strat­ed in greater detail here ) to low­er your anx­i­ety lev­els (use­ful these days!), nav­i­gate ten­sion-filled moments, and deal with food crav­ings.

Else­where, Weil has said, “If I had to lim­it my advice on health­i­er liv­ing to just one tip, it would be sim­ply to learn how to breathe cor­rect­ly.” Hence why he cre­at­ed an audio record­ing, Breath­ing: The Mas­ter Key to Self Heal­ing, which you can still pur­chase online.

If you would like to sign up for Open Culture’s free email newslet­ter, please find it here. It’s a great way to see our new posts, all bun­dled in one email, each day.

If you would like to sup­port the mis­sion of Open Cul­ture, con­sid­er mak­ing a dona­tion to our site. It’s hard to rely 100% on ads, and your con­tri­bu­tions will help us con­tin­ue pro­vid­ing the best free cul­tur­al and edu­ca­tion­al mate­ri­als to learn­ers every­where. You can con­tribute through Pay­Pal, Patre­on, and Ven­mo (@openculture). Thanks!

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Peo­ple in the Mid­dle Ages Slept Not Once But Twice Each Night: How This Lost Prac­tice Was Redis­cov­ered

How a Good Night’s Sleep — and a Bad Night’s Sleep — Can Enhance Your Cre­ativ­i­ty

Sleep or Die: Neu­ro­sci­en­tist Matthew Walk­er Explains How Sleep Can Restore or Imper­il Our Health

10 Hours of Ambi­ent Arc­tic Sounds Will Help You Relax, Med­i­tate, Study & Sleep

240 Hours of Relax­ing, Sleep-Induc­ing Sounds from Sci-Fi Video Games: From Blade Run­ner to Star Wars

Einstein’s Divorce Letters and the Cruel List of Marital Demands He Imposed on His First Wife

Albert Ein­stein is the rare fig­ure who’s uni­ver­sal­ly known, but almost entire­ly for his pro­fes­sion­al achieve­ments. Few of us who can explain the the­o­ry of rel­a­tiv­i­ty can also say much about the per­son­al life of the man who came up with it, though that does­n’t owe to a lack of doc­u­men­ta­tion. Thanks to sci­ence YouTu­ber Toby Hendy, we have, for exam­ple, some of the love let­ters he wrote to the women who con­sti­tut­ed a ver­i­ta­ble parade through his life. Also, in anoth­er video for her chan­nel Tibees, Hendy reads the let­ters he wrote in the process of divorc­ing his first wife, the Ser­bian physi­cist and math­e­mati­cian Mil­e­va Mar­ić.

Ein­stein mar­ried Mar­ić in Jan­u­ary 1903, says Hendy, “after they had been togeth­er for around five years. The rela­tion­ship was in its prime, and so was the aca­d­e­m­ic pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. It was in 1905 that Ein­stein would pub­lish his four major papers that would change the face of physics. By 1912, how­ev­er, Ein­stein had start­ed hav­ing an affair with his cousin,” Elsa Lowen­thal.

By 1914, Ein­stein wrote to Mar­ić a let­ter “detail­ing some con­di­tions of them con­tin­u­ing to live togeth­er,” if not quite as man and wife. The con­di­tions read as fol­lows:

CONDITIONS

A. You will make sure:

1. that my clothes and laun­dry are kept in good order;
2. that I will receive my three meals reg­u­lar­ly in my room;
3. that my bed­room and study are kept neat, and espe­cial­ly that my desk is left for my use only.

B. You will renounce all per­son­al rela­tions with me inso­far as they are not com­plete­ly nec­es­sary for social rea­sons. Specif­i­cal­ly, You will forego:

1. my sit­ting at home with you;
2. my going out or trav­el­ling with you.

C. You will obey the fol­low­ing points in your rela­tions with me:

1. you will not expect any inti­ma­cy from me, nor will you reproach me in any way;
2. you will stop talk­ing to me if I request it;
3. you will leave my bed­room or study imme­di­ate­ly with­out protest if I request it.

D. You will under­take not to belit­tle me in front of our chil­dren, either through words or behav­ior.

Though they agreed to put this strin­gent plan into effect, less than two weeks lat­er, he wrote to Elsa, “Yes­ter­day my wife left for good with the chil­dren” — and “you, dear lit­tle Elsie, will now become my wife and become con­vinced that it is not at all so hard to live by my side.”

Ein­stein did mar­ry Lowen­thal in 1919, and the union, though hard­ly char­ac­ter­ized by ide­al faith­ful­ness, did last until her death in 1935. There would be plen­ty of oth­er women, but none who played quite the same role in his life as Mar­ić, not only the moth­er of his chil­dren, but also — accord­ing to some his­to­ri­ans — a col­lab­o­ra­tor on some of his accom­plish­ments in physics. Accord­ing to Lost Women of Sci­ence, “there is lit­tle tan­gi­ble evi­dence to sup­port the claims that Mar­ić was a co-author of Einstein’s first major work. That said, there are plen­ty of per­son­al tes­ti­monies from those who knew Mar­ić and Ein­stein that her involve­ment was like­ly.” One con­di­tion of their divorce set­tle­ment, at any rate, held that Mar­ić receive his Nobel Prize mon­ey, were he to win it, which he went on to do a cou­ple of years lat­er. This makes clear that, what­ev­er the impor­tance of her own sci­en­tif­ic work, she must’ve had a good head on her shoul­ders.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Read­ings of Albert Einstein’s Love Let­ters (and Chilly Divorce Let­ters) to His First Wife Mil­e­va

Albert Ein­stein Impos­es on His First Wife a Cru­el List of Mar­i­tal Demands

Albert Ein­stein & Sig­mund Freud Exchange Let­ters and Debate How to Make the World Free from War (1932)

Read the Uplift­ing Let­ter That Albert Ein­stein Sent to Marie Curie Dur­ing a Time of Per­son­al Cri­sis (1911)

“Do Sci­en­tists Pray?”: A Young Girl Asks Albert Ein­stein in 1936. Ein­stein Then Responds

Albert Einstein’s Grades: A Fas­ci­nat­ing Look at His Report Cards

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

What’s the Most Banned Book of the 2024–25 School Year?: A Clockwork Orange

If you hap­pen to be a high school stu­dent in Flori­da who’s eager to read A Clock­work Orange, that urge may turn out to be hard­er to sat­is­fy than you imag­ine. Antho­ny Burgess’ har­row­ing, lin­guis­ti­cal­ly inven­tive nov­el of a grim near future has come out on top in PEN Amer­i­ca’s lat­est rank­ing of banned books: that is, books removed or pre­vent­ed even from enter­ing pub­lic school libraries, most com­mon­ly in the state of Flori­da, with Texas and Ten­nessee as run­ners-up. Fur­ther down the list appears anoth­er wide­ly known dystopi­an saga, Mar­garet Atwood’s The Handmaid’s Tale; Toni Mor­rison’s tale of Depres­sion-era race rela­tions The Bluest Eye; and even such long-pop­u­lar “young adult” stan­dards as Judy Blume’s For­ev­er and Stephen Chbosky’s The Perks of Being a Wall­flower.

Since its pub­li­ca­tion in 1962, “A Clock­work Orange has faced mul­ti­ple book ban­ning attempts due to the sex­u­al vio­lence it depicts,” says Carnegie Mel­lon Uni­ver­si­ty’s Banned Books Project. “In 1973, a book­seller in Orem, Utah, was arrest­ed for sell­ing the nov­el along with two oth­er ‘obscene’ books.”

Bans fol­lowed “in 1976 in Auro­ra, Col­orado, in 1977 in West­port, Con­necti­cut, and in 1982 in Annis­ton, Alaba­ma. As recent­ly as 2019, mem­bers of the Flori­da Cit­i­zens Alliance” — in yet anoth­er exam­ple of the sur­pris­ing ten­den­cy toward cul­tur­al author­i­tar­i­an­ism in the Sun­shine State — “have lob­bied to ban the book along with almost one hun­dred oth­er ‘porno­graph­ic’ nov­els.”

The noto­ri­ety of A Clock­work Orange in this regard prob­a­bly owes some­thing to the steely lurid­ness of Stan­ley Kubrick­’s film adap­ta­tion, which was banned in Eng­land by Kubrick him­self. It makes, in any case, for an iron­ic object of a book ban, giv­en its themes. Burgess was inspired to write this nov­el of juve­nile ultra-delin­quen­cy, as he explains in the inter­view clip above, by “talk in the nine­teen-six­ties of the pos­si­bil­i­ty of get­ting these young thugs and not putting them in jail, because jail is need­ed for pro­fes­sion­al crim­i­nals, but rather putting them through a course of con­di­tion­ing” to make them behave less like organ­isms than machines: the “clock­work oranges” of the title. The state, it seemed, “was all too ready to take over our brains and turn us into good lit­tle cit­i­zens with­out the pow­er of choice” — a process that plau­si­bly begins by restrict­ing the choice of read­ing mate­r­i­al.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

A Clock­work Orange Author Antho­ny Burgess Lists His Five Favorite Dystopi­an Nov­els: Orwell’s 1984, Huxley’s Island & More

Antho­ny Burgess Names the 99 Best Nov­els in Eng­lish Between 1939 & 1983: Orwell, Nabokov, Hux­ley & More

Why Maya Angelou’s Mem­oir I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings Became One of the Most Banned Books of All Time

The Brook­lyn Pub­lic Library Gives Every Teenag­er in the U.S. Free Access to Cen­sored Books

America’s First Banned Book: Dis­cov­er the 1637 Book That Mocked the Puri­tans

The New York Pub­lic Library Pro­vides Free Online Access to Banned Books: Catch­er in the Rye, Stamped & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

A Complete Digitization of Leonardo Da Vinci’s Codex Atlanticus, the Largest Collection of His Drawings & Writings

No his­tor­i­cal fig­ure bet­ter fits the def­i­n­i­tion of “Renais­sance man” than Leonar­do da Vin­ci, but that term has become so overused as to become mis­lead­ing. We use it to express mild sur­prise that one per­son could use both their left and right hemi­spheres equal­ly well. But in Leonardo’s day, peo­ple did not think of them­selves as hav­ing two brains, and the worlds of art and sci­ence were not so far apart as they are now.

That Leonar­do was able to com­bine fine arts and fine engi­neer­ing may not have been over­ly sur­pris­ing to his con­tem­po­raries, though he was an extra­or­di­nar­i­ly bril­liant exam­ple of the phe­nom­e­non. The more we learn about him, the more we see how close­ly relat­ed the two pur­suits were in his mind.

He approached every­thing he did as a tech­ni­cian. The uncan­ny effects he achieved in paint­ing were the result, as in so much Renais­sance art, of math­e­mat­i­cal pre­ci­sion, care­ful study, and first­hand obser­va­tion.

His artis­tic projects were also exper­i­ments. Some of them failed, as most exper­i­ments do, and some he aban­doned, as he did so many sci­en­tif­ic projects. No mat­ter what, he nev­er under­took any­thing, whether mechan­i­cal, anatom­i­cal, or artis­tic, with­out care­ful plan­ning and design, as his copi­ous note­books tes­ti­fy. As more and more of those note­books have become avail­able online, both Renais­sance schol­ars and laypeo­ple alike have learned con­sid­er­ably more about how Leonardo’s mind worked.

First, there was the Codex Arun­del. It is, writes Jonathan Jones at The Guardian, “the liv­ing record of a uni­ver­sal mind”—but also, specif­i­cal­ly, the mind of a “technophile.” Then, the Vic­to­ria and Albert Nation­al Art Library announced the dig­i­ti­za­tion of Codex Forster, which con­tains some of Leonardo’s ear­li­est note­books. Now The Visu­al Agency has released a com­plete dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonardo’s Codex Atlanti­cus, a huge col­lec­tion of the artist, engi­neer, and inventor’s fine­ly-illus­trat­ed notes.

“No oth­er col­lec­tion counts more orig­i­nal papers writ­ten by Leonar­do,” notes Google. The Codex Atlanti­cus “con­sists of 1119 papers, most of them drawn or writ­ten on both sides.” Its name has “noth­ing to do with the Atlantic Ocean, or with some eso­teric, mys­te­ri­ous con­tent hid­den in its pages.” The 12-vol­ume col­lec­tion acquired its title because the draw­ings and writ­ings were bound with the same size paper that was used for mak­ing atlases. Gath­ered in the 16th cen­tu­ry by sculp­tor Pom­peo Leoni, the papers descend­ed from Leonardo’s close stu­dent Gio­van Francesco Melzi, who was entrust­ed with them after his teacher’s death.

The his­to­ry of the Codex itself makes for a fas­ci­nat­ing nar­ra­tive, much of which you can learn at Google’s Ten Key Facts slideshow. The note­books span Leonardo’s career, from 1478, when he was “still work­ing in his native Tus­cany, to 1519, when he died in France.” The col­lec­tion was tak­en from Milan by Napoleon and brought to France, where it remained in the Lou­vre until 1815, when the Con­gress of Vien­na ruled that all art­works stolen by the for­mer Emper­or be returned. (The emis­sary tasked with return­ing the Codex could not deci­pher Leonardo’s mir­ror writ­ing and took it for Chi­nese.)

The Codex con­tains not only engi­neer­ing dia­grams, anato­my stud­ies, and artis­tic sketch­es, but also fables writ­ten by Leonar­do, inspired by Flo­ren­tine lit­er­a­ture. And it fea­tures Leonardo’s famed “CV,” a let­ter he wrote to the Duke of Milan describ­ing in nine points his qual­i­fi­ca­tions for the post of mil­i­tary engi­neer. In point four, he writes, “I still have very con­ve­nient bomb­ing meth­ods that are easy to trans­port; they launch stones and sim­i­lar such in a tem­pest full of smoke to fright­en the ene­my, caus­ing great dam­age and con­fu­sion.”

As if in illus­tra­tion, else­where in the Codex, the draw­ing above appears, “one of the most cel­e­brat­ed” of the col­lec­tion.” It was “shown to trav­el­ing for­eign­ers vis­it­ing the Ambrosiana [the Bib­liote­ca Ambrosiana in Milan, where the Codex resides] since the 18th cen­tu­ry, usu­al­ly arous­ing much amaze­ment.” It is still amaz­ing, espe­cial­ly if we con­sid­er the pos­si­bil­i­ty that its artistry might have been some­thing of a byprod­uct for its cre­ator, whose pri­ma­ry moti­va­tion seems to have been solv­ing tech­ni­cal problems—in the most ele­gant ways imag­in­able.

See the com­plete dig­i­ti­za­tion of Leonardo’s Codex Atlanti­cus here.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2019.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Ear­li­est Note­books Now Dig­i­tized and Made Free Online: Explore His Inge­nious Draw­ings, Dia­grams, Mir­ror Writ­ing & More

How Leonar­do da Vin­ci Drew an Accu­rate Satel­lite Map of an Ital­ian City (1502)

Leonar­do da Vinci’s Hand­writ­ten Resume (Cir­ca 1482)

Leonar­do Da Vinci’s To-Do List from 1490: The Plan of a Renais­sance Man

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

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The Fascinating Story of How the Electric Music Pioneer Delia Derbyshire Created the Original Doctor Who Theme (1963)

We’ve focused a fair bit here on the work of Delia Der­byshire, pio­neer­ing elec­tron­ic com­pos­er of the mid-twen­ti­eth cen­tu­ry—fea­tur­ing two doc­u­men­taries on her and dis­cussing her role in almost cre­at­ing an elec­tron­ic back­ing track for Paul McCartney’s “Yes­ter­day.” There’s good rea­son to devote so much atten­tion to her: Derbyshire’s work with the BBC’s Radio­phon­ic Work­shop laid the bedrock for a good deal of the sound design we hear on TV and radio today.

And, as we point­ed out pre­vi­ous­ly, her elec­tron­ic music, record­ed under her own name and with the band White Noise, influ­enced “most every cur­rent leg­end in the business—from Aphex Twin and the Chem­i­cal Broth­ers to Paul Hart­noll of Orbital.”

Yet for all her influ­ence among dance music com­posers and sound effects wiz­ards, Der­byshire and her music remain pret­ty obscure—that is except for one com­po­si­tion, instant­ly rec­og­niz­able as the orig­i­nal theme to the BBC’s sci-fi hit Doc­tor Who (hear it at the top), “the best-known work of a rag­tag group of tech­ni­cians,” writes The Atlantic, “who unwit­ting­ly helped shape the course of 20th-cen­tu­ry music.” Writ­ten by com­pos­er Ron Grain­er, the song was actu­al­ly brought into being by the Radio­phon­ic Work­shop, and by Der­byshire espe­cial­ly. The sto­ry of the Doc­tor Who theme’s cre­ation is almost as inter­est­ing as the tune itself, with its “swoop­ing, hiss­ing and puls­ing” that “man­ages to be at once haunt­ing, goofy and ethe­re­al.” Just above, you can see Der­byshire and her assis­tant Dick Mills tell it in brief.

What we learn from them is fas­ci­nat­ing, con­sid­er­ing that com­po­si­tions like this are now cre­at­ed in pow­er­ful com­put­er sys­tems with dozens of sep­a­rate tracks and dig­i­tal effects. The Doc­tor Who theme, on the oth­er hand, record­ed in 1963, was made even before basic ana­log syn­the­siz­ers came into use. “There are no musi­cians,” says Mills, “there are no syn­the­siz­ers, and in those days, we didn’t even have a 2‑track or a stereo machine, it was always mono.” (Despite pop­u­lar mis­con­cep­tions, the theme does not fea­ture a Theremin.) Der­byshire con­firms; each and every part of the song “was con­struct­ed on quar­ter-inch mono tape,” she says, “inch by inch by inch,” using such record­ing tech­niques as “fil­tered white noise” and some­thing called a “wob­bu­la­tor.” How were all of these painstak­ing­ly con­struct­ed indi­vid­ual parts com­bined with­out mul­ti­track tech­nol­o­gy? “We cre­at­ed three sep­a­rate tapes,” Der­byshire explains, “put them onto three machines and stood next to them and said “Ready, steady, go!” and pushed all the ‘start’ but­tons at once. It seemed to work.”

The theme came about when Grain­er received a com­mis­sion from the BBC after his well-received work on oth­er series. He “com­posed the theme on a sin­gle sheet of A4 man­u­script,” writes Mark Ayres in an exten­sive online his­to­ry, “and sent it over from his home in Por­tu­gal, leav­ing the Work­shop to get on with it.” Aware that the musique con­crète tech­niques Der­byshire and her team used “were very time-con­sum­ing, Grain­er pro­vid­ed a very sim­ple com­po­si­tion, in essence just the famous bass line and a swoop­ing melody,” as well as vague­ly evoca­tive instruc­tions for orches­tra­tion like “wind bub­ble” and “cloud.” Ayres writes, “To an inven­tive radio­phon­ic com­pos­er such as Delia Der­byshire, this was a gift.” Indeed “upon hear­ing it,” The Atlantic notes, “a very impressed Grain­er bare­ly rec­og­nized it as his com­po­si­tion. Due to BBC poli­cies at the time, Grainer—against his objections—is still offi­cial­ly cred­it­ed as the sole writer.” But the cred­it for this futur­is­tic work—which sounds absolute­ly like noth­ing else of the time and “which brought to a wide audi­ence meth­ods once exclu­sive to the high mod­ernism of exper­i­men­tal composition”—should equal­ly go to Der­byshire and her team. You can con­trast that ahead-of-its-time orig­i­nal theme with all of the iter­a­tions to fol­low in the video just above.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2016.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

Hear Sev­en Hours of Women Mak­ing Elec­tron­ic Music (1938- 2014)

Two Doc­u­men­taries Intro­duce Delia Der­byshire, the Pio­neer in Elec­tron­ic Music

Meet Four Women Who Pio­neered Elec­tron­ic Music: Daphne Oram, Lau­rie Spiegel, Éliane Radigue & Pauline Oliv­eros

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

What a Lack of Social Contact Does to Your Brain

To many of us, the con­cept of soli­tary con­fine­ment may not sound all that bad: final­ly, a reprieve from the siege of social and pro­fes­sion­al requests. Final­ly, a chance to catch up on all the read­ing we’ve been mean­ing to do. Final­ly, an envi­ron­ment con­ducive to this med­i­ta­tion thing about whose ben­e­fits we’ve heard so much. (Per­haps we made those very assur­ances to our­selves when the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic set in.) But accord­ing to the ani­mat­ed TED-Ed les­son above, writ­ten by psy­chi­a­trist and cor­rec­tion­al men­tal health expert Ter­ry Kupers, the neg­a­tives of the expe­ri­ence would well out­weigh the pos­i­tives. It all comes by way of answer­ing the ques­tion, “What hap­pens to your brain with­out any social con­tact?”

Unsur­pris­ing­ly, per­haps, iso­la­tion takes its great­est toll when imposed against the will of the iso­lat­ed, and even more so when imposed for an indef­i­nite dura­tion. “Ear­ly on, stress hor­mones may spike, and as time pass­es, that stress can become chron­ic,” says the video’s nar­ra­tor.

With­out the avail­abil­i­ty of social inter­ac­tions as “a sound­ing board where we can gauge how ratio­nal our per­cep­tions are,” one’s “sense of iden­ti­ty and real­i­ty becomes threat­ened.” The stage is there­fore set for “depres­sion, obses­sions, sui­ci­dal ideation, and, for some, delu­sions and hal­lu­ci­na­tions.” Sleep­ing dif­fi­cul­ties can man­i­fest on the more strict­ly phys­i­cal end, poten­tial­ly accom­pa­nied by “heart pal­pi­ta­tions, headaches, dizzi­ness, and hyper­sen­si­tiv­i­ty.”

While trav­el­ing in the Unit­ed States, Charles Dick­ens bore wit­ness to the pun­ish­ment by soli­tary con­fine­ment already in effect in Amer­i­can pris­ons, com­ing away with the impres­sion that it was “worse than any tor­ture of the body.” He wrote that after a vis­it to a Philadel­phia pen­i­ten­tiary, whose very name reflects the the­o­ry, held by the Quak­er groups who intro­duced the prac­tice in the late eigh­teenth cen­tu­ry, that it could “bring about reflec­tion and pen­i­tence.” After much research on the mat­ter, Kupers has come to the con­clu­sion that, in fact, it “does immense dam­age that is con­trary to reha­bil­i­ta­tion, while fail­ing to reduce prison vio­lence.” If you’re read­ing this, you may not be espe­cial­ly like­ly to be sen­tenced to invol­un­tary con­fine­ment. But the next time you start feel­ing out of sorts for rea­sons you can’t pin down, con­sid­er how long it’s been since you’ve spent real time with real peo­ple.

Relat­ed con­tent:

What Hap­pens When You Spend Weeks, Months, or Years in Soli­tary Con­fine­ment

How Lone­li­ness Is Killing Us: A Primer from Har­vard Psy­chi­a­trist & Zen Priest Robert Waldinger

Mod­ern Art Was Used As a Tor­ture Tech­nique in Prison Cells Dur­ing the Span­ish Civ­il War

What an 85-Year-Long Har­vard Study Says Is the Real Key to Hap­pi­ness

On the Pow­er of Teach­ing Phi­los­o­phy in Pris­ons

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.

The Foot-Licking Demons & Other Strange Things in a 1921 Illustrated Manuscript from Iran

Few mod­ern writ­ers so remind me of the famous Vir­ginia Woolf quote about fic­tion as a “spi­der’s web” more than Argen­tine fab­u­list Jorge Luis Borges. But the life to which Borges attach­es his labyrinths is a librar­i­an’s life; the strands that anchor his fic­tions are the obscure schol­ar­ly ref­er­ences he weaves through­out his text. Borges brings this ten­den­cy to whim­si­cal employ in his non­fic­tion Book of Imag­i­nary Beings, a het­ero­ge­neous com­pendi­um of crea­tures from ancient folk­tale, myth, and demonolo­gy around the world.

Borges him­self some­times remarks on how these ancient sto­ries can float too far away from rati­o­ci­na­tion. The “absurd hypothe­ses” regard­ing the myth­i­cal Greek Chimera, for exam­ple, “are proof” that the ridicu­lous beast “was begin­ning to bore peo­ple…. A vain or fool­ish fan­cy is the def­i­n­i­tion of Chimera that we now find in dic­tio­nar­ies.” Of  what he calls “Jew­ish Demons,” a cat­e­go­ry too numer­ous to parse, he writes, “a cen­sus of its pop­u­la­tion left the bounds of arith­metic far behind.

Through­out the cen­turies, Egypt, Baby­lo­nia, and Per­sia all enriched this teem­ing mid­dle world.” Although a less­er field than angelol­o­gy, the influ­ence of this fas­ci­nat­ing­ly diverse canon only broad­ened over time.

“The natives record­ed in the Tal­mud” soon became “thor­ough­ly inte­grat­ed” with the many demons of Chris­t­ian Europe and the Islam­ic world, form­ing a sprawl­ing hell whose denizens hail from at least three con­ti­nents, and who have mixed freely in alchem­i­cal, astro­log­i­cal, and oth­er occult works since at least the 13th cen­tu­ry and into the present. One exam­ple from the ear­ly 20th cen­tu­ry, a 1902 trea­tise on div­ina­tion from Isfa­han, a city in cen­tral Iran, draws on this ancient thread with a series of water­col­ors added in 1921 that could eas­i­ly be mis­tak­en for illus­tra­tions from the ear­ly Mid­dle Ages.

As the Pub­lic Domain Review notes:

The won­der­ful images draw on Near East­ern demono­log­i­cal tra­di­tions that stretch back mil­len­nia — to the days when the rab­bis of the Baby­lon­ian Tal­mud assert­ed it was a bless­ing demons were invis­i­ble, since, “if the eye would be grant­ed per­mis­sion to see, no crea­ture would be able to stand in the face of the demons that sur­round it.”

The author of the trea­tise, a ram­mal, or sooth­say­er, him­self “attrib­ut­es his knowl­edge to the Bib­li­cal Solomon, who was known for his pow­er over demons and spir­its,” writes Ali Kar­joo-Ravary, now an assis­tant pro­fes­sor of Islam­ic his­to­ry at Colum­bia Uni­ver­si­ty. Pre­dat­ing Islam, “the depic­tion of demons in the Near East… was fre­quent­ly used for mag­i­cal and tal­is­man­ic pur­pos­es,” just as it was by occultists like Aleis­ter Crow­ley at the time these illus­tra­tions were made.

“Not all of the 56 paint­ed illus­tra­tions in the man­u­script depict demon­ic beings,” the Pub­lic Domain Review points out. “Amongst the horned and fork-tongued we also find the archangels Jibrāʾīl (Gabriel) and Mikāʾīl (Michael), as well as the ani­mals — lion, lamb, crab, fish, scor­pi­on — asso­ci­at­ed with the zodi­ac.” But in the main, it’s demon city. What would Borges have made of these fan­tas­tic images? No doubt, had he seen them, and he had seen plen­ty of their like before he lost his sight, he would have been delight­ed.

A blue man with claws, four horns, and a pro­ject­ing red tongue is no less fright­en­ing for the fact that he’s wear­ing a can­dy-striped loin­cloth. In anoth­er image we see a mous­ta­chioed goat man with tuber-nose and pol­ka dot skin mani­a­cal­ly con­coct­ing a less-than-appetis­ing dish. One recur­ring (and wor­ry­ing) theme is demons vis­it­ing sleep­ers in their beds, scenes involv­ing such pleas­ant activ­i­ties as tooth-pulling, eye-goug­ing, and — in one of the most engross­ing illus­tra­tions — a bout of foot-lick­ing (per­formed by a rep­til­ian feline with a shark-toothed tail).

There’s a play­ful Boschi­an qual­i­ty to all of this, but while we tend to see Bosch’s work from our per­spec­tive as absurd, he appar­ent­ly took his bizarre inven­tions absolute­ly seri­ous­ly. So too, we might assume, did the illus­tra­tor here. We might won­der, as Woolf did, about this work as the prod­uct of “suf­fer­ing human beings… attached to gross­ly mate­r­i­al things, like health and mon­ey and the hous­es we live in.” What kinds of ordi­nary, mate­r­i­al con­cerns might have afflict­ed this artist, as he (we pre­sume) imag­ined demons goug­ing the eyes and lick­ing the feet of peo­ple tucked safe­ly in their beds?

See many more of these strange paint­ings at the Pub­lic Domain Review.

Note: An ear­li­er ver­sion of this post appeared on our site in 2020.

Relat­ed Con­tent:

700 Years of Per­sian Man­u­scripts Now Dig­i­tized and Avail­able Online

2,178 Occult Books Now Dig­i­tized & Put Online, Thanks to the Rit­man Library and Da Vin­ci Code Author Dan Brown

160,000 Pages of Glo­ri­ous Medieval Man­u­scripts Dig­i­tized: Vis­it the Bib­lio­the­ca Philadel­phien­sis

Josh Jones is a writer and musi­cian based in Durham, NC. 

See Beethoven’s Entire 9th Symphony Visualized in Colorful Animations

While report­ing on the Euro­vi­sion Song Con­test, the New York­er’s Antho­ny Lane “asked a man named Sep­po, from the sev­en-hun­dred-strong Euro­vi­sion Fan Club of Nor­way, what he loved about Euro­vi­sion. ‘Broth­er­hood of man,’ he said — a slight­ly ambigu­ous answer, because that was the name of a British group that entered, and won, the con­test in 1976.” And the con­cept has a longer his­to­ry in Euro­pean music than that: Friedrich Schiller claimed to be cel­e­brat­ing it when he wrote his poem “An die Freude,” or “To Joy,” which Lud­wig van Beethoven adapt­ed a few decades there­after into the final move­ment of his Sym­pho­ny No. 9. Lat­er still, in 1972, that piece of music was adopt­ed by the Coun­cil of Europe as the con­ti­nen­t’s anthem; in 1985, the Euro­pean Union made it offi­cial as well.

In a sense, “Ode to Joy” is a nat­ur­al choice for a musi­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tion of Europe, not just for its explic­it themes, but also for the obvi­ous ambi­tion of the sym­pho­ny that includes it to cap­ture an entire civ­i­liza­tion in musi­cal form.

Its com­plex­i­ty and con­tra­dic­tion may be eas­i­er to appre­ci­ate through these videos, which con­sti­tute a visu­al­iza­tion by Stephen Mali­nows­ki, cre­ator of the Music Ani­ma­tion Machine, pre­vi­ous­ly fea­tured here on Open Cul­ture for his ani­mat­ed scores of every­thing from Vivaldi’s Four Sea­sons to Bach’s Bran­den­burg Con­cer­to no. 4 to Debussy’s Clair de lune. As one of the most fre­quent­ly per­formed sym­phonies in the world, Beethoven’s 9th comes to us laden with a fair amount of cul­tur­al bag­gage, but Mali­nowski’s spar­e­ly ele­gant ren­der­ing lets us lis­ten while keep­ing our mind on the essen­tials of its struc­ture.

That struc­ture, as the view­ing expe­ri­ence empha­sizes, is not a par­tic­u­lar­ly sim­ple one. Though already deaf, Beethoven nev­er­the­less com­posed this final com­plete sym­pho­ny with lay­er after ever-chang­ing yet inter­lock­ing lay­er, draw­ing from a vari­ety of musi­cal tra­di­tions as well as pieces he’d already writ­ten for oth­er pur­pos­es. At its 1824 pre­miere in Vien­na, Sym­pho­ny No. 9 received no few­er than five stand­ing ova­tions, though over the cen­turies since, even cer­tain of its appre­ci­a­tors ques­tion whether the final move­ment real­ly fits in with the rest. Indeed, some even regard “Ode to Joy” as kitschy, an exer­cise unbe­com­ing of the sym­pho­ny as a whole, to say noth­ing of the man who com­posed it. But then, it’s unde­ni­able that Euro­pean cul­ture has since achieved heights of kitsch unimag­in­able in Beethoven’s day.

Relat­ed con­tent:

Slavoj Žižek Exam­ines the Per­verse Ide­ol­o­gy of Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy”

The Sto­ry of How Beethoven Helped Make It So That CDs Could Play 74 Min­utes of Music

“A Glo­ri­ous Hour”: Helen Keller Describes The Ecsta­sy of Feel­ing Beethoven’s Ninth Played on the Radio (1924)

Beethoven’s “Ode to Joy” Mov­ing­ly Flash­mobbed in Spain

Watch Clas­si­cal Music Come to Life in Art­ful­ly Ani­mat­ed Scores: Stravin­sky, Debussy, Bach, Beethoven, Mozart & More

Based in Seoul, Col­in Marshall writes and broad­casts on cities, lan­guage, and cul­ture. His projects include the Sub­stack newslet­ter Books on Cities and the book The State­less City: a Walk through 21st-Cen­tu­ry Los Ange­les. Fol­low him on the social net­work for­mer­ly known as Twit­ter at @colinmarshall.


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