Michael's Corner

It is known that J.S. Bach was the father of counterpoint harmony. I don’t know if Bach set out to create counterpoint harmony, a component that enriched music exponentially, or discovered it by accident. His music ranged from godly to subtly intense, and from celebratory to a man working out internal strife.

And speaking of an artist working out strife, internal or otherwise, no composer did it more profoundly than Dmitri Shostakovich. Often, it seemed that Shostakovich used the art of musical composition to hurl the message, “This is what’s going on behind the wall,” to the West. Often, those messages were executed with too much clarity, and it got Shostakovich in trouble with Soviet authorities.

Who didn’t like the era of Impressionism? Every artist of that era spoke to me, but none more than Edgar Degas. Degas’s darker hues and brooding themes seemed more poignant than those of his contemporaries.

I’m a sucker for Norman Rockwell. Are Rockwell’s works on the order of artistic genius? No. But his pre- and post-World War II themes, embodying Americana, Saturday Evening Post sketches, and baseball works, are always a joy.