An Inquiry into the Possibility of a Pure Artistic Judgement — Cornelis de Bondt Introduction The observation that the social significance of ‘classical’ art has increasingly come under pressure in recent decades has by now become a cliché. Nevertheless, it still seems worthwhile to me to investigate the reasons for this development. In this essay I focus primarily on Western music, and specifically on music that has in one way or another been fixed or recorded — t...

J. Chr. de Vries For my uncle 'Here is the Giant' Leo I was who I will be. 
— Amenhotep III, regarding the deity of the people with the shuffling feet. Fact: I met Reid Zieger once, in person, to be precise; that was on February 17, 1999. Exactly 273 months later, I received a message from Taunis Haas, in which he recounted a peculiar story involving the same Zieger. The reason for this story pertains to the imminent conclusion of the game of chess, something we had known the...

— J. Chr. de Vries Mortals call him fluttering love, but the immortals call him the winged one, because the growth of wings was a necessity for him.— Plato, Phaedrus [quote from Homer] On a very hot late summer afternoon in 1991, I was sitting in the intercity train from Amsterdam to The Hague. The train was quiet, and I was in an empty smoking compartment. The train departed from Haarlem station, which I thought was the perfect moment to light up a cigar. The compartment door s...