Mathew Lyons

1 week ago | historytoday.com | Mathew Lyons

For one terrifying moment it seemed that history was repeating itself. In early 1881 the Russian tsar Alexander II had been assassinated. And now, a decade later on 11 May 1891, an assassin brought a sabre down on his grandson Nicholas’ bowler-hatted head. The 22-year-old tsarevich was in Japan on a tour of the East. He had already seen Sri Lanka, Singapore, and China.

3 weeks ago | engelsbergideas.com | Mathew Lyons

The Monastic World: A 1,200-Year History, Andrew Jotischky, Yale University Press, £25Perhaps aptly, for institutions that laid claim to eternity, there is no agreed origin for monasticism. Saint Jerome, writing around the turn of the fourth century, believed that it began with Christians fleeing into the desert to escape Roman persecution.

2 months ago | thespectator.com | Damian Thompson |Michael Hann |Mathew Lyons |Anne Daniel

Three projects shedding light on the sacred music of J.S. Bach are nearing completion. The first consists of an epic twenty-five-year project to record all the composer’s vocal works — passions, masses, motets and 200-odd cantatas — in electrifying performances supplemented by lectures and workshops. At the helm is a Swiss choral conductor renowned for his improvisatory skills — and surely the only baroque specialist to have played Sidney Bechet on a chamber organ.

2 months ago | thespectator.com | Stephen Hough |Michael Hann |Mathew Lyons |Anne Daniel

My Piano Concerto, “The World of Yesterday,” began with an email during one of the darker days of the pandemic: would I like to write a score for a movie about a concert pianist writing a piano concerto? As I looked at my concert diary, blank but for Zoom calls, it seemed like a wonderful way to keep busy.

2 months ago | historytoday.com | Mathew Lyons

The Reformation in Switzerland began quietly. On the evening of 9 March 1522, the first Sunday in Lent, what one historian has called ‘the ostentatious eating of sausages’ took place in the parlour of Zurich printer Christoph Froschauer. It was a provocative act, in breach of church rules on fasting. Twelve people were present. Some later became Anabaptists; one, a bootmaker named Hottinger, would be beheaded in Baden two years later for challenging the Mass.