A valuable new book (and accompanying website) on protest songs gives insightful political context to music that can seem detached from its original meaning and culture. ‘A protest song, like protest itself, is intent upon political change—of ideas, attitudes, or actions.’

Is it possible that ‘early music’ is over, and we just haven’t realized it? I think we can expect, if not a revolution, at least a freedom, an exhilaration, a new age to succeed the old. After all, the modern HP movement has been around for about as long as the distance between the B-minor Mass and the Ninth Symphony. A lot of changes took place in those 75 years…

Fortepianist Sezi Seskir and cellist Keiran Campbell’s fine new recording of Beethoven’s two cello sonatas captures the composer’s many facets: nuanced, exciting, humorous, and often blazing with joy. Highly recommended.

Looking for ancient voices from his native Ecuador, Felipe Ledesma Núñez turned to ceramics and the sounds of his ancestors. He sees a problem in the humanities, ‘that we are privileging the written word. And those kinds of systems are ill-suited: They cannot carry sound.’