The joys of autodidacticism: Bach

One good thing about being an autodidact is that you sometimes discover something really good only after you're old enough to appreciate it. For example, Bach's chorales! Good solid simple Lutheran hymns perfectly arranged by JS Bach himself.

When hooligans Bach down

A recent article from Theodore Dalrymple. Incipit:

Staying recently in a South Yorkshire town called Rotherham—described in one guidebook as “murky,” an inadequate word for the place—I was interested to read in the local newspaper how the proprietors of some stores are preventing hooligans from gathering outside to intimidate and rob customers. They play Bach over loudspeakers, and this disperses the youths in short order; they flee the way Count Dracula fled before holy water, garlic flowers, and crucifixes.