Cover photo by Philippe Bout on Unsplash I’ve been hard at work on music lectures lately, with only a couple of weeks until I present Beethoven’s magnificent ninth symphony to an audience who just a few years ago had only … Continue reading The Potential for Scholarship
(cover image by Aldric Rivat) Move over, Hovhaness (67ish), Haydn (100+), Bourgeois (114), Dittersdorf (120ish), and even Rowan Taylor (265). You thought Shostakovich’s 15 symphonies, Niels Viggo Bentzon’s 24, Myaskovsky’s 27, Mozart’s 40+, or others held some record for most … Continue reading Quirky Quantity or Questionable Quality?
aka Jakob Ludwig Felix Mendelssohn Bartholdy “Musical prodigies … are probably no longer so rare; but what this little man can do in extemporizing and playing at sight borders the miraculous, and I could not have believed it possible at so early … Continue reading Influential People: Felix Mendelssohn
Truly in Schubert there is the divine spark. Ludwig van Beethoven His influence is interesting, and we’re not really going to be discussing his influence as much as his potential influence, or something. This article that I scanned quickly asks … Continue reading Influential People: Franz Schubert
(title image located here, from the Dutch National Archive) In this video of Mitsuko Uchida speaking about Schoenberg’s piano concerto, she mentions how Debussy and Schoenberg approached their rebellion against tonality in different ways. She says (I’m paraphrasing; just go watch … Continue reading Influential People: Pierre Boulez
performed by the Basel Symphony Orchestra under Marko Lentoja So this is (perhaps thankfully) where our saga of the Beethoven quote ends. It’s been with us for around a month now, and it’s time we close that chapter. Mahler 3 … Continue reading Felix Weingartner: Symphony No. 1 in G
or The Composer as Specialist from Hi Fidelity, February 1958 Wikipedia article here Original article here (PDF) Bach, Beethoven, Brahms…. Jump ahead, jump ahead and there’s Babbitt. But there’s also obviously a lot in between. Last week’s post was a … Continue reading Thoughts on Babbitt’s "Who Cares if You Listen"
Fugue for Thought 