Score: On Huillet and Straub’s Chronik der Anna Magdalena Bach.
Boston Globe, October 7, 2016.
Screening next Friday (10/14).
Globe Articles
Second line
Score: The funeral march’s public and private origins.
Boston Globe, September 30, 2016.
Libera me
Score: Leonce de Saint-Martin and the liberation of Paris.
Boston Globe, September 26, 2016.
Now and later
Reviewing Dinosaur Annex.
Boston Globe, September 20, 2016.
Once again reviewing for the Globe, at least for the time being—with a concert that, it turned out, was all about the time being.
G(n, M)
Score: Musicians and Erdős numbers.
Boston Globe, September 19, 2016.
148, 149, 150
Recent Score columns:
July 22, 2016: Remembering Justin Holland
A sketch of the guitarist, pedagogue, and activist (and birthday buddy).
July 29, 2016: George Butterworth, composer and casualty
Killed a century ago today, leaving a catalogue small, singular, and intense.
August 5, 2016: Beethoven’s op. 11 (and Joseph Weigl)
And, for the 150th of these efforts, a look at the milieu of what is still (perversely, I know) my favorite Beethoven piece.
This I know
It seems that this space is destined to be updated only in transit. The last post (five months ago?! yikes) was written in the midst of a change of abode, and now we are preparing to move Soho the Dog HQ yet again. It’s like our own Year of the Three Kings, except, instead of monarchs, it’s places to live. Which means we’re about to start living in the residential equivalent of… Richard III? I think that analogy ran off the rails somewhere.
At any rate: as proof that I have not been completely idle, the list of Score columns over on the sidebar there has been finally brought up to date. That’s 141 installments (and counting) of oblique musicological speculation for your summer reading entertainment. I should also link to this article that Molly coaxed out of me for NewMusicBox, which ended up with a pleasant amount of break on its curve, I thought. Plus, there was this Messiaen introduction for Red Bull Music Academy Daily, which led me down the garden path of echoes between Messiaen’s idiosyncratic theology and that of the Flemish mystic Jan van Ruusbroec.
Oh, yeah, and this went down, which at least resulted in some flattering sympathies from smart and nice people—thank you! Like I’ve said before: I have a knack for getting into careers in their categorical twilight. On the other hand, it does leave more time for composing:
Guerrieri: Shining Throne (Prelude on “Jesus Loves Me”) (2016) (PDF, 48 Kb)
And a low-fidelity phone recording:
The registration is only a suggestion, i.e., what happens to work on my particular church organ. (I am, now and forever, a sucker for a good—or even not-so-good—celeste stop.)
And with that, it’s northern-hemisphere summer. Whatever critical scrapes I manage to get myself into will be duly noted here. Or not—I picked up some Apuleius for a dollar at a library sale today, and, I have to say, it’s a better-looking prospect than a lot else that’s going on out there. But Apuleius probably always is.
Hit the North
Reviewing Blair McMillen.
Boston Globe, July 1, 2015.
Met the gazes, observed the spaces
Reviewing “Song Cycle” at the Peabody Essex Museum.
Boston Globe, June 29, 2015.
And let your arrow fly
Reviewing Aston Magna.
Boston Globe, June 19, 2015.
