blogobowitz

  Blog #6 Now you hear it, now you don't... Well-chosen were the three readings for this assignment - Kozinn, Slonimsky, Hogwood - not in tandem do they work best, but each of them chooses to "define" or "catalogue" (but best: to attack) Urtext as an idea, but from different perspectives. Slonimsky first of all (tongue-in-cheek not) reduces it reasonably to an outgrowth of "Germanism" - what I like to call the Teutonic Tectonics of Theoreticals. In other words, that which can be analyzed SHALL be analyzed. That which can not be analyzed (and certainly not by the same system) will therefore lie fallow and be ignored - as if somehow the musical work was less valid, because it defies the theoretical analysis. Naturally I'm talking about Schenkerian analysis here - analogous to Freud, but far more painful. Bach, Beethoven and Brahms can be analyzed in these patterns - the French composers widely not. Or Spanish or English or Russian. Different system. ...

 Blog #5 - Oct. 18, 2020 From Brahms to Bach All of these readings as class assignments have hit me amidships - because for me it's all directly relevant. Once again - to the uninitiated - the readings are broadly speaking about a) the differences between Manuscripts, Autographs and Holographs, and b) the consequences that even a bit of scholarship can make toward deciphering the composer's true intentions, in light of the struggle between Urtext, Annotated Editions, Urschrift, Reinschrift, etc. Why is it relevant to me personally? Well, it's NOT about Brahms at all (referring to the reading), but about Bach. You see, I have a vested interested in not only playing Bach, but also getting Bach "right" - I play marimba, an instrument for which Bach never composed. If I want the people - the specialists - with whom I rub shoulders here in Leipzig, Germany (Bach is buried here) to accept my Bach interpretations, I can't simply "Play Bach" - I need to show...

 Blogobowitz #4 -  "Oh, what a tangled web  we  weave, when first  we   practice   to  deceive !"  - Sir Walter Scott, 1808 There are four readings for this assignment, and it's all about getting things wrong, from different levels, and with different - widely different - intentions. Although not each and every form and shade of deceit is listed in the four readings for this assignment, their echo teaches us that one may never rest on one's laurels, so to speak. In the general changes of society, even what may have been established and settled law - not unlike human rights - may still need to be radically reviewed and updated. Walter Scott. Dred Scott. Great Scott. The very tenets upon which our society is built, moored in  seemingly primordial mud, may yet become untethered. Science, we are taught, should be irrefutable. Yet, we're all in danger - yikes! - maybe what we've believed isn't true at all. It's important to be on the RIG...

 There have been a number of surprises in the readings for this, Blog #3, regarding the main themes of: 1) definitions of periodicals (Wagstaff) (2011) (Journals, magazines, etc...) 2) evaluating the writer's voice by calculation of what type of reader is targeted (Weir) (2011) 3) the misuse of academic papers by "vanity-presses" - charitably put (Kolata, the NYT, 2013) 4) characteristics of predatory publishers (Eriksson & Hegesson) (probably first appeared in 2018) ________________________   At first, my reaction was ornery. "How could they!" - They, meaning fly-by-night publishers, pilfering the papers of would-be professors, in order to sell them a list of goods. Inverse Robin Hoods - robbing the poor student, in order to whisk the money away by a nefarious "dotted-line" clause. OY! No one wants to be treated poorly - it doesn't take a lot of experience in the "real-world" to learn about vanity-publishers, who'll be delighted ...