I was actually in the book business for a few years.  I still enjoy listening to insiders talk about publishing and books.

Sunday evening I was trying to relax a bit so I listened to Andre Schriffin be interviewed on C-Span.

Schiffrin was director of the publisher, Pantheon, which brought Pasternak and Foucault to English readers.

In the C-Span interview, he discussed how publishing has changed and how it works to the advantage of people who want to control or stop the flow new ideas.

I enjoyed his ideas on several levels. He is a book person. He is cosmopolitan.  I share some of his political ideas. And last he gave the impression of someone who knows stuff but also knows that he is not relevant to people who aren’t aware of history and words.

So of course he is now on my list of thinkers to check out.

In between taking care of my wife and all the other things I have been doing, I have been organizing my composition files. I think I have figured out a way to put these hundreds of files in folders on my exterior hard drive where I will be able to access them.

It’s a good mindless-type task.

Eileen continues to mend, feeling a bit better everyday.  I will be driving up to Grand Haven this afternoon for another round of rehearsals with the young singers I will be accompanying in a recital and Solo and Ensemble festival. Plus my 8:30 AM ballet class this morning.

In between I will be making sure Eileen has what she needs.

Life goes on.

As Eileen left for church yesterday morning, she stepped onto the icy back steps and fell. She fell squarely back on the steps and hit her upper back on them.

I was right behind and also slipped but caught myself so I didn’t fall hard.

Eileen was immediately aware that she had hurt herself pretty badly. So we took a few minutes to calm down and assess how badly. After a bit we realized she would need to go to Emergency.

She didn’t seem to have any broken bones. She could move her extremities. It crossed my mind that if her neck or back was broken it would be better to call an Ambulance.

But she was not hurt so badly that she couldn’t slowly stand and make her way to the car.

Since it was Sunday morning, we stopped and I let my boss know what was going on. She urged me to do what I needed to do and that the Sunday morning service I usually play at would take care of itself.

It is clarifying when someone you love is hurt. Trivial things in life seem truly trivial, important things are suddenly clearly important.

After Eileen got checked in and settled in to a room in the ER waiting for a doctor, she told me I should leave her and go play my silly service. By this time, she was in pretty good spirits even though she was silly hurting badly. So I did go back and play the service.

I canceled my post-service rehearsal and went back quickly to be with Eileen. By this time they had given her some tylenol for the pain and ran tests on her (Cat scan, X ray).

They had discovered that her fourth and fifth thorassic vertebrae were exhibiting “mild” compression fracture.

This condition is either caused by osteoporosis or a fall. Since they were in the area that Eileen had hit her back, the doctor concluded they were the result of the fall.

There is no real treatment to speed the healing process of this kind of injury. Only the pain can be treated.

So they sent Eileen home with prescriptions for drugs for pain (Percocet and Motrin) and told her to make a follow up appointment with the neurologist who had helped the ER doctor read the xrays and determine the extent of the injury.  She was not to go to her job until she saw the neurologist.

I spent the rest of the day taking care of her and running around trying to get the silly prescriptions filled. They gave her her first pills at the hospital so that she barely made it through lunch before she was groggy and needed to lie down.  Apparently Percocet is not only a mild narcotic, it does not have a generic brand making it kind of rare. Meijers (where we do a lot of our shopping and all of our prescriptions) didn’t have any.  The dude at Walgreens said it was my lucky day because we cleaned him out.

Eileen had a previous doctor’s appointment for this morning so she will be seeing her internist (Dr. Fuentes) then.  My Mom is scheduled to spend the morning see her psychologist and psychiatrist, back to back, in Zeeland, the next little city over.

I think I will spend the morning, at least, running them back and forth to these appointments.

I installed the 2010 version of Finale, the music software I use, recently. The church paid for the update. Bless their hearts.  I have already spent a couple hours this morning reorganizing the many files I have of compositions and arrangements. I figure I’m about 1/4th of the way done. What a huge job.

Instead of reading news articles online yesterday as I treadmilled, I read in The Study of Fugue by Alfred Mann.

I continue to think about fugal writing. Mann’s book is a classic in the area and I haven’t read it before.  I was reading it on Google Books when I came to a page that wasn’t “part of the preview.” I turned off the computer and pulled out my copy to see if I could read it while I exercised. Sure enough, the type was big enough.

Ironic, that even though I own a copy I wasn’t able to access it online. Seems like if you own a piece of copyrighted material it would be fair to allow you to access it online for convenience. Silly me.

I also adapted the Hatch family recipe for meatloaf to a lower calorie version.

Then I made it.

Calories in Meatloaf recipe

Ground Beef 650 calories for 17 ounces

3/4 C oatmeal 225 calories
1/4 C egg beater 30 calorie
1/2 grated onion 32 calories
3/4 C non fat milk 68 calories
3 T ketchup 45 calories
2 T dried parlsey 8 calories
1 1/2 t salt 0 calories
1 1/2 t (1/2 T) of shortening to grease pan 55 calories

total calories 1113

Combine and bake in greased loaf pan for about an hour at 375 degrees
1/5 slice as a serving therefore has about 227 calories

I determined the calories by looking at the handy-dandy labels and also using this web site:

Eileen has not tried the final product yet. If she likes it, I’ll probably post it on Facebook because I am connected to so many Hatches on it.

02 All upon the altar by jupiterjenkins

My brother asked me to email him a copy of this recording yesterday.  Our father sang in this group as a young man.  My brother’s copy of this particular track seemed to be giving him trouble, so he asked me to send him a new copy.

Isn’t the Soundcloud embed nifty?

I have been running across these little embeds and finally somebody mentioned the web site by name so I ran it down and used it. I like the way you can see the entire recording. This is the way the editing software I use shows it as well.

Both the soundcloud and the editing software are free. Click on the pics for a link.

Thanks to “David & Paul” for emailing me a link to this man’s photographs and art.  The artist is Liu Bolin. The photo above is called “Hiding in the city No. 63-Gray’s Opening Ceremony 2008.” The web site is a collection of photographs and art by Bolin. In many of them he is  standing ill or well disguised into a background. The mood of these shots and the one above in particular is one with which I can identify. I see them as quietly humorous but also dark in their implication of invisibility.

I think about invisibility from time to time.

I think one of the things I like about playing for ballet class is the fact that the music I improvise is a very small but real part of what is happening. I say this but yesterday I had an embarrassing moment.  The “Bar Stretch” exercise requires a long slow steady piece of improvised music. It is important that this music be gentle and relaxing. Last week I did a slow country waltz. But yesterday I lost myself in a improvisation during this time. It’s hard to describe improv, but I developed a slow jazzy theme and then played that with my left hand and added quicker lines with my right hand.

When I came up for air one at the end of the young dancers remarked that what I had just done was beautiful. I thanked her but was totally embarrassed.  I think that my personality is such that I am comfortable with the vulnerability of improvisation and music in general. But I can easily be shocked back into realizing how naked this makes me and how much of myself  I put into such silly little things like improvisations.

Still I do like being a little visible. It seems to be part of the animal of music. That it is perceived.

I continue reading in Niebur’s Leaves from the Notebooks of a Tamed Cynic for some reason.

Speaking of his criticism of preachers at revival meetings, in his 1924 Notebook entry he says this:

“If you don’t simplify issues you can’t arouse emotional crises. It’s the melodrama that captivates the crowd. Sober history is seldom melodramatic. God and the devil may be in conflict on the scene of life and history, but a victory follows every defeat and some kind of defeat every victory. The representatives of God are seldom divine and the minions of Satan are never quite diabolical.”

Writing between the wars in America and living in Detroit as a young evangelical pastor, his words seem prophetic of and salient to today.  Of course now in America we often only say “drama” to describe overreaction. And we also demonize the “other” very quickly seldom recalling that our reaction is often a mirror of our own failings and that those around us are “seldom divine” and “never quite diabolical.”

In 1924, he writes:

“…[T]he real clue to the tameness of a preacher is the difficulty one finds in telling unpleasant truths to people whom one has learned to love.

To speak the truth in love is difficult, and sometimes an almost impossible achievement. If you speak the truth unqualifiedly, that is usually because your ire has been aroused or because you have no personal attachment to the object of your strictures. Once personal contact is established you are very prone to temper your wind to the shorn sheep. It is certainly difficult to be human and honest at the same time.

I recognize myself in this quote.

Mostly how I have sometimes used the truth because I was angry. Not proud of that. I try not to do it.

I had a very good discussion with my boss at our weekly meeting yesterday.  I laid out for her the motivation for my wanting to talk about my professional relationship with Grace church. Then outlined for her my priority of the value of my ability and work for this community.  For her part, she described her and the vestry’s continuing efforts to address bringing the staff’s compensation more in line with acceptable standards.

I described my motivation in different ways. One clear synopsis of it was that I have three problems.  Lack of awareness on the part of the community of the professional nature of my work; the disparity between my salary and a fair remuneration commiserate with my credentials, experience and abilities; and the fact that as a 20 hour a week poorly paid employee I am doing too much.

It is the combination of these three that gives me despair. If any one of them were to be addressed, I would be less motivated to continue to try to initiate a discussion.

After we discussed the situation in regards to my own morale, I outlined the value of my work for this church as I see it. Again I boiled it down to three areas. First, my work as a primary leader of worship in the weekly services themselves. This includes preparation of myself and others that I lead. Secondly, the consultative, collegiate nature of my team work with my pastor herself. Finally, my work in the area of educating the community, of helping Episcopalians be better Episcopalians.

My boss’s response throughout all of this was that she sees both my motivation and the prioritizing of my values in a very similar way.  I believe her. We meet weekly and have frank delightful discussions about our work together as colleagues. My comments were ones I had made before to her in these conversations, so nothing I said would have surprised her.

What was different was I pressed her for clarification about how she as my boss saw me as an employee. She has always been extremely helpful and supportive, but I was asking how the way I see my work relates to the way she sees it.

The next step is think of ways to emphasize the areas where I am being effective in these value and de-emphasize those where I am not.  My language again, but still I think Jen (my boss) agrees and finds my analysis and summations helpful in figuring out how to manage me.

We did all this is in the first half of our meeting and used the rest of our time reviewing options for the upcoming season of Lent. This was my idea. I think Jen was ready to take the entire time of our weekly meeting yesterday and address my concerns. I told her I thought we could do that but still have time to do others stuff, which we did.

The funny thing is that I was totally out of the mood to talk about church stuff.

I get all worked up and think about solutions and ways to look at an idea that is bothering me. Then by the time it gets addressed, I often am in a completely different space.

Yesterday I was thinking much more about fugues and composition.  I continue analyzing Bach fugues.  I worked carefully through two of his organ fugues yesterday, paying close attention to the structure.

Then later I played through two of the four canons in the Art of Fugue and discovered that the second one is not a strict canon.

BOREDOM WARNING, RELATIVELY CONFUSING EXPLANATION OF THE COMPOSITIONAL PROCEDURE FOLLOWS. CAN BE EASILY SKIPPED.

After  25 measures of the upper voice mimicking the lower voice five notes higher, it ceases to do so for 8 measures. Then it begins an idea that the lower voice mimics at a distance of 8 measures. The lower voice imitates the upper voice with exact pitches. Though this canon is labeled as a Canon alla Duodecima in Contrapunto all Quintu, Which means a canon at the 12th (an octave plus a fifth) in counterpoint at the fifth, it actually is a canon at the octave for many measures.

This was a revelation for me. I quickly googled it to see if I could find an analysis that explained why Bach did this. To no avail.

My violinist had to stay home with her kids yesterday due to school closing, so we weren’t able to meet. I took advantage of his time and did some cooking and grocery shopping and exercising.

Then out for a great meal at the locally owned Mexican-American restaurant we love, Margaritas. As we went up to pay the check, the owner (who always remembers me as Mr. Jenkins) chatted us up. He told us that the schools had already announced they were going to be closed the next day (Friday). He said he thought they were closing because the machines that usually plow the sidewalks couldn’t handle the amount of snow and were in fact breaking down. This meant a large number of students who walked to school would be forced to walk in the street and that this contributed to the closing.

Who knew?

LINKS (PRIMARILY NEWSY STORIES I BOOKMARKED YESTERDAY)

First I found this pic on Boing Boing and totally loved it:

Click on the pic to go to the Boing Boing article about it.

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Health reform repeal: Fixing the mandate | The Economist

I think of the Economist as a conservative international financial mag. I know they have good analysts, but I find their point of view sometimes confusing or discouraging. I was surprised to read that an important idea in the health care reform bill came from a guy on a G.W. Bush commission: “He’s an economist named Mark Pauly, and he proposed the individual mandate idea to President George H.W. Bush in 1991.” Interesting.

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Egypt’s Bumbling Brotherhood – NYTimes.com

You may have heard of the Muslim Brotherhood as the dire bogeyman in Egypt’s current troubles. Much mis-information seems to be bouncing around about this organization. Here’s a good source of info on it.

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Undiagnosed Diseases Program Solves Its First Mystery – NYTimes.com

I found this article fascinating. The science intrigues me. Plus I love a good mystery.

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Game Over: The Chance For Democracy In Egypt Is Lost | The Middle East Channel

Haven’t read this one yet.  It’s on Foreign Policy’s website. Looks like worth reading.

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Will Arab turmoil spread to oil-rich Gulf? | Jay Bookman

This is from the Atlanta Journal-Constitution website and is a topic on a lot of people’s minds. Also haven’t read yet.

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I seem to be playing my way through Bach’s “Art of Fugue.” I am using the edition above by Beethoven’s teacher, Carl Czerny. For years I have studied this work in score, which is the way that Bach wrote it out.  My edition of the score has a keyboard reduction underneath but it is very very small.

By writing these 14 fugues in score it’s not clear how or if Bach intended this music to be done by any particular instruments. It is often played in arrangements for many different kinds of ensembles.

I have also played movements on the organ. I long wanted a larger clean keyboard version, but the most up to date edition was over $40.00 and I kept telling myself I could just make an edition from the scores myself.

Finally I broke down and bought the lousy edition by Czerny. I say lousy because many 19th century editors brought their musical sensibilities to any music they edited. So while Bach never wrote a crescendo sign

or a long slur,

Czerny clutters his edition with superfluous markings.  If you look below at the first page you see a great deal that is not Bach but Czerny (Andante Con Moto, sempre legato and the “P” sign, none of which Bach wrote just in the first measure).

The many volume edition of Scarlatti’s Ezzercisi I bought from my teacher, Craig Cramer, is the same way. When playing these editions, one has to remind one’s self constantly to ignore the markings and just look at the notes since that’s all the composer actually wrote.

I find this most difficult to do with articulations (accents and staccato markings especially) because I automatically follow them.

Anyway, having played all the way through many different works like Bach’s Well Tempered Clavichord and Haydn’s piano sonatas, I realized that I was doing the same thing with the “Art of Fugue’ now that I have Czerny’s edition laying around. I’m all the way the fourteenth fugue.

These works are an encylopedic working out of a beautiful melody. The melody of a fugue as it is stated for the first time is called the “subject.”

Here’s a link to free mp3s of Chris Breemer playing all the movements.

On Tuesday morning, as the ballet teacher came in the room, I was playing a suite movement by Bach on the piano (the prelude from the G minor English Suite). The movement is in 3/8 and I was playing it through a bit slowly for accuracy’s sake even though I have learned and performed this piece many times.

She began dancing and talking about how the music would make a nice dance. I pointed out that I was playing it under tempo. We then had a discussion of how 17th and 18th century musicians and dancers thought about tempo and the relationship of one dance to another.

She then proceeded to give the class a short lecture on the historic origins of ballet in the French court emphasizing the baroque nature of the dance. I thought it might be nice to play a little Bach for their first exercise, so I quickly scanned the Minuet II from the F Major French Suite of Bach. By scanning I mean that I made sure that it fell evenly into four measure phrases.

I began playing by sketching out Bach’s melody and making it more simple so that it could be easily perceived by dancers. This seemed to work okay but was a little complicated in places where Bach like any good composer avoided obvious groupings of the melody and made it more subtle.

The teacher mentioned to the class that they were getting authentic baroque music for their dance today. Then she said that she loved using Sarabandes for dancing and said that she preferred the melancholy minor ones.  I started flipping through trying to find one.

I did find one and used it for the next exercise. Unfortunately, she had not been asking me to do one, just telling me and the class how much she liked them. She walked over to the piano and said we were going to have to dispense with Baroque music for the day.

She was extremely gracious (as all the teachers I have worked with have been) and I told her it was no problem and immediately began improvising more appropriate music.

It is so much easier to improvise music that I can tailer and alter to the needs of the moment.  But Bach is pretty wonderful even if he is complex.

I am thinking this morning I will take the music of Louie Couperin along in case this same teacher calls for a melancholy Sarabande to dance to.  Uncle Louie (as I refer to him since he is the uncle of the more famous  Francois Couperin) makes beautiful little dance movements that seem a bit more simple in their structure.  I say it that way because they are ever bit as elegant as Bach’s suite movements and even more subtle in places in their simplicity. It’s great music I have been playing for decades. It makes me want to get back to work on the harpsichord.

LINKS

Post-Minimalism and Folk Ballads Fuel a Composer  ALLAN KOZINN on composer and Bang on a Can founder, Julia Wolfe.

Most of today’s links are articles I haven’t read yet.

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Lorraine Adams on The Truth Behind the Headlines | FiveBooks | The Browser

Princeton educated Lorraine Adams was a staff writer for The Washington Post for 11 years and won a Pulitzer Prize for investigative reporting. She is the author of Harbor, a novel about the experience of young Arab Americans, and more recently The Room and the Chair, a book that deals with US newsrooms, cockpits over Afghanistan, intelligence headquarters and the way the truth about violence can be manipulated, glossed over and forgotten. In a democracy, she says, you can’t go to war when the public has been so unreliably informed by the media and will poll accordingly.

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Barnett and Foley: The Nuts and Bolts of the ObamaCare Ruling – WSJ.com

It is a common phenomenon that we see the bias we disagree with and are blind to the bias we agree with. I find many op-ed articles in the Wall Street Journal speak from a very different point of view than I have. This article begins by labeling progressives who don’t take challenges to the health care law seriously as “smug” thus performing a neat ad hominem one-two punch: people the authors disagree with are stupid AND also smug in their ill-conceived understanding. FWIW, I think it’s very likely the Supreme Court will rule against this law.  But I guess I am smug. Heh.

These two writers are worth reading. I plan to read their article even though it starts the way it does.  A quick Google reveals that Barnett is a libertarian and Foley a bio-ethics expert. They are both highly educated and articulate. What more could you want from a conservative when you are a smug progressive? Heh.

Anyway, I make it a point to read and listen to the most coherent people that I disagree with.

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Amira Bennison on Science and Islam | FiveBooks | The Browser

Deputy Chair of Cambridge’s Oriental Studies Faculty reveals her selection of books that show how Islamic scientific discoveries underpinned much of the European Rennaissance

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Explain yourself: George Lakoff, cognitive linguist | Explainer.Net

For Lakoff, language is not a neutral system of communication…

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Why Julian Assange Hates the ‘New York Times’ | The Nation

So what sparked the rift with Assange?

For one thing, Assange was upset that the Times refused to link directly to the WikiLeaks site. Then there was a shaky profile last summer..

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Daniel Bell, Ardent Appraiser of Politics, Economics and Culture, Dies at 91 – NYTimes.com

My ten rehearsals ended up being seven rehearsals (2 dropped out, 1 ill). I was finished by 5:30 PM and drove from Grand Haven to Holland in the beginnings of the blizzard.

I was impressed by the quality of the songs these kids are preparing. Interestingly they also seem well within the grasp of the musicians. I often see teachers assigning difficult (and to me often boring) music to young musicians. Nice to play composers like Schubert, Menotti and Paul Bowles. I haven’t had much exposure to Bowles as a composer. I know him more as a writer of prose.

Several of the students were suffering with colds and respiratory stuff. I notice that singers seem to often have these problems. It makes me wonder how connected they are to over all anxiety.

There was plenty of anxiety in these singers yesterday. Almost to a person they apologized for how badly they were about to sing. Many of these kids know me from my work with the Grand Haven musical. My reputation seems to far exceed my actual abilities. So I think some of them may have been a bit intimidated.  The rehearsals were in the choir room and most of them sat around watching like doomed people while I and the vocal teacher worked with each singer.

I did my best to relax each singer and get them to connect to what they were doing musically. Fortunately, the vocal teacher was okay with that. Sometimes people can get a little huffy when the dang piano player starts mentioning musical stuff.

So today is a free day for both Eileen and me.

Herrick Library actually closed due to the blizzard as did Hope College. My church staff meeting was canceled early on last night. Eileen’s library let them out an hour early.  I’m sure Eileen will want to get out and use her new snow shoes today.

I emailed my boss yesterday giving her a heads up that I would like to have a conversation about my professional relationship to my church.  About 18 months ago, I asked my boss to formalize the fact that I am underpaid. I realize that the church can’t really pay me more. But wanted to at least raise the awareness of what church musicians should get paid so that eventually (maybe even after I am not working there) they could address the inequity.

At this time, I gave my boss a very conservative description of how I use my time for Grace. It came out to 24 to 26 hours. I think they consider me half time (20 hrs weekly). My salary last year was 25.2 K.

The American Guild of Organist recommendations for 2010 for someone like myself with a Master’s degree in Sacred Music working 20 hours a week was a Base of 28.8 K – 39.6 k, Benefits should be an added 10.6 K to 14.6 K, totals: 39.5 K to 54.3 K.  The lower range was for “musicians with fewer than five years experience.” Higher amounts were for “those with greater experience.” I surely fall in the latter category. Not to mention that I’m good at what I do. I am just wondering how valuable it is to my boss (who I am convinced appreciates me) and my community (many of whom are very complimentary and supportive).

In addition I have added duties in the last year that were not included in my last figuring like recruiting, composing for and rehearsing an instrumental ensemble.

My proposal to my boss was that we prioritize in importance how she sees my work and lop off some of it. I see my value as primarily a leader of worship, trainer of volunteers and liturgical/professional consultant. But we’ll see how she sees it, I guess.

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LINKS

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PrideSource – Chick-fil-A sponsors anti-gay marriage conference

This is an online article by my nephew, Benjamin Jenkins. I’m very proud!

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Free online PDF converter

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Saw this guy on tv recently. I was very impressed with his grasp of history in relationship to the present time. Here’s a link to the recording of the discussion he participated in.

I’m interested in his book. Link to excerpt.

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And for you conservative types:

I was always loyally opposed to William F. Buckley. I admired him and have read many of his books but objected to many of his crackpot ideas and his racism. James is his brother and is still alive. He sounds more coherent than his deceased younger brother. Here’s a link to recent C-Span appearance which I found fascinating.

Here’s his book, which also looks interesting to me.

I guess I do watch TV, eh?

I broke my morning pattern a bit this morning and started a recipe to feed Eileen today.

The recipe is “Honey Glazed Spiced Pork Tenderloin” from Devin Alexander’s cookbook,  The Most Decadent Diet Ever. I substituted  Pork Shoulder Blade after a bit of research. I bought it on sale and when I froze it, I could tell it was very tender so it should work just fine.

I threw a couple of potatoes in the oven as well. My plan is to get all this done and ready for Eileen to take to work and heat up tonight.

I am booked through her meal break and won’t be able to bring her supper like I usually do. I will be meeting with student vocalists and going through their pieces for Solo and Ensemble. They are also performing these pieces at a recital next Wed evening.  I think the recital is a good idea.

Each student seems to be preparing two pieces. Which means I have twenty accompaniments to prepare. I’m not complaining. I taped the photocopies together and went through about 3/4ths of them yesterday.  There is actually some pretty good music in the selection. Works by Menotti, Schubert, Strauss and Paul Bowles. I am looking forward to this.

After starting my recipe, I sat down to email the members of my piano trio.  We decided to read more of the Haydn piano trios before we settle on which ones we want to learn. Once we have decided, I will research a decent edition of them. I bought Peters editions of Mozart and Mendelssohn Piano Trios and have regretted it. They are dated. I’d like not to make the same mistake with Haydn.

My violinist has also promised to listen to recordings of the Bach violin sonatas and pick one for us to learn if I would email them to her. I thought I had recordings of these but I must have been thinking of the Mozart violin sonatas. So I purchased and downloaded a set of them and am emailing her the first one. Woo hoo! An excuse to buy Bach recordings.

Even though I tried to take yesterday morning off, I found myself pretty busy all day.

Ran some errands for my Mom (got her computer working again and a trip to the Dollar store for her),  and some errands for myself.  Then 2 & 1/2 hours of ballet class. Home to exercise for an hour or so.  The day was over. So I don’t have a ton of links even though I did read online for a while.

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Links

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Weighing the Unknowns in Egypt – NYTimes.com

Good synopsis of the history of the relationship between the Egypt and the US by Ross Douthat

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Milton Babbitt, Composer Who Gloried in Complexity, Dies at 94 – NYTimes.com

Obit of the influential complexity composer who wrote the article “Who Cares if You Listen?” Though influential, I’m afraid he represents an approach to composition that has never interested me all that much, namely the Schoenberg technique.

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A London Salmagundi

This is an interesting web site which describes itself as

“Being a Hotch-pot of gallimaufry of divers things. to which there shall be posted a variety of links, pictures, tweets, videos and other kickshaws. By H. Rutherford author of that much admir’d blog, heraclitean fire, and of the photoblog Clouded Drab. Also including such Thoughts and observations which are to found to be too short for that esteemed organ; and not short enough for twitter.”

The picture above came from it.  A friend of mine emailed me a link to this website. Very cool!

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Read online “True Grit ” by Charles Portis. Instant free e-book download at OnRead.com.

I am seriously planning on purchasing Portis’s book. In the meantime I found this link to it online. I think the whole web site is suspicious. I downloaded it’s proprietary software and found AFTER I did so that there was a charge. I don’t see how they can charge for access to copyrighted material like Portis’s book and still be legal.