I’ve been having tremendous fun this term teaching a course on the history of music criticism at City Lit. We’ve only had four sessions so far, but we’ve already covered some pretty major points for discussion including what should/shouldn’t fall within a reviewer’s domain; whether ad hominem arguments are allowed
If you were watching this website a fortnight ago, you will have come across a post I wrote called ‘Tale Spin’, and the challenges (so-called) of writing a biography for someone like Brahms who, in comparison with some of his wilder contemporaries, did not really live the kind of life
Yesterday afternoon, as I was idly flicking through Twitter, I discovered some photos of Welsh National Opera’s latest print marketing campaign. The blurb draws parallels between well-known musicals, such as Miss Saigon and Rent, and their operatic parallels (both Madam Butterfly and La Bohème feature in WNO’s upcoming season). Some
In 2004, full of trepidation that it wasn’t going to be good enough, I submitted my first paid programme note job to the staff of Lakeside Arts, Nottingham. I was a Masters student at the university there, and they needed someone to write about some of the Bartók string quartets
This week, my last full week of holiday before pushing my nose firmly against the grindstone once again, I seem to have spent a great deal of time watching Disney films. Whilst my brain refuses to retain specific dates of compositions, Bach Verzeichnis numbers, or a whole host of other
Well, here we are in the middle of the summer holidays. There’s time off to go walking, visit new places, watch too much telly, drink beer with friends… and start noticing things you don’t tend to pay much attention to the rest of the time. As I sat on a
For lovers of musical blogs around the internet, the title of this week’s post will probably be ringing a bell already. It is taken from a series of articles on the site On An Overgrown Path written by Bob Shingleton, who has recently been part of an exchange with Joyce
Categorization. We humans love it. We have constructed endless words – nay, entire vocabularies – to classify groups of everything from mildew and tree moss to stamp collectors and bee keepers. Categories allow us to track general trends, whether they be historical (for example, popular opinions via certain newspaper columns)
A couple of days ago, on my way to the British Library, I bumped into a friend who asked me what I was currently working on. Enthusiastic, as usual, to share stories about recent projects, I began reeling off some of the jobs currently on my to-do list: CD notes
Last week, I had the pleasure of attending my second conference of the year in sunny Antwerp. But following my voyage to Toronto back in June, this was a conference of a different hue: it was the annual conference of IAML, the International Association of Music Libraries, Archives and Documentation
