This is Post 1500!!

I started this blog on June 5, 2011 and at that time had no idea how it would unfold or even that I would get to the point of having put up 1500 posts. My models were more political blogs like Instapundit or Ann Althouse who put up several or even dozens of posts a day. However, their focus was largely topical while mine has turned out to be more contextual. I don't know if that is the right juxtaposition. Instead of writing about the musical news of the day, I tend to focus on important repertoire, aesthetic principles, interesting theoretical ideas, music history and occasional critiques of musical coverage in the mass media with a little discussion of non-classical music from time to time. I just write about what I think is interesting and important and, frankly, most news of the day, like album sales or who won a Grammy or who resigned over what scandal or who was appointed director of what, just doesn't seem that interesting or important to me.

I have found the growth in traffic over the three and half years to be very gratifying. In the beginning I got just a few hundred visitors a month. Now it ranges between 15,000 and 18,000. It fluctuates from month to month, but the overall trend is strongly upward. I wonder sometimes how much traffic is actually visits by web robots, but I don't know how to subtract that out.

I am also gratified by the quality of commentary. I have had a number of scholarly experts weigh in from time to time and had visits by music critics from the West and East coasts (of the US). Composers also visit my blog including Pulitzer-prizewinner Jennifer Higdon. In all this time and with thousands of comments I have only had to delete one, which was both obscene and insulting. The others have been, on the whole, very respectful and worthwhile. I think that is an exception on the Internet!

So, this has been a fulfilling and exciting project that I intend to continue. After all, I have all those concerto posts to do!

I want to thank you all for reading the blog and for leaving comments and I hope you and many others will keep on doing so.

In the beginning I had so many things to say, never having had an outlet like this before, that I posted a lot. In the second month I put up 73 posts. Alas, I am busier now than I was then, and I have less absolute time to devote to the blog. Also, there are fewer posts insisting on being written now. I may not get up one every day. What has happened here is that instead of being the kind of blog that does a lot of link-oriented posts every day, I tend to write longer (up to a 1000 words) posts and more substantive ones. These take a lot longer to write. A typical post on a symphony or concerto, even though it may only introduce the piece and just do a sketchy analysis of one movement, can easily take two or three hours. So I can't do that every day! But I will do as often as I can.

My musical envoi for today is Hilary Hahn, violin, and Natalie Zhu, piano, playing the Violin Sonata No 18 in G major, K 301 by some dead white guy: