Tuesday, December 24, 2019

Best Music Salon Posts of the Year

For those of you, you know who you are, who have not diligently read every post. Here is the best post, in my somewhat biased view, from each month:

  • January: The General and the Specific in which I do an analysis of music aesthetics from the point of view of the Platonic theory of Forms. No, really!
  • February: Five Kinds of Vibrato in which I discuss how vibrato is produced on string instruments, especially on my instrument, the guitar.
  • March: Lots of possibilities this month, but I am going to choose this one on Aleatoric vs Improvised Music which is really just about definitions, but has some interesting musical examples.
  • April: I discovered Jean Rondeau, harpsichord and there are several clips to enjoy.
  • May: Saw a post on What I Owe to Bach with, again, some nice clips.
  • June: This month I did some posts on Luigi Nono, but didn't keep going for very long. Here are two: Introducing Luigi Nono and Nono the Venetian.
  • July: Here is a rather nice Friday Miscellanea that is probably as interesting as anything I posted in July.
  • August was my Salzburg excursion so there are lots of posts about concerts and food and so on. Here are a couple: Tourist Day: the Hohensalzburg Fortress with lots of photos and Igor Levit, Haus Für Mozart. The Haus Für Mozart is a medium-sized concert hall right next to the Grosse Festspielhaus.
  • September: The longest and certainly the most involved post this month was one on a French sociologist who wrote a lot about culture: Was Pierre Bourdieu Right About Taste?
  • October: Among a lot of pretty decent posts I think the one on Variations stood out.
  • November: One of the most enjoyable events for me this month was giving a talk on my compositions for a small group of people in a house in the country: Talk on Composition
  • December: I finally posted the recording of my piece for violin and guitar, "Dark Dream" with a bit of an introduction: "Dark Dream" (2018) for violin and guitar
And that was 2019. Fewer posts than in previous years, but some good ones perhaps worth a re-read. And for an envoi, here is Igor Levit playing the Piano Sonata no. 30 in E major, Op.109 by Beethoven which I will hear at the Salzburg Festival this coming August where Levit will play all the Beethoven piano sonatas in a series of concerts.


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