Writing about Music

I was over at Ann Althouse's blog just now and she had a post up about Colette, Georges Simenon and advice about writing. Althouse has been on a bit of a crusade lately after reading an essay by philosopher Harry Frankfurt on bullshit. Yes, he comes right out and says it, no dancing around the word! Anyway, Ann put up an interesting link to a site that purports to judge "how much bullshit hides in your text." The BlaBlaMeter. Well, I couldn't resist, so I pasted in the first two paragraphs of my last post into the BlaBlaMeter and here was the result:

Bullshit Index :0.05

Your text shows no or marginal indications of 'bullshit'-English.

So you can rest easy: even though I am talking about a very enigmatic art form, music, I'm not shining you on. Just the facts, ma'am. Oh, and some very opinionated opinions, but supported by facts. Or pretty much...

To round off this low-content post, let me put up some lovely music that I was just listening to: Dichterliebe by Robert Schumann sung, in his Salzburg debut recital in 1956, by Dietrich Fischer-Dieskau. Notice, among other things, the amazing harmonic ambiguity of the first song. Supposedly in F# minor, but with cadences on A and D and ending--ending!--with a C# dominant seventh chord...