I just about missed it, but yesterday, June 5, was the tenth anniversary of the very first post on this blog:
https://themusicsalon.blogspot.com/2011/06/welcome.html
It has been almost an unalloyed pleasure the whole time. In the beginning I did a lot more posts than I do now as I got much of what I had to say out of my system. Now I am discovering that I do still have things to say and I am continually discovering new ones. From the beginning and more so over time, I have been blessed with kind and intelligent commentators who have made great contributions. These have included not only music lovers and musical amateurs but also private scholars, musicians and composers, music critics and even professors of music. One high point that I felt very humbled by was a comment from Richard Taruskin, the dean of musicologists. I have learned a great deal from the experience and have found it very fulfilling.
Thanks to you all.
This is a song I wrote a bit before I started this blog. It is from a set of twelve songs, all setting well-known poems. This is "Nuits de Juin" by Victor Hugo, in the original French.
This is also the 3,308th post on the blog.
11 comments:
10 years of blogging is a great achievement! Congratulations Bryan. Your posts are a regular feature of my on-line time and they never disappoint. Thanks for your commitment to music and music appreciation.
Congratulations Bryan on your 10th Jubilee as my favorite blogger! I often read and run, "too busy" to comment because your thoughtful and sometimes even deep posts deserve well-considered replies, and often I don't think I could add much but I definitely take much with me as I go. THANK YOU!
And your soprano sings beautifully, to your tasteful accompaniment. I have your "4 Pieces for Violin and Guitar" burned to CD (too hard for my rudimentary violin skills). I look forward to your next album, I take inspiration from you very much!
Thanks so much, David and Will. I really appreciate your support!
The 10th anniversary is a nice marker as such but I think the main achievement of the blog has been maintaining a substantive and varied discussion and exposition without getting overly technical. Not an easy balance to maintain. As I noted a while back, the reader should take a look at the earlier years' threads once in awhile since the standard of the writing is as excellent as recent years, some topics haven't been revisited that much and the commentators were different. In some cases I provided a comment in these older threads but that was years later. All the best.
Thanks Maury! Yes, the back catalogue is pretty large and there were some pretty great comment threads. I have thought of taking a selection of the more successful posts and turning them into an e-book, but the technical and editing challenges have stymied me so far. I just have too much else on my plate.
It's a great achievement! Whenever I'm exploring some new musical subject I always go through The Music Salon archives and seldom fail to find something relevant and enriching, such is the breadth and quality of the blog. For example recently I've been listening to a lot of Chopin, and even playing (by way of Tarrega) some of it on guitar. And inevitably I discovered your Chopin posts, which are wonderful. There were excellent introductions to various works, ideas about rubato, form, Chopin's position in the history of music etc.
Thanks so much Steven! The Chopin posts came about because I was asked to give some pre-concert talks during a season when a lot of Chopin was being played so I had to give myself a graduate seminar on him.
I would like to concur with all the previous comments, your blog is very enriching and I quite often peruse posts from previous years. Congratulations Bryan, and long may it continue!
Congratulations on a happy milestone! I've been a regular reader for years. This is the most consistently interesting music blog that I know of. Keep up the great work!
A warm thanks to you, Marc and Craig. I'm very grateful for your kind words and I look forward to many more years of posting to this blog.
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