According to their manifesto, Bleep Blop, a Boston-based electroacoustic new music ensemble, “collaborates with sound designers, artists and composers to develop new music and visual arts, and is committed to the merging of acoustic performers and live electronics, resulting in an overhaul of the concert experience.” They also promote interactions with their audiences. Their 8:00 [...]
Sound Icon: Carter at B.U.
Mar 25th, 2013
It has been two years since the Boston based sinfonietta ensemble, Sound Icon, made its debut. Since then the ensemble has garnered a reputation both for challenging the status quo and blurring the boundaries between the intimacy of the chamber and the formality of the concert hall. On Saturday night, in the crisp and vibrant [...]
Van Halen and Developing Variation
Mar 3rd, 2013
It is always delightfully surprising to recognize serious compositional processes applied in ridiculous popular music contexts. For example, how about the 80s “sweat brothers” Van Halen applying the process which Schoenberg so loved in Mozart’s K. 465–liquidation. Actually, it is liquidation actualized across two fragmented statements of a primary theme, given here: Overall the complete [...]
Victor!
Jan 28th, 2013
Hello dear tireless, fearless reader! I’ve missed you. Things have been crazy here, but okay. In any case, I had a really good day teaching and I thought I’d blog about it. The highlight came in my (History of the) Fugue class. Well, there wasn’t a specific highlight, but I thought that it was fun, [...]
The Face Was Too Brief
Sep 1st, 2012
On August 31st, the Firebird Ensemble presented the Boston premiere of Donald Crockett’s new chamber opera The Face in concert performance at the Boston Conservatory Theater. David St. John, the librettist, derived the opera’s 11 scenes from his own “novella in verse” of the same title, which he overtly characterized as “a classical Faustian story.” In an [...]
Poor Emily White
Jun 20th, 2012
Did anyone read Emily White’s blog post? It’s not about downloading music illegally, and the trichordist’s post is terribly unfair–this David Lowery guy attributes not one, but two suicides directly to her despite the fact that she states that she actually paid for most of her 11,000 songs. (Depressed people commit suicide because they are [...]
Nihil Novi
Jun 16th, 2012
In the media, in popular music, on the television, there seems to be an ongoing resurgence of the Romantic movement in English speaking culture, a resurgence that has manifested itself in many ways across the culture. Take, for instance, the new television show Grimm. Beside revamping the tales of the famous lexicographing brothers, it borrows, in [...]
Appoggiature
Mar 13th, 2012
Oddly enough, there’s been a great big to-do going on around the web about the Appoggiatura. I suppose folks wanted to use a fancy word for what they are hearing in the music, and the debate is basically whether they used the correct word. First, let’s get a good clear (albeit dry and heartless) definition: “A [...]
- Music theory & composition in wiki Academic Careers May 25, 2013MUSIC THEORY/COMPOSITION JOBS 2013-14 $(function() { buildToC({container:$('#toc'),flat:false,max:100,depth:5,plain:false,title:"Contents"}) }) Archive of 12-13 theory/comp job wiki Archive of 11-12 theory/comp job wiki Archive of 10-11 theory/comp job wiki Archive of 09-10 theory/comp job wiki Archive of 08-09 theory/comp job wiki CMS Mu […]
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