In case you don't know it, Stephen Soderberg's blog Essays & Endnotes is one of the best things going of late, if you have an interest in the some of the possible relationships between notes and numbers. Steven shares my enthusiasm for perfect shuffles, but takes it well into mathematical territory outside my modest expertise. Ultimately, this is all about how the workings of simple systems can create lively music. Recommended for people who like the music of Babbitt or Krenek, but also those who like that of Tom Johnson. Stephen is on a small break from blogging at the moment, so it's a perfect opportunity to catch up with some very long threads.
Also this: the second part of Franklin Cox's virtuoso take-down of Taruskin's is now online at the Search Journal for New Music and Culture. While I have a handful of tiny quibbles (i.e. I can't quite agree to identify Benjamin Boretz as a "formalist" (a point which is somewhat ironic in this context, given Boretz's very explicit turn from a formalist program, culminating perhaps with the treatment of Sleeping Beauty in his Meta-Variations), I think Cox is very solid here in his criticsm of Taruskin on both matters of musicological evidence and opinion.
No comments:
Post a Comment