Recently in Madrid I stood for a while in front of Picasso’s Guernica, trying to explain it to Mozart. I often speak to my biographical subjects while I’m writing about them. A while back I spent some time imagining playing Louis Armstrong recordings for Brahms. I felt sure he would catch on and like it. … Continue reading “PICASSO AND THE 18TH CENTURY”
Both as a composer and writer I’ve been pretty lucky with reviews. Both my endeavors are on the one hand deeply absorbing, on the other hand perfectly idiotic ways to try to make a living. For all the misery involved in my so-called jobs, however, my reviews and my reception on Amazon and the like … Continue reading “A SORE POINT REGARDING SCHOLARSHIP”
These days everybody’s a genius: genius soccer players, genius cooks, genius recipes, genius pornstars, what have you. In other words, it’s a much-degraded word and some have suggested retiring it. But however hackneyed, romanticized, and vaporous the idea is, I suggest that genius is real all the same. Here are some thoughts about it. I’ll … Continue reading “THIS GENIUS THING”
We learn about life and love and art all our lives, in ways expected and unexpected. Here I want to talk about the unexpected revelations, great or small, that hit us when we think we’re doing something else. In downtimes on the set the movie actor Cary Grant used to prowl around tinkering with things: … Continue reading “Epiphanies in Strange Places”
JAN SWAFFORD: A NEW ENGLAND HIKER’S JOURNAL In August, 1970, a friend and I sat watching the sunset from the summit of Mount Liberty in New Hampshire’s White Mountains. As of that evening, I had never in my life been so dirty and so exhausted. My shorts were too tight, boots too small, shirt too … Continue reading “Entries from my first hiking journal, and a postscript.”
JAN SWAFFORD– IN MEMORIAM: GANDY (ca. 1984) I first set eyes on Gandy Brodie on a blustery day in November, as I was driving to my schoolteaching job in Vermont. There he was, hanging his thumb beside the road at West Townsend. I pulled over automatically – hitching was the only form of public transportation … Continue reading “This is a piece I wrote in the middle of the 80s and thought, sadly, I’d lost. But it turned up and I’m posting it here. Another of my orphans.”
STORY – from a dream 11/088 ON THE WAY TO THE GAME One, two, three. One, two, three. Okay, let’s check it. All right, it’s recording. Okay, I, uh… I hope this little recorder holds up for a while because I’ve got some things to say before … Wait, is that a … No. Whew. … Continue reading “Story”
TALK ON MUSICAL BIOGRAPHY FIRST GIVEN AT TUFTS, JANUARY 2006: “LISTENING TO YOUR SUBJECT.” Let me start with a quick tour of what I think I’m doing as a biographer and why, then get to what I can of the how. I’m a composer who writes scholarly biographies of composers aimed at a wide audience. … Continue reading “About Musical Biography”
I’m a longtime fan of the movie The Sweet Smell of Success, but my admiration has redoubled after seeing it for the first time in a theater. Appropriately, it was the venerable Brattle St. arthouse in Harvard Sq, where the Bogart revival began in the 50s and Bergman got his American foothold. I’ve been … Continue reading “THE SWEET SLIME OF CURTIS AND LANCASTER”
[The below was written for my new intro to music for Basic Books, due to come out later this year as best I can tell. I’m posting my original essays here because most of this material was cut from the book.] When I used to teach classes in musical analysis I insisted that my … Continue reading “EXPRESSION AND EMOTION IN MUSIC”