Another Blog

Bob Kosovsky, the curator for rare books in the music division at the New York Public Library for the Performing Arts, has a newish blog, and it is fascinating! Especially for those of us into book porn and historical trivia. Check it out.

Here Comes the Musicologist

Okay people. Nobody helped me out with my Sopranos question. But now I have a real live musicological question that I desperately need an answer to. I suspect this will be a more popular question, because it strikes at the psychological core of why we are all musicologists in the first place: choosing music and forcing people to listen to it.

So: if one were, hypothetically speaking, getting married in four short weeks, for one's ceremony one would need a processional. If, hypothetically, the groom was a musicologist, there would be certain expectations placed on this music. One could not, for instance, use certain tunes by Wagner or Mendelssohn, or anything having to do with Handel. What music should this hypothetical disorganized groom/musicologist choose?

I should note this has already been discussed in the small but brilliant musicological blogosphere, and I probably should have been paying more attention at the time. But I have an important caveat to the above question that nixed all the answers that crowd gave: I work on twentieth-century American music. I'm not expecting to force the crowd to listen to dissertation music, because although the opening to Sonatas and Interludes has a certain arresting, fanfare-like quality, I think the organist at the church might object to the concept of a "prepared organ." However, I see no reason why there should not be a piece of twentieth- or twenty-first century organ music out there that might do the job. No offense to the canon, but that's not my bag. Spiky dissonance, sordid subject matter, crunchy textures, that's fine, but you can leave your German Idealism at home. Ideally should be playable on an organ.

Solve my problem!

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Do you live in Los Angeles? Are you free tonight? My friend and colleague Elizabeth Morgan is doing an important recital tonight, featuring works from Jane Austen's musical notebooks being played on an 1813 Broadwood. It's at 8:00 pm in the rotunda of the UCLA library, and is free and awesome. All you need to know is that it ends with an earth-shattering performance of Kotzwara's Battle of Prague, which can only be truly appreciated live. If you miss the concert, her Prague will hopefully be put up on YouTube shortly.