Month: October 2013

Carry high the Blue and Gold


Attention, upper Midwesterners: I am pleased and flattered to be part of this year’s Chippewa Valley Book Festival, which will find me at the L. E. Phillips Memorial Public Library in Eau Claire, Wisconsin, this coming Monday, October 14 at 7:00 PM. I will be talking, of course, about the only book I have managed to write, which means some far-flung Beethovenian tangents. Fun for all ages! Unless the subject of the Minnesota Orchestra Association comes up, in which case the fun will rapidly turn NC-17 (language).

The Eau Claire Bears! I do hope to make a pilgrimage to Carson Park, in honored memory of Andy Pafko.

Doric, Ionic, Corinthian

Score: Mauricio Kagel’s elegant sabotage.
Boston Globe, October 12, 2013.

I know I’ve been terrible about linking to my various writings in this space, but this “Score” column is something that’s been going on for a few months now: the Globe lets me do a calendrical riff on something each week: a concert, an anniversary, a piece of repertoire. The list so far:

October 5: Jehan Alain and the Battle of Saumur
September 28: Carlo Gozzi and The Love for Three Oranges
September 21: The Legendary Pink Dots and the theology of psychedelia
September 14: Henry Brant’s 100th
August 31: Frederic Fradkin and the Boston Symphony Orchestra’s one and only strike
August 24: Duck That! and other musical birdcalls
August 17: Alfred Hitchcock’s Waltzes from Vienna
August 10: Joseph Schuster and other mistaken identities
July 27: The precarious political life of Cardinal Francesco Barbarini
July 13: John Jacob Astor, piano salesman
July 6: The Lyricon and its adherents
June 29: Francis Hopkinson, revolutionary and composer
June 22: The Pythian Games and the birth of music competitions
June 16: Early music connecting Boston and Bloomsday
June 8: John Cage’s Variations III
June 1: The Bach family, for multiple hands
May 27: Erich Wolfgang Korngold’s Hollywood moment
May 23: K. 550 and a Bollywood pioneer