The following interview was omitted for reasons of space from a collection of extended interviews with musicians Bálint András Varga, From Boulanger to Stockhausen (University of Rochester Press, 2013). We are delighted to be able to reprint it in English for the first time here. I met the great… Read More
by Bonnie Gordon The online community of the American Musicological Society is currently exploding around a post by Pierpaolo Polzonetti called “Don Giovanni Goes to Prison.” The post, about teaching opera in prison, sparked both harsh criticism of Polzonetti’s efforts… Read More
by William Cheng Audre Lorde (1934-1992) “Each of us is more than the worst thing we’ve ever done.” – Bryan Stevenson (on working with the incarcerated), Just Mercy: A Story of Justice and RedemptionFast and furious reactions to Pierpaolo Polzonetti’s… Read More
Editorial Update: Comments for this Post are Now Closed. Please continue the conversation on social media, or in the posts elaborating on these issues by William Cheng and Bonnie Gordon. — 22 Feb. 2016 8:15 AM EST 2022 Editorial Update: With the… Read More
By Mackenzie Pierce Sound decays. Once its vibrations drop below the audible capacity of the human ear, it survives only as memory, trace, or reproduction. The history of this physical reality, however, leads in no singular direction: today it takes me to France in 1833, where… Read More
By Katelijne Schiltz What has one eye but cannot see? Yes, I confess: this is a silly riddle, and its solution—a needle—is rather trivial. But we somehow feel attracted to it nevertheless, because it is a little game. When we don’t know the solution, what do we do? We start… Read More
by Martha Feldman In 2014-15 the faculty in the Department of Music at the University of Chicago where I teach decided to boil its eight graduate proseminars in music history down to four. Given the changed critical orientations and demographics of the field, the time seemed right. The three chronologically… Read More
The editors of Grove Music are inviting submissions to their third Spoof Article Contest: more information can be found at Anna-Lise Santella’s announcement here at the OUP blog. Calling all comedian-musicologists out there!… Read More
by Robert W. Eshbach John Singer Sargent, portrait of Joachim.Art Gallery of Ontario Toronto Joseph Joachim is widely acknowledged to have been one of the most important musicians of the long 19th century. A Hungarian Jew, he rose… Read More
We here at MN thought our readers would like to know that AMS Member William Cheng recently appeared on the Washington Post’s blog PostEverything, with a post “I’m a musician who can’t play music anymore. I feel like I’m… Read More