Music... medieval to modern

This is a place for me to collect some thoughts together, and present an ongoing series. As opposed to the reference-oriented pages which form the bulk of this site, this section will tackle some of the underlying issues in a less dispassionate way. It is also a chance to commit some ideas to writing with a date attached, and not to continue modifying them as new information becomes available, making it an opportunity to look foolish as well.

While inspiration and points of reference will come from Early Music, World Music, anything in between or beyond, the freedom of format will lend itself to unifying some of these ideas and indeed injecting them into what is a thoroughly modern act of creation. So many of my ideas on this music are conditioned by a desire to inject it into contemporary composition, yet I find the sheer volume of musical information in need of absorption and integration to be prohibitive.

If that seems a dreary pronouncement, there is also no doubt in my mind that time will cure these problems, especially as other fine music roots itself more firmly in our classical musical culture. What is to be done then is to divest the inauthentic from the authentic, where the word is to take on its real meaning, rather than any designation of superficial technique. In that sense, criticism is even more pronounced in its importance. In the early editorials, I will write in more general terms, and then build on many of the issues raised as the series progresses.

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One thing I've done with this site is try to set it up in a familiar way for someone seeking to read a regular editorial column, newspaper style. This is one of the new uses of the Internet and I think a pleasant one. There is also an archive, a very substantial one at this point.

What I ask is that all readers explicitly subscribe, and I hope you will be understanding in that. There is a form setup to do this easily online, and hopefully it will be completely painless. Subscribe now. There is no fee.

I hope you find something of interest here.