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PostClassic

Kyle Gann on music after the fact

Well, Damn If It Ain’t Sort of Blue After All

Ba da da da dum (bum, bum – bum, bum):

Danubephoto.jpg
In case you didn’t get the onomatopoeia, that’s the blue, or grayish-blue, Danube. It begins at Donaueschingen (“fount of the Danube”) in Germany, and, unusually for a European river (they mostly flow north or south), flows eastward into the Black Sea. In the 1770s, ur-musicologist Charles Burney sailed down it to document musical activity in eastern Europe. Me, I’m currently lecturing at the University of the Arts of Belgrade. Half of the students I’ve met are doing projects in American music (Gershwin, Weill, Glass), and I have to assume with them a more detailed level of knowledge than I do with my American students. On the left, in front of her school, is my sponsor, Professor Dragana Stojanovic-Novicic, a Nancarrow/Ligeti/Carter expert:
UniversityBelgrade.jpg
The school is across the street from this park:
Park.jpg
Beograd means “white city,” and there must be some kind of zoning laws to keep it that way:
Beograd.jpg
The National Museum is on the left here, the National Theater on the right, and a statue of 19th-century Serbian Prince Mihailo Obrenovic:
Museum.jpg
There’s a wonderful fortress and park where the Sava and Danube rivers flow together. Because of its strategic position, the city of Belgrade has been involved in 115 wars over the centuries, and razed to the ground 44 times, which explains to me why the drivers (I’ve been driving here) are so nervous and aggressive:
Fortress.jpg
I love the way Serbians transliterate foreign names into their own language as we used to do, so that tabloids write about Dzordz Kluni (George Clooney), Sandre Bulok, and Meril Strip. (Mine would be Kajl Gen.) And it extends to scholarly publications about rock stars as well, as one can see in this biography of – can you guess the singer (name at the bottom, Dz being their letter for “J”)?:
Joplin.jpg\
The paprika-packed Serbian meatballs are to die for. I’ve learned to say “Zelio bih casu viskija sa ledom, molim?” (“Can I get a whiskey on the rocks, please?”), and aside from that and a couple of legal Cuban cigars, what else do I need?

What’s going on here

So classical music is dead, they say. Well, well. This blog will set out to consider that dubious factoid with equanimity, if not downright enthusiasm [More]

Kyle Gann's Home Page More than you ever wanted to know about me at www.kylegann.com

PostClassic Radio The radio station that goes with the blog, all postclassical music, all the time; see the playlist at kylegann.com.

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Sites to See

American Mavericks - the Minnesota Public radio program about American music (scripted by Kyle Gann with Tom Voegeli)

Kalvos & Damian's New Music Bazaar - a cornucopia of music, interviews, information by, with, and on hundreds of intriguing composers who are not the Usual Suspects

Iridian Radio - an intelligently mellow new-music station

New Music Box - the premiere site for keeping up with what American composers are doing and thinking

The Rest Is Noise - The fine blog of critic Alex Ross

William Duckworth's Cathedral - the first interactive web composition and home page of a great postminimalist composer

Mikel Rouse's Home Page - the greatest opera composer of my generation

Eve Beglarian's Home Page- great Downtown composer

David Doty's Just Intonation site

Erling Wold's Web Site - a fine San Francisco composer of deceptively simple-seeming music, and a model web site

The Dane Rudhyar Archive - the complete site for the music, poetry, painting, and ideas of a greatly underrated composer who became America's greatest astrologer

Utopian Turtletop, John Shaw's thoughtful blog about new music and other issues

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