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PostClassic

Kyle Gann on music after the fact

Redeeming Juvenilia

[Back from Serbia after a 24-hour door-to-door trip in which my plane made an unscheduled stop in Canada because a woman passenger had a seizure and needed medical attention. It was a classic “Is there a doctor on the plane?” situation out of a movie I don’t want to see again.]

One minor note about the video that accompanies Frank Oteri’s interview with me at New Music Box: The video is framed by passages (and even the score) of my first microtonal piece, Superparticular Woman, from 1992. This is one of those pieces I never play for anyone, won’t put on a CD, and whose cheesy MIDI version makes me wince. I don’t really believe in disowning works, or I’d disown this one. (I do think its sole virtue, though, is that its voice-leading within the tuning structure is rather elegant.) But Frank has, among other things, a genius for appreciating pieces most would scorn (years ago his favorite piece of mine was Ghost Town, which I also soft-pedal). And I have to admit, as intro/outro music, I think Superparticular Woman has finally found its niche. I wouldn’t play it on a concert, but I could hear it as an ironic, intrinsically humorous logo tune for some NPR bit like “All Things Considered.” You need more of an ear for media than I have to make a call like that.

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.

Recent archives for this blog

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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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