Last book episode till fall

I'm happy to announce the ninth episode of the new version of my book on the future of classical music, online right now. In it you'll find some delightful details of performance practice in the past. Or maybe a better term would be performance non-practiced, since what I'm talking about is improvisation, which should sound spontaneous, rather than practiced (no matter how much work went into it). Here I'm continuing my portrait of classical music before the concept of classical music existed, and one key difference between then and now is that performers improvised -- they changed the notes the composers wrote, sometimes drastically. And that's what the composers and audience expected. It's fascinating that musicologists know about this (what I'm reporting is hardly my discovery), but even so, we rarely hear performances that show anywhere near the amount of improvisation common before the 19th century (and, in Italian opera, well into it).

You'll see that I've used musical notation in this episode, once very briefly, and the other time. ...well, check it out. The notation is so vivid that you don't need to read music to know what's going on.

As I've said, this is the last episode until September. I need some time off, and I'm beginning a badly-needed vacation at the start of July. In August I'm likely to take some of the material I've written for this book, and work at improving it.

On another note, I again want to mention the debate that went on in my blog about Allan Kozinn's brave and controversial piece in The New York Times. After I ventured a disagreement, Allan wrote a comment, understandably defending himself. This developed into quite a wonderful discussion, very civilized, focusing on issues, not personalities, with comments from many, many people, including some notable figures in the classical music business. Some of these people had to post anonymously, since they're not authorized to speak for their institutions. But two were happy to post openly: Joe Kluger, who used to run the Philadelphia Orchestra, and Klaus Heymann, the founder and CEO of Naxos. This, I'm proud to believe, is one of the rare debates that actually illuminates its subject.