Tag: Analysis
-
George Lewis, Improvisation, and the Rhizome
This is the written portion of a presentation by the same name I gave at the College Music Society‘s Northwest Chapter conference. George Lewis is one of the most significant composers in the world of computer music and improvisation. Beginning his musical career as a trombonist with the AACM (American Association of Creative Musicians) on…
-
Sontag’s Against Interpretation and Musical Analysis
“We have an obligation to overthrow any means of defending and justifying art which becomes particularly obtuse or onerous or insensitive to contemporary needs and practice.” — Susan Sontag, Against Interpretation My current analytical project (if I can be presumptuous for a moment) is based around understanding three pieces of music, which I consider to…
-
Mahler’s Ninth: Preliminaries
Since I first watched that clip of Leonard Bernstein delivering a gorgeous monologue about Mahler’s Ninth Symphony, I’ve wondered about the nature of influence in this case: do I love this piece just because old Lennie convinced me that it was more profound than it really is? Or is the piece actually as brilliant as…
Continuous Variations 