“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 toContinue reading “Sontag’s Against Interpretation and Musical Analysis”
Tag Archives: Analysis
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 asContinue reading “Mahler’s Ninth: Preliminaries”
Continuous Variations 