Conductor's Notebook
Writings, including academic papers and music criticism, as well as videos, audio, notes, and other content.
Viewing entries tagged
Bernstein
I have always appreciated Kyle Gann’s website for its resources for Florence Price’s Symphony No. 3. Recently, I took time to investigate some of the other resources he freely provides, including his own compositions, as well as links to his many books and albums. Among the resources on the site is a terrific “Chronology of the Symphony: 1730-2019,” listing years and major symphonies composed and/or premiered that year.
How do you start a new music ensemble from scratch? I don't pretend to have all the answers but I enjoyed contributing my "piece of the map" to the conversation.
Originally published in Baltimore:
It’s hard to believe that just a year ago, all of Baltimore waited with anticipation for the exciting inauguration of the festival called Light City. We wondered: What would this “light art” look like? Would the weather cooperate? Would the tourists show up? No one knew for sure, but everyone could feel the energy crackling.
Leonard Bernstein's Norton Lecture Series of 1973 has played a critical role in helping to define a particular landscape of thought which might be best described by Bernstein’s own (admittedly nonacademic) term, "musico-linguistics". While not a formal discipline, the term characterizes and encompasses the body of thought upon which he speculates in six multi-hour lectures at Harvard.
