After observing things for months, and thinking it doesn’t really look like the sort of ideal place to promote music on, I decided to give the MySpace Music pages a try. So now I have a space and an assorted bunch of so called “friends” — a mix of personal friends, musicians I have heard or heard about before, and some complete strangers.
Monthly Archives: August 2006
Happiness is a pair of red shoes at a funeral
Har läst många av Karin Thunbergs krönikor och intervjuer i Svenska Dagbladet, och funderat över hur hon ser på sin roll som journalist och sig själv. Inte bara hon förresten, det finns idag många som skildrar verkligheten och debatterar dagsfrågor och livet genom att berätta om sina personliga erfarenheter. Så har hon tydligen kommit ut med en bok nu, som är ännu mera om henne själv. I en intervju härom dagen avslöjas att hon egentligen inte ville avslöja att hon haft cancer två gånger, men att det till slut var det som gjorde boken hon planerade att skriva meningsfull. Det kan inte bara handla om lycka.
Web Log
Today (or yesterday) I have looked at these web pages:
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Att lära sig lyssna på Bartok, och andra tankar om kultur, av Stefan Johansson.
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Composer Jane Gardner.
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Music publishing at SibeliusMusic.
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An article about will power, self-discipline, and “moral muscles”.
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“No matter how often the commercial cart is put before the horse of art, the noble steed is never going to water-ski.”
“Monotony, like pain, is endurable in short doses. Stretched over two CDs lasting two and a half hours, it arouses dangerous emotions in those who last the course – an irresistible urge to strangle the ‘concept developers’, having first held the heads of each and every one of the composers under water until they promise to write nothing but atonal sonatas and musical sudokus for the rest of their ingratiating lives.”
(from the latest Lebrecht article.
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some pages with info about the movie “Tara Road”:
http://www.cinefacts.de/kino/db/filmdetails.php?id=22453&ab=101
http://www.critic.de/index.pl?aktion=kritik&id=392
http://imdb.com/title/tt0429153/usercomments
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Music for peace? War questions musical meaning?
[From a recent list discussion about music, war and peace. The anonymous writer of the quoted passage — that is, I can’t remember the name of the list member who posted it, and I don’t think it was relevant to mention even if I knew it — was just one among many who posted their thoughts and supplied facts about experiences from “peace missions” with music making among people in countries and regions suffering from wars and conflicts:]
Though not an expert in this area, I wish to add that one of the things that war does to students and scholars of music is that it questions the relevance, meaning, and limitations of their/our practice.
I’m sorry to be harsh, but perspectives — and experiences — like these are painfully common: why does it take a war to get us to “question the relevance, meaning, and limitations of their/our practice”? If we don’t know what we’re doing, what its relevance is, what it means to our societies, to our fellow human beings — if we cannot address these crucial questions in the luxurious calm of peace, it will be far too late in wartime. It is what we must do, and not await catastrophe as a stimulus.
(listen to this mp3 — a demo version of Undiminished Hope, an original tune by MWM, now arranged for jazz quintet.)