A helpful reader with a fake e-mail address has written in to accuse me of “writing myself into history” by including myself in the discussion of totalist music in my previous post. Lest there be any further confusion: This is my own personal blog, which I am not paid to write. While I do not knowingly publish falsehoods here, I may sometimes cast myself in a favorable light. The blog is not intended to replace scholarly musical reference works. If you would like to read scholarly accounts of the totalist movement that make no reference to me, I recommend the ones I have written in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart, in my book American Music in the 20th Century, and in the final chapter of Wiley Hitchcock’s Music in the United States. These are all intended to be objective and historically factual. Remember, kids, don’t rely on blogs as research for your homework.
Oh, and while I’m at it, be warned: Sometimes on Postclassic Radio, I play my own music. I wouldn’t want anyone to be surprised and feel shystered.
Meanwhile, Samuel Vriezen, who names a couple of Dutch composers who work with totalist rhythmic ideas, himself included – I hope our anonymous friend doesn’t mind Sam mentioning himself – has come up with an alternative name for the movement: Metametrics! Metametric music, metametric music…. I like it! Sounds steely and machine-cut.