A transcript of my spoken remarks at Boston University last week, as part of a symposium on piano sonatas by Beethoven. “I’d like to talk about what I would call anomalies in my own reception of Beethoven’s piano sonatas. “I can certainly remember -- as I’m sure many of you can remember -- a time when I first played through a piano sonata by Beethoven from beginning to end, in a kind of performance. It was in my living room, I think I was … [Read more...]
Other Planets
Recurring patterns of signification in music -- topoi. The grand unfolding of time and space represented by a steady repeated-pitch ostinato with slow-motion harmonic change around it, found at the opening of Haydn's Creation, for example. (Haydn could have had a career in sci-fi futurism...) I heard a pianist play through Debussy's prelude "...La terrasses des audiences du clair de lune." Near the end, there's an anomalous passage that … [Read more...]