In My Dreams

I keep thinking about this self-indulgent course I want to teach, all European music. My Advanced Analysis seminars usually encompass three pieces from different historical periods, analyzed in depth. And I desperately want to teach one based around the unfinished fugue from Bach’s The Art of Fugue; Ferruccio Busoni’s Fantasia Contrappuntistica, which is based on that Bach fugue; and Kaikhosru Sorabji’s five-hour Opus Clavicembalisticum, which also uses the same fugue theme and is heavily indebted to Busoni. I figure I’d probably attract one student, if I taught it in a year in which I had one student who was totally devoted to me. And he’d probably drop it.