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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 5h

Another great composer anecdote from Ann McCutchan’s “The Muse That Sings: Composers Speak About the Creative Process” (1999). Daugherty is talking about dissatisfaction with abstract composition in the early 1980s.

Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 5h

Composer Michael Daugherty reads that Ligeti loves jazz & rock. “I went to Hamburg, found his apartment, & said, ‘I want to study with you.’ He asked me, ‘Do you like Milton Babbitt?’ & I said no. Then he asked, ‘Do you like Thelonious Monk?’ I said yes, & he said, ‘Then you can study with me.’”

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 8h

20,000 to 30,000 vinyl records collected by the late classical music critic Richard Dyer are for sale Sat 10–3, Sun 10–12 at 61 Garfield St #3 in Cambridge.

“I doubt there’s an opera recording made between 1930 and 1980 that he didn’t have,” says nephew.

Critic Richard Dyer’s final gift to the Boston music community: an astounding library of records - The Boston Globe

Dyer’s nephew, who is managing the estate, is offering the collection for sale this weekend.

www.bostonglobe.com

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 17h

Game 5 is Groundhog Day?

Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 17h

“I made it to the 23rd inning. How did it end?”

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 18h

Looking forward to the 14th inning stretch

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 18h

Did not expect to see this much intense baseball after a full length tragic opera. Wrung out!

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 20h

On Verdi’s birthday no less

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 23h

Opera selfie time! “Macbeth” with Boston Lyric Opera (in what may be the tightest seat I ever squeezed into!).

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Reposted by Chris Walton ❌👑

Indivisible ❌👑 @indivisible.org · 1d

Let’s call this what it is: A baseless attempt to chill free speech and scare people away from exercising their constitutional right to protest an authoritarian regime.

We have been committed to nonviolence from the very beginning. It’s a core principle, not just a talking point.

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 2d

“the girlfriend of one of the founders of antifa”

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 3d

I have laughed out loud at least once in almost every interview so far. These are wonderfully human portraits.

Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 3d

Adventures in composing: I had no idea, when I checked it out, how much I would enjoy Ann McCutchan's 1999 book of interviews with 25 composers born between 1930 and 1960, "The Muse That Sings: Composers Speak about the Creative Process." I'm halfway through, and have found each one fascinating.

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 6d

So glad to hear this early Mahler (pared down to essentials) in preparation for the BSO/Boston Lyric Opera production of his Song of the Earth next March. Definitely heard some common elements!

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 6d

The Boston Symphony Chamber Players program today concluded with Amy Beach’s very fine Three Compositions (opus 40, 1898) and the marvelous Schoenberg Society for Private Musical Performance arrangement of Mahler’s Songs of a Wayfarer (1884-5; 1896; 1920).

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 6d

Composer John Harbison: “When I was a student I asked Maxwell Davies, who had already done quite a lot as a composer, if he worried about whether what he was writing was any good. ‘Good?’ he said. ‘I don’t have time for that.’”

(In “The Muse That Sings” by Ann McCutchan, 1998)

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 6d

Academic footnote of the day: Andrew Killick's engaging 2006 essay "Holicipation: Prolegomenon to an ethnography of solitary music-making" (Ethnomusicology Forum 15:2). He wonders why scholars haven't studied people who make music alone, and thinks through how they might. doi.org/10.1080/1741...

Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 7d

Eric Stokes: "[C]omposers are called to serve people, not themselves…. And music is for the people, for all of us: the dumb, the deaf, dogs and jays, the crazy, weak, hurt, the weed keepers, the strays. The land of music is everyone's nation—her tune, his beat, your drum. One song, one vote." (8)

Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 7d

“Debussy said, ‘I have these magnificent dreams, and then I have to think about quarter notes!’”

Composer Eric Stokes, in “The Muse That Sings: Composers Speak About the Creative Process” by Ann McCutchan (1998)

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 8d

Commiserating with the cat about the Red Sox

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 9d

I'm making a Lasagna and Fugue in C# minor.

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 9d

@walsh.bsky.social an archival find right up your alley!

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 9d

Now I want a kitchen appliance called a Fugue Extruder

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 9d

Very cool to learn that Montgomery is part of a cohort of other Black composers — the Blacknificent 7 — who make a point of showing up together to support each other's works.

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 9d

3) "[M]aintain an aspirational feeling around the people that you care about and the people you eventually hope to connect with through your art." She roots this in things as simple as basic human interactions, recalling and valuing acts of kindness.

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