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

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 · 2d

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 · 3d

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 · 3d

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 · 4d

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 · 4d

“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 · 5d

Commiserating with the cat about the Red Sox

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

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

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

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

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

Now I want a kitchen appliance called a Fugue Extruder

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

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 · 6d

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

2) Protect playfulness: “You have to be hopeful and you have to protect your playfulness.… Being able to be free and playful is, some would say, an act of resistance…" — a commitment also to the empowering and community-building qualities of play and creativity.

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

I love this interview with composer Jessie Montgomery. Three observations I'm bookmarking: 1) Music as theater: "As the composer, you’re thinking about how the person who’s listening to it will experience it over time and that it does feel theatrical in that way."

I CARE IF YOU LISTEN @icareifyoulisten.bsky.social · 6d

“I spent a lot of time at theaters watching actors work and understanding those hit points: the moments at which the story has to progress.... That whole interaction is baked into my music and the way I think about how to present the music."

icareifyoulisten.com/2025/10/jess...

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

Mansprawling?

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

And here's the Tufts Composers "Look What Happened Now: Dialogue and Silence" concert organized around the work of Andrew Blickenderfer: as.tufts.edu/music/news-e...

Events Calendar | Department of Music

Events listed below are free and open to the public for in-person attendance with no tickets required, unless noted. Click this link for Directions and Parking information.

as.tufts.edu

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

Here's the program for "Memory Palaces," the Collage New Music concert yesterday: www.collagenewmusic.org/2025-26-conc...

2025-26 Concert I: Memory Palaces — Collage New Music

www.collagenewmusic.org

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

🎶 In the past two days, I've heard amazing recent music composed by Curtis Hughes, Joan Huang, Sarah Gibson, Christopher Cerrone, Nina Young, Naomi Epstein, and Steven Stucky (by Collage New Music at Longy), and Andrew Blickenderfer and three student composers (at Tufts). So stimulating! 👏👏👏👏

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 12d

(I came across this wonderful anecdote in Eugene Montague, "Entrainment and Embodiment in Musical Performance," in The Oxford Handbook of Music and the Body)

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 12d

Midlife in grad school update: I learned such a cool concept today, "entrainment," first noticed by Christiaan Huygens from his sickbed in 1665 as he watched two clocks with pendulums gradually achieve synchronicity. He called it “la sympathie des horloges” (the sympathy of the clocks).

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 15d

I was today years old when I first heard some of the piano music by Teresa Carreño (1853–1917). Do seek it out! She was world famous as a pianist (and singer), and performed for both Abraham Lincoln and Woodrow Wilson. My introduction was through a Clara Rodriguez recording, but there are others.

Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 15d

Alas. (In good news, however, I've managed to interest one of my kids in the novel!)

Review: A ‘Kavalier & Clay’ Opera Doesn’t Meet Its Moment

www.nytimes.com

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 16d

🙄

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Chris Walton ❌👑 @philocrites.bsky.social · 16d

LOL: The difference between a Congregationalist and an Episcopalian is definitely that this doesn't sound like a real thing to a Congregationalist and very much sounds like a real thing to an Episcopalian!

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

D.T. Max, writing in the New Yorker: With the Sagrada Família, Antoni Gaudí "became the Gerard Manley Hopkins of architecture."

Is the Sagrada Família a Masterpiece or Kitsch?

In the century since Antoni Gaudí died, his wild design has been obsessively realized, creating the world’s tallest church—and an endlessly debated icon.

www.newyorker.com

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