Composition
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Suprised by the Beauty of 20th-Century Music
We are living at the time of a major musical renaissance.
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Fighting Back: Thoughts on Robert R. Reilly
Tonality is constantly renewing itself in defiance of an academic orthodoxy that denies its right to exist.
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The Post-Modern Ear
Serious composers must work on the rhythms of everyday life.
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Tonal Affinities and Their Denial, Part II
Schoenberg’s error was to ignore the inherently hierarchical nature of pitched sound itself.
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Tonal Affinities and Their Denial, Part I
If, after Kant, there was no way to know “the thing-in-itself,” after Wagner, there was no way to know “the-key-in-itself.”
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The Blind Spots of Pierre Boulez
His way of looking at the world was discredited by the nightmare of the 20th century’s totalitarian conceptions.
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The Clothes Have No Emperor
We must surely understand Boulez as the instigator of a false conception of the nature of music itself.
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The Myth of Progress in the Arts
On being imprisoned between, on one hand, the past, and on the other, modernism.
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The Symphony: A Moral Vision Revealed in Music
The symphonic tradition is an imposing legacy. Some turn away in terror. It might be the safer option.
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A Defense of Virtuosity
It is now held that individuals have the right to be artists, or at least consider themselves as such.