I realized after submitting my program note that I had only commented about the poem I set — nothing about the musical aspects.

Who needs to sleep when your nightmares come to you unbidden in the feed

I don’t think there’s any event I absorbed in quite this way. I was 35 on 9/11, humors grown phlegmatic, and while it was a shock, I have understood without difficulty e.g. that those born later would not themselves experience it

"Well, that's a hell of an act–what do you call it?" "THE AMBASSADORS!"

There's a move I've heard in many contemporary pieces (Thorvaldsdottir comes to mind but is not the only one), where out of a cloud of complexity, a diatonic tune takes shape. It just now struck me that a model for this may be Sibelius, e.g. the big trombone tune in the 7th. ...

Not sure what brought this across the feed just now, but in fact there is coffee connoisseurship in classic detective fiction. From Chandler's "Farewell, My Lovely", 1946:

I did not know this bit about 432 Hz! Credit to LaRouche for a solid effort at selling the nonsense to Italy.

I managed to mess up the sitting part for a bit by unwisely taking up more exercise. With a new job, I have a new commute into which I can integrate walking -- and after a week or so of that, my back complained. Fortunately it seems to be recovering, building up tolerance or perhaps even strength

Every year, Christina Rossetti wrote a Valentine to her mother. This is the one for 1884, when Christina was her 84 year-old mother's primary caregiver.

Bay Area Arts Alliance presents Opus 10! Featuring Megan Cullen, soprano; Kelsey Seymour, flute; Chris Pun, vibraphone; and Paul Dab, piano. Music by Alburger, Vance Maverick, Taktakishvili, and Chopin. Saturday, February 21, 2026, 7:30 PST Community Music Center 544 Capp St., San Francisco

Skating at Berkeley Iceland (now a branch of Sports Basement). www.sfgate.com/bayarea/arti...

I’ll go with another instrumental chestnut. This I think conveys something of what’s extraordinary in the musical continuity of the operas…. youtu.be/wXh5JprKqiU?...

I remember hearing that Finnish had extraordinarily long geminate consonants, but apparently the vowels stretch out too!

Linguists and vocal pedagogues dismayed

I filled in a long survey about how things are going after a month at work, mostly in the form of Likert scale questions. After it was complete, it popped up another question about how I would rate the survey.

This discussion is making me realize that I really do process musical meaning differently than most people. I like the pieces people are suggesting. I generally accept them as "triumphant", "majestic", etc. ...

Somehow I'm in among the Cypriot intellectuals and the Wynonna Earp fandom

On reflection, my thought is that the preference for putting up reproductions of famous fancy art — very much my own bias — is as inimical to a democratic culture of art as the love of AI art. …

Egon Schiele's sunflower (1909–1910), 150 cm tall and 30 cm wide -- so tall and skinny that Bluesky's crop shows only parts of a couple of leaves. It's great in person, full of nature-wonder and caustic satire on prettiness at once. sammlung.wienmuseum.at/en/object/20...

How about two? youtu.be/VDcjPR48E1w?...

Google Books search appears to be back! www.google.com/search?q=%22...

Not at all the important bit here, but my calculus teacher used the phrase “lie sandwich” for a mathematical proof that had two errors in it such that it started from valid premises, stumbled into a false proposition, then stumbled again into the demonstrandum

This was great. The Left Coast Ensemble performed the septet version, without a conductor. - In the full version, the square rhythms (q q q q) sometimes lumber. Soloists can shape them individually. - Lines were sometimes buried -- a conductor could have guided the balance.

From program notes to Strauss’s Metamorphosen… Perhaps he might have reflected that the ideology of “Germany’s 2,000 years of cultural evolution” was part of the problem!

@tomsnarsky.bsky.social #smallpoemsunday Charlotte Mew (1869 - 1928), "À Quoi Bon Dire" ...

I'm a white American 60-year-old, and people close to me have been mega-fans, and I don't get it either. Part of it is that as a teenager I was a classical-music nerd and uninterested in popular music. I eventually got better, but most of the 70s passed me by.

The piece mentions the VSO's search for a composer, and gives a couple demographic details, but not her name. "'She and the two vocalists, our conductor, are all-- it’s an entirely queer creative team,' Brunelle said."

Can’t believe Eric Whitacre has sunk so low

#smallpoemsunday Tennyson, In Memoriam 126

I’m embarrassed to say that I began quarreling with one of the doctrinaire anarchists over this, not because of the IR usage but because of the normal usage. WBY did not mean that mere utopian wishful thinking about Barcelona 1936 was loosed upon the world.

If you see this, we IMPLORE YOU to post a picture from whatever device you’re using without explanation.

Happy birthday Cindy Sherman! I'm not sure I've grasped what she's done since the Untitled Film Stills, but they at least are great. artlead.net/journal/mode...

It’s funny, and yet obviously the answer is that it’s not enough leaves, any more than this is enough trees. www.sensesatlas.com/klimt-forest...

My grim-irony meter is pegged at 11. The insult is in its origin the voice of US imperialism: “haha these lazy Latins can’t even manage a country when we keep it under our heel for the benefit of the United Fruit Company”

Which character in the Lawyers, Guns and Money comment section said, “I am familiar with all Internet traditions?”

Manka’s in Inverness, CA, on Point Reyes. A wonderful convivial New Year’s Eve dinner, of which I remember the wine and low light better than the food. Burned down years ago

Cléo de 5 à 7 youtu.be/sRR0_VJFqwg?...

My first required "training" at the new gig is to confirm that I "have read and understood the content" of an 86-page Employee Handbook. (Serious enough to warn me about, evidently, but not serious enough to make it accessible.)

My taste is more for the improvisation on e.g. Live Dead. But I’m with CB on this — a significant amount of good music among the inconsistency

Lots of people reacting like this — but I’m pretty sure he means that territorial claims are grounded in present force, not history or any humane reason. This is fully consistent with the dispossession of Native Americans.

Email from my new employer about starting work on Monday: "We are business casual." (Phrased like that, I imagine, to sound less like a diktat.) ...

Sporadically reading Rachel Cusk's _Outline_, which is opaque and polished up to a point. She can make carefully balanced highbrow sentences (the model might be Muriel Spark), but doesn't seem quite to follow through. ...

I wonder if Strauss was familiar with Tannhäuser at all. ;-) (cue should be at 9:18) www.youtube.com/watch?v=s68W...

This is a good piece: youtu.be/MlpNB0WeQaQ?...

“The iniquity of oblivion blindly scattereth her poppy.”

Introduce yourself with what almost killed you. A gutter, which fell from the roof of a recycling center while I was leaning in at the customer window. It bounced on the little awning over the window and glanced off my head