Going through hundreds of blackletter fonts to find one that doesn’t look too third reichy

Emjoyed

Oh no I have to redo my lecture for the April lecture concert because discoveries

Oh no mantissa has learned how to open doors.

Singing to this cat and she is confused

Throwback to when we first noticed baby Mantissa had a special relationship with the dishwasher

I felt like making some art last night/today and could have made something beautiful and/or meaningful but I made this instead. It's a Barbie Yaga Malibu Dream Hut. No regrets. Can't defeat fascism without joy.

Its title is “Field song”, but Hensel specifies that it is also suitable for singing in the Garden.

I’ve got Feldlied (H169) stuck in my head it’s too catchy

these caves in Ishigaki, Japan pipe in music through the entirety of the walkway. please think about what kind of music you would pipe into a cave to improve the ambiance. then unmute. you are wrong

I’m approaching forty years of age and have been starting to get those unfamiliar pangs, that feeling that I have to reach the south pole by sled

Ordered some merch samples. If the quality is good enough for you all, they’ll be on the site in a couple weeks … 😱

I’ve been toiling away in the Hensel mines instead of posting… is anyone still here??

Mockup:

Thinking of making some merch out of Fanny’s terrible (lovely) drawing….

Wilhelm Hensel was notoriously unmusical… (his failure to sing a single note on pitch despite multiple people prompting him at a family gathering is recorded for posterity on his Wikipedia bio.) But it’s not like Fanny was particularly skilled at the visual arts…………

Today is the day

It has never been more important in most of our lifetimes than now to make art that deeply offends and concerns fascists.

All the “autism is an invention of the 21st century” people should meet some of the 85-year-old ladies in my music club

I followed @googleballs.com and now Google balls fan art is crowding out horrible politics posts in my feed and it feels like self care?

Exciting news in Florence Price Land: Samantha Ege’s edition of Price’s 4 Fantasies is now available for pre-order, thus saving all future pianists from the nightmare hell that I went through global.oup.com/academic/pro...

🎹 African Pianism🌍 Piano music rooted in African classical & contemporary traditions. Coined by Nigerian composer Akin Euba, expanded by 20th‑century composers of the Schools of African Art Music into a rich, diverse piano repertoire. #AfricanPianism #GlobalClassical

You are all hereby notified that beginning in 2026, dishwasher appreciation day may fall on Saturday or Sunday, or occasionally some other day of the week, due to a change in the liturgical calendar of the Great Dishwasher. After all, in our hearts, every day is dishwasher appreciation day.

People knowledgeable about strings / orchestration -- would a passage like this work in a chamber setting? It's from the Strauss horn concerto #1, at a tempo of quarter = 112. I suspect it's too much, and should be thinned out to single lines mixed with double stops at most.

Doing some 2025 henselpushers year-end review: I did at least some henselpushers related work on 360 days of 2025; the 5 days I didn’t were non-sequential.

Today I’m listening to the time that, as a YOUNG CHILD, he and a friend ditched school in Iowa to hitchhike then train hop to Washington state to pick berries. They got bored by Colorado so they split up(!!). His friend went to his sister’s in Denver and grampa climbed a peak in the Rocky Mountains

My grampa recorded his memoir on multiple cassette tapes many years ago, and my mom and I are working on turning it into a book for family (transcribing, researching locations referenced, adding photos/ maps). This man was nuts in the best way and it is a treat to hear him recount his antics.

I want to see your earnest, mediocre art

Quarterfinal, Match 1 of 4 b. Man Rescued Twice

While on my usual lookout for historical images of women cellists (first stages of a new research project, stay tuned), I stumbled across this painting, "Music-Making Angels" (1628) by Peter Paul Rubens and was intrigued as to why all the angels were playing the instruments wrong-handed.

What journals are good for publishing Hensel research in? We’ve made some discoveries

Replaying AC Valhalla and I’ve learned my favorite part is just lighting all the candles and braziers in the underground crypts

The dishwasher works but makes a lot of extra noise these days, so we put the towel under it for noise dampening overnight. Mantissa tries to tear out its throat every morning for some reason. Anyway happy last dishwasher Sunday of 2025!

I know a lot of people need to hear this: you can actually just criticize people directly for their direct actions instead of saying “they must be on drugs”

Mantissa’s first time having a houseguest and she is peeping under the door nonstop

Two older women brought me the compositions their mother had written out of the basement in laundry baskets.

you may be aware of my writing about Vicente Lusitano, the sixteenth century mixed race composer of African descent - there are multiple points in his historiography when lack of access to, or failure to engage with, primary sources has distorted scholars' understanding of his life and music

Dishwasher

Keess 💋

One last music drop for 2025! Take a break from holiday music and enjoy this lovely nocturne by Maria Szymanowska. On all major streaming platforms and downloadable from iTunes. lnkfi.re/szymnocturne

I don't think recommending *Beethoven* is a hipster choice, hipsters would recommend the piano sonatas of Helene de Montgerault www.youtube.com/watch?v=jQi0...

woot new scores: henselpushers.org/a-cappella-t...

One more new video for you this week: I think this is the world premiere performance/recording of Fanny Hensel's unfinished fourth piano sonata in E-flat (1829).

What we DO know is that Robert Schumann loved Fanny Hensel's music. Bobby and Felix were buddies in Leipzig, and Felix played some of Fanny's music--at least lieder--for the Leipzig circle. Felix wrote to Fanny in January 1837 saying that Robert Schumann "was wild about her".

Here's another Hensel fugue in E-flat for string quartet!

the world is impossibly big until you drill down into the sicko shit that you're really into and then it's impossibly small

All I want for Christmas is for you to listen to my favorite unknown Hensel piece