The GRAMMY Nominations: A Classical Music Smorgasbord!

Christmas comes early to Music Nerd Land! 🙂 The GRAMMY® nominations are out, and boy, do I feel like a kid in a candy store! …

You have 57 Notes — Play Them Wisely!

Here at McVirgo Manor, Saturday afternoon often means Saturday Afternoon at the Opera on CBC Radio 2. It’s one of the benefits of living so …

A Lucky Day for Detroit!

Cross-posted at the Detroit Symphony Blog, because I am so famous and in demand! 😀 If you’re superstitious, you probably already have your lucky rabbit’s …

Hard Thoughts: A Renaissance Woman's Dilemma (part 1)

NaBloPoMo Day 18! This afternoon I attended the Detroit Symphony‘s performance of Gustav Mahler‘s Symphony no. 9. I’m going to write about it, you can …

Criticism: Possible Antidotes… and That's Enough for Now!

“How with this rage shall beauty hold a plea?”

I came across this quote the other day in a post about musical responses to great tragedies: “Requiems,” by Alex Ross, music critic for The New Yorker.

Ross’ understanding of Shakespeare’s question (which, as he mentions, Wallace Stevens cited while writing about World War II) concerns the light-in-the-darkness function that musicians serve in the face of horrific events:

How, in other words, can artists respond to news that exceeds their most extravagant nightmares?”

Happily, we can, and do, respond in many ways…

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