Further adventures of Kaptain Kartoffelkopf

The reprise of my own idiocy has struck again in what is becoming an all to familiar litany of stories.  I could be an idiot-savant if I could just get the savant part down.  This time it occurred as follows:I was playing for several members of a horn studio...

Rilke translations: Ich lebe mein Leben

In anticipation of the upcoming premiere, I’m continuing some translating work for the programs. This is the first text in the new Rilke song cycle from his Stundenbuch. The poems are written from the perspective of a medieval monk.Ich lebe mein Leben in...

Aesthetics: Plotinus and immoral art

Plotinus (c. 200-270 BCE) was a neo-Platonist that developed the first real metaphysic of beauty. As you might expect, his ideas about beauty are wrapped up in Platonic ideals. The true beauty is found in the Ideal, and the concrete object gives us a reflection of the...

Aesthetics: Teaching honesty in music composition?

In the Poetics, Aristotle gives us one of the first (if not the first) introduction to the idea that there is an economy in works of art. He says, “For that which makes no perceptible difference by its presence or absence is no real part of the whole.” I don’t believe...