by Kurt Knecht | Sep 10, 2011 | Uncategorized
This is a preview of the first movement of a piece that David Matthews commissioned for the University of South Florida Chamber Singers. The official premiere of the whole piece is going to be at Florida ACDA in November. Dan Monek is also performing it at Marietta...
by Kurt Knecht | Sep 6, 2011 | Uncategorized
Just in case you were confused, Aristotle explains it all.”A beginning is that which is not itself necessarily after anything else, and which has naturally something else after it; an end is that which is naturally after something itself, either as its necessary...
by Kurt Knecht | Sep 5, 2011 | Aristotle, art, michael moore, Uncategorized
As usual, Aristotle follows Plato and suggests that the arts are about imitation. He suggests that humans are imitative by nature and delight in imitation. We even like to see the nasty bits imitated. In Poetics, he says that “though the objects themselves may be...
by Kurt Knecht | Sep 1, 2011 | Uncategorized
I think I’ve finally figured out what I don’t like about the American press and evolutionary theory. When they interview biologists, I’m usually okay. When they interview psychologists, I get a little weird. Consider this report on NPR today: “Embed a tiny...
by Kurt Knecht | Aug 31, 2011 | Aristotle, Beethoven 5th, Grünwald, masterpiece, Uncategorized
Aristotle argues that in a “good work of art…it is not possible either to take away or to add anything” without in some way damaging it. Whenever I think about this, I always think of young Berlioz when he was working in the Biblioteque Nationale. He would check out...
by Kurt Knecht | Aug 30, 2011 | Aristotle, Cage, Duchamp, Uncategorized, Warhol
In book 2 of the Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle continues Plato’s line of thought aand suggests that the ideals of art are centered around proportion. “Thus a master of any art avoids excess and defect, but seeks the intermediate and chooses this – the intermediate not...
by Kurt Knecht | Aug 27, 2011 | Beethoven, Chuck D, Dr. Dre, Plato, Stockhausen, Stravinsky, Uncategorized
In the Ion, Plato lays out the central problem with artists in general. To wit: they’re crazy. Well, maybe they aren’t crazy all the time, but they are at least crazy when they are making their art. Socrates points out that “all good poets…compose their beautiful...
by Kurt Knecht | Aug 25, 2011 | Darwin, Rick Perry, Uncategorized, Vonnegut
Many people have recently been offended by Rick Perry’s recent comments on evolutionary theory. Personally, I find it to be one of the most tedious and boring issues on the face of the earth. I am supremely uninterested in evolutionary theory. However, I would...
by Kurt Knecht | Aug 23, 2011 | aesthetics, Plato, the N.W.A., Uncategorized
In book 10 of the Republic, Plato goes on one of his more extended rants against artists. His final target appears to be Homer. His first issue is that artists are always three steps from the truth. They make copies of copies. So, a painter paints a chair, but he...
by Kurt Knecht | Aug 21, 2011 | nudity, Professor Carol, Stravinsky, Uncategorized
I was reading an article sent on by my friend Michael Baker about a new performance of Stravinsky’s Symphony in C. Michael was a student with me at SMU where we both did our Masters degrees. This sent me down a short memory lane to an iconography project that I...
by Kurt Knecht | Aug 20, 2011 | Uncategorized
I have a few potholes in the road that paves my intellectual life. I’m spreading the asphalt right now by reading Anna Karenina. I discovered this wonderful passage tonight. “It used to be that a freethinker was a man who had been brought up with notions of religion,...
by Kurt Knecht | Aug 19, 2011 | BWV 541, J.S. Bach, kurt knecht, NPR theme song, Uncategorized
I believe this is what the kids today are calling a “mashup”. A few years ago, I was taking a counterpoint class, and I wanted to do some an intense study of a specific Bach fugue. In this case, I was looking at the G major fugue from BWV541. I realized...
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