Author Archives: Sam L. Richards

“My Own” Performance at Conduit

Last weekend, on February 27th, two of my works were featured in Portland, one a premiere, at Intrinsic Environment: A dance and music collaboration. A video of My Own, with choreography by Valerie Ifill and Emily Baumann, can be found here. Video of the other work, Tangential, which was an extended version of the piece premiered [...]
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Intrinsic Environment, Tonight in Portland!!!

Tonight at Instrinsic Envirnonment: A dance and music collaboration two of my works will be performed along with choreography by Valerie Ifill: My Own, and Tangential. Choreography and music by my colleagues David C. Horton, Jeremy Schropp, and A.T. Moffett will also be on the program. Rehearsals last night looked great! Featured at Conduit Dance, [...]
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Richard Taruskin’s Wisdom

To composers imbued with a 19th-century world view, artistic traditions are transmitted ”vertically.” Nineteenth-century music historiography is an epic narrative of texts arranged in single file. It assumes that artists are primarily concerned—whether to emulate or to rebel—with the texts of their immediate precursors. These assumptions have led to an obsession with lines of stylistic [...]
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Music Theory Pedagogy 101

This is in follow up to my previous post titled Music Composition Pedagogy 101. Comments, criticism, corrections, suggestions, and overall beefs are more than welcome in the comments below. 1. There are no rules, only conventions. The language that you use in order to communicate the subject to your students essentially defines the students’ relationship to [...]
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Beware of Illegitimization Disguised as Categorization

Beware of those who seem seem obsessed with categorization, as their clandestine project (frequently unbeknownst to them!) is often illegitimization, or devaluing something by stripping from it the very categories which empower it.
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ECCE: New Website

Although it has been in use for over a month now, I have failed to mention it here on my own blog: ECCE (the Eugene Contemporary Chamber Ensemble), the new music ensemble which I currently direct and conduct, has a newly refurbished website that is so hot I think my own servers will fry if I [...]
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June 19, 1995 — Untitled

This is worth reiterating: Beach rocks jutting up from liquid churn          pebbles in the sea Cheek bones beneath my lover’s face          What are they to me? Hard things shape and hold in place          The softness of the earth. Bones and stones support the shape          That rends all beauty’s birth. — John H. Richards, June 19, 1995
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Boccherini, Performance, and the Post-Modern Musicology

The composer achieves nothing without executants. . . for while it is pleasing to hear people say, “What a beautiful work this is!” it seems to me even more so to hear them add, “Oh, how angelically they have executed it!” - Luigi Boccherini[1] I know that music is made to speak to the heart of man, [...]
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Music Composition Pedagogy 101

1. Before anything else (including asking to see what music the student has written that week, monologuing, critiquing, nit-picking, or nose-picking) ask the student if there is anything in particular that they would like to discuss, present, or ask about. Asking simple questions like this can avoid an enormous waste of time for both you and [...]
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Morning Musing

I am not nearly as concerned with being correct as I am intensely interested in being insightful.
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