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Author Archives: Sam L. Richards
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, [...]
Posted in Concerts/Events, News/Updates Leave a comment
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 [...]
Posted in Thoughts, Uncategorized Leave a comment
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 [...]
Posted in Thoughts 2 Comments
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.
Posted in Thoughts Leave a comment
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 [...]
Posted in Concerts/Events, News/Updates, Other-Links-Etc. 2 Comments
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
Posted in Other-Links-Etc. Leave a comment
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, [...]
Posted in Thoughts, Uncategorized, Writing Leave a comment
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 [...]
Posted in Thoughts, Uncategorized 4 Comments
Morning Musing
I am not nearly as concerned with being correct as I am intensely interested in being insightful.
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“My Own” Performance at Conduit