Sunday, June 28, 2015

Ildebrando D'Arcangelo, Evelino Pido, Roberto Alagna, Aleksandra Kurzak

From Aleksandra Kurzak's Facebook Photo Page, Il Turco in Italia ROH 2015


Monday, June 15, 2015

This Is Your Brain on Music Quote

One of the best quotes from the above by Daniel J. Levitin, 2006, p. 29:

This direct mapping of pitch is so important, it bears repeating. If I put electrodes in  your visual cortex (the part of the brain at the back of the head, concerned with seeing), and I then showed you a red tomato, there is no group of neurons that will cause my electrodes to turn red. But if I put electrodes in your auditory cortex and play a pure tone in your ears at 440 Hz, there are neurons in your auditory cortex that will fire at precisely that frequency, causing the electrode to emit electrical activity at 440 Hz--for pitch, what goes into the ear comes out of the brain!


Saturday, June 13, 2015

Writing and Musical Key

But if the act of writing cannot be controlled by the will, it can be controlled by that magical key of which I have already spoken. The key, I believe, is literally a key in that it is musical . . . it is the tone of voice, the only tone of voice, in which this particular piece of writing will permit itself to be written. Yet the unconscious, or the Muse, or whatever it is, often exacts a sacrifice from the writer before it will allow him to hit upon the right tone, the key. . . . Making It, Norman Podhoretz, 1968, pp. 139-41.