Roger Bourland
writes about music and life

Photos © 2005 by Roger Bourland.

An enigmatic post in the Feb. 11 New York Times let us know that Rufus Wainwright is indeed slated to compose something that sounds like an opera. The longish article ends by saying:
“The Met and the theater have commissioned works from a range of composers and playwrights, some of them outside the classical tradition. The [...]

I drive down Sunset Blvd every night and look at this huge billboard of some of our newest senior citizens: The Rolling Stones!

And in case you forgot, this is what they looked like in 1965:

And then I saw at a 2005 picture of Crosby Stills and Nash:

And what they looked like in 1969:

Still cool after [...]

“Under the microscope, I found that snowflakes were miracles of beauty; and it seemed a shame that this beauty should not be seen and appreciated by others. Every crystal was a masterpiece of design and no one design was ever repeated. When a snowflake melted, that design was forever lost. Just that much beauty was [...]

In the summer of 1980 I worked as an assistant for Randall Thompson, composer, Harvard Professor Emeritus, and dean of American choral composers. He had had a stroke. I helped him with his correspondence, simple bookkeeping, I arranged the Pueri Hebraeorum for SATB, but he told me not to take credit for it. I said: [...]

I am forever amazed at the power of the interaction between sound vibrations and matter. The principle is beautifully illustrated in the work of Hans Jenny in his book “Cymatics,” and in the research of Ernst F.F. Chladni. Their experiments involved setting a vibration in motion onto a metal plate, or water, or other viscous [...]

(The class happened at breakneck speed today, trying to cover all this material and dip into the text meanings only briefly. This is a brief and hurried report to those who are anxious to know what we covered in the seminar. A polished analysis it is not.)
Per Mark Carlson’s right-on suggestion, we emphasized the music [...]

I have received some emails with suggestions about things to see, and/or discuss on RED BLACK WINDOW. I’d like to ask you to click on the comments link below this post and add yours. If you’d like to contact me privately via email, just put the “at” sign in between my first and last name [...]

I am taking the liberty of printing an email I got from a new “Rufusonian”, pucks_soul. I relate to his/her obsession and thrill that this music evokes so much within us that it drives us forward to learn more. I love that music, and in this case, specifically, Rufus Wainwright, can call up such a [...]

After a century of this-ism and that-ism, too many composers look for techniques and mathematical or pre-canned procedures to write music. The rise to prominence of composers in the academy has almost made contemporary music a science rather than an art or a discipline in the humanities. My colleague, composer, and friend Paul Chihara recently [...]