I started this blog, Red Black Window, in Jan. 2006 as an open work-in-progress for my book on the music of Rufus Wainwright. Although it still has that component, I couldn’t keep the blog to only that component. I changed my subtitle to Roger Bourland writes about music and life. That seemed to give me plenty of latitude. The fact that I was on sabbatical from teaching from April through September afforded me time to give extra time to this blog. Now that school has started again, my posts may be a bit clumpy, but I trust that I will get a rhythm going with my new reality.
Because the fellow scheduled to play Mozart in my new chamber opera, MOZART AND THE GREY STEWARD, is having visa difficulties, we have decided to put off the performance to 2008. So, I will now put a fermata over the project until January.
That leaves me two months to finish my book on Rufus Wainwright. As I look at the table of contents I had originally planned, the book would likely be 600- 700 pages long. I don’t think the world needs that for the moment. I will scale back the number of pieces that I’ll be discussing, and revisit EVERYTHING I’ve written so far. As I revisit each analytic essay I cover, I will remove the corresponding posts on this blog. Because of copyright issues, I won’t be including full transcriptions of his piano music, but rather largish chunks. I like to imagine that some of my readers are traditional musicians who may only have a passing knowledge of who RW is and will sit down at the piano and read through it themselves.
I have learned from Ray Knapp and his use of online musical clips, that I can have the best of both worlds by having a physical book with supporting clips online. (Ray has two new terrific books on the American musical.) So, despite my preference for having this book just appear serially in my blog, I’ve heard my readers loud and clear that they want a physical book. Susan McClary has encouraged me to approach a well known publisher for this book, but I must admit that I’m tempted to give it to Yelton Rhodes Music and keep it in the family.
[Photo by Elina Tanner; edited by RB]
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