For those of you looking to gain insight into the thought processes of various composers (which should be all of you), I’ve run across a few composer blogs of potential interest.
Starting with self-publicity, I’ve restarted my own blog, processed_sound. I tend to gravitate towards issues of composition, technology, and culture, but right now I’m tracking a few of my own projects, and my struggle with writers block.
Former Ball State Faculty member, and currently professor at Fresno State, Kenneth Froelich has an excellent blog about composition and computer notation, The Electric Semiquaver. His “about this blog” blurb puts it well: “Strategies and pedagogical approaches to help young composers create, develop, and compose out music within notation software.”
Alex Ross, classical music critic for the New Yorker, and author of the book The Rest is Noise, has moved his primary blogging activities to the New Yorker web site. His new blog is called Unquiet Thoughts. Ross frequently writes about new music and composers. His old blog, The Rest is Noise, will remain mainly to promote his book, but the archives are rich with excellent posts.
Ross also has a post that lists several composer blogs, including Alexandra Garnder, Nico Muhly, and the one that I deem a must-read, John Adams’ Hell Mouth. Adams has always been a wonderful interviewee, and writer about his own works. In his blog he gives advice to composers about first rehearsals (“Try not to panic if you can’t recognize that noise coming from the stage as something you wrote.”), and muses about flying cross country while reading the modernist philosopher Theodore Adorno while being distracted by his seat-mate watching Fox News.
