I'm not exactly sure that the unparalleled genius will be coming anytime soon, but I certainly have a lot to say percolating in various documents and notebooks. Indeed, my notebook carting tendency has been something of a curious habit to a number of people.
Which brings me to the purpose of this blog: getting some of these ideas, opinions, and analyses out of the documents and notebooks and into some place where they might find a readership.
Even if there is no readership, the posts will be here, because I've found that the best way to get better at my dissertation writing is to write all sorts of other things. Without an academic job to keep my mind occupied with thoughts of musicology (no matter how small the percentage that time would be in reality) I find that my mind wants to apply the ideas I've been writing about for my degree to all the art I see around me. So I've been scribbling about French pop music, sci-fi-disaster-made-for-tv films, historically informed performance practice–pretty much everything I watch or listen to these days gets at least a few words written about it.
If there is a theme, the blog's title hopefully comes closest to it. I thought of "accented dissonance" as a unifying theme for my writing some time ago as I explaining what brought me from studying early-20th century German expressionist music to late-17th century French opera. Although for most people this seems like quite a leap, to me it is quite natural, and not simply because I'm the one doing the leaping. Music on both ends of this spectrum (and all of the things I've been interested in along the way) makes a point of putting dissonances–in harmony, texture, plot, lyrical content–and exploiting our desire to have these dissonances resolved. Of course, some would say this is true of most, if not all, music and art generally, but I'm interested in the moments when one is aware of this tension and is not immediately struck down with a feeling of the pedantic.
I suppose, however, I've wandered somewhat off of the path of my planned missive about not having anything to say, and have actually said something.
All which means that I will now retreat into my poorly lit scholar's desk (read: fairly comfortable modern apartment) and get to work on producing something really real to put here.
