Monday, February 23, 2009

5 things about discovering a new composer



  1. No matter how much I think I know about something, there is always something else to be known.
  2. And that heretofore unknown thing, in this case the compositions of Henry Brant, is discussed in terms that you should already be familiar with this when it is mentioned, such as with this article about a poorly thought out staging of a Charles Ives performance in Baltimore.
  3. Obscure as that thing I don't know may be, it is never tiny, always vast. I don't discover a composer that wrote just a handful of pieces, they created a whole genre and there are ensembles dedicated to performing them at afternoon recitals in far flung Universities. There are books in the library about them.
  4. The more obscure the composer (to me) the more comprehensive the collected works package is and suddenly, I go from not knowing anything about a composer to knowing, or at least experiencing, everything. Added occasional bonus: great covers.
  5. Except there is always a chunk missing - in this case, where has vol. 7 gone, lala.com?
The Henry Brant Collection, vols. 1-6, 8-9 on lala

Ed: Vol 7 was hiding right there in plain sight, where things always hide

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