Author Archives: Scott Foglesong

Two criticisms wafted about my general vicinity of late. One came from me. It was directed towards a student who has a tendency to think mostly note-to-note when she is sightsinging, taking down dictation, or writing harmonic progressions. Each musical … Continue reading →

Most of the venues in which I give presentations have built-in sound systems, so audio is a simple matter of plugging a 1/8″ stereo plug into my laptop’s audio-out jack and all is well. However, my classroom at UC Berkeley … Continue reading →

Back when I lived in Denver — all right, it was the Nixon administration, but who’s counting? — I exulted in the typical summer weather pattern that I have never encountered outside that homey metropolis along the edge of the … Continue reading →

If there is one painting I would like to own, it’s Samuel Palmer’s 1839 The Rise of the Skylark. At first glance it seems little more than your basic drippy mid-Romantic idyllic landscape, as the man by the gate gazes … Continue reading →

I’m a tad disappointed in Gen Y. That’s in my capacity as a bonafide Baby Boomer and not in my capacity as a professor to said Gen Ys. Professorially I’m not the slightest bit let down by today’s college types … Continue reading →

You might have noticed that many old-style opera houses contain gigantic, ornate foyers. Consider Milan’s La Scala, Venice’s La Fenice, and the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples. Even relatively modern opera houses have tended to crib the notion of … Continue reading →

Oscar Thompson, writing in the New York Sun, was beside himself. “All of the Toscanini magic was in the three performances of the evening. The slakeless care, the amazing equipoise of parts, the inerrable tracing of the essential lifeline of … Continue reading →

It wasn’t easy being Wolfgang Mozart. He was just a toddler when the Gods snickered and fastened a dead albatross around his itty-bitty neck. There was a label fluttering from the bird’s foot. Prodigy, it said. From that moment on … Continue reading →

The trip home yesterday was nothing out of the ordinary but it seemed worse. I was bit more sensitized than usual, my nostrils twitching at the stench of urine baking on the sidewalk, my eyes averted from the phalanx of … Continue reading →

Sibelius gave us seven symphonies. There's not a dud in the bunch. Each is a world unto itself, each unmistakably the work of the same composer, but each unique in its approach to the genre, to the orchestra, to music … Continue reading →