Monthly Archives: November 2011

Too Much of an Audiophile, Maybe

I'm not a hardcore audiophile. (He said bravely, clutching desperately to whatever shreds of delusion yet remained.) That is to say, I haven't bankrupted myself acquiring a rig so high-priced as to buy a nice house in many parts of … Continue reading

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Cultural Monuments in their Salad Days

Given my professorial life, I spend most of my time working with 18-25 year olds. No objections there, mind you: that age is a time in life that I particularly cherish. My own sojourn through early adulthood was generally good; … Continue reading

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All Praise the Mighty Reissue

The record industry continues to enrich the buying public by rummaging around in copious back catalogs and re-issuing worthy stuff from the past. Just recently I picked up a number of spiffy box sets: Furtwängler: The Great EMI Recordings (21 … Continue reading

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Giulini and a Brahmsian Ideal

As a dyed-in-the-wool record enthusiast/collector/nut, I own a hefty assortment of Brahms symphony recordings. By "hefty" I refer to my 25 separate recordings of the First, matched by similar numbers for the remaining three. 18 of the Haydn Variations. I'll … Continue reading

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Go Ahead, Sit There

Back in my early twenties, during a visit to see the family, I was watching the news. One item particularly incensed me. It seems that twenty years previously a large company had known about, but had done nothing about, severe … Continue reading

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Talking, Not Shouting

A short while back I enjoyed a fine evening at an old-time San Francisco restaurant, Alfred's Steakhouse, tucked away on a side alley across the street from Portsmouth Square. Everything about Alfred's says yesteryear in Baghdad-By-The-Bay, from its Dashiell Hammett … Continue reading

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Means, Not an End

Not long ago I came up against a standard French textbook on figured harmony. The book is typically French in that it is thorough, exhaustive, and probably just a wee bit anal-retentive. It's a good text insofar as it goes. … Continue reading

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Snuggery

The fine old Victorian house that I call home has two bedrooms, or maybe three if I count the sunroom that I use as my home office. The sunroom was originally the house’s back porch, but at some point during … Continue reading

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