Blog Post 50! Where We’ve Been

Fifty blog posts – wow! Seems like a lot to me, but I realize that for people who have been blogging for quite some time, fifty is a mere drop in the bucket. But I’m excited and just want to do a little retrospective about where we’ve been. Posts 1 (Opening Chord), 2 (What Is Maullaria?), 4 (The Good News), 14 (Life Under The Grand Piano), and 36 (A Visit With Saul) deal with my own awakening to classical music and the listening process. I still remember the events described there like they were yesterday – so vivid and intense were those experiences of so long ago.

A fair number of the posts deal with what is called on line and in print these days – the ‘Classical Music Crisis’, such as Posts 3 (Is Classical Music Dying?), 9 (It’s the Money Stupid – Or Is It?), 15 (Is Classical Music Dying? Part 2), 23 (A Bit of a Rehash), 36 (The Philadelphia Orchestra – Rest In Peace?), 45 (Brooklyn Philharmonic May Face Bankruptcy) and 48 (Oi Vey! Not Another One). And, as I continue to believe, the crisis is not with classical music itself. Rather, there is a very real crisis surrounding the economics of how we produce professional classical music performances in both the United States and Europe these days. Does the general lack of perceptive listening among the population pose a new crisis – hardly! This condition has been with us perhaps for all of human history. At The Discovery Orchestra we see this as a great opportunity! How many people can we reach and encourage to adopt perceptive listening as a way of life?

I’ve made a few feeble attempts at humor – Posts 28 (Conductor Humor), 33 (Musician Humor) and 37 (A Day in the Life of a Pair of Violists). There are even posts about music that is frightening – 18 (What Makes Scary Music Scary?) and 42 (Halloween Candy).

But certainly the topic dearest to my heart is the listening process itself. Post 5 (The More We Perceive. . .The More We Receive), 7 (Can You Hear Me Now?), 19 (Weathering Life’s Storms), 20 (Being Thankful), 24 (Beating the Winter Blahs and Blues), 26 (The Invisibility of Music), 27 (Can We Really Multitask And Listen?), 31 (Art for Life’s Sake), 32 (The Bernstein Legacy), 39 (The Joys of Life!), 41 (“When You’re A Jet” ) and 44 (Thanks! An Encore Presentation).

To those of you who have been reading my blog – thanks for reading! And if you haven’t (although I don’t know what makes me think I can reach you with this post!) – perhaps glancing at these subjects might whet your appetite to read a few of them now. While not considering myself “the voice of him that crieth in the wilderness” of the Ethernet (Handel should be echoing in your mind’s ‘ear’). . .I will persist in writing these bi-monthly musings.