The perils of “musicality” when you’re accompanying a ballet solo
When you’re accompanying a ballet solo, too much “musicality” (as musicians understand that term) can be a bad thing. In the last week, I’ve had the same correction from two…
Meter vs subdivision: An easy solution to the ballet and time signature problem?
In the course of writing an article about the problems of ballet and time signature recently, I read a lot of books and articles about 18th century theories of meter.…
Goffman and the office
The Guardian has published two articles on contemporary office design in the last two days – the first a diatribe by Jeremy Paxman, “If I were king for a day,…
Oh so it’s not just me then – Facebook saturation point
Just a few weeks after my last post about my growing disenchantment with Facebook (and all social media, as it happens), I found an article by Theo Merz on the…
Facebook echo and rediscovering privacy
Don’t get me wrong: I love Facebook, and I am one of its most shallow users. I’ll post anything – videos and pictures of cats (a lot), pictures of things…
All fingers and thumbs
In an earlier post, I described how a nasty accident with a food processor blade helped me to understand a passage about the history of piano technique in Nicholas Cook’s…