Blogospherical miscellania

Phil Ford

A quick tour of the musicoloblogosphere after teaching this morning turned up a couple of interesting things: the Joseph McCarthy Youtube clip at Phil Gentry's blog, and, at Likely Impossibilities, another musicologradstudentblog, a mash-up of Syberberg's film version of Parsifal with Bye Bye Birdie. Writes Micaëla,

Sample comments from the YouTubes: "This is awesome." "This is so wrong."  Both are true.

And, from The Black Torrent Guard, a response to my thing about Christmas book swag. What's most interesting about the post is the photo of Andy H-D's books. The top one is something called Dissertation Most Deadly. What's that all about? Aha. A musicological murder mystery. From the publisher description:

"I couldn't believe he was dead." So explodes an unexpected whirlwind tour of international proportions that propels music scholar Leigh Maxwell through a bizarre series of events in the course of investigating her dissertation. From a musty archive in Madrid, to treasure-troves of libraries in recently reunited Germany, to the warm and sultry breezes of the Caribbean, Maxwell, a doctoral student of Music History, uncovers 100-year-old secrets that reveal a web of theft, jealousy, deceit, treachery and surprising discovery.

Why am I always the last to hear about things like this?

Comments

[Harriet]

As long as we're discussing musicological murder mysteries, I assume you know of Nemesis by Rosamund Smith (better known as Joyce Carol Oates -- as if she didn't write enough under her own name). Rumor has it that it's a roman a clef (no pun intended...I think), although I'm not sure if its clef has ever been identified.

[Bob]

I have been meaning to get back to the musicology fiction list that I asked for input on way too long ago, and I have just not been able to. I got Elizabeth Seitz's book when I heard about it. It's fun. I got a fair bit of feedback when I asked, and really there's a call for some list-making. OK, anybody want to help me out, drop me a note please. I have actually begun a wiki that I think will work OK for doing a little project like this. Let me know if you're interested, rjudd@ams-net.org.

[Micaëla]

Procrastinating on Oxford Journals Online can occasionally turn up amazing stuff for one's blog. Thanks for the link!