| Tip of the Hatto: Debut post, explores the fascinating story of pianist Joyce Hatto who became famous for recordings that turned out to be by other pianists. Explores implications for how we hear music. | 2007/02/24 | meaning; hatto; recordings |
| The Hatto Sonnets: A series of six sonnets (in "Onegin" style), retelling the story of Joyce Hatto. | 2007/03/14 | hatto; poetry; creativity; best |
| Great Moments in Stupid Headlines: More exploration of the Joyce Hatto story, particularly the idea that what "we know" about a performance greatly affects what "we hear." | 2007/03/18 | meaning; hatto |
| Hyperspace: Musings on how the hyperlinked world of the Internet might particularly appeal to creative minds. | 2007/03/27 | meaning; tech; connections; creativity; best |
| Bell Failure: 2 sonnets summarizing the notorious "Joshua Bell in the Subway" experiment. | 2007/04/10 | poetry; creativity; aesthetics |
| Too Good To Be True?: Problems with perfection. | 2007/05/07 | meaning; amateur |
| A Taste of 1825: An imaginary conversation, in which a culinary master reflects on how recordings change the way we think about music. | 2007/05/19 | meaning; recordings; best |
| Translation, Transcription, Transimpson: How does a work retain its identity when transferred to another medium? With Stravinsky transformed into Simpsons form! | 2007/07/31 | translation |
| Transcription as a Metaphor for Listening: In short: when we're listening, we're transcribing. | 2007/08/12 | translation; recordings |
| Tradition!: Thoughts on performance traditions which, in spite of distortions, have much to offer. | 2007/11/12 | meaning; aesthetics |
| Saving the best for first: A classical problem: when the best part comes first, is the rest a letdown? (not really answered!) | 2007/11/19 | aesthetics |
| Classical Vanity: License Plates Inspired by Classical Music | 2007/11/22 | fun |
| The Metamorphoses of Don Juan: An unexpected link between early and late Strauss works. | 2007/12/01 | connections; strauss |
| The 12 Composers of Christmas: The classic song re-imagined with 12 composers and their music joining in. | 2007/12/11 | mashup; pedagogy; fun; christmas |
| The Best Christmas Party Music Ever: Chamber music in its natural environment. | 2007/12/23 | amateur; christmas |
| An Old Viola Joke: Fun little personal jab hidden in Britten's Albert Herring | 2008/01/28 | fun; viola |
| the kind of infectious it's good to spread around: In praise of A Mighty Wind | 2008/02/13 | fun |
| Warhorse Wordsmithing: Program notes for Fauré's Requiem and Dvořák's 'New World' Symphony | 2008/02/22 | pedagogy; program notes |
| Strange Loop: A Tchaikovsky sequence looped so that it never ends, mixed with an ever-rising staircase. | 2008/02/28 | loops; mischief; scorimation; Bach |
| Canon Loop: Bach's infinitely rising canon, recorded with infinitely rising "Shepard Tone" technique. | 2008/03/02 | loops; animation; Bach; canon; Hofstadter |
| Retro Loop: Bach's "crab" canon, animated with crabs. | 2008/03/25 | loops; animation; Bach; canon |
| Ambigramania: An original ambigram of Bach's name, turned into an animation in which the ambigram takes shape along with a Bach canon. | 2008/04/13 | Bach; canon; creativity; loops; best |
| Carrousel perpétuel: The score of Poulenc's most famous work is wrapped around a carousel. | 2008/04/27 | loops; ; mmplaying |
| The Doctor in Spite of Himself: A blog devoted to my performing edition of Gounod's comic opera, including links to six "Doctor Karaoke" singalong videos. | 2008/08/07 | animation; translation; creativity; opera |
| Webern in Mayberry: A video illustration of how comfortably atonal music fits into a lighthearted 60's sitcom. | 2008/11/24 | atonality |
| Le sacre du Peterman: Stravinsky's most iconic work, imagined as a page in the J. Peterman catalog. | 2008/12/08 | Stravinsky; fun |
| For that special masochist in your life...: Schubert's iconic Erlkönig becomes the subject of a J. Peterman ad. | 2008/12/09 | fun; best |
| The Rite of Appalachian Spring: One of my first really successful mashups, exploring influence of Stravinsky on Copland. | 2008/12/11 | stravinsky; best; mashup; connections |
| Canon a 2 Tempi (Take Two): Maria Callas and Renee Fleming square off in a Puccini Showdown. | 2009/03/06 | mashup; mischief; animation; canon |
| Piano Hero Reflections: Musings on an innovative series of noontime "sightreading" recitals. | 2009/03/12 | fun; amateur; mmplaying |
| Twynopses: A large collection of original, Twitter-sized #operaplot summaries from the legendary online contest. | 2009/04/27 | twitter; program notes; opera |
| Magical Music: Description of an experiment in having a class create an original opera scene in the style of a historical model. | 2009/05/15 | pedagogy; creativity; opera |
| Meta-music: Thoughts on transcribing Stravinsky for piano. Do we end up hearing more than a piano? | 2009/06/05 | connections; stravinsky; translation; aesthetics |
| The Seinfeld Sonnets: Seven episodes of Seinfeld retold in sonnet form. | 2009/10/14 | poetry; fun |
| Chopin's Funeral March (with ghosts!): A surprisingly successful mashup of the final two movements of Chopin's Funeral March Sonata. | 2009/11/01 | animation; best; mashup; chopin |
| The Joy of (looking at) Music: An experiment in projecting an annotated score of the 1812 Overture for a live audience. They loved it! | 2009/11/14 | animation; aesthetics |
| Name That Bassoon: An odd juxtaposition of two very different works, by Copland and Mendelssohn, with strikingly similar passages. | 2009/11/18 | connections; animation; mashup |
| Illuminating Ornamentation: Description (and audio/video) of a collaboration with an artist who "decorated" scores in ways I then interpreted in performance. | 2009/12/01 | mashup; creativity |
| Testing with the Stars: Comical (?) puns and other suggestions from composers which originally appeared on music history exams. | 2009/12/10 | fun; pedagogy |
| Reflections on a 2-part Invention: An audio/video "re-enactment" of a remarkable experiment in having two completley different works played simultaneously. | 2010/02/18 | mashup; best; random |
| ...in which Winnie the Pooh inspires Twitter-like program notes: An experiment in micro-program-notes. Each work in a long program described in 140 characters or less. Also features rhyming program notes. | 2010/03/02 | program notes; twitter; poetry |
| Why Twitter exists...: Remembering the great #composerfilm meme. Does "Batman and Scriabin" arouse your interest? | 2010/04/13 | twitter; fun; creativity |
| Should there be a "Free the Movements" Movement?: An argument for not always playing the whole thing. | 2010/11/22 | fragments; |
| Bach Doubled: Showing how two closely connected Bach movements can be played simultaneously. | 2010/11/29 | Bach; mashup; animation; connections |
| Sleigh Ride in a Fast Machine: A fun mashup of classics by Adams and Anderson. | 2010/12/08 | mashup; fun; mischief; christmas |
| Sax and Violence: Inspired by the "saxophone craze" in classical music, a disco-style rendition of Brahms, with mixed meter. | 2011/03/27 | translation; mischief; mashup |
| Good Friday Bach: An experiment in using YouTube annotations to show musical analysis. | 2011/04/22 | bach; animation; pedagogy |
| Und singen Halleluja!: An exploration of how Bach's musical techniques reinforce the theological content in his amazing Cantata No. 4. | 2011/04/24 | bach; meaning; best |
| Meta-unpredictability: How Stravinsky can you "surprise" you when you know what's coming. | 2011/04/26 | stravinsky; random |
| Multimedia Moonlight March Madness Mashup: A very odd mashup of works by Stravinsky and Schoenberg. | 2011/06/04 | stravinsky; mashup; mischief; animation |
| Somewhere between Beethoven and Strauss: Looking at how passages from Beethoven and Strauss can be combined to create some Bernstein. | 2011/06/08 | Beethoven; Strauss; mashup; connections; animation |
| Mozart Mashup Medley: Weaving back and forth among three different Mozart violin concertos. | 2011/06/10 | Mozart; mashup; connections; animation; best |
| Atonality on Ice: Comparing the brutal worlds of ice hockey and atonal music. One of my favorite essays. | 2011/06/23 | atonality; sports; best; aesthetics |
| My Jesus, Joy of Man's Desiring: A mashup of Bach's famous triplets with a different hymn and a different meter. | 2011/08/09/ | bach; mashup; mmplaying |
| Musical Storyboards: Condensing recordings to help reveal large-scale musical structures. | 2011/09/27 | theory; fragments |
| Fun with the First Figaro Finale: First in a series of online, integrated listening guides featuring analysis, score, and video. | 2011/10/18 | Mozart; pedagogy; theory; opera |
| Beethoven - more ahead of his time than you thought!: A "fake" musicological discovery about proto-Stravinsky hiding out in a Beethoven manuscript. | 2011/10/25 | mashup; mischief; beethoven; stravinsky; connections |
| Eroica Mix'n'Match: Demo for an integrated, online listening guide for Beethoven's most revolutionary symphony. | 2011/10/21 | pedagogy; Beethoven; theory |
| The Rite Stuff: Big set of links to all things Rite of Spring. | 2012/02/26 | Stravinsky; meta |
| Ballade Blogging: A series of seven posts inspired by a week spent re-learning a Chopin ballade. Some of my favorite bits of writing. | 2012/03/09 | chopin; best; aesthetics; meaning |
| Child's Play: A children's story, told in sonnets, about a young violinist with performance anxiety. | 2012/04/06 | poetry |
| Now just a minute...: What does the "Minute" Waltz sound like played in a minute? | 2012/07/05 | chopin; fun; mischief; animation |
| Dances with words: Creative reflections on re-reading Douglas Hofstadter's Le ton beau de Marot. | 2012/07/08 | creativity |
| Happy Augmented Sixth Day!: Realization that Aug 6 is the day to celebrate the wonder of Augmented 6th chords. | 2012/08/06 | pedagogy; theory |
| Gateway to Insanity: Successfully (?) creating sonnets within Twitter's 140-character limit. | 2012/08/22 | poetry; twitter |
| MMrecital - the Program Booklet: An innovative program booklet in quasi-comic book style. | 2012/09/14 | program notes; mmplaying |
| Willkommen, Bienvenue...: Original cabaret lyrics about: 1) cabarets and 2) historically informed performance. | 2012/10/01 | poetry; creativity |
| A Splendid Sunrise: How harmony and orchestration can transform a D Major scale into something magical. | 2012/10/09 | theory; animation |
| Mr. Stravinsky's Random Accent Generator 2.0 - Now With More Random!: An experiment in randomizing Stravinsky's iconic sycnopations. Does it sound more surprising? | 2012/10/18 | stravinsky; random; coding |
| Imitation as Inspired Improve-ization: The power of imperfect imitations. | 2013/08/25 | translation; aesthetics |
| Fragmented Thoughts on Fragments: How it is that fragments can be satisfyingly complete. | 2013/09/07 | sports; fragments; aesthetics |
| Recital Revisited I: Moonlight Mashup: Live video of the "Moonlight" Sonata and Clair de lune played simultaneously. | 2013/10/09 | Beethoven; mashup; mischief; best |
| Using MMmusing: A guide to various MMmusing resources, especially for use in the classroom. | 2013/11/07 | pedagogy |
| Shostakovich 5: Mashed-up Memories: Daughter's youth orchestra performance brings up lots of memories - and makes a strange Shostakovich/Vaughan Williams connection. | 2013/11/24 | mashup; amateur; connections; memory |
| The Good, The Shred, and The Ugly: A distinctively viola-esque mashup of a Bach prelude and "Pop, Goes the Weasel." | 2014/04/04 | fun; viola; mashup; mischief; Bach; mmplaying |
| Satierical Gymnasium: Satie's most famous piece, randomized in various ways as an exploration of its timeless qualities. | 2014/05/01 | satie; random; fragments; coding; scratch |
| Twelve Little Notes: A 12-tone matrix generator which can play back rows and their transformations in counterpoint. | 2014/05/01 | atonality; random; coding; scratch |
| Serial Satie (Gymnopédie No. 12): A program which converts 12-tone rows (original or randomly generated) into variations on Satie's most famous piece. | 2014/05/28 | satie; atonality; random; mashup; coding; best; scratch |
| 12-Step Program: Describing an experiment in composing accessible (?) 12-tone music. | 2014/10/27 | atonality; composition |
| Music + Music = Music: Musing about mashups, with discussion of my own mashup ("The Luigi Rag") of music associated with two different Luigis. | 2014/11/05 | mashup; composition; fun; mmplaying |
| A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Dodecaphony: Extending the 12-tone composition experiment with a new, lighthearted scherzo for string quartet. | 2014/11/08 | atonality; composition |
| Season's Greetings in C: Converting the idea behind Terry Riley's iconic "In C" into a new mashup of seasonal tunes. | 2014/11/22 | christmas; mashup; random; fun; composition |
| What lurks under the sea of my mind?: Strange combination of two popular songs from the 80's. | 2014/12/10 | mashup; fun |
| Louange a l'éclat de Messiaen: "Happy Birthday" in the style of the great French composer. | 2014/12/10 | mashup; birthday; mmplaying |
| The Rite of "Spring Sonata": Mixing two famous works of spring. | 2014/12/16 | stravinsky; beethoven; mischief; mashup |
| Sleigh Ride in 7/8 Time (The 12 Musings of Christmas #7): MM performing John Eidsvoog's brilliant take on a Leroy Anderson classic. | 2014/12/19 | christmas; mmplaying |
| Notes on a Recital: Program notes for a trio performance of works by Beethoven, Ravel, and Brahms | 2015/06/03 | program notes |
| MM's Musical Manipulatives: Newly designed interactive pages which synchronize score, audio/video, and analysis. | 2015/09/08 | best; coding; pedagogy; beethoven; mozart; brahms; mendelssohn |
| Adding Words to Wordless Music: Examing some ways in which instrumental music has been vocalized, for better or for worse. | 2015/09/25 | KEYWORDS |
| Founts of Inspiration: New chorale prelude based on an old hymn tune. | 2015/09/29 | composition; mmplaying; organ |
| Pugilistic Pianism: A Flintstones joke inspires a marriage of Rocky and Rachy. | 2015/10/03 | mashup; fun; rachmaninoff |
| Turning the page...: Blow-by-blow description of top level professionals fighting with paper. | 2015/10/09 | fun |
| What if the great composers wrote the music for the closing credits of '80's TV shows? Part I.: First of a three-part (!) series. | 2015/11/17 | fun; dvorak; beethoven; franck |
| Fugue in Royal David's City: Newly composed chorale prelude based on a classic Christmas carol. | 2015/12/17 | composition; christmas; fugue; mmplaying |
| MMerry Christmas: Lots of links to Christmas creations past. | 2015/23/15 | christmas; meta |
| Rhythmic Mediation at the Border: Bringing two countries together with a mashup of national anthems. | 2016/08/16 | mashup |
| Triangulated Counterpoint: Bringing two tunes together with the help of a third contrapuntal line. | 2016/08/17 | mashup |
| Sundays at the Improv: Experiments in making things up in church. | 2016/09/04 | composition; mashup; mmplaying; organ |
| This just popped up: A program which plays Bach interactively while popping (virtual) popcorn. | 2016/09/27 | animation; Bach; fugue; coding; fun; scratch |
| 10 Years: To celebrate 10 years of blogging, a newly composed opera aria for President Trump's beleaguered press secretary. | 2017/02/24 | composition; fun; trump |
| Looking Bach: Celebrating Bach's birthday with a big set of links to Bach posts here on the blog. | 2017/03/21 | Bach; birthday; meta |
| A Little Birthday Music: Celebrating Sondheim's birthday in subdued fashion. | 2017/03/22 | mashup; birthday |
| Punspiration: The idea of a Bach Street Boys boy band inspires a new Bachian allemande. | 2017/06/11 | mashup; Bach |
| Switched-on Barber: Demo of an animated Samuel Barber playing his violin concerto - on the guitar. | 2017/11/30 | animation; coding; Barber |
| Re-inventing Bach: Various permutations of a famous Bach invention. | 2018/01/20 | Bach |
| The Princess and the Fugue: A new fugue based on a theme from Rimsky-Korsakov's Scheherazade. | 2018/01/20 | composition; fugue; best; mmplaying |
| Fuguing up to Boston: A new fugue which, sadly, failed to spur the Patriots on to victory. But it's a good fugue! | 2018/02/02 | composition; fugue; best; organ |
| Oh no, I'm a hocket man: A newly composed little duet which uses the hocket technique to bring two quarreling lovers together. | 2018/02/14 | composition |
| Learning curves: All about an impossibly beautiful Ravel slur. | 2018/03/08 | |
| A Fugue for Strings: The fugue from Barber's Piano Sonata arranged for string orchestra. | 2018/03/13 | Barber; fugue; animation |
| Barber Guitar Concerto: A full realization of the finale of Barber's Violin Concerto arranged for electric guitar. | 2018/03/16 | Barber; animation; best |
| Suggestions d'anniversaire: Happy Birthday homages for Ravel and Prokofiev | 2018/04/14 | birthday; homage; mashup; mmplaying |
| Fugue State: The conclusion of an 11-part series of summer fugues. | 2018/08/24 | composition; fugue; mmplaying |
| Surprise: Haydn's most famous symphony, fitted out with some legit surprises. | 2019/02/10 | random; fun |
| Cut that out!: Exploring the problem of making cuts in concerto performances - with some unusual solutions in the Bruch concerto. | 2019/02/22 | fun |
| Bach to the future!: Futuristic accompaniment added to an unaccompanied violin prelude. | 2019/03/19 | bach; composition |
| There are no accidents - just accidentals!: Simple hymn tune harmonized with excessive chromaticism. | 2019/05/16 | composition; hymn |
| Impossible Piece = Impossible Peace?: Densely chromatic Schoenberg slowed way down....and sped way up. | 2019/05/19 | |
| Hindemirth Day: Another Happy Birthday homage. | 2019/11/19 | mashup |
| Searching for gold: Beethoven and the Golden Ratio. | 2020/02/07 | analysis; Fibonacci; math |
| Thirteen: New short piano piece based on the Fibonacci Sequence. | 2020/02/24 | composition; math |
| Notes that float: MM live performance of a Bach Allemande . | 2020/02/29 | mmplaying |
| I'll be Bach: Beginning of 11-day Bach birthday blog-a-thon, featuring new score for my newly added left hand to a Bach preludio. | 2020/03/21 | composition; bach |
| Bach Day #3: Bach to Bach: Inverted left-hand added to a Bach preludio to create a 2-part invention. | 2020/03/23 | composition; bach |
| Bach Day #4: Orpheus in the Underworld?: Performance of my own improvised transcription of a Bach concerto movemement for solo piano. | 2020/03/24 | mmplaying; bach |
| Bach Day #7: Bring out the canons: new THIRTY MINUTE VERSION of an 8-bar Bach canon. | 2020/03/27 | animation; bach; Hofstadter |
| Bach Day #11: Chaconne at a glance: debuting new, interactive page for listening to and viewing the Bach Chaconne. | 2020/03/31 | bach; analysis; score; Lilypond; coding |
| Skip to my loop: Linking to and reflecting on an article about this very blog. | 2020/04/28 | bach; meta |
| Signs and Music: Debuting a new Beethoven re-assembly game and reflections on connections between coding and composition. | 2020/05/02 | coding; scratch; fun; game |
| The one about the other guy having a 250th birthday year: Performance of a new-to-me fugue in 5/8 by Anton Reicha. | 2020/05/25 | mmplaying |
| Variations on Beethoven: The iconic Für Elise gets sliced and diced. | 2020/11/05 | fragments |
| Chopped!: How do you count chopsticks? | 2020/11/12 | meter; score |
| Magnificat: New setting of an old text. | 2020/12/13 | composition |
| Blue birds, wind chimes, minor sevenths, and mine craft: How a video game theme suggests a famous partsong - with bonus wind chimes! | 2021/01/01 | mmplaying; connections; coding; scratch; songswithoutsingers; stanford |
| Humming along: Chausson's beautiful song Le colibri performed as piano solo with new scrolling score. | 2021/01/25 | songswithoutsingers; mmplaying |
| Rite and Wrong: Second of two posts exploring melodic connections between Stravinsky's Rite of Spring and Queen's We are the champions. | 2021/01/30 | mashup; tune; mischief |
| Chime after Chime: Second of two posts exploring an unusual hymn tune by American composer William Albright. | 2021/02/16 | loops; |
| The Birth of Coulenc: Second of two posts exporing the idea of alternating-beat mashups, in this case combining iconic works of Couperin and Poulenc. | 2021/02/24 | mashups; score |
| MMmusing Virtual Recital: A 45-minute piano "recital" of music I've blogged about, including a number of unique creations and visualizations. | 2021/04/13 | mmplaying |
| Augmented Reality: Detailed exploration of use of Augmented Sixth chords in works by Haydn, Mendelssohn, and Brahms. | 2021/10/16 | theory |
| Hats off to so many hats: An appreciation of the music of Stephen Sondheim. | 2021/11/29 | broadway; theater; musical theater |
| Parody Parade: An investigation of Ravel's La Valse as a case study in parody. | 2022/02/23 | |
| 15: On the fifteenth anniversary of the blog, a list of 15 distinctive posts from each of the 15 years. | 2022/02/24 | |
| Epiphany Fugue 8/8: The Lasst One: The final in a series of eight new hymn fugues written for Epiphany 2022. | 2022/02/27 | composition |
| Smiles of a Sondheim Night: Finding possible inspiration for Sondheim's "Night Waltz" in the score of Bergman's Smiles of a Summer Night, the film which inspired A Little Night Music. | 2022/09/13 | broadway; musical theater; mashup |
| Some Little Knights Music: An exploration of a little-known cantata by Menotti. | 2022/10/10 | analysis; choral |
| Muppet of the Night: Elmo sings an iconic aria. | 2023/11/16 | fun; mischief; animation |
| A Canon for Kim: exploration of a new canon written for my sister-in-law. | 2023/09/01 | composition; fugue |
| Changes both major and minor: A fun if irresponsible experiment in transforming Schubert's iconic Erlkönig from major into minor. | 2023/09/22 | mischief; arranging |
| Concentric Circles: Nardini → Kreisler: Unexpected connections between two different sets of pieces, including exploration of circle progressions. | 2023/11/11 | theory |
| Sondheim Slanted Evening: Two mashups of Sondheim tunes with unexpected partners. | 2023/11/30 | mashup; mischief; puns |
| 'Tis the Season: A new version of my Terry Riley inspired Christmas mashup In Season. | 2023/12/21 | christmas; composition; mashup |
| Old Faithful: new fugue based on the famous Christmas hymn Adeste fidelis. | 2023/12/23 | christmas; fugues; composition |
| Whose Fault Is It Anyway?: A new animation machine which performs the "Your Fault" scene from Sondheim's musical Into the Woods. | 2024/02/03 | sondheim; programming; scratch |
| Preluding and Fuguing: New prelude and fugue on the hymn tune Engelberg. | 2024/40/05 | fugues; composition |
| It's a rap: A mashup of an iconic Dr. Dre song with an iconic Vivaldi violin concerto - with a rap! | 2024/09/06 | composition; mashup; mischief |
| Bach to Bach: A new mashup of a folk hymn with Bach's famous Prelude in C, plus another unexpected combo of another folk hymn with another Bach prelude. | 2024/09/24 | mashup; composition; mmplaying |
| A Piece for Voices as Instruments of Peace: A simple new, chant-based setting of a famous prayer by St. Francis of Assisi. | 2024/10/08 | composition |
| The Two Gustavs (Emptying the Desk Drawer #1): Bringing together two works by famous composers named Gustav. | 2024/10/10 | mashup |
| Timeless French Timepieces: New, unusual recordings of a Messiaen motet, with long introductory exploration of a certain kind of perfect composition. | 2024/10/18 | mmplaying |
| Songs Without Singers #8 (and #7): New entry in the "Songs without Singers" series: Fauré's Lydia performed as piano solo. | 2024/10/22 | mmplaying |
| Riding the Railing (Emptying the Desk Drawer #2): A small composition for piano based on some unusual music notation designed into a staircase railing. | 2024/10/24 | mmplaying; composition; score; animation |