Writing

Spohr’s first clarinet concerto

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged music spohr on by

Louis Spohr wrote four clarinet concertos as a result of his professional acquaintance with clarinetist Johann Simon Hermstedt. The first shows that Spohr’s often conservative approach to composition didn’t keep him from writing a concerto with some serious surprises. It’s a difficult work, especially for the clarinet of his time, which had fewer keys than the modern instrument.

The difficulty is partly due to Spohr’s unfamiliarity with what is easy and what is harder on a clarinet. His preface to the printed music reveals that this concerto led directly to improvements in the instrument’s design:
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A historical note on blackface

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In the nineteenth century, minstrel shows were a popular form of entertainment in the US. Their focus was racial caricature. The songs were in a fake form of black dialect, and many of them trivialized bad things that happened to black people. Some of them have survived in a cleaned-up form. “Dixie,” the unofficial anthem of the South, was originally “Dixie’s Land,” about a woman who “died for a man that broke her heart,” treating it as a bit of fun. (“But if you want to drive away sorrow, / Come and hear this song tomorrow!”) Other songs were still worse.

Minstrel shows featured performers in blackface. This didn’t mean simply black makeup; it was an intentional caricature, with dark makeup on the face and white lips. A well-known example is Al Jolson in the 1927 film The Jazz Singer. Even black performers were sometimes expected to wear blackface.
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Vancouver Comics Arts Festival is looking worse

This entry was posted in Writing and tagged books Canada conventions fandom on by

In an earlier post, I discussed the Vancouver Comics Arts Festival’s exclusion of Miriam Libicki for, in effect, being Israeli. Today I found a newly published interview with Libicki that makes the convention look still worse. Based on what she says, the convention’s motivation was more a matter of book-banning.

She characterizes the disruption which allegedly endangered the convention as “screaming.” As described, it might be grounds for restricting or expelling the person responsible, but there doesn’t seem to have been any threat to anyone. At one point, security removed some people for being disruptive. The “screaming” person was objecting to Libicki’s books without having read them. Subsequently the convention demanded a review of Libicki’s writing. Libicki was asked for digital copies of her books, which she couldn’t readily provide.
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The attack of the singularized plurals 2

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged grammar language writing on by

English includes many nouns that end in “-um” or “-on” and are pluralized by changing the ending to “-a.” They come from Latin and Greek respectively. Examples include “medium,” “datum,” “ovum,” “criterion,” and “phenomenon.” As with everything else, the language isn’t consistent; we have museums, not musea; morons, not mora; polygons, not polyga. I wouldn’t complain if the language regularized the endings of all these words. “Bacteriums” and “phenomenons” would sound weird at first, but we could get used to it.

What’s happening instead is that people turn the plurals into singulars. With some words, like “data” and “media,” the change has been firmly established. Others are substandard but turn up often, like “a bacteria” or “a phenomena.” Recently I saw a writer friend who should know better talking about “a criteria.” This doesn’t make the words any more regular, since double-pluralizing “medias” or “datas” is still frowned upon. It leaves us with words that are the same in the singular and the plural.
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What really is a theocracy?

This entry was posted in Commentary Writing and tagged language usage on by

About a year and a half ago, I wrote about the overbroad use of the term “Fascism” and what it really was or is. Another political designation that gets freely tossed around is “theocracy.” Merriam-Webster defines it as “government of a state by immediate divine guidance or by officials who are regarded as divinely guided.” This is too broad; governments of all kinds have claimed that God guides their heads of state. Listen to traditional patriotic songs, and you’ll hear lots of claims that the leaders act under God’s guidance.
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Update on Smashwords and Draft2Digital

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Smashwords is now saying that some accounts will be automatically moved to Draft2Digital. A May 1 email says:

On June 1st, we’ll begin automatically migrating some Smashwords author accounts to Draft2Digital. If you desire more control over the migration process, or want to have your account migrated sooner, please complete the brief questionnaire that was previously sent to the email address associated with your Smashwords account.
 
When Draft2Digital acquired Smashwords in March 2022, we announced that the integration of the two companies would be completed in three phases, with the final phase involving the migration of Smashwords author/publisher accounts over to Draft2Digital. Given the vast number of Smashwords accounts, the migration process itself must be divided into phases to ensure maximum effectiveness and efficiency.

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Villains

This entry was posted in Techniques Writing and tagged fiction writing on by

Villains make stories exciting. They add an element of danger, giving the hero an adversary to overcome and the reader someone to hate. But who exactly counts as a villain? Is it any character who does bad things? This question came up in my mind when discussing the question of whether the opera Carmen has a villain. Is it Don Jose? He murders the protagonist. Is it Carmen? She leaves a trail of ruin, but that’s not her intention. Here I’ll put a few thoughts together.

First try: A proper villain does bad things with bad intentions. But do the intentions have to be bad? The classic example of the righteous villain is Javert in Les Miserables. Throughout the novel, he pursues Jean Valjean in the belief that he’s hunting down a dangerous criminal. He can’t grasp that Valjean has greatly changed, and when the truth hits him … well, that’s a spoiler. Is he a villain? Gottesmann in my The Magic Battery is similar, and I had Javert in mind when I created him. He thinks that letting just anybody use magic is too dangerous to allow, and he won’t allow the conviction of an innocent person, but his campaign kills a lot of people.
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Migrating from Smashwords to Draft2Digital

This entry was posted in Writing Writing as business and tagged draft2digital ebooks publishing smashwords on by

A few days ago I got an email from Smashwords saying I’m now eligible to migrate my self-publishing account to Draft2Digital. “Uncomplicated” accounts were eligible to migrate in February. Mine must be “complicated,” which surprises me. Maybe it’s because the two Thomas Lorenz novels constitute a series. In any case, if you’re a Smashwords author and think you may have missed the notification, check out the Migration FAQ.

The good news is that Smashwords says your existing links will continue to work. It would have been very annoying if they didn’t. However, it isn’t clear what the benefits are. The FAQ says, “After you update your manuscript through the Draft2Digital interface, only the ePub format will be available to readers.” That sounds like a downgrade. There’s nothing about whether migration will eventually be mandatory. If you have books published on Smashwords, read the information and use your judgment. This article on selfpublishing.com provides information which could help, though it’s a couple of years old. I’m content to drag my feet.

Recollections of Ergo

This entry was posted in History Writing and tagged education history MIT writing on by

Ergo: The Campus Voice of Reason. That was the name of our paper. Like all college students, we were more confident we were right than we should have been, but we stood apart from the crowd. As an organization, we were never “liberal” or “conservative” in the popular sense of the words. Our position was libertarian, strongly influenced by Ayn Rand’s philosophy of Objectivism. Ergo challenged university administrators, the campus left, politicians, and academics. My association with Ergo helped me to develop a framework of thought that I still go by. My views on what is important and how to achieve it have changed, and so have some of my conclusions, but my basic principles have changed very little.

Ergo came into being during a time called the “sixties,” which lasted from about 1965 to 1975. The founder was J. R. M. Seitz, who allegedly acquired all the parts necessary to build an Atlas missile (except the nuclear warhead) on the open market. It was the time of the Vietnam War and urban riots. It was a time of protests and violence. People marched and occupied buildings. Some thought that totalitarian Communist states were a great idea. Others just wanted the government to stop drafting people and sending them into an undeclared war on the other side of the globe. Once I was punched in the nose, and another time the sweater I was wearing was set on fire. I can’t count the number of times I was called a fascist. Interesting times.
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The numbering of musical works

This entry was posted in Music Writing and tagged music writing on by

The other day while driving, I heard a familiar-sounding piano sonata on WCRB. It was one I’d heard before, in fact one I was familiar with. I could accurately anticipate the music, which was obviously Mozart’s, in some spots. But I couldn’t place the damn thing! When I reached my destination, I stayed in the parking lot and kept the radio on to the end. The announcer said only that it was Mozart’s “Piano Sonata No. 2.” This wasn’t very helpful, since there are different numberings in different editions.

The numbering of musical works is tricky in general. For many composers, there are generally accepted numbers, but Mozart’s sonatas aren’t the only case where there’s confusion. Schubert’s symphonies are usually numbered 1 to 9, even though No. 7 is just a sketch. The “Unfinished” is No.8 and the “Great C major” the 9th in this scheme. Some lists, though, have just eight symphonies. They make the “Unfinished” the seventh and the C major symphony the eighth, or vice versa.
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