No Quarter November has come and gone and I have had some thoughts on that kind of stuff. Philip Ewell has a conversation in Current Affairs that I might have to link to later. I wouldn't trust either Philip Ewell or John McWhorter on the topic of Christianity like I would Esther Acolatse (ordained Presbyterian that she is and her book on the reception history of Ephesians 6 interpretation from the apostolic era up through Walter Wink and Clinton Arnold is fantastic).
Because I'm threading music theoretical speculations about time and space across medieval theological treatises on Trinitarian dogmatics by Aquinas and John of Damascus I might be an unusually harsh reader for anything Ewell might have to say about Christianity if I'm drawing on Syrian Christian theology as a corrective to post-Schleiermacherian Germanophile art mysticism. Some of the most robust cases I've seen in theological aesthetics published in the last fifty or so years of scholarship have come from Catholic and Dutch Reformed/neo-Calvinist circles. But reading Ewell at Current Affairs I pretty much worked out he hasn't read a single sentence from either Frank Burch Brown or Nicholas Wolterstorff. And Philip E Stoltzfus' analysis of the Orpheus and Pythagorean schools in Hellenistic philosophy as a false dualism that ignores other approaches to music?
Pretty sure Ewell hasn't read it. Pretty likely Ted Gioia hasn't read it either but I'll get to Stolfzfus' analyses of Schleiermacher as Orpheus cheerleader and Barth as neo-Pythagorean after I finish the dense but intriguing book. The short version is that a theologian has proposed the contrast between Orphic/Pythagorean ideals of music is a false binary because both views have severe weaknesses and are simply not representative of not-Greek approaches to music in theological terms. I do think Ewell would appreciate that point, though. :)
I have meant to blog about William T Dargan's great book on the lining hymn tradition in black American churches but the music director at my church still has it and there's been some logistical issues with office pivots. But I hope in 2024 to get to blogging about Dargan's wonderful book, and it's exciting that Hans Rookmaaker's work is back in print in English because Dargan's account, though he regarded it as speculative, is a speculation mirrored in key ways by Rookmaaker on how it was the low church Calvinist strands of Anglicanism and incipient Methodism that seemed to give room for the lining out of metrical psalmody to evolve as it did in primitive Baptist and Methodist churches in African American communities. So I do hope to finally blog about the Dargan book but call that a resolution for 2024 blogging.
I have been thinking about writing a supplementary chapter to Ragtime and Sonata Forms dealing with practical approaches to ragtime/sonata fusions for months. I might have to take a stab at that. Some of the comments by Ewell and Jason Yust on how Schenkerianism botches the reality that musical repetitions have to be considered truly structural really applies to attempts to adapt ragtime to what would probably have to be called 18th century approaches to form and musical timespace.
Also ... Hayao Miyazaki has a new movie coming out! Woo-hoo! Also ... word of mouth from friends is that Godzilla Minus One is pretty good and not just "pretty good ... for a Godzilla movie".
I have not done any friendly writing about either Death Note or Spy x Family yet, both lovely anime I've belatedly discovered this year.
So while part of me wants to get around to some thoughts on some stuff related to Wilson's influence on a Richard Nixon of megachurch preachers and historical influence I'd rather do something more fun, and I hear fun stuff about the new Godzilla movie.
In other words, some showboating in Moscow, Idaho "could" still be a topic for blogging but ... you've seen there are so many more fun and productive things I could be writing about. I almost wrote some stuff this last weekend on some of that stuff but thought better of it.
Also, Matiegka's Grand Sonata I really does need some heavy-duty blogging at some point but I've resigned myself to the fact that the Matiegka blogging project is going to have to roll into 2024 and maybe even 2025 if I'm going to keep the musical analyses at the level I want them to stay at.
PS for that one reader who commended it, I did try getting into Outlaw Star but the art style just bugged me for reasons I can't really explain.
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